Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver
BNC Faculty – I need your help on a situation that is impacting the ability of researchers to use the BNC equipment. We are beginning to reach epidemic proportions of people reserving equipment and not using the equipment – and not cancelling their reservations so that someone else can use that equipment. This practice causes false bottlenecks and leaves the equipment unused. In the first 8 weeks of this fiscal year, we have had 1165 incidents. An example is one user who has 20 unused and not canceled reservations on the MJB-3 aligner in 8 weeks – that’s 2 ½ unused reservations every week. This is a very highly used piece of equipment, and we are receiving complaints that this equipment is not available. This same user has 12 unused and not canceled reservations on the CHA evaporator – another critical piece of equipment. The CHA evaporator has had 82 unused and not canceled reservations in the last 8 weeks, more than 10 per week. Please ask your students to be more courteous to the other researchers in the BNC. The attached spreadsheet shows those users with at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations in the past 8 weeks by Coral user name. I have also highlighted incidents where one user had at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations on a particular piece of equipment. While it is understood that there are legitimate incidents where a user reserves a piece of equipment but cannot use it, this happening at a very high frequency is more likely abuse. Thanking you for your consideration, John John R. Weaver Facility Manager Birck Nanotechnology Center Purdue University (765) 494-5494 jrweaver@purdue.edu
John & Colleagues: The answer to this is very, very simple. That user should have had their user privileges revoked somewhere between 3-5 of these events. It is a privilege to access equipment, not a right. I say this based on now ∼20 yrs of working in electron microscopy labs: you don't show up, you lose your privilege to use the equipment. Eric (yes: I don't work at BNC anymore, but this would have NEVER been OK in my labs there.) On Aug 27, 2010, at 5:09 PM, Jeff Goecker wrote:
BNC Faculty –
I need your help on a situation that is impacting the ability of researchers to use the BNC equipment. We are beginning to reach epidemic proportions of people reserving equipment and not using the equipment – and not cancelling their reservations so that someone else can use that equipment. This practice causes false bottlenecks and leaves the equipment unused. In the first 8 weeks of this fiscal year, we have had 1165 incidents.
An example is one user who has 20 unused and not canceled reservations on the MJB-3 aligner in 8 weeks – that’s 2 ½ unused reservations every week. This is a very highly used piece of equipment, and we are receiving complaints that this equipment is not available. This same user has 12 unused and not canceled reservations on the CHA evaporator – another critical piece of equipment.
The CHA evaporator has had 82 unused and not canceled reservations in the last 8 weeks, more than 10 per week.
Please ask your students to be more courteous to the other researchers in the BNC. The attached spreadsheet shows those users with at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations in the past 8 weeks by Coral user name. I have also highlighted incidents where one user had at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations on a particular piece of equipment.
While it is understood that there are legitimate incidents where a user reserves a piece of equipment but cannot use it, this happening at a very high frequency is more likely abuse.
Thanking you for your consideration, John
John R. Weaver Facility Manager Birck Nanotechnology Center Purdue University (765) 494-5494 jrweaver@purdue.edu
_______________________________________________ Bnc-faculty-all-list mailing list Bnc-faculty-all-list@ecn.purdue.edu https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/mailman/listinfo/bnc-faculty-all-list
Hi all, Although I do not know who the students are (John, I could not find an attachment to your email) and this impacts my students probably more than anyone else’s, I have a somewhat different approach than Eric’s. In my opinion, when something reaches epidemic proportions, there may be a deeper reason. I am not sure what the reason is, but I think we need to find out. I personally would like to volunteer to talk to the students and find out what is going on. Either something in the system is not working (I doubt it but we need to consider it) or students are irresponsible (the second and most likely possibility). Either way, I think we can find out. In the first case we can probably fix things. In the second case, I would follow Eric’s approach, as we should not tolerate abuse. If you agree, maybe a small sub-committee (I could be part of it) could talk individually to students next week to identify the problem and also deliver a strong warning to them that they are forcing BNC to take action against them. Best, Dimitri ___________________________________________________ Dimitrios Peroulis Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering/Mechanical Engineering Purdue University Birck Nanotechnology Center Room 2266 1205 West State Street West Lafayette, IN 47907 tel: (765) 494-3491 fax: (765) 496-6443 email: dperouli@purdue.edu From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [mailto:bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu] On Behalf Of Eric Stach Sent: Friday, August 27, 2010 9:19 PM To: Jeff Goecker; Weaver, John R Cc: Dmitri Zakharov; BNC Faculty Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver John & Colleagues: The answer to this is very, very simple. That user should have had their user privileges revoked somewhere between 3-5 of these events. It is a privilege to access equipment, not a right. I say this based on now ∼20 yrs of working in electron microscopy labs: you don't show up, you lose your privilege to use the equipment. Eric (yes: I don't work at BNC anymore, but this would have NEVER been OK in my labs there.) On Aug 27, 2010, at 5:09 PM, Jeff Goecker wrote: BNC Faculty – I need your help on a situation that is impacting the ability of researchers to use the BNC equipment. We are beginning to reach epidemic proportions of people reserving equipment and not using the equipment – and not cancelling their reservations so that someone else can use that equipment. This practice causes false bottlenecks and leaves the equipment unused. In the first 8 weeks of this fiscal year, we have had 1165 incidents. An example is one user who has 20 unused and not canceled reservations on the MJB-3 aligner in 8 weeks – that’s 2 ½ unused reservations every week. This is a very highly used piece of equipment, and we are receiving complaints that this equipment is not available. This same user has 12 unused and not canceled reservations on the CHA evaporator – another critical piece of equipment. The CHA evaporator has had 82 unused and not canceled reservations in the last 8 weeks, more than 10 per week. Please ask your students to be more courteous to the other researchers in the BNC. The attached spreadsheet shows those users with at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations in the past 8 weeks by Coral user name. I have also highlighted incidents where one user had at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations on a particular piece of equipment. While it is understood that there are legitimate incidents where a user reserves a piece of equipment but cannot use it, this happening at a very high frequency is more likely abuse. Thanking you for your consideration, John John R. Weaver Facility Manager Birck Nanotechnology Center Purdue University (765) 494-5494 jrweaver@purdue.edu<mailto:jrweaver@purdue.edu> _______________________________________________ Bnc-faculty-all-list mailing list Bnc-faculty-all-list@ecn.purdue.edu<mailto:Bnc-faculty-all-list@ecn.purdue.edu> https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/mailman/listinfo/bnc-faculty-all-list
