The Signal Corps Advanced Course and graduate school would be my first operational retooling after seven years in the operational Army. During those seven years, I spent four years jumping out of perfectly safe airplanes and three years running really top secret data center. With 18 months in command and a year as battalion S3, my six months in the advanced course was relaxing and a good opportunity to connect with my peers. I could not get out of attending the course. Thus, I played a good bit of golf, played a bit of soccer and regrettably broke the hand of our goalie when we both went for the ball, and made some lifelong friends like Mike Bozeman. I performed well in the course and ended up winning the top leadership award, the Kilborne Award as well as the top academic performance in the class as the distinguished honor graduate.
After the advanced course, Eileen and I stayed at Fort Gordon Fort Eisenhower, GA so I could attend the Army Automation course. This course was great preparation for graduate school. I was an honor graduate for this course.
As for graduate school, the Army had a set of schools that were in the top 20 of programs nationwide and had a history of Army officers graduating on time. For a master’s program, the Army gave you 18 months. My short list consisted of Texas A&M University and Northwestern. Both were spectacular but Texas A&M had the advantage of being able to buy or rent a 2,400 square foot house within five minutes of campus. We found a fabulous house with a stunning indoor atrium with soaring glass walls that served as an inner sanctum of calm in a busy work.
My faculty advisor was Dr Udo Pooch who handled all of the armed forces officers seeking a Masters or PhD in computer science. Udo, with service in the Marines and a PhD in Physics, was a tough and highly respected member of the faculty. He did not allow to submit for final exams until you were ready and if he thought you were ready, he made it very clear to the other faculty that you were ready. That is the sign of a great faculty advisor. He enjoyed his interactions with his students and would host periodic dinners or parties complete with Mariachi bands playing in the background.
Graduate school progressed quickly over the next 18 months and I ended up completing my Master’s degree with a 4.0 GPA. This led to induction into the interdisciplinary honor society of Phi Kappa Phi and the computing honor society of Upsilon Pi Epsilon. In both cases, I would become a lifetime member to support their championship of excellence in promote their related disciplines and to encourage their contribution to the enhancement of knowledge.
Some vignettes from graduate school:
- I took my first graduate class in artificial intelligence. The professor, Dr John Yen, was diminutive in stature but a giant as a professor. I studied hard for the midterm in the class and was one of the few students to do well on the midterm. Dr Yen was frustrated with the results and encouraged the students to redouble their efforts in understanding artificial intelligence. Fast forward and three days before my final exam in artificial intelligence, Eileen and I welcomed our second son into the world. I really didn’t have a lot of time to study for the AI final but I tried. As I opened the final exam, I heard a cacophony of groans from my classmates. I just grinned. Dr Yen had done the most evil thing a professor can do – the final exam was the midterm exam. I got an A in that class.
- Udo Pooch would come to class and intentionally teach incorrect material with increasingly obvious errors to see if the students had prepared for class and if they had the courage to challenge him in class. If challenged, he would not back down initially and you had to engage in an academic debate as to why what he was teaching was absolutely incorrect. It made class spicy and small as students dropped the class rather than have that degree of rigor in the classroom.
I would return to Texas A&M for my PhD in 1998 and in 2009, I would be selected as a Distinguished Former Student.