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Graduate Student Abuse
Following is a copy of a grievance letter I submitted to the Texas
Professional Engineering Licensing Board, stipulating half a dozen felonies by staff at the UT Austin Aerospace Engineering Department: July 24, 2004 Professional Engineering Licensing Board 1917 South IH 35 Austin TX 78741 Dear Sir or Madam, This is a narrative summary of events related to the attached complaint. I have provided essential documents, but many more are available that quite thoroughly document the following events. I began graduate school in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin in the fall of 1997. My first advisor was Dr. Fowler, but I was reassigned to Dr. Roger Broucke, an expert in celestial mechanics (Dr. Fowler's expertise is orbital mechanics). Dr. Broucke was my primary advisor until late in the fall semester 2000, at which time Dr. Fowler became my primary advisor again because Dr. Broucke was a professor emeritus and there had just been new rule implemented (possibly because of my assertions) that required all professors emeritus who had graduate students to have another full time regular faculty member who was the graduate student's main advisor. Dr. Broucke retired in the summer of 2001, and he told me he no longer wanted to have graduate students, so at that time Dr. Fowler was my main and only advisor. I took a supervised research Thesis class in the summer of 1998 and, with Dr. Brocke's approval, began to create a numerical model of the Earth to Mars trajectory. I did not get any help at all from Dr. Broucke for this project, despite its being a "supervised research" class, but kept him updated of my work and kept working on the problem. By the time I took a second supervised research class in the summer of 2000 the program was complete, and had shown good results. However, I still got no help at all from Dr. Broucke on this research. It is at this point that I complained to the graduate advisor, Dr. Hull; who took no action, then to Dr. Terry Kahn at the Graduate College level; who took no action either. That fall I kept complaining, and eventually they let me present my research at a formal seminar (the flyer is enclosed), which was attended by Dr.s Hull, Abusali, Fowler, Chambers, and a few graduate students. Dr. Abusali told me the following summer in an email that he was surprised I had not graduated yet because he had thought that seminar I gave in November 2000 was my dissertation defense. I took nine hours of supervised graduate research class that fall, but again got nothing in return. The seminar was not associated with this supervised research in the least, and was in fact organized by a new professor in the Department Dr. Cesar Ocampo. It seems as though my complaints against Dr. Broucke were thought to be against Dr. Fowler, when the College of Engineering finally got involved (the Office of Students with Disabilities was also involved marginally; as I am technically a disabled Viet Nam era veteran), and he had to go to the Dean's office to explain things. He never mentioned any of this to me, and I only found out about it in his letter quitting as my advisor (enclosed) and in other paperwork that was generated as the appeals process went its course. Be that as it may, I continued my research, and continued to try and get help from Dr. Fowler who's expertise is trajectory optimization, and who's own Ph.D was a model of the Earth to Mars trajectory. I took six hours of graduate research classes that spring, three more in the summer, and nine more in the fall. Again, I got absolutely no help in furthering my research in all of these courses, from either Dr. Broucke or Dr. Fowler. That summer I passed the written qualifying exams and was slated to take the oral qualifying exam in the fall. In August 2001 I had a meeting with Dr. Fowler at his office in the Center for Space Research and he said my research looked good and needed very little more work; all I needed was to write it up and perhaps develop a theoretical basis for the faster, safer, more efficient trajectory my algorithm found. I had some theory in what I had presented in the seminar in November 2000, but either Dr. Fowler did not notice that part of my presentation or wanted me to find something more. This was an unusual stipulation because my work had up to that point been a straight forward numerical model. It is not customary to require theory to accompany a model, just to show that the model conforms to acceptable physical laws and engineering practice, which I had done. Having been so stipulated to reinforce my work with a strong theoretical basis, I then started to seek assistance and help outside of the University, via emails to many experts around the world (attached). I found several individuals and organizations who were very interested in my research (I had put it all on the web, then asked them to visit my website and see what I was doing, download the sourcecode, read my reports, etc..) The individuals were interested in being on my dissertation committee, particularly Dr. John Birge, Dean of Engineering and Mathematics at