I also could not find an attachment and I am curious to see if any of my students are offenders… My doctor has a solution for appointments that aren’t canceled 24 hours ahead of time—she bills me anyway. If these repeat offenders are charged for their unused reservations, they will certainly draw the attention of their advisors when the cost to fabricate some widget doubles. I’m sure this would bring the practice to an end. Steve Wereley, Professor of Mechanical Engineering Birck Nanotechnology Center, Room 2019, 1205 West State Street Purdue University West Lafayette, IN 47907 phone: 765/494-5624, fax: 765/494-0539 web page: http://engineering.purdue.edu/~wereley From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [mailto:bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu] On Behalf Of Peroulis, Dimitrios Sent: Friday, August 27, 2010 10:17 PM To: Eric Stach; Jeff Goecker; Weaver, John R Cc: Dmitri Zakharov; BNC Faculty Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver Hi all, Although I do not know who the students are (John, I could not find an attachment to your email) and this impacts my students probably more than anyone else’s, I have a somewhat different approach than Eric’s. In my opinion, when something reaches epidemic proportions, there may be a deeper reason. I am not sure what the reason is, but I think we need to find out. I personally would like to volunteer to talk to the students and find out what is going on. Either something in the system is not working (I doubt it but we need to consider it) or students are irresponsible (the second and most likely possibility). Either way, I think we can find out. In the first case we can probably fix things. In the second case, I would follow Eric’s approach, as we should not tolerate abuse. If you agree, maybe a small sub-committee (I could be part of it) could talk individually to students next week to identify the problem and also deliver a strong warning to them that they are forcing BNC to take action against them. Best, Dimitri ___________________________________________________ Dimitrios Peroulis Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering/Mechanical Engineering Purdue University Birck Nanotechnology Center Room 2266 1205 West State Street West Lafayette, IN 47907 tel: (765) 494-3491 fax: (765) 496-6443 email: dperouli@purdue.edu From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [mailto:bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu] On Behalf Of Eric Stach Sent: Friday, August 27, 2010 9:19 PM To: Jeff Goecker; Weaver, John R Cc: Dmitri Zakharov; BNC Faculty Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver John & Colleagues: The answer to this is very, very simple. That user should have had their user privileges revoked somewhere between 3-5 of these events. It is a privilege to access equipment, not a right. I say this based on now ∼20 yrs of working in electron microscopy labs: you don't show up, you lose your privilege to use the equipment. Eric (yes: I don't work at BNC anymore, but this would have NEVER been OK in my labs there.) On Aug 27, 2010, at 5:09 PM, Jeff Goecker wrote: BNC Faculty – I need your help on a situation that is impacting the ability of researchers to use the BNC equipment. We are beginning to reach epidemic proportions of people reserving equipment and not using the equipment – and not cancelling their reservations so that someone else can use that equipment. This practice causes false bottlenecks and leaves the equipment unused. In the first 8 weeks of this fiscal year, we have had 1165 incidents. An example is one user who has 20 unused and not canceled reservations on the MJB-3 aligner in 8 weeks – that’s 2 ½ unused reservations every week. This is a very highly used piece of equipment, and we are receiving complaints that this equipment is not available. This same user has 12 unused and not canceled reservations on the CHA evaporator – another critical piece of equipment. The CHA evaporator has had 82 unused and not canceled reservations in the last 8 weeks, more than 10 per week. Please ask your students to be more courteous to the other researchers in the BNC. The attached spreadsheet shows those users with at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations in the past 8 weeks by Coral user name. I have also highlighted incidents where one user had at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations on a particular piece of equipment. While it is understood that there are legitimate incidents where a user reserves a piece of equipment but cannot use it, this happening at a very high frequency is more likely abuse. Thanking you for your consideration, John John R. Weaver Facility Manager Birck Nanotechnology Center Purdue University (765) 494-5494 jrweaver@purdue.edu<mailto:jrweaver@purdue.edu> _______________________________________________ Bnc-faculty-all-list mailing list Bnc-faculty-all-list@ecn.purdue.edu<mailto:Bnc-faculty-all-list@ecn.purdue.edu> https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/mailman/listinfo/bnc-faculty-all-list
By "3-5 events" Eric means - you need 3 occasions to identify those users 4th and 5th you talk to them then if they do not understand - they loose their privilege, right Eric? So if those users have not been talked to yet, it is probably a good idea to start with. In my experience they are all good kids. One conversation with careful explanation that it is a "privilege and not a right to use an equipment" is usually enough. I do not recall that Eric and I had to revoke somebody's privileges. In addition, it could be included in policy and procedure to let someone else use an equipment on first come first served basis if user who reserved the equipment does not show up within,for example, 15min since the beginning of the reservation. However it might be difficult to implement for clean room in particular. Also running electron microscopy facility equipment mailing lists proved to be extremely helpful. Users notify each other (usually) if they cancel their reservation. This works even in case they are not able to access coral out of campus for some reason but e-mail always works. All the best, Dmitri __________________________________ Dmitri N. Zakharov, Ph.D. Staff Scientist Purdue University Birck Nanotechnology Center 1205 West State Street West Lafayette, IN 47907 (765) 496-1075 On Aug 27, 2010, at 10:29 PM, Wereley, Steven T. wrote:
I also could not find an attachment and I am curious to see if any of my students are offenders…
My doctor has a solution for appointments that aren’t canceled 24 hours ahead of time—she bills me anyway. If these repeat offenders are charged for their unused reservations, they will certainly draw the attention of their advisors when the cost to fabricate some widget doubles. I’m sure this would bring the practice to an end.
Steve Wereley, Professor of Mechanical Engineering Birck Nanotechnology Center, Room 2019, 1205 West State Street Purdue University West Lafayette, IN 47907 phone: 765/494-5624, fax: 765/494-0539 web page: http://engineering.purdue.edu/~wereley
From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [mailto:bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu ] On Behalf Of Peroulis, Dimitrios Sent: Friday, August 27, 2010 10:17 PM To: Eric Stach; Jeff Goecker; Weaver, John R Cc: Dmitri Zakharov; BNC Faculty Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver
Hi all,
Although I do not know who the students are (John, I could not find an attachment to your email) and this impacts my students probably more than anyone else’s, I have a somewhat different approach than Eric’s. In my opinion, when something reaches epidemic proportions, there may be a deeper reason. I am not sure what the reason is, but I think we need to find out.
I personally would like to volunteer to talk to the students and find out what is going on. Either something in the system is not working (I doubt it but we need to consider it) or students are irresponsible (the second and most likely possibility). Either way, I think we can find out. In the first case we can probably fix things. In the second case, I would follow Eric’s approach, as we should not tolerate abuse.
If you agree, maybe a small sub-committee (I could be part of it) could talk individually to students next week to identify the problem and also deliver a strong warning to them that they are forcing BNC to take action against them.
Best, Dimitri
___________________________________________________ Dimitrios Peroulis Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering/ Mechanical Engineering Purdue University Birck Nanotechnology Center Room 2266 1205 West State Street West Lafayette, IN 47907 tel: (765) 494-3491 fax: (765) 496-6443 email: dperouli@purdue.edu
From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [mailto:bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu ] On Behalf Of Eric Stach Sent: Friday, August 27, 2010 9:19 PM To: Jeff Goecker; Weaver, John R Cc: Dmitri Zakharov; BNC Faculty Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver
John & Colleagues:
The answer to this is very, very simple. That user should have had their user privileges revoked somewhere between 3-5 of these events. It is a privilege to access equipment, not a right.
I say this based on now ∼20 yrs of working in electron microscopy labs: you don't show up, you lose your privilege to use the equipment.
Eric
(yes: I don't work at BNC anymore, but this would have NEVER been OK in my labs there.)
On Aug 27, 2010, at 5:09 PM, Jeff Goecker wrote:
BNC Faculty –
I need your help on a situation that is impacting the ability of researchers to use the BNC equipment. We are beginning to reach epidemic proportions of people reserving equipment and not using the equipment – and not cancelling their reservations so that someone else can use that equipment. This practice causes false bottlenecks and leaves the equipment unused. In the first 8 weeks of this fiscal year, we have had 1165 incidents.
An example is one user who has 20 unused and not canceled reservations on the MJB-3 aligner in 8 weeks – that’s 2 ½ unused reservations every week. This is a very highly used piece of equipment, and we are receiving complaints that this equipment is not available. This same user has 12 unused and not canceled reservations on the CHA evaporator – another critical piece of equipment.
The CHA evaporator has had 82 unused and not canceled reservations in the last 8 weeks, more than 10 per week.
Please ask your students to be more courteous to the other researchers in the BNC. The attached spreadsheet shows those users with at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations in the past 8 weeks by Coral user name. I have also highlighted incidents where one user had at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations on a particular piece of equipment.
