Faculty Senate Minutes

August 13, 2001

Attendees: Greg Poston, Tracy Marshall, Lee Poehls, Aniruddh Hathi, Jean Turner, Bob Larsen, Gwenn Kelly, Susie Watkins, Roy Rost, Manny Avila, Steve Betros, Nancy Gidden, Martin Knudsen, Troy Slayden, Terry Ehrhardt, David Junek, Frank Gentry, Ruth Gray, Dale Bullock, Bob Cosby, Richard Wheet, Ed Price, Debi Cisneros, Tinker Clift, Theresa Holmberg, Barbara Lease and many faculty from CNS, EEC.

Ed Price introduced the guest speaker Terry Preuninger, member of the Board of Regents.

Terry is a TXU District Manager.  His father was a peanut farmer in Whitesboro, Texas.  After graduating from High School he enters Texas Tech University where he graduated with an Electrical Engineering degree.  He began work with Texas Power & Light out of college, which later became TXU. At the time TSTC Waco was named TSTI, and TXU was hiring engineering techs, which he was in charge of training.  There are still several that were hired that are still with TXU in responsible positions.  Members of the Board of Regents are appointed by the governor and are in these positions for 6 years.  Terry has been in this position for only 18 months in which time he has been to 6 of the Board of Regents meetings that meet 4 times a year. These meetings may last for on to one and half days.  They discuss the direction and future that technology is going. They look at improvements that need to be done, work with the legislature.  Last legislative session discussed funding; approximately 20 million increases in the budget were appropriated for the next fiscal year.  The Board of Regents is always looking at the budget to insure the dollars are heading in the right direction.  This last meeting they approved the Faculty’s compensation/ranking/evaluation plans.  Terry then asked if there were any questions that he may be able to answer.

Q: Is there anyone or anyway of successfully tracking TSTC Alumni?

A: Marking group is doing this and also Tara Odem, director of the Regents Circle foundation has about 35,000 graduates in a database, approx. 60-70% are bad addresses but hoping that this will get better.

Q: What is the future of funding as you see it?

A: Very positive. We now have access to tuition revenue bonds. We sell bonds and buy back with tuition money and is mostly funded by the state.

Q: Strategically what do you see as problems and the opportunities?

A: Industry is continually changing; we must meet technology needs, and staying ahead of the needs of technology.  We must be disciplined enough that as we see technologies that are not meeting the needs of industry we redirect those funds in technologies that are meeting those needs and the emerging technologies.

Q: What do you see are the emerging markets?

A: We are in an effort to point those out, working with IC2 a think tank in Austin.  At this point they are saying Communications, Internet Security and there is another one that escapes me right now.

Q: What about alternative energy?

A: Preliminary research is being done and looking into fuel cell, wind power and what they call the mesa project which is being done by Sweetwater.

Q: With technology changing so fast and software changing, it is difficult for the faculty to keep up due to workloads.  There is not any time to take off to take courses or to study to keep up.  Are the members looking at this issue of workload?

A: The board did look at data of standard workloads. It is a challenge to find time to keep up with all the changes. Department heads, Dr. Ellis, and the deans are focused on monitoring the workload of the faculty.

Q: Is there any changes being made on the way that we are funded?

A: Contact hours are primarily how you are funded. This is how you are measured by the state, all higher education institutions are measured in this manner.

Q: Is there any increase in advertising dollars?

A: Yes, there are recruiters in the major cities (Dallas/Ft. Worth, Austin, San Antonio, Houston) they generate leads, look at interests, curriculum.  They bring them in and it is up to each department to make the sell.

Q: Whom do the recruiters report to?

A: Day-day activity is reported to a director in Sweetwater.

Q: Has there been an increase in advertising to compete with MCC?

A: Not sure what Dr. Ellis has in mind for the advertising dollars for the Waco campus.  MCC has urged to compete w/ TSTC for dollars.  What we would like to see is that we form partnerships with these 2 year colleges and not compete but bring technical skills to these schools.  We don’t need to reinvent the wheel.  Need to spread the dollars to faculty, faculty training and equipment.

Q: Over the days travel funding have been going down, do you see this changing?

A: Hope to help.  For the first time been able to budget for travel dollars only time will tell.

Q: Has any one though of talking to High School counselors to recruit graduating students?