Northwestern University whose forte was optimization and he was interested in my methods. Several others were interested: =B7 Juris Vagners, orbital mechanics expert at the University of Washington =B7 Frank Tveter, astrophysicist at a Norway research group =B7 Robert Cassanova, Director NAIC =B7 Jorg Kapmann, a computer consultant in Denmark =B7 Robort Tolson, orbital mechanics expert at George Washington University The University allows you to have one person outside the University on your dissertation committee, and Dr. Birge was going to do that for me. The others were going to help. In the meantime I found four more professors in the Aerospace Engineering Department to be on my oral exam committee (one backup in case somebody had to cancel), which included Dr. Fowler, Dr. Schutz, Dr. Ocampo, Dr. Mark (the backup), and Dr. Lightsey. I found a time and date that was agreeable to all of them - the morning of December 17th I believe. The Department sent written notifications to each of these professors, all of whom I had talked with previously, described my research; they were all interested, and would be glad to do the oral exam and to be on my dissertation committee (it is customary for the people to be on your dissertation committee who are on your oral exam committee). When I went in to take the oral exam as scheduled, I was told I had been dismissed from the program. Apparently the letter mailed to me by Dr. Dolling was held up in the Christmas rush and I did not receive it for another couple of days. I had previously been told that a committee had been set up to review my research, after I had written to ABET complaining about not getting what I paid for with the supervised research classes. I got a letter asking me to come in to hear the results of that evaluation but as I was studying hard for my oral exam I asked if it could wait until after I passed the exam, and Dr. Dolling said that was OK. Evidently in the interim, Dr. Fowler quit as my advisor and when Dr. Dolling (the Chairman of the Aerospace Department) could find no other professor to be my advisor, that is when they dismissed me. You will notice that all of this administrative activity took place in less than ten days, which was during the final exam time when all the professors were busy administering exams, grading them, and so forth. During all of this nobody made an attempt to contact me by telephone or email to let me know what was going on, so that I could lobby to find another professor to be my advisor - my research was of interested to many of the professors, who were on the exam committee; and others as well. One of two things happened: they were all so upset that I had contacted ABET that they shared the opinion expressed by Dr. Fowler in his letter (which was placed in my personnel file in the Department, and which file they would have looked at to see if they wanted to be my advisor) or they were upset at the quality of my research. The part of the documents I submitted - essentially a copy of the website that the aforementioned professors outside the University had looked at, then expressed an interest in - that may have caused the most angst is the theoretical part, which at the time was very tentative and which I have since established mathematically from many perspectives. However, the fact remains that they rejected me because of this research, the same material which several equally reputable experts outside the University had looked at, studied, and even acknowledging that it was not complete, but still thought it was promising enough to volunteer to be on my dissertation committee and/or to help in any way they could in furthering this research project once I entered candidacy. There are no written, unwritten, or assumed regulations that require any candidate to have previously shown qualifications in doing Ph.D level research. I can think of many reasons why Dr. Fowler might have behaved as he did, and by inference his peers in the orbital mechanics group: =B7 I had appealed to a higher authority, as is my civil right; i.e. to the Engineering College, the Graduate School, and ultimately to ABET stating things that they had done wrong =B7 Their having stated in writing that my research had some major flaws is an acknowledgment that the supervising professors during the 39 hours of supervised research classes I took during this time either did not help me, gave me bad advice, or I did not do the work. The latter cannot be supported, because every part of the way I Copyrighted the work I was doing (attached list). So the Department had to expel me to keep from looking incompetent, or worse. =B7 Perhaps they didn't feel that just because I was a P.E. I was due any sort of different treatment than any other student; which in fact I had not asked for or expected, just to be treated like any other graduate student =B7 Most of this seemed to happen right after I told Dr. Fowler and Dr. Hull that I had a "stress disorder" so they may have acted out of prejudice, or assumed that my disability made me claim grandiose things (even though the research had been accepted at conferences) =B7 They didn't even help me to prepare