While it is understood that there are legitimate incidents where a user reserves a piece of equipment but cannot use it, this happening at a very high frequency is more likely abuse.
Thanking you for your consideration, John
John R. Weaver Facility Manager Birck Nanotechnology Center Purdue University (765) 494-5494 jrweaver@purdue.edu
_______________________________________________ Bnc-faculty-all-list mailing list Bnc-faculty-all-list@ecn.purdue.edu https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/mailman/listinfo/bnc-faculty-all-list
Dimitri, This would be a good exercise for the P&P committee (or at least a subcommittee). However, we put the P&P committee on indefinite hiatus -- generally due to a lack of participation by faculty and a perception that most major issues had been solved. Apparently, the latter wasn't a particularly valid suggestion. Dave Peroulis, Dimitrios wrote:
Hi all,
Although I do not know who the students are (John, I could not find an attachment to your email) and this impacts my students probably more than anyone else’s, I have a somewhat different approach than Eric’s. In my opinion, when something reaches epidemic proportions, there may be a deeper reason. I am not sure what the reason is, but I think we need to find out.
I personally would like to volunteer to talk to the students and find out what is going on. Either something in the system is not working (I doubt it but we need to consider it) or students are irresponsible (the second and most likely possibility). Either way, I think we can find out. In the first case we can probably fix things. In the second case, I would follow Eric’s approach, as we should not tolerate abuse.
If you agree, maybe a small sub-committee (I could be part of it) could talk individually to students next week to identify the problem and also deliver a strong warning to them that they are forcing BNC to take action against them.
Best,
Dimitri
___________________________________________________
Dimitrios Peroulis
Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering/Mechanical Engineering
Purdue University
Birck Nanotechnology Center Room 2266
1205 West State Street
West Lafayette, IN 47907
tel: (765) 494-3491
fax: (765) 496-6443
email: dperouli@purdue.edu
*From:* bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [mailto:bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu] *On Behalf Of *Eric Stach *Sent:* Friday, August 27, 2010 9:19 PM *To:* Jeff Goecker; Weaver, John R *Cc:* Dmitri Zakharov; BNC Faculty *Subject:* Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver
John & Colleagues:
The answer to this is very, very simple. That user should have had their user privileges revoked somewhere between 3-5 of these events. It is a privilege to access equipment, not a right.
I say this based on now ∼20 yrs of working in electron microscopy labs: you don't show up, you lose your privilege to use the equipment.
Eric
(yes: I don't work at BNC anymore, but this would have NEVER been OK in my labs there.)
On Aug 27, 2010, at 5:09 PM, Jeff Goecker wrote:
BNC Faculty –
I need your help on a situation that is impacting the ability of researchers to use the BNC equipment. We are beginning to reach epidemic proportions of people reserving equipment and not using the equipment – and not cancelling their reservations so that someone else can use that equipment. This practice causes false bottlenecks and leaves the equipment unused. In the first 8 weeks of this fiscal year, we have had 1165 incidents.
An example is one user who has 20 unused and not canceled reservations on the MJB-3 aligner in 8 weeks – that’s 2 ½ unused reservations every week. This is a very highly used piece of equipment, and we are receiving complaints that this equipment is not available. This same user has 12 unused and not canceled reservations on the CHA evaporator – another critical piece of equipment.
The CHA evaporator has had 82 unused and not canceled reservations in the last 8 weeks, more than 10 per week.
Please ask your students to be more courteous to the other researchers in the BNC. The attached spreadsheet shows those users with at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations in the past 8 weeks by Coral user name. I have also highlighted incidents where one user had at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations on a particular piece of equipment.
While it is understood that there are legitimate incidents where a user reserves a piece of equipment but cannot use it, this happening at a very high frequency is more likely abuse.
Thanking you for your consideration,
John
*/John R. Weaver/*
*/Facility Manager/*
*/Birck Nanotechnology Center/*
*/Purdue University/*
*/(765) 494-5494/*
*/jrweaver@purdue.edu <mailto:jrweaver@purdue.edu>/*
*/
/*
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John: I talked to several of my students this week to try to understand better their CORAL experiences/struggles and what they think about so many "no-shows" among BRK users. I found that, while some of the no-shows were due to students forgetting canceling their reservations (which is clearly unacceptable), many "no-shows" may also be due to students swapping their reservations (so in this case the equipment is actually used, but by different users from who originally reserved). I found this kind of "swapping"/exchange is quite wide spread practice among the students, especially for the heavily bottlenecked instruments like CHA (this may partially explain the incredible high number of "no-show" incidents). For these intruments, the student typically have to book many days (2 weeks) ahead of time in order to get a slot (as the slots fill up extremely quickly). Often the devices may not be ready to process in the booked instrument (let's say evaporation on CHA) 2 weeks down the road (given the uncertain nature of exploratory research, this is quite common, and as David pointed out, typically one step needs to follow another step, often as soon as possible but many unexpected things could happen...). However, in this case the student (say "A") is often reluctant to cancel the reservation because if he/she cancels, he/she may not be able to get another new slot in 2 weeks because the equipment is already so heavily booked all the time (and any new slots opened up can be taken by some one else in a matter of seconds). Then student A swap the time with another "trusted" student "B" (there are always so many waiting anyway) who has a reservation a bit later but can use the instrument now, and take the student "B"'s slot (thus avoiding both losing their reserved slots and get their work done in reasonable time). I found the students have formed an impressive network/buddy system to do this kind of "swaps" (often cross different groups) and they say often this is the only way they can get work in reasonable time in bottled necked CHA. Can we compare the reported "no-show" incidents for each instrument against the times the instrument is actually enabled/used (which may result from the swaps) vs not used (likely true no-shows) to understand the different root causes of the "no-show" events? Thanks, Yong ----- Original Message ----- From: Peroulis, Dimitrios To: Eric Stach ; Jeff Goecker ; Weaver, John R Cc: Dmitri Zakharov ; BNC Faculty Sent: Friday, August 27, 2010 10:17 PM Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse -ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver Hi all, Although I do not know who the students are (John, I could not find an attachment to your email) and this impacts my students probably more than anyone else’s, I have a somewhat different approach than Eric’s. In my opinion, when something reaches epidemic proportions, there may be a deeper reason. I am not sure what the reason is, but I think we need to find out. I personally would like to volunteer to talk to the students and find out what is going on. Either something in the system is not working (I doubt it but we need to consider it) or students are irresponsible (the second and most likely possibility). Either way, I think we can find out. In the first case we can probably fix things. In the second case, I would follow Eric’s approach, as we should not tolerate abuse. If you agree, maybe a small sub-committee (I could be part of it) could talk individually to students next week to identify the problem and also deliver a strong warning to them that they are forcing BNC to take action against them. Best, Dimitri ___________________________________________________ Dimitrios Peroulis Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering/Mechanical Engineering Purdue University Birck Nanotechnology Center Room 2266 1205 West State Street West Lafayette, IN 47907 tel: (765) 494-3491 fax: (765) 496-6443 email: dperouli@purdue.edu From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [mailto:bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu] On Behalf Of Eric Stach Sent: Friday, August 27, 2010 9:19 PM To: Jeff Goecker; Weaver, John R Cc: Dmitri Zakharov; BNC Faculty Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver John & Colleagues: The answer to this is very, very simple. That user should have had their user privileges revoked somewhere between 3-5 of these events. It is a privilege to access equipment, not a right. I say this based on now ∼20 yrs of working in electron microscopy labs: you don't show up, you lose your privilege to use the equipment. Eric (yes: I don't work at BNC anymore, but this would have NEVER been OK in my labs there.) On Aug 27, 2010, at 5:09 PM, Jeff Goecker wrote: BNC Faculty – I need your help on a situation that is impacting the ability of researchers to use the BNC equipment. We are beginning to reach epidemic proportions of people reserving equipment and not using the equipment – and not cancelling their reservations so that someone else can use that equipment. This practice causes false bottlenecks and leaves the equipment unused. In the first 8 weeks of this fiscal year, we have had 1165 incidents. An example is one user who has 20 unused and not canceled reservations on the MJB-3 aligner in 8 weeks – that’s 2 ½ unused reservations every week. This is a very highly used piece of equipment, and we are receiving complaints that this equipment is not available. This same user has 12 unused and not canceled reservations on the CHA evaporator – another critical piece of equipment. The CHA evaporator has had 82 unused and not canceled reservations in the last 8 weeks, more than 10 per week. Please ask your students to be more courteous to the other researchers in the BNC. The attached spreadsheet shows those users with at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations in the past 8 weeks by Coral user name. I have also highlighted incidents where one user had at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations on a particular piece of equipment. While it is understood that there are legitimate incidents where a user reserves a piece of equipment but cannot use it, this happening at a very high frequency is more likely abuse. Thanking you for your consideration, John John R. Weaver Facility Manager Birck Nanotechnology Center Purdue University (765) 494-5494 jrweaver@purdue.edu _______________________________________________ Bnc-faculty-all-list mailing list Bnc-faculty-all-list@ecn.purdue.edu https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/mailman/listinfo/bnc-faculty-all-list ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Bnc-faculty-all-list mailing list Bnc-faculty-all-list@ecn.purdue.edu https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/mailman/listinfo/bnc-faculty-all-list
Yong, what you say makes a lot of sense: if you have a bottleneck you have a traffic jam. I've heard similar story from my student who worked in the clean room last year. The shadow reservation/swap system clearly points to the failure of the official one, we need to look at the source of the problem rather than how to punish the offenders. More evaporators (even cheaper resistive ones, like Edwards 306 or Denton 502, ~$50K) may solve the problem. I just came from Cavendish lab, they have ~9 evaporators for a small clean room of <50 users. In this case they have dedicated evaporators for different types of contacts and gates which also improves cleanliness, quality and increases yield. Another possibility is to retrofit evaporators with load locks, in this case the usage time reduces to < hour and also vacuum/quality improves. Needless to say that there were no more than 1 day waiting times. --Leonid Yong P. Chen wrote:
John:
I talked to several of my students this week to try to understand better their CORAL experiences/struggles and what they think about so many "no-shows" among BRK users.
I found that, while some of the no-shows were due to students forgetting canceling their reservations (which is clearly unacceptable), many "no-shows" may also be due to students swapping their reservations (so in this case the equipment is actually used, but by different users from who originally reserved).
I found this kind of "swapping"/exchange is quite wide spread practice among the students, especially for the heavily bottlenecked instruments like CHA (this may partially explain the incredible high number of "no-show" incidents). For these intruments, the student typically have to book many days (2 weeks) ahead of time in order to get a slot (as the slots fill up extremely quickly). Often the devices may not be ready to process in the booked instrument (let's say evaporation on CHA) 2 weeks down the road (given the uncertain nature of exploratory research, this is quite common, and as David pointed out, typically one step needs to follow another step, often as soon as possible but many unexpected things could happen...). However, in this case the student (say "A") is often reluctant to cancel the reservation because if he/she cancels, he/she may not be able to get another new slot in 2 weeks because the equipment is already so heavily booked all the time (and any new slots opened up can be taken by some one else in a matter of seconds). Then student A swap the time with another "trusted" student "B" (there are always so many waiting anyway) who has a reservation a bit later but can use the instrument now, and take the student "B"'s slot (thus avoiding both losing their reserved slots and get their work done in reasonable time). I found the students have formed an impressive network/buddy system to do this kind of "swaps" (often cross different groups) and they say often this is the only way they can get work in reasonable time in bottled necked CHA.
Can we compare the reported "no-show" incidents for each instrument against the times the instrument is actually enabled/used (which may result from the swaps) vs not used (likely true no-shows) to understand the different root causes of the "no-show" events?
Thanks, Yong
----- Original Message ----- *From:* Peroulis, Dimitrios <mailto:dperouli@purdue.edu> *To:* Eric Stach <mailto:eastach@ecn.purdue.edu> ; Jeff Goecker <mailto:jgoecker@purdue.edu> ; Weaver, John R <mailto:jrweaver@purdue.edu> *Cc:* Dmitri Zakharov <mailto:zakharov@purdue.edu> ; BNC Faculty <mailto:Bnc-faculty-all-list@ecn.purdue.edu> *Sent:* Friday, August 27, 2010 10:17 PM *Subject:* Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse -ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver
Hi all,
Although I do not know who the students are (John, I could not find an attachment to your email) and this impacts my students probably more than anyone else’s, I have a somewhat different approach than Eric’s. In my opinion, when something reaches epidemic proportions, there may be a deeper reason. I am not sure what the reason is, but I think we need to find out.
I personally would like to volunteer to talk to the students and find out what is going on. Either something in the system is not working (I doubt it but we need to consider it) or students are irresponsible (the second and most likely possibility). Either way, I think we can find out. In the first case we can probably fix things. In the second case, I would follow Eric’s approach, as we should not tolerate abuse.
If you agree, maybe a small sub-committee (I could be part of it) could talk individually to students next week to identify the problem and also deliver a strong warning to them that they are forcing BNC to take action against them.
Best,
Dimitri
___________________________________________________
Dimitrios Peroulis
Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering/Mechanical Engineering
Purdue University
Birck Nanotechnology Center Room 2266
1205 West State Street
West Lafayette, IN 47907
tel: (765) 494-3491
fax: (765) 496-6443
email: dperouli@purdue.edu
*From:* bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [mailto:bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu] *On Behalf Of *Eric Stach *Sent:* Friday, August 27, 2010 9:19 PM *To:* Jeff Goecker; Weaver, John R *Cc:* Dmitri Zakharov; BNC Faculty *Subject:* Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver
John & Colleagues:
The answer to this is very, very simple. That user should have had their user privileges revoked somewhere between 3-5 of these events. It is a privilege to access equipment, not a right.
I say this based on now ∼20 yrs of working in electron microscopy labs: you don't show up, you lose your privilege to use the equipment.
Eric
(yes: I don't work at BNC anymore, but this would have NEVER been OK in my labs there.)
On Aug 27, 2010, at 5:09 PM, Jeff Goecker wrote:
BNC Faculty –
I need your help on a situation that is impacting the ability of researchers to use the BNC equipment. We are beginning to reach epidemic proportions of people reserving equipment and not using the equipment – and not cancelling their reservations so that someone else can use that equipment. This practice causes false bottlenecks and leaves the equipment unused. In the first 8 weeks of this fiscal year, we have had 1165 incidents.
An example is one user who has 20 unused and not canceled reservations on the MJB-3 aligner in 8 weeks – that’s 2 ½ unused reservations every week. This is a very highly used piece of equipment, and we are receiving complaints that this equipment is not available. This same user has 12 unused and not canceled reservations on the CHA evaporator – another critical piece of equipment.
The CHA evaporator has had 82 unused and not canceled reservations in the last 8 weeks, more than 10 per week.
Please ask your students to be more courteous to the other researchers in the BNC. The attached spreadsheet shows those users with at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations in the past 8 weeks by Coral user name. I have also highlighted incidents where one user had at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations on a particular piece of equipment.