A: Recruiters for the past 3 months have been talking to counselors at the high schools.  The counselors are the ones that talk to the students. Waco is working with A.J. Moore Academy, which is getting more information about other alternatives to education. There has been a great number of our students that go on to get 4 year degrees and some students are ones with 4 year degrees coming to get work skills. Only 18-22% of high school students go on to get a 4-year degree.

Q: Has there been any thought to forming partnerships with manufacturers?

A: There was a foundation formed that we felt was not performing the way we thought, so a new foundation was formed called the Regents Circle foundation.  In it’s infancy the sole purpose is to form partnerships, such as equipment, funding with industry. The director is Tara Odem, which she has only been in this position for 6 months has secured approx. $175,000.

Report of the President’s Council meeting

COP’s approved; Contractors safety, Personal protection equipment, deleted COP on multiple accident for employees, Professional release time (4 hours to take courses) system policy recommended that it be changed to “as needed”. Work schedules 12-month contracts nothing done about 9 month contracts, recommended put these in, and there be a calendar for 9 month contracts. Change intramurals to recreation ? Flag policy; as long as you are within federal guidelines you are ok. . Hire a retention coordinator. There will be a reception for Dr. Gulick, the new Dean of Instruction from 3-6pm in the Ideas Center. In September there will be a meeting with systems with the committee members that worked on the compensation/ranking/evaluation plans.

Board of Regents Meeting

Compensation/Ranking/Evaluation Plans approved.  $1800 m pay raise for faculty. Dr. Ellis is working on contract letters with $ amounts, you will also get a 3rd letter stating your rank.

There was a problem with Campus Security not being able to be reached over the weekend.  There was an answering machine which a message was left .Lacy Lakeview police was called and they were able to get in touch with the campus police.  The problem was with the Nextel system, as you know with this system there are areas that are dead zones. The officer was evidently in a dead zone and unable to be reached.  This is being looked into so that this does not happen again.

Richard stated that there have been numerous problems with INS.  Richard indicated to the council that they should not take this lightly and that the faculty is very upset. Richard informed them of CNS problems with INS and he feels that he opened a lid in regard to computer repairs.  Dr. Ellis was invited to come tonight to the senate meeting but had other plans.  She did call back and stated that she would cancel those plans if she needed to be at the meeting.  Dr. Ellis is open to solutions such as Dell support, certain department’s maintenance of their networks and will review all possible solutions with an open mind.

INS Discussion

Ron Sanders, CNS Department Chairperson, spoke about a situation that occurred in the CNS department while he was on vacation.  It started on Friday evening on August 3rd. It was brought to the attention of John Spradling (Cluster Director) and Tom Dean (acting Department Chair) from Susan Meyers that there was a problem with faculty in the CNS department. Susan told Tom Dean that Ken Scheler and Debi Cisneros were doing network scans and should cease and desist immediately. Ken was in the process of teaching a class and his computer locked and Debi was in the process of rebuilding her machine. She was told that Tom would look into the situation on Monday morning and they (John, Susan, and Tom) agreed.  John and Tom left at 7:00pm that night with the assumption that things would be looked into on Monday morning.  CNS maintains its own network, e-mail and web server and has done so for many years.   Monday morning 8/6, first day of new student registration, Mark, Debi and Ken were told to come to the lounge area where Susan Meyers, Shane Howard, Nathan O’Neal (CNS Co-op student), and Josh Reynolds all stood waiting for John Spradling to arrive. The president was told that a router was compromised and that colleague was compromised as well.  Richard Dixon (CNS Instructor) was in his office grading papers Friday night at 11:00pm and was told “if he knew what was good for him he would leave” there was no reason for it and it was unprofessional manner in which it was done! Ron had looked at several logs on his return and after finding out what had gone on in his absence, and found that logins started between 10pm-3am Friday night Saturday morning and that they were not here all weekend working as they told the president. 