my research to present it at other conferences, and there were several, as is customary with other graduate students at my level =B7 Dr. Broucke told me once that "there is an informal rule in the Department not to give a student any feedback on his or her research until after being formally admitted to candidacy" because they were afraid of having their ideas stolen =B7 Other departments like the School of Architecture have a written contract between the professor and student setting goals for work to be done in supervised research classes, but not the Aerospace Department. Perhaps they were afraid my activities would lead to that kind of thing and did not want their academic freedom curtailed in that way. =B7 Having created a committee to evaluate my research as stated in the enclosed letter from the Department is a clear acknowledgement that what I had said all along was true; i.e. I had gotten absolutely no help from anybody in any of my supervised graduate research classes. Once this letter was issued, and I picked up on the implications right away and used this in my appeal, it behooved the Department to get rid of me as quickly as possible. =B7 The reviewers clearly spent very little time studying my algorithm and computer code, comparing my results to the simplest model you can create with a few calculations on the back of an envelope; whereas my model had 24 degrees of freedom - 23 more than the model they used to compare it with, thereby claiming I was totally wrong. Perhaps they could not follow the code, or they did not believe that it worked as I claimed because it was very complicated; or even believe that I could not have written it myself - even though I have over the last 15 year had my own Bar X Software company, and have given away half a dozen engineering design computer programs with my two textbooks from McGraw-Hill =B7 One graduate student told me he thought Dr. Broucke was extremely jealous that I had published two authoritative textbooks with McGraw-Hill. =B7 There is a saying in physics, and celestial mechanics is a kind of astrophysics, that nobody past 25 can come up with decent new ideas - I was in my early 40's. Maybe they assumed that older people cannot do good work on the theoretical level. =B7 Dr. Schutz evaluated the celestial mechanics part of my research, which is quite abstract (and even more so now that I have had a chance to fully illustrate and support my work with mathematical proofs); he presented himself to the University as an expert in celestial mechanics, even though his academic career has next to nothing to do with any of the classical problems of celestial mechanics; but mostly satellite geodesy, statistical modeling, and related fields. In this regard he misrepresented his qualifications, as had Dr. Fowler and others. This is a serious thing to do, and involved the whole Department actually. =B7 When I arrived at UT the Aerospace Department had the best celestial mechanics group in the world; when I left they had no celestial mechanics group at all, even though they continue representing this capability in the graduate catalog. Perhaps they were afraid somebody would notice that, and they could not have those "phantom courses" in their catalog. =B7 As I went through the appeals process, I got the feeling that many people in the orbital mechanics field do not believe that it is even possible to solve the interplanetary trajectory without the use of third party optimization software. In fact, it is so very non linear that most experts use genetic algorithms to solve the problem. This was Dr. Fowler's favorite method, as he stated often in his classes - perhaps he resented that I had found another way; Dr. Hull the Graduate Advisor was the expert in optimization; perhaps he resented that I had found a solution to the problem that did not use optimization methods at all, but just some celestial mechanics and some insightful computer programming tricks. They may not have thought it possible that I did in 25 pages of code what NASA does with thousands of pages; or that my optimization converges to a solution in 30 seconds on a 333 Mhz PC whereas NASA's takes many minutes on a supercomputer. =B7 You will note that many of these superior kinds of attitudes are just what was found in the blue label committee that investigated the problems leading to the crash of the Challenger NASA shuttle, attributing them to the "NASA culture." Well, UT Austin is the leading NASA research university, the Center for Space Research is second only to JPL in the space community, and in fact at least half the people you see in any TV shots at JPL are UT Austin graduates. =B7 Prejudice against my being a disabled student, assuming that my disability had caused me to imagine all the problems. Dr. Kahn as much as said so, as did Lee Smith the Vice President of Legal Affairs - who only recently has forbidden me from contacting anybody at the University involved in the appeals process. It makes me wonder what they're afraid of. =B7 Dr. Broucke as not very well liked at all by everybody else in the Aerospace Department, especially the people in the orbital mechanics group. Apparently