While it is understood that there are legitimate incidents where a user reserves a piece of equipment but cannot use it, this happening at a very high frequency is more likely abuse.
Thanking you for your consideration,
John
*/John R. Weaver/*
*/Facility Manager/*
*/Birck Nanotechnology Center/*
*/Purdue University/*
*/(765) 494-5494/*
*/jrweaver@purdue.edu <mailto:jrweaver@purdue.edu>/*
*/
/*
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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-- ---------------------------------------------------------- Leonid Rokhinson Department of Physics Purdue University 525 Northwestern Avenue West Lafayette, IN 47907 Tel: (765) 494-3014 (office) [+I-DCCLXV-CDXCIV-MMMXIV] 494-5513 (lab) Fax: (765) 494-0706 [+I-DCCLXV-CDXCIV-DCCVI] e-mail: leonid@purdue.edu web: www.physics.purdue.edu/people/faculty/leonid.shtml -----------------------------------------------------------
For the NCN students I had to pull out the standard use of the color printer, since they in general were to lazy to redirect their output to a black and white printer and be judicious. So emails, where just an email address had the blue clickable address were being printed in color and they did not care. It did not hurt them - the money just came from NCN or the professor. Now we relocated the printer to a secretary area, and if they want to print in color they have to climb a set of steps and guess what, only color documents are getting printed. Somehow an incentive to adhere to the rules needs to be introduced. Something like: "you miss one appointment, then 1) the advisor is notified 2) the next preferred, scheduled appointment is delayed by a week" gerhard On Aug 27, 2010, at 5:09 PM, Jeff Goecker wrote:
BNC Faculty –
I need your help on a situation that is impacting the ability of researchers to use the BNC equipment. We are beginning to reach epidemic proportions of people reserving equipment and not using the equipment – and not cancelling their reservations so that someone else can use that equipment. This practice causes false bottlenecks and leaves the equipment unused. In the first 8 weeks of this fiscal year, we have had 1165 incidents.
An example is one user who has 20 unused and not canceled reservations on the MJB-3 aligner in 8 weeks – that’s 2 ½ unused reservations every week. This is a very highly used piece of equipment, and we are receiving complaints that this equipment is not available. This same user has 12 unused and not canceled reservations on the CHA evaporator – another critical piece of equipment.
The CHA evaporator has had 82 unused and not canceled reservations in the last 8 weeks, more than 10 per week.
Please ask your students to be more courteous to the other researchers in the BNC. The attached spreadsheet shows those users with at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations in the past 8 weeks by Coral user name. I have also highlighted incidents where one user had at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations on a particular piece of equipment.
While it is understood that there are legitimate incidents where a user reserves a piece of equipment but cannot use it, this happening at a very high frequency is more likely abuse.
Thanking you for your consideration, John
John R. Weaver Facility Manager Birck Nanotechnology Center Purdue University (765) 494-5494 jrweaver@purdue.edu
_______________________________________________ Bnc-faculty-all-list mailing list Bnc-faculty-all-list@ecn.purdue.edu https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/mailman/listinfo/bnc-faculty-all-list
BNC Faculty Colleagues: As part of this thread, Eric and Steve have made suggestions regarding how to rectify the situation. I would like to point out that the Policy and Procedures committee has discussed this general issue several times in the past (although not the specific recent situation addressed in John's email). While "suspend privileges" or "charge the account even if the equipment is not used" may be valid approaches in some situations/equipment, there are legitimate cases where a reserved slot cannot be used. For example, in many processes, a number of pieces of equipment are needed in sequence; if one piece of equipment is down, there is no use for the next piece of equipment. Likewise, if a prior processing step does not work properly. Couple this with the fact that we have a number of time-critical process steps, and there will be unavoidable times where a sign-up slot would not be used - and would not likely be of use to other people (since they would not have time to perform the prior processing steps). That being said, the situation described in John's email is way beyond these circumstances. Please discuss the situation with your students -- particularly those who have been frequent violators. I view this as one of several "citizenship" issues that we have at Birck -- other issues include mis-use/breakage of equipment, failure to clean up after one's self, and use of other groups' specialty chemicals/supplies without permission and/or without contributing to replacement costs. By way of cc, I will ask John and/or Jeff to provide a copy of the spreadsheet (omitted from the original email), As I said in an earlier email, we have put the P&P committee on indefinite hold -- primarily due to lack of participation by faculty. If you would like to participate in shaping BNC lab access and safety policies, the P&P committee would be an excellent venue. Dave Jeff Goecker wrote:
BNC Faculty –
I need your help on a situation that is impacting the ability of researchers to use the BNC equipment. We are beginning to reach epidemic proportions of people reserving equipment and not using the equipment – and not cancelling their reservations so that someone else can use that equipment. This practice causes false bottlenecks and leaves the equipment unused. In the first 8 weeks of this fiscal year, we have had 1165 incidents.
An example is one user who has 20 unused and not canceled reservations on the MJB-3 aligner in 8 weeks – that’s 2 ½ unused reservations every week. This is a very highly used piece of equipment, and we are receiving complaints that this equipment is not available. This same user has 12 unused and not canceled reservations on the CHA evaporator – another critical piece of equipment.
The CHA evaporator has had 82 unused and not canceled reservations in the last 8 weeks, more than 10 per week.
Please ask your students to be more courteous to the other researchers in the BNC. The attached spreadsheet shows those users with at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations in the past 8 weeks by Coral user name. I have also highlighted incidents where one user had at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations on a particular piece of equipment.
While it is understood that there are legitimate incidents where a user reserves a piece of equipment but cannot use it, this happening at a very high frequency is more likely abuse.
Thanking you for your consideration,
John
*/John R. Weaver/*
*/Facility Manager/*
*/Birck Nanotechnology Center/*
*/Purdue University/*
*/(765) 494-5494/*
*/jrweaver@purdue.edu/*
*/ /* ------------------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________ Bnc-faculty-all-list mailing list Bnc-faculty-all-list@ecn.purdue.edu https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/mailman/listinfo/bnc-faculty-all-list
Dave, Thanks for your email. Besides Eric's and Steve's suggestions, there was also a proposal from me yesterday. As for the P&P committee handling the issue, I believe it is a bit too big to handle this. The P&P only gets together once a month or so and many times there are irresolvable conflicts for faculty (e.g. teaching - that was the case for me last semester). On the other hand, the subcommittee that handles violations (headed by Tim Fisher) is much smaller and has meetings on a need-to-discuss basis when a problem arises. I believe we need to handle this issue that way. Thanks Dimitri -----Original Message----- From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [mailto:bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu] On Behalf Of David B. Janes Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2010 3:56 PM To: Jeff Goecker Cc: Weaver, John R; BNC Faculty Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver BNC Faculty Colleagues: As part of this thread, Eric and Steve have made suggestions regarding how to rectify the situation. I would like to point out that the Policy and Procedures committee has discussed this general issue several times in the past (although not the specific recent situation addressed in John's email). While "suspend privileges" or "charge the account even if the equipment is not used" may be valid approaches in some situations/equipment, there are legitimate cases where a reserved slot cannot be used. For example, in many processes, a number of pieces of equipment are needed in sequence; if one piece of equipment is down, there is no use for the next piece of equipment. Likewise, if a prior processing step does not work properly. Couple this with the fact that we have a number of time-critical process steps, and there will be unavoidable times where a sign-up slot would not be used - and would not likely be of use to other people (since they would not have time to perform the prior processing steps). That being said, the situation described in John's email is way beyond these circumstances. Please discuss the situation with your students -- particularly those who have been frequent violators. I view this as one of several "citizenship" issues that we have at Birck -- other issues include mis-use/breakage of equipment, failure to clean up after one's self, and use of other groups' specialty chemicals/supplies without permission and/or without contributing to replacement costs. By way of cc, I will ask John and/or Jeff to provide a copy of the spreadsheet (omitted from the original email), As I said in an earlier email, we have put the P&P committee on indefinite hold -- primarily due to lack of participation by faculty. If you would like to participate in shaping BNC lab access and safety policies, the P&P committee would be an excellent venue. Dave Jeff Goecker wrote:
BNC Faculty –
I need your help on a situation that is impacting the ability of researchers to use the BNC equipment. We are beginning to reach epidemic proportions of people reserving equipment and not using the equipment – and not cancelling their reservations so that someone else can use that equipment. This practice causes false bottlenecks and leaves the equipment unused. In the first 8 weeks of this fiscal year, we have had 1165 incidents.
