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From: bhilden@druxj.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.college
Subject: C.S. Department woes -- University of Wisconsin-Madison
Message-ID: <787@druxj.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 25-Apr-84 01:01:59 EST
Article-I.D.: druxj.787
Posted: Wed Apr 25 01:01:59 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Apr-84 00:39:20 EST
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Denver
Lines: 75

At the risk of having my fellow colleagues and professors flame me
to death, I graduated from UW-Madison in December 1983 with a MS
in CS and thought I would through in my two cents about life in
Madtown.
First off, it seems like the situation is improving at UW but in
many aspects of the program, that was the only way things could
go.  
Concerning the teaching situation, UW is hurting for faculty in
almost all disciplines except theory(they are developing
a strong program) which has several implications.  First, many
of the undergraduate courses are taught by TA`s and lecturers,
though this may be a blessing in disguise as some faculty members
won`t give students the time of day outside of class and office
hours.  Secondly, many of the faculty teach the same course
each year leading to motivational problems(i.e. "here we go again").
A very real problem at UW is the method for registering for CS
courses, which for the most part is not restricted to majors
only(some funky University rule).  Many non majors would like
to get a few CS courses under their belt and onto their resumes
and it is these persons(Seniors and Juniors) who fill up the
courses.  The department does hold some sections open for 
Sophomores and Freshman but, the problem does exist.
Incidentally, the drop rate in undergraduate CS courses is quite
high at 30-40%, though our department wisely chooses not to 
over enroll courses(enrollment is determined by available
machine time).  One method I have heard to curtail the high
drop rate(in use at UW EE dept) is to keep waiting lists for
courses and if a student drops, he/she goes to the end
of the waiting list.  This could have grave consequences for
a senior.

One bright spot at UW is the Department Administrator who performs
teaching evaluations of his graduate instructors to determine who
is qualified, and then assigns them courses they are qualified
to teach.

Concerning machine availability I have mixed feelings.  The 
department has a number of teaching machines pdp 11/70(the ratio of 
uptime to downtime), vax 11/750, vax 11/780, hp 3000, IBM 4341 and
various research machines( ~2 11/780, ~6 11/750 + 12 11/750`s in
a ring).  The department has had dificulty balancing the load
between the teaching machines for a number of reasons, some I can
understand and some I can`t.  But, anyway there have been moments
when we had 25-30 waiting processes on our 11/780 while other
machines were virtually idle.  The late bloomer in this regard
was the IBM 4341 running VM.  There were about 100 graduate students
using it for a compiler course and a networking course last fall.
It ran like a champ, never crashed and could compile 10,000 lines
of Pascal in about 10 minutes.  It was so reliable that, as I understand,
the department put a few more courses on it and the students started
doing things like tracing the OS code and WHAMMY, the machine has
been going down more often than your generic $5 dollar streetwalker.

It can be argued that there is only one course or professor who may
be causing all this grief but, at the UW this seems to be a common
occurrence.  As the story goes, some professor gets over ambitious
and without realizing it, assigns a project or group of projects
which totally cripple a machine.  The obvious solution is for all the
instructors to get together at the beginning of the semester and
present their proposed assignments and their respective due dates
(which can be even more critical) in order to schedule the available
resources most optimally(Banker`s Algorithm anyone?). 

In closing, and I could go on, I would like to say that I think the
department is becoming more aware of its problems, though solutions
are most often tied to the `ol $$$$$.  As far as instructor/student
relationships, some of the faculty need to be a little more human.

It is unfortunate some people are majoring in CS because they
are genuinely interested in computers and enjoy it to boot.
Sorry folks, its all a matter of timing.

          Bruce Hildenbrand
          ATT ISL Denver
          ihnp4!druxj!bhilden