Dr. Broucke was outspoken in trying to get professors to spend more time with students and teaching duties and less time in research and consulting. When Dr. Broucke left, this hatred may have transferred to me, his last graduate student; and a mature engineer with his same feelings about academia. It seems absurd to me that a student who does good research, has good grades, has passed his written qualifying exams on the first try; that a student like that who has a high intrinsic value and has proven a lot, that I could have been dismissed for this shopping list of petty, personal, and irrelevant reasons. The most distressing part to me is that I have advanced my research quite a ways - far beyond even a draft dissertation I delivered six weeks ago to professors in the orbital mechanics group - and I am not even permitted the usual courtesy of local consultants or researchers, to present my work at a University or Center for Space Research Seminar. I can only hope that in a month or so after I have generated a polished dissertation document, that somebody will be interested. Regards, William H. Clark II NOTE: The P.E. Board took no action on this letter. My Texas State Representative Ron Baxter refused to take any action either. As of this point (March 2005) I have been prohibited from contacting anybody at the University by the UT Vice President for Legal Affaris, Dr. Lee Smith, JD - thus I cannot get references to complete my research elsewhere, or even to get a job. |
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"WH Clark" wrote in message oups.com... Following is a copy of a grievance letter I submitted to the Texas Professional Engineering Licensing Board, stipulating half a dozen felonies by staff at the UT Austin Aerospace Engineering Department: You're a mathematician right, so let's use some math to figure out what went wrong at school. Any complex adaptive system, whether an ecosystem, a person or a department, requires an unstable equilibrium between its static and chaotic forms to evolve and create. For a person this would be a balance between detailed study, the static realm, and a bit of insanity to help form the chaotic realm of concepts and theory. If the balance is weighted to one or the other the system tends to fall apart. This holds in all frames of reference. So would you say your relationships and work within the department maintained the proper equilibrium? The static realm would be your detailed work, but what would fill the chaotic attractor in the system at hand, the university? The chaotic realm would be your interpersonal relationships. Clearly you established a system that was entirely dominated by your work, and forgot to balance the creative process with strong interpersonal relationships. As a result the system, the creative process, failed. All real world systems, whether dealing with celestial mechanics or office politics, are non linear in nature. To attempt to place blame on a certain individual or two, or conjure up a conspiracy is misguided. As such real world systems are far too complex for such simple or deterministic explanations. Navigating the real world, or a solar system, will always require more than simple number crunching. Forcing a solution onto a complex adaptive system always results in conflict and a negative sum game. To succeed you needed to make the others /want/ to help you, not force them to. The former produces a self organizing system certain to succeed, the latter produces a lot of name calling, lawsuits etc. Before you work can proceed, you should plot a path towards others, instead of away. Jonathan s July 24, 2004 Professional Engineering Licensing Board 1917 South IH 35 Austin TX 78741 Dear Sir or Madam, This is a narrative summary of events related to the attached complaint. I have provided essential documents, but many more are available that quite thoroughly document the following events. I began graduate school in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin in the fall of 1997. My first advisor was Dr. Fowler, but I was reassigned to Dr. Roger Broucke, an expert in celestial mechanics (Dr. Fowler's expertise is orbital mechanics). Dr. Broucke was my primary advisor until late in the fall semester 2000, at which time Dr. Fowler became my primary advisor again because Dr. Broucke was a professor emeritus and there had just been new rule implemented (possibly because of my assertions) that required all professors emeritus who had graduate students to have another full time regular faculty member who was the graduate student's main advisor. Dr. Broucke retired in the summer of 2001, and he told me he no longer wanted to have graduate students, so at that time Dr. Fowler was my main and only advisor. I took a supervised research Thesis class in the summer of 1998 and, with Dr. Brocke's approval, began to create a numerical model of the Earth to Mars trajectory. I did not get any help at all from Dr. Broucke for this project, despite its being a "supervised research" class, but kept him updated of my work and kept working on the problem. By the time I took a second supervised research class in the summer of 2000 the