An example is one user who has 20 unused and not canceled reservations on the MJB-3 aligner in 8 weeks – that’s 2 ½ unused reservations every week. This is a very highly used piece of equipment, and we are receiving complaints that this equipment is not available. This same user has 12 unused and not canceled reservations on the CHA evaporator – another critical piece of equipment.
The CHA evaporator has had 82 unused and not canceled reservations in the last 8 weeks, more than 10 per week.
Please ask your students to be more courteous to the other researchers in the BNC. The attached spreadsheet shows those users with at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations in the past 8 weeks by Coral user name. I have also highlighted incidents where one user had at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations on a particular piece of equipment.
While it is understood that there are legitimate incidents where a user reserves a piece of equipment but cannot use it, this happening at a very high frequency is more likely abuse.
Thanking you for your consideration,
John
*/John R. Weaver/*
*/Facility Manager/*
*/Birck Nanotechnology Center/*
*/Purdue University/*
*/(765) 494-5494/*
*/jrweaver@purdue.edu/*
*/ /* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- --
_______________________________________________ Bnc-faculty-all-list mailing list Bnc-faculty-all-list@ecn.purdue.edu https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/mailman/listinfo/bnc-faculty-all-li st
Dimitri, A small group to address this specific issue sounds like a good idea -- this could certainly address the short-term issues. Involvement by the faculty advisor has been an important part of the process used by the disciplinary sub-committee, and I suggest that we include that also. In the longer term, I think that we need to update our policies re equipment sign-up and cancellation, so that it's clear to everyone what is expected. Dave Peroulis, Dimitrios wrote:
Dave,
Thanks for your email. Besides Eric's and Steve's suggestions, there was also a proposal from me yesterday.
As for the P&P committee handling the issue, I believe it is a bit too big to handle this. The P&P only gets together once a month or so and many times there are irresolvable conflicts for faculty (e.g. teaching - that was the case for me last semester). On the other hand, the subcommittee that handles violations (headed by Tim Fisher) is much smaller and has meetings on a need-to-discuss basis when a problem arises. I believe we need to handle this issue that way.
Thanks Dimitri
-----Original Message----- From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [mailto:bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu] On Behalf Of David B. Janes Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2010 3:56 PM To: Jeff Goecker Cc: Weaver, John R; BNC Faculty Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver
BNC Faculty Colleagues:
As part of this thread, Eric and Steve have made suggestions regarding how to rectify the situation. I would like to point out that the Policy and Procedures committee has discussed this general issue several times in the past (although not the specific recent situation addressed in John's email). While "suspend privileges" or "charge the account even if the equipment is not used" may be valid approaches in some situations/equipment, there are legitimate cases where a reserved slot cannot be used. For example, in many processes, a number of pieces of equipment are needed in sequence; if one piece of equipment is down, there is no use for the next piece of equipment. Likewise, if a prior processing step does not work properly. Couple this with the fact that we have a number of time-critical process steps, and there will be unavoidable times where a sign-up slot would not be used - and would not likely be of use to other people (since they would not have time to perform the prior processing steps).
That being said, the situation described in John's email is way beyond these circumstances. Please discuss the situation with your students -- particularly those who have been frequent violators. I view this as one of several "citizenship" issues that we have at Birck -- other issues include mis-use/breakage of equipment, failure to clean up after one's self, and use of other groups' specialty chemicals/supplies without permission and/or without contributing to replacement costs.
By way of cc, I will ask John and/or Jeff to provide a copy of the spreadsheet (omitted from the original email),
As I said in an earlier email, we have put the P&P committee on indefinite hold -- primarily due to lack of participation by faculty. If you would like to participate in shaping BNC lab access and safety policies, the P&P committee would be an excellent venue.
Dave
Jeff Goecker wrote:
BNC Faculty –
I need your help on a situation that is impacting the ability of researchers to use the BNC equipment. We are beginning to reach epidemic proportions of people reserving equipment and not using the equipment – and not cancelling their reservations so that someone else can use that equipment. This practice causes false bottlenecks and leaves the equipment unused. In the first 8 weeks of this fiscal year, we have had 1165 incidents.
An example is one user who has 20 unused and not canceled reservations on the MJB-3 aligner in 8 weeks – that’s 2 ½ unused reservations every week. This is a very highly used piece of equipment, and we are receiving complaints that this equipment is not available. This same user has 12 unused and not canceled reservations on the CHA evaporator – another critical piece of equipment.
The CHA evaporator has had 82 unused and not canceled reservations in the last 8 weeks, more than 10 per week.
Please ask your students to be more courteous to the other researchers in the BNC. The attached spreadsheet shows those users with at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations in the past 8 weeks by Coral user name. I have also highlighted incidents where one user had at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations on a particular piece of equipment.
While it is understood that there are legitimate incidents where a user reserves a piece of equipment but cannot use it, this happening at a very high frequency is more likely abuse.
Thanking you for your consideration,
John
*/John R. Weaver/*
*/Facility Manager/*
*/Birck Nanotechnology Center/*
*/Purdue University/*
*/(765) 494-5494/*
*/jrweaver@purdue.edu/*
*/ /* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- --
_______________________________________________ Bnc-faculty-all-list mailing list Bnc-faculty-all-list@ecn.purdue.edu https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/mailman/listinfo/bnc-faculty-all-li st
All, It is not at all clear to me why we need a bureaucratic solution to this problem, and setting up a small committee to deal with it is a bureaucratic solution. The situation Dave Janes describe is largely correct. Students hedge their bets and schedule multiple slots for equipment because they cannot predict how quickly earlier processing steps will be successfully completed. It's logical, but creates unnecessary delays and is inconsiderate of other users. I would like to see the following policy implemented: 1. Signing up for any piece of equipment implies a commitment to pay for the time scheduled unless cancelled at least 12 hours before the start time reserved. 2. Missed reservations First offense: loss of privileges for 5 days. Second offense: loss of privileges for one month. Third offense: loss of privileges. Part of our problem is the "three strikes" culture. I favor an environment where all of us are accountable for our actions and we accept the responsibility to conduct ourselves in a manner suitable for a share-user facility FROM THE START. The culture Dave described has been in place as long as I've been here (1997). This culture will only change if we install a new culture with well-defined guidelines and real consequences. Telling the faculty that one of their students missed a reservation is a complete waste of time. Let's take real action! Mike Capano Quoting "David B. Janes" <janes@ecn.purdue.edu>:
Dimitri,
A small group to address this specific issue sounds like a good idea -- this could certainly address the short-term issues. Involvement by the faculty advisor has been an important part of the process used by the disciplinary sub-committee, and I suggest that we include that also.
In the longer term, I think that we need to update our policies re equipment sign-up and cancellation, so that it's clear to everyone what is expected.
