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∂AILDr. James E. White↓200 College Street↓Northfield, Minnesota 55037∞

Dear Dr. White:

You are one of several people with PhD's and some teaching experience in
mathematics planning to convert to computer science.  In my opinion, if
you can manage it, the best way to do it is in place, maintaining your
actual position and increasing the amount of research you do in computer
science until you have the background to transfer to computer science at
your own or some other school.  If you can't do this, then getting PhD
level support in a computer science area has been possibile for several
people whom I know in the past but I guess it is now more difficult, and
in particular, we have no openings.  The last alternative is to enter
as a graduate student in computer science and we have at least one
graduate student who has done this.

In my opinion, the books you have mentioned are somewhat peripheral
to computer science.  I would suggest that you also study some of the
more central fields of computer science; mathematical theory of computation,
artificial intelligence, semantics of programming languages and the
theory of algorithms.  I would recommend books by Manna (mathematical
theory of computation), Nilsson (artificial intelligence),
and Knuth (algorithms).

In the past, we have succeeded in getting some form of financial aid for
almost all graduate students admitted to the PhD program and we are
particularly interested in getting minority graduate students.

.sgn