Mark Spivey, NST Department Chairperson, spoke about how he was treated by INS.  Started Friday night before he left from work, Tom and John had come in and told him that they were told by Susan Meyers that Ken & Debi were doing scans and they were to cease and desist immediately.  He informed them that Debi is rebuilding her machine and that she doesn’t even know how to do scans. Ken scans those that scan him and he had done some scans for Larry Thompson, ECT Department Chairperson on his request. Mark does scans of this campus all the time to see if there are any security issues and if they are being handled. Mark has given a report of the security problems on this campus to John Spradling.  Friday late, Mark was unable to reach his web page networksecuritytech.com and came to his office to see if there was a problem with the network.  He noticed that his office had been ransacked and that several things were out of place.  He called campus security which Richard explained the problem earlier. He returned to his office to file a report and take a inventory to see if there was anything missing.  He has approx. $30,000 worth of equipment in his office due to not having anyplace to store the equipment at this time.  When he came in on Monday he was faced with a note on his machine that stated “Do Not Touch this Machine See John Spradling Immediately” Susan asked that he and Debi step outside.  Once Susan, John and Mark were in John’s office Susan informed them that she wanted to watch each one bootup and look for a particular file structure.  Mark asked what kind of file structure?  She said she was looking for “Triangle Boy”.  Triangle boy is a piece of software that he and his students brought back from the Defcon 9 convention in Las Vegas.  What it does is a redirector to surf the internet anonymously.  It runs SSL and firewalls do not stop it.  He set it up so that he would have a productional system that he could try to find ways that he could stop it. Mark to appease Susan agreed to take triangle boy down so that the CNS department could start registering students. After this occurred the problem went away. What Susan was saying was going on was technically impossible.

Q: Was a CNS router open?

A: it was a campus router. INS put a sniffer on the network and it generated a 512 page report, INS asked if I would like to see it and I have asked to see and still have not seen.

Tinker Clift expressed that the CNS department has the most students and the Senate should support this department.  This should have never happened.

Ginger Carney, CNS Instructor, stated that after the network came back up her computer would not attach to the network.  Diane and Jamie, CNS Lab assistants, called INS to make sure that there was not a problem on their end since they had taken the segment down earlier.  INS said 100% positive that is was not on their end.  Diane and Jamie spent most of the day troubleshooting her machine to find out that it was INS mistake for not enabling her port for her computer.

Tom Dean, CNS Assistant Department Chairperson, was acting department chair during Ron’s absence.  Tom was informed on Friday evening that there were illegal scans going on in CNS. It had been a problem since Thursday. There was no way from looking at the processes on the network that there was a problem.  Code Red II had come out and suspected that this could be the problem.  At approximately 6:30pm came to an agreement with Susan Meyers that it would be handled on Monday.  At 10pm was the 1st attack.

Jimmy Summers, CNS Instructor, Mark had to secure permission from INS to put triangle boy on the network with IP addresses and connection to a port. Ins did know that he was up and running did not do covertly.  Jimmy is the Final Project instructor, maintain independent network. Lynn Fancis help to set this up.  which is a last semester class for CNS students and his student were unable to connect to the network to do their research for their class and it took 2 hours to get them up and running again.  Only a portion of segment 27 was down some of the other instructors that are attached to that segment were able to get to the network.

Tom Dean, None of this made any sense; it is possible that all of it was made up. Power play by INS.

Karen Norman, CNS Instructor,

Steve Betros, Faculty Senator for Electronics Core, how this happened, should address these type of tactics, I would expect that the Faculty Senate call to dismiss all the people that were involved.

Clint Pate, CNS Instructor, I came from Baylor where I was a Computer Technician 3 years and this type of thing would have never happened at Baylor.  Baylor has council which keeps these things from happening. If there is not something done he stated that he would be forced to put in his resignation. Had to cancel class to help with registration.

Bob Cosby, Webmaster Instructor, states that INS acts like they are police authority here on campus.  He had called INS because his computer was missing a printer driver and needed it reloaded on his machine. INS took his hard drives, printed everything from the hard drives including his e-mails.  INS had every piece of data, grades, all his PowerPoint presentations, and everything was lost. This happened 2 months ago.  He had a disciplinary hearing where they had a 5” binder and 3” binder of so called evidence (everything that was printed from his hard drives) stating that he had inappropriate material on his computer. Bob asked Susan if this in any way was going to tarnish his reputation or make it difficult for him to teach and her statement was “No, on the contrary we were wondering if you were seeing anyone?” He then asked her to specify who “we” was.