Dave
Peroulis, Dimitrios wrote:
Dave,
Thanks for your email. Besides Eric's and Steve's suggestions, there was also a proposal from me yesterday.
As for the P&P committee handling the issue, I believe it is a bit too big to handle this. The P&P only gets together once a month or so and many times there are irresolvable conflicts for faculty (e.g. teaching - that was the case for me last semester). On the other hand, the subcommittee that handles violations (headed by Tim Fisher) is much smaller and has meetings on a need-to-discuss basis when a problem arises. I believe we need to handle this issue that way.
Thanks Dimitri
-----Original Message----- From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [mailto:bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu] On Behalf Of David B. Janes Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2010 3:56 PM To: Jeff Goecker Cc: Weaver, John R; BNC Faculty Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver
BNC Faculty Colleagues:
As part of this thread, Eric and Steve have made suggestions regarding how to rectify the situation. I would like to point out that the Policy and Procedures committee has discussed this general issue several times in the past (although not the specific recent situation addressed in John's email). While "suspend privileges" or "charge the account even if the equipment is not used" may be valid approaches in some situations/equipment, there are legitimate cases where a reserved slot cannot be used. For example, in many processes, a number of pieces of equipment are needed in sequence; if one piece of equipment is down, there is no use for the next piece of equipment. Likewise, if a prior processing step does not work properly. Couple this with the fact that we have a number of time-critical process steps, and there will be unavoidable times where a sign-up slot would not be used - and would not likely be of use to other people (since they would not have time to perform the prior processing steps).
That being said, the situation described in John's email is way beyond these circumstances. Please discuss the situation with your students -- particularly those who have been frequent violators. I view this as one of several "citizenship" issues that we have at Birck -- other issues include mis-use/breakage of equipment, failure to clean up after one's self, and use of other groups' specialty chemicals/supplies without permission and/or without contributing to replacement costs.
By way of cc, I will ask John and/or Jeff to provide a copy of the spreadsheet (omitted from the original email),
As I said in an earlier email, we have put the P&P committee on indefinite hold -- primarily due to lack of participation by faculty. If you would like to participate in shaping BNC lab access and safety policies, the P&P committee would be an excellent venue.
Dave
Jeff Goecker wrote:
BNC Faculty –
I need your help on a situation that is impacting the ability of researchers to use the BNC equipment. We are beginning to reach epidemic proportions of people reserving equipment and not using the equipment – and not cancelling their reservations so that someone else can use that equipment. This practice causes false bottlenecks and leaves the equipment unused. In the first 8 weeks of this fiscal year, we have had 1165 incidents.
An example is one user who has 20 unused and not canceled reservations on the MJB-3 aligner in 8 weeks – that’s 2 ½ unused reservations every week. This is a very highly used piece of equipment, and we are receiving complaints that this equipment is not available. This same user has 12 unused and not canceled reservations on the CHA evaporator – another critical piece of equipment.
The CHA evaporator has had 82 unused and not canceled reservations in the last 8 weeks, more than 10 per week.
Please ask your students to be more courteous to the other researchers in the BNC. The attached spreadsheet shows those users with at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations in the past 8 weeks by Coral user name. I have also highlighted incidents where one user had at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations on a particular piece of equipment.
While it is understood that there are legitimate incidents where a user reserves a piece of equipment but cannot use it, this happening at a very high frequency is more likely abuse.
Thanking you for your consideration,
John
*/John R. Weaver/*
*/Facility Manager/*
*/Birck Nanotechnology Center/*
*/Purdue University/*
*/(765) 494-5494/*
*/jrweaver@purdue.edu/*
*/ /* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- --
_______________________________________________ Bnc-faculty-all-list mailing list Bnc-faculty-all-list@ecn.purdue.edu https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/mailman/listinfo/bnc-faculty-all-li st
I generally agree with the sentiments expressed by Mike and Xianfan. However, I would like to point out that 12 hours is way too long. My students routinely process samples where certain process steps must be done within a few minutes of each other. This implies that students need to reserve slots on several pieces of equipment in relatively rapid sequence (or perform wet-chemistry steps immediately prior to using a given piece of equipment), and problems with the process at any step makes the next reservation unnecessary (often with just a few minutes notice). The "equipment down" exemption that Xianfan has proposed would also need to be extended to cover this case. Perhaps we could institute a financial/access penalty for those students who have an unusually large number of "no-shows" or un-justified late cancellations. Rather than criminalize every case where a reservation goes un-used, I think we broadly need an environment in which we acknowledge that various circumstances will arise. This should be balanced with an expectation that all users act responsibly. Since there are apparently a relatively small number of students who have accounted for a relatively large fraction of the overall un-used slots, I think Dimitri's suggestion of meeting with the specific students is a good short-term approach. In addition, I would hope that their faculty advisors would understand that this reflects poorly on them (the advisor), and make it clear to their student(s) that this behavior needs to stop. In a broader sense, I think this is part of a "my research comes first, and I don't particularly care about other people's ability to be productive/safe" mentality exhibited by a small, but significant, subset of our users. I listed a few examples in an earlier email in this thread. Based on numerous discussions with the BNC staff, there are a small number of users who cause a large fraction of our equipment down-time, messes in chem hoods, etc.. In many instances, the individual with this attitude actually degrades their owe research (as well as that of others). As faculty, I think we have a responsibility to make it clear to students that this overall attitude is not acceptable in a facility such as BNC. Dave capano@ecn.purdue.edu wrote:
All,
It is not at all clear to me why we need a bureaucratic solution to this problem, and setting up a small committee to deal with it is a bureaucratic solution. The situation Dave Janes describe is largely correct. Students hedge their bets and schedule multiple slots for equipment because they cannot predict how quickly earlier processing steps will be successfully completed. It's logical, but creates unnecessary delays and is inconsiderate of other users.
I would like to see the following policy implemented:
1. Signing up for any piece of equipment implies a commitment to pay for the time scheduled unless cancelled at least 12 hours before the start time reserved. 2. Missed reservations First offense: loss of privileges for 5 days. Second offense: loss of privileges for one month. Third offense: loss of privileges.
Part of our problem is the "three strikes" culture. I favor an environment where all of us are accountable for our actions and we accept the responsibility to conduct ourselves in a manner suitable for a share-user facility FROM THE START. The culture Dave described has been in place as long as I've been here (1997). This culture will only change if we install a new culture with well-defined guidelines and real consequences. Telling the faculty that one of their students missed a reservation is a complete waste of time. Let's take real action!
Mike Capano
Quoting "David B. Janes" <janes@ecn.purdue.edu>:
Dimitri,
A small group to address this specific issue sounds like a good idea -- this could certainly address the short-term issues. Involvement by the faculty advisor has been an important part of the process used by the disciplinary sub-committee, and I suggest that we include that also.
In the longer term, I think that we need to update our policies re equipment sign-up and cancellation, so that it's clear to everyone what is expected.
Dave
Peroulis, Dimitrios wrote:
Dave,
Thanks for your email. Besides Eric's and Steve's suggestions, there was also a proposal from me yesterday.
As for the P&P committee handling the issue, I believe it is a bit too big to handle this. The P&P only gets together once a month or so and many times there are irresolvable conflicts for faculty (e.g. teaching - that was the case for me last semester). On the other hand, the subcommittee that handles violations (headed by Tim Fisher) is much smaller and has meetings on a need-to-discuss basis when a problem arises. I believe we need to handle this issue that way.
