COMPUTER SCIENCE NEWSLETTER Department of Computer Science November 13, 2001
Letter from Graduate Advisor		As most of you already know, I became the new Director of Graduate Studies on September 16, 2001. I would like to thank my predecessor, Dr. Stephen Huang, for making it very easy to take over the job: I am not inheriting any major problems! There are many goals that I consider important for the future of our graduate programs. The first and most important goal is that you receive a good, state-of-the art education. In the last two years our department faced many problems resulting from a very large student population in our degree programs and many other problems. I am happy to report that we were able to reduce the number of students in our graduate programs from 450 to 350. Moreover, we were able to hire 4 new faculty members this year. The second goal is to increase the quality of students in our graduate programs. This is important because this will influence how your future employers will view our department and what the value of the degree will be you are trying to obtain. For example, we only accepted about 30% of applicants into our graduate programs in the last two semesters. The third goal is to make our department an environment of which students, faculty, and staff are happy to be a part. As I see it, we still have a lot to do to accomplish this goal. In this letter, I like to encourage you to get involved in what is going on in the department, and to create activities of your own that serve your and the other students social and professional needs. Being the Director of Graduate Studies for about 2 months, I have observed that many of you are not aware of the rules and regulations of the graduate program, and sometimes get yourselves into unnecessary trouble. I strongly encourage you to read our degree requirements that can be found on the web (http://www.cs.uh.edu/degree.html). I plan to discuss some of those matters in more detail in my next newsletter. Spring 2002 registration is starting soon, and I am happy to report that we will be offering a large number of graduate courses next semester. If you have any doubts concerning which courses to take, feel free to visit me during my office hours. One problem that we encountered in the past is that sometimes a large number of students want to take the same course. As you might have experienced yourself, taking graduate classes with more than 50 students is rarely a lot of fun; consequently, we have put quotas on all courses with the goal to maintain and enhance the quality of our education. In general, I like to ask you to be more flexible with respect to classes you like to take next semester. We will also try our best to offer popular classes more frequently, but this is easier said than done: it is quite difficult in these days to find skilled instructors who can teach those classes. Being successful in any professional job usually requires interacting well with the environment you are a part of. Feel free to give me feed-back about activities and events that you like in our department, and also let me know about things you do not like in our department. That's all I have to say today! Christoph F. Eick
Sun Microsystems To Install Fast Computer Grid at UH		A collaboration involving state-of-the-art technology and higher education announced today by Sun Microsystems, Inc. and the University of Houston will enhance research efforts aimed at solving complex problems in the environment and maximizing the utilization of energy resources. Professor Barbara Chapman of Computer Science at UH is the principal investigator on the project. Grid computing has a high profile in the research community today, and it’s the new way of using computers at various places on the Internet, Chapman said. For more information, please see the press release.