program was complete, and had shown good results. However, I still got no help at all from Dr. Broucke on this research. It is at this point that I complained to the graduate advisor, Dr. Hull; who took no action, then to Dr. Terry Kahn at the Graduate College level; who took no action either. That fall I kept complaining, and eventually they let me present my research at a formal seminar (the flyer is enclosed), which was attended by Dr.s Hull, Abusali, Fowler, Chambers, and a few graduate students. Dr. Abusali told me the following summer in an email that he was surprised I had not graduated yet because he had thought that seminar I gave in November 2000 was my dissertation defense. I took nine hours of supervised graduate research class that fall, but again got nothing in return. The seminar was not associated with this supervised research in the least, and was in fact organized by a new professor in the Department Dr. Cesar Ocampo. It seems as though my complaints against Dr. Broucke were thought to be against Dr. Fowler, when the College of Engineering finally got involved (the Office of Students with Disabilities was also involved marginally; as I am technically a disabled Viet Nam era veteran), and he had to go to the Dean's office to explain things. He never mentioned any of this to me, and I only found out about it in his letter quitting as my advisor (enclosed) and in other paperwork that was generated as the appeals process went its course. Be that as it may, I continued my research, and continued to try and get help from Dr. Fowler who's expertise is trajectory optimization, and who's own Ph.D was a model of the Earth to Mars trajectory. I took six hours of graduate research classes that spring, three more in the summer, and nine more in the fall. Again, I got absolutely no help in furthering my research in all of these courses, from either Dr. Broucke or Dr. Fowler. That summer I passed the written qualifying exams and was slated to take the oral qualifying exam in the fall. In August 2001 I had a meeting with Dr. Fowler at his office in the Center for Space Research and he said my research looked good and needed very little more work; all I needed was to write it up and perhaps develop a theoretical basis for the faster, safer, more efficient trajectory my algorithm found. I had some theory in what I had presented in the seminar in November 2000, but either Dr. Fowler did not notice that part of my presentation or wanted me to find something more. This was an unusual stipulation because my work had up to that point been a straight forward numerical model. It is not customary to require theory to accompany a model, just to show that the model conforms to acceptable physical laws and engineering practice, which I had done. Having been so stipulated to reinforce my work with a strong theoretical basis, I then started to seek assistance and help outside of the University, via emails to many experts around the world (attached). I found several individuals and organizations who were very interested in my research (I had put it all on the web, then asked them to visit my website and see what I was doing, download the sourcecode, read my reports, etc..) The individuals were interested in being on my dissertation committee, particularly Dr. John Birge, Dean of Engineering and Mathematics at Northwestern University whose forte was optimization and he was interested in my methods. Several others were interested: · Juris Vagners, orbital mechanics expert at the University of Washington · Frank Tveter, astrophysicist at a Norway research group · Robert Cassanova, Director NAIC · Jorg Kapmann, a computer consultant in Denmark · Robort Tolson, orbital mechanics expert at George Washington University The University allows you to have one person outside the University on your dissertation committee, and Dr. Birge was going to do that for me. The others were going to help. In the meantime I found four more professors in the Aerospace Engineering Department to be on my oral exam committee (one backup in case somebody had to cancel), which included Dr. Fowler, Dr. Schutz, Dr. Ocampo, Dr. Mark (the backup), and Dr. Lightsey. I found a time and date that was agreeable to all of them - the morning of December 17th I believe. The Department sent written notifications to each of these professors, all of whom I had talked with previously, described my research; they were all interested, and would be glad to do the oral exam and to be on my dissertation committee (it is customary for the people to be on your dissertation committee who are on your oral exam committee). When I went in to take the oral exam as scheduled, I was told I had been dismissed from the program. Apparently the letter mailed to me by Dr. Dolling was held up in the Christmas rush and I did not receive it for another couple of days. I had previously been told that a committee had been set up to review my research, after I had written to ABET complaining about not getting what I paid for with the supervised research classes. I got a letter asking me to come in to hear the results of that evaluation but as I was studying hard for my oral exam I asked