A graduate immigration course in computer science

As part of a RIAS grant from the NSF, a pilot course intended for incoming graduate students in computer science was offered during the fall of 1977. This course was intended to acquaint new graduate students with (1) the CS graduate curriculum and degree requirements; (2) the areas of CS faculty interest, research, and support; (3) current areas of research in CS; and (4) the computing facilities available through the UT Computation Center and the department's software laboratory. These goals were realized through regular lectures, several programming problems and ten lectures from different faculty members about their research interests and current work. Specific assignments for each student were determined on the basis of their backgrounds and interests. (A questionnaire answered during the first lecture helped to determine these.) An important part of the course involved about twelve lectures citing widely applicable topics from the first three volumes of <u>The Art of Computer Programming</u>, by D. E. Knuth.This course is believed to be a valuable asset to the department's curriculum because of the diverse nature of its faculty, computing facilities, and graduate students.