NASA reforms will never, ever succeed

I have submitted the attached statement to my Texas state Senator and
Representative, the Chancellor, President and Board of Regents at UT
Austin, and I thought you might be interested in reviewing the case.

Regards,

Bill Clark

- - - - -

Senator Barrientos,

I am 46 years old and have been a licensed Professional Engineer in
half a dozen different disciplines. I got my BS from UT Austin in
1978, and an MS from UT Austin in 2001.

I was a semester short of a Ph.D in Aerospace Engineering at UT Austin
- my project was a computer model of the Earth to Mars trajectory,
with applications for the missile defense targeting system - and I was
expelled for non-academic reasons a semester short of matriculating
with a Ph.D. I appealed the dismissal through the whole UT
bureaucracy for two solid years, to no avail.

A few weeks ago I submitted a statement to the Texas Board of
Professional Engineers giving evidence and documentation of several
serious offenses done by the ASE Department. They include slander,
retaliation, misrepresentation, and theft of services. The
documentation I submitted to the PE Board included letters from
esteemed professors admitting to all these offenses in their own
words.

I received a letter back from the PE Board yesterday stating that the
things I have described are "...beyond their jurisdiction because they
do not involve the practice of engineering."

As a lifelong engineer, a published author, and a third generation
engineer; I find this ruling by the Board to be offensive. What can
be more the practice of engineering than the teaching of it? When I
was a consulting engineer most of my day was devoted to training
subordinates, educating clients, and sharing my experience and
knowledge with anybody and everybody. To separate this from the
"practice of engineering" is to narrow the definition of engineering
to little more than the equivalent of a computer algorithm.

The most disturbing part to me is that the professors at the
University - all of whom are licensed PE's - know they are beyond the
law, and have no guilt for breaking every rule in the book. I think
the Texas Legislature should consider the particulars of my case, and
contemplate the idea of enforcing some kind of ethical, moral, and
humanistic standards upon those who teach engineering to furure P.E.'s
and, in their comportment in the classroom, set the standard of
behavior for all the impressionable students in their realm of
influence.

Regards,

Bill Clark

XC: P.E. Board
XC: Lee Smith, UT VP for Legal Affairs