if it could wait until after I passed the exam, and Dr. Dolling said that was OK. Evidently in the interim, Dr. Fowler quit as my advisor and when Dr. Dolling (the Chairman of the Aerospace Department) could find no other professor to be my advisor, that is when they dismissed me. You will notice that all of this administrative activity took place in less than ten days, which was during the final exam time when all the professors were busy administering exams, grading them, and so forth. During all of this nobody made an attempt to contact me by telephone or email to let me know what was going on, so that I could lobby to find another professor to be my advisor - my research was of interested to many of the professors, who were on the exam committee; and others as well. One of two things happened: they were all so upset that I had contacted ABET that they shared the opinion expressed by Dr. Fowler in his letter (which was placed in my personnel file in the Department, and which file they would have looked at to see if they wanted to be my advisor) or they were upset at the quality of my research. The part of the documents I submitted - essentially a copy of the website that the aforementioned professors outside the University had looked at, then expressed an interest in - that may have caused the most angst is the theoretical part, which at the time was very tentative and which I have since established mathematically from many perspectives. However, the fact remains that they rejected me because of this research, the same material which several equally reputable experts outside the University had looked at, studied, and even acknowledging that it was not complete, but still thought it was promising enough to volunteer to be on my dissertation committee and/or to help in any way they could in furthering this research project once I entered candidacy. There are no written, unwritten, or assumed regulations that require any candidate to have previously shown qualifications in doing Ph.D level research. I can think of many reasons why Dr. Fowler might have behaved as he did, and by inference his peers in the orbital mechanics group: · I had appealed to a higher authority, as is my civil right; i.e. to the Engineering College, the Graduate School, and ultimately to ABET stating things that they had done wrong · Their having stated in writing that my research had some major flaws is an acknowledgment that the supervising professors during the 39 hours of supervised research classes I took during this time either did not help me, gave me bad advice, or I did not do the work. The latter cannot be supported, because every part of the way I Copyrighted the work I was doing (attached list). So the Department had to expel me to keep from looking incompetent, or worse. · Perhaps they didn't feel that just because I was a P.E. I was due any sort of different treatment than any other student; which in fact I had not asked for or expected, just to be treated like any other graduate student · Most of this seemed to happen right after I told Dr. Fowler and Dr. Hull that I had a "stress disorder" so they may have acted out of prejudice, or assumed that my disability made me claim grandiose things (even though the research had been accepted at conferences) · They didn't even help me to prepare my research to present it at other conferences, and there were several, as is customary with other graduate students at my level · Dr. Broucke told me once that "there is an informal rule in the Department not to give a student any feedback on his or her research until after being formally admitted to candidacy" because they were afraid of having their ideas stolen · Other departments like the School of Architecture have a written contract between the professor and student setting goals for work to be done in supervised research classes, but not the Aerospace Department. Perhaps they were afraid my activities would lead to that kind of thing and did not want their academic freedom curtailed in that way. · Having created a committee to evaluate my research as stated in the enclosed letter from the Department is a clear acknowledgement that what I had said all along was true; i.e. I had gotten absolutely no help from anybody in any of my supervised graduate research classes. Once this letter was issued, and I picked up on the implications right away and used this in my appeal, it behooved the Department to get rid of me as quickly as possible. · The reviewers clearly spent very little time studying my algorithm and computer code, comparing my results to the simplest model you can create with a few calculations on the back of an envelope; whereas my model had 24 degrees of freedom - 23 more than the model they used to compare it with, thereby claiming I was totally wrong. Perhaps they could not follow the code, or they did not believe that it worked as I claimed because it was very complicated; or even believe that I could not have written it myself - even though I have over the last 15 year had my own Bar X Software company, and have given away half a dozen engineering design computer programs with my two textbooks from McGraw-Hill · One graduate student told me he thought Dr. Broucke was extremely jealous that I had published two authoritative textbooks with McGraw-Hill. · There is a saying in physics, and celestial mechanics is a kind of astrophysics, that nobody past 25 can come up with decent new ideas - I was in my early 40's. Maybe they assumed that older people cannot do good work on the theoretical level. · Dr. Schutz evaluated the celestial mechanics part of my research, which is quite abstract (and even more so now that I have had a chance to fully illustrate and support my work with mathematical proofs); he presented himself to the University as an expert in celestial mechanics, even though his academic career has next to nothing to do with any of the classical problems of celestial mechanics; but mostly satellite geodesy, statistical modeling, and related fields. In this regard he misrepresented his qualifications, as had Dr. Fowler and others. This is a serious thing to do, and involved the whole Department actually. · When I arrived at UT the Aerospace Department had the best celestial mechanics group in the world; when I left they had no celestial mechanics group at all, even though they continue representing this capability in the graduate catalog. Perhaps they were afraid somebody would notice that, and they could not have those "phantom courses" in their catalog. · As I went through the appeals process, I got the feeling that many people in the orbital mechanics field do not believe that it is even possible to solve the interplanetary trajectory without the use of third party optimization software. In fact, it is so very non linear that most experts use genetic algorithms to solve the problem. This was Dr. Fowler's favorite method, as he stated often in his classes - perhaps he resented that I had found another way; Dr. Hull the Graduate Advisor was the expert in optimization; perhaps he resented that I had found a solution to the problem that did not use optimization methods at all, but just some celestial mechanics and some insightful computer programming tricks. They may not have thought it possible that I did in 25 pages of code what NASA does with thousands of pages; or that my optimization converges to a solution in 30 seconds on a 333 Mhz PC whereas NASA's takes many minutes on a supercomputer. · You will note that many of these superior kinds of attitudes are just what was found in the blue label committee that investigated the problems leading to the crash of the Challenger NASA shuttle, attributing them to the "NASA culture." Well, UT Austin is the leading NASA research university, the Center for Space Research is second only to JPL in the space community, and in fact at least half the people you see in any TV shots at JPL are UT Austin graduates. · Prejudice against my being a disabled student, assuming that my disability had caused me to imagine all the problems. Dr. Kahn as much as said so, as did Lee Smith the Vice President of Legal Affairs - who only recently has forbidden me from contacting anybody at the University involved in the appeals process. It makes me wonder what they're afraid of. · Dr. Broucke as not very well liked at all by everybody else in the Aerospace Department, especially the people in the orbital mechanics group. Apparently Dr. Broucke was outspoken in trying to get professors to spend more time with students and teaching duties and less time in research and consulting. When Dr. Broucke left, this hatred may have transferred to me, his last graduate student; and a mature engineer with his same feelings about academia. It seems absurd to me that a student who does good research, has good grades, has passed his written qualifying exams on the first try; that a student like that who has a high intrinsic value and has proven a lot, that I could have been dismissed for this shopping list of petty, personal, and irrelevant reasons. The most distressing part to me is that I have advanced my research quite a ways - far beyond even a draft dissertation I delivered six weeks ago to professors in the orbital mechanics group - and I am not even permitted the usual courtesy of local consultants or researchers, to present my work at a University or Center for Space Research Seminar. I can only hope that in a month or so after I have generated a polished dissertation document, that somebody will be interested. Regards, William H. Clark II NOTE: The P.E. Board took no action on this letter. My Texas State Representative Ron Baxter refused to take any action either. As of this point (March 2005) I have been prohibited from contacting anybody at the University by the UT Vice President for Legal Affaris, Dr. Lee Smith, JD - thus I cannot get references to complete my research elsewhere, or even to get a job. |
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Following is a letter I just got from UT Austin