Rick Lindsey, CNS Student, The only reason that I am here tonight was that there was an incident involving my wife who is an ECT student and INS. This happened on Wednesday, August 8th.  She was sitting in a lab when someone from INS, who didn’t indicate who he was, started questioning her in a very stern manner.  She felt intimidated and angry. She had FTP to another room with administrative rights to load some files that she needed for class. He told her that she had accessed waco.tstc.edu without privileges.  My wife is from Siberia and a Russian citizen and she knows the tactics of the KGB and she felt that these were the same tactics that INS was showing to her. He never gave her any explanation as to what she actually did wrong or how so that she could not make the same mistake.  As a student Rick stated that he would be angry, but as her husband that was not called for at all.

In the beginning INS was put under the Presidents office under Dr. Williams due to personality conflicts and later discovered that it was not over a personality conflict. Elton Stuckley, Dean of Instruction listened to what the Faculty Senate had to say and decided since INS main job is to support instruction then it should be placed under the Dean of Instruction.  Now, it has been placed once again under the President as of August 6th.

Ken Scheler proven to Tom and John no scanning on his machine..spoofing going on.

Barbara doesn’t trust INS.

Ron Sanders stated that the CNS department is faced continuously with the static IP to MAC addresses from INS. They control all the IP’s for the campus and if we want to move a computer to another lab we may have to wait for 3 weeks or more for them to get it assigned properly so that the computer can connect to the network.  If an Instructor is given another computer he is faced with having to take his old NIC out so that he can keep the same IP to be able to have his machine up and running in a timely manner. We had on TCP/IP lab that we had been waiting for 3 weeks for them to give IP’s (they had new computers in that lab) and Jake Beaver came in looked and went downstairs and they magically were working. 

Bob Larsen, Faculty Senator for CMT, his department is on the regular network and INS has Zen works on their computers which allows them to remotely access the computer and lock him out.  The material he has on his machine should be under intellectual property and they should not be able to remotely access without his permission.

Clift Tinker, Faculty Senate Treasurer, he has been on the Faculty Senate for 2 years and all the officers have worked very hard to get faculty enthusiasm up and he resents the fact that INS is undermining that progress.

Ken Scheler, CNS Instructor, he is one of the ones that was affected by this incident.  He feels that there should not have been a student involved at all. There is still IP spoofing going on and he suggested that all faculty not leave their computers running when the leave their offices. He is running a firewall on his system and he was being hit by an IP on campus. He contacted the person to find out that this person is on vacation and would not be back for 2 weeks. Reiterated that the faculty shut down when they leave!

Barbara Lease, Faculty Senate Chairperson, asked the question “Can this be fixed with the current staff in INS?” all agreed that it could not.  She personally does not trust them (INS).

Jean Turner, Faculty Senator for CAA, What is spoofing and scanning?

Mark answered by explaining that all computers have a unique IP address and that spoofing is the process in which you use an IP address other than your own. He stated that it is something that is easy to do and does not take a lot of talent. 

Steve Betros felt that this incident needed to be separate from any other problems brought up.

Richard explained that other problems needed to be addressed so that it did not look like CNS is being singled out by INS. If we do not address this issue it will look like it is just a personality conflict with CNS.

Mark back to the question above scanning is not illegal as long as service is not denied.

Ron Sanders legally speaking yes however in the last 3 years we (CNS) has always cooperated with INS.  There are ways to handle security issues or other problems and what they did was a political issue and these instructors did not need to be treated this way.

Richard asked if there were any other department that had issues with INS.

John Spradling has been talking to the President.  The President appointed Susan Meyers as INS Director.

John Kemp, DMD Department Chairperson stated that his department has had problems with INS altering settings, service and taking laptops and returning them without all the software being on them. 

Due to the fact of the way things were handled in CNS it looks like it would be imperative that INS hire someone from the outside.

All this shows why this was a good reason that INS was put under Instruction.  Their job is to support the instructional issues on this campus.  It has is much more complex to support instruction.

Concerns and issues of all and what the faculty senate and faculty that was at the meeting. There was a motion made and seconded for the all of the following:

The faculty was allowed to leave for other business:

Greg Poston brought up that he had read the Faculty Senate By-Laws and Constitution and said that the suspension of the election was done improperly.  If we are going to do this he felt that the By-Laws and Constitution should be written so that this action is added.

Richard posed the question should we have an election now?

Faculty Senate voted to stay the way it is until the upcoming March 2002 elections and proceed thereafter according to the bylaws.