Bill Clark, I hope all is going well with your relocation to Leon County. I cannot help but feel that creating a measure of distance between yourself and the Austin area will open you up new opportunities as you finally close this chapter of your life. Just the elimination of the stress alone will no doubt add years to your productive life. I am very encouraged by your recent statement that you intend to return to the practice of engineering and will soon begin interviewing with major Aerospace companies around the nation, and I certainly wish you well in this endeavor. Your recent email suggests to me that there may be some confusion regarding the application of the Privacy Act (FERPA) to the document you refer to as your "dissertation". The unsolicited document that you hand delivered to my office last August is indeed a University record, but it is not an "educational record" covered by the Privacy act. It is, however, covered by the Copyright Act. Because the University is a state agency, the document to which you refer is a state agency record subject to normal state agency record retention, inspection and destruction policies established under state law (The Texas Public Information Act), provided only that "copies" can only be made with the permission of the copyright holder, and that would be you. With that understanding, please note that while anyone can "inspect" that document pursuant to state law, we will not provide "copies" of that document to anyone without your permission. Although you are now moving on with your life and all of this will soon become ancient history, just for the record, I thought this might be as good a time as any to correct just a few of the false statements that run through some of your emails and web postings that may simply be additional points of confusion. - You state, falsely, that you have a "grievance" pending with the University over your dismissal. The truth is, because all of your administrative appeals have already been exhausted, there are no additional "grievances" that can be pursued, at least not within the University. - You state, falsely, that you were "never given" any reason for your dismissal from the PhD program. The truth is, you simply disagree with the reasons you were given. - You state, falsely, that you were a PhD Candidate that "completed all for Ph.D. but dissertation defense". The truth is, you were never admitted to PhD Candidacy because you never satisfied the requirements for PhD Candidacy. - You state, falsely, that the written material you posted on your website and delivered to myself and various individuals as your "PhD Dissertation". The truth is, a research paper is only that, and does not become a "dissertation" until a faculty committee approves it as such, and that never happened. - You state, falsely, that the engineering faculty never evaluated the substance of your research. The truth is, a faculty panel engaged in a thorough examination of substance of your research and you simply disagree with their determination that your research was, essentially, unscholarly. - You state, falsely, that you cannot now get an engineering license and that UT is somehow responsible for this. The truth is, you were a licensed engineer before you were admitted to the PhD program and your academic status, or non-status, with the University presents no impediment whatsoever to your engineering license. The truth is, you voluntarily surrendered your perfectly valid engineering license and, except for satisfying the continuing education requirements, you are eligible to have your engineering license reinstated any time you wish. - You state, falsely, that you cannot get employment and that UT is somehow responsible for this. The truth is, you were a practicing engineer without a PhD before you voluntarily surrendered your license and there is nothing prevents you from reinstating your engineering license and practicing engineering again any time you wish. As for your ability to obtain letters of recommendation, by their nature, letters of recommendation are voluntary honest expressions of the personal opinions of the writer. No faculty member can be compelled to provide a letter of recommendation and no faculty member can be compelled to say positive things that they do not honestly believe about a a person's scholarship and compliance and progress and cooperation. The faculty members in our College of Engineering that are familiar with your lack of scholarship, lack of compliance, lack of progress and lack of cooperation with the reasonable requirements of your supervising faculty, have all stated that they do not choose to give you a letter of recommendation. This is their choice. It strikes me that you want letters of recommendation, you will have to find someone outside of The University of Texas that holds you in sufficiently high regard that they can honestly recommend you, because am not aware of anyone here that fits that description. BIll, as I have said, I wish you well in your new endeavor. Let me know how you are doing. Lee Smith Associate Vice President for Legal Affairs The University of Texas at Austin |
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The formal research is at http://lulu.com/whclark in two nicely
formatted books - one my Masters Report/Thesis, one the Dissertation. You can get the PDF version free, the paperback at cost. WH Clark |
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