Thanks Dimitri
-----Original Message----- From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [mailto:bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu] On Behalf Of David B. Janes Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2010 3:56 PM To: Jeff Goecker Cc: Weaver, John R; BNC Faculty Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver
BNC Faculty Colleagues:
As part of this thread, Eric and Steve have made suggestions regarding how to rectify the situation. I would like to point out that the Policy and Procedures committee has discussed this general issue several times in the past (although not the specific recent situation addressed in John's email). While "suspend privileges" or "charge the account even if the equipment is not used" may be valid approaches in some situations/equipment, there are legitimate cases where a reserved slot cannot be used. For example, in many processes, a number of pieces of equipment are needed in sequence; if one piece of equipment is down, there is no use for the next piece of equipment. Likewise, if a prior processing step does not work properly. Couple this with the fact that we have a number of time-critical process steps, and there will be unavoidable times where a sign-up slot would not be used - and would not likely be of use to other people (since they would not have time to perform the prior processing steps).
That being said, the situation described in John's email is way beyond these circumstances. Please discuss the situation with your students -- particularly those who have been frequent violators. I view this as one of several "citizenship" issues that we have at Birck -- other issues include mis-use/breakage of equipment, failure to clean up after one's self, and use of other groups' specialty chemicals/supplies without permission and/or without contributing to replacement costs.
By way of cc, I will ask John and/or Jeff to provide a copy of the spreadsheet (omitted from the original email),
As I said in an earlier email, we have put the P&P committee on indefinite hold -- primarily due to lack of participation by faculty. If you would like to participate in shaping BNC lab access and safety policies, the P&P committee would be an excellent venue.
Dave
Jeff Goecker wrote:
BNC Faculty –
I need your help on a situation that is impacting the ability of researchers to use the BNC equipment. We are beginning to reach epidemic proportions of people reserving equipment and not using the equipment – and not cancelling their reservations so that someone else can use that equipment. This practice causes false bottlenecks and leaves the equipment unused. In the first 8 weeks of this fiscal year, we have had 1165 incidents.
An example is one user who has 20 unused and not canceled reservations on the MJB-3 aligner in 8 weeks – that’s 2 ½ unused reservations every week. This is a very highly used piece of equipment, and we are receiving complaints that this equipment is not available. This same user has 12 unused and not canceled reservations on the CHA evaporator – another critical piece of equipment.
The CHA evaporator has had 82 unused and not canceled reservations in the last 8 weeks, more than 10 per week.
Please ask your students to be more courteous to the other researchers in the BNC. The attached spreadsheet shows those users with at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations in the past 8 weeks by Coral user name. I have also highlighted incidents where one user had at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations on a particular piece of equipment.
While it is understood that there are legitimate incidents where a user reserves a piece of equipment but cannot use it, this happening at a very high frequency is more likely abuse.
Thanking you for your consideration,
John
*/John R. Weaver/*
*/Facility Manager/*
*/Birck Nanotechnology Center/*
*/Purdue University/*
*/(765) 494-5494/*
*/jrweaver@purdue.edu/*
*/ /* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- --
_______________________________________________ Bnc-faculty-all-list mailing list Bnc-faculty-all-list@ecn.purdue.edu https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/mailman/listinfo/bnc-faculty-all-li st
All, While I agree that some students like to ignore the rules that are in place intentionally and only care about their own research, there is also always a set of students that are a little more careless but without mal-intent. I agree with the notion to have a thorough conversation with the respective students on the list and to make sure that the advisors and students are both aware of the action that will be taken if the situation does not improve. Best regards, Joerg Joerg Appenzeller Professor and Scientific Director of Nanoelectronics School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Purdue University Birck Nanotechnology Center, Box 1006 1205 West State Street W. Lafayette, IN 47907-2057 Tel. 765-494-1076 Fax. 765-496-8383 Email: appenzeller@purdue.edu ________________________________ From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu] On Behalf Of David B. Janes [janes@ecn.purdue.edu] Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 1:27 PM To: capano@ecn.purdue.edu Cc: Weaver, John R; BNC Faculty; Jeff Goecker Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver I generally agree with the sentiments expressed by Mike and Xianfan. However, I would like to point out that 12 hours is way too long. My students routinely process samples where certain process steps must be done within a few minutes of each other. This implies that students need to reserve slots on several pieces of equipment in relatively rapid sequence (or perform wet-chemistry steps immediately prior to using a given piece of equipment), and problems with the process at any step makes the next reservation unnecessary (often with just a few minutes notice). The "equipment down" exemption that Xianfan has proposed would also need to be extended to cover this case. Perhaps we could institute a financial/access penalty for those students who have an unusually large number of "no-shows" or un-justified late cancellations. Rather than criminalize every case where a reservation goes un-used, I think we broadly need an environment in which we acknowledge that various circumstances will arise. This should be balanced with an expectation that all users act responsibly. Since there are apparently a relatively small number of students who have accounted for a relatively large fraction of the overall un-used slots, I think Dimitri's suggestion of meeting with the specific students is a good short-term approach. In addition, I would hope that their faculty advisors would understand that this reflects poorly on them (the advisor), and make it clear to their student(s) that this behavior needs to stop. In a broader sense, I think this is part of a "my research comes first, and I don't particularly care about other people's ability to be productive/safe" mentality exhibited by a small, but significant, subset of our users. I listed a few examples in an earlier email in this thread. Based on numerous discussions with the BNC staff, there are a small number of users who cause a large fraction of our equipment down-time, messes in chem hoods, etc.. In many instances, the individual with this attitude actually degrades their owe research (as well as that of others). As faculty, I think we have a responsibility to make it clear to students that this overall attitude is not acceptable in a facility such as BNC. Dave capano@ecn.purdue.edu wrote:
All,
It is not at all clear to me why we need a bureaucratic solution to this problem, and setting up a small committee to deal with it is a bureaucratic solution. The situation Dave Janes describe is largely correct. Students hedge their bets and schedule multiple slots for equipment because they cannot predict how quickly earlier processing steps will be successfully completed. It's logical, but creates unnecessary delays and is inconsiderate of other users.
I would like to see the following policy implemented:
1. Signing up for any piece of equipment implies a commitment to pay for the time scheduled unless cancelled at least 12 hours before the start time reserved. 2. Missed reservations First offense: loss of privileges for 5 days. Second offense: loss of privileges for one month. Third offense: loss of privileges.
Part of our problem is the "three strikes" culture. I favor an environment where all of us are accountable for our actions and we accept the responsibility to conduct ourselves in a manner suitable for a share-user facility FROM THE START. The culture Dave described has been in place as long as I've been here (1997). This culture will only change if we install a new culture with well-defined guidelines and real consequences. Telling the faculty that one of their students missed a reservation is a complete waste of time. Let's take real action!
Mike Capano
Quoting "David B. Janes" <janes@ecn.purdue.edu>:
Dimitri,
A small group to address this specific issue sounds like a good idea -- this could certainly address the short-term issues. Involvement by the faculty advisor has been an important part of the process used by the disciplinary sub-committee, and I suggest that we include that also.
In the longer term, I think that we need to update our policies re equipment sign-up and cancellation, so that it's clear to everyone what is expected.
Dave
Peroulis, Dimitrios wrote:
Dave,
Thanks for your email. Besides Eric's and Steve's suggestions, there was also a proposal from me yesterday.
As for the P&P committee handling the issue, I believe it is a bit too big to handle this. The P&P only gets together once a month or so and many times there are irresolvable conflicts for faculty (e.g. teaching - that was the case for me last semester). On the other hand, the subcommittee that handles violations (headed by Tim Fisher) is much smaller and has meetings on a need-to-discuss basis when a problem arises. I believe we need to handle this issue that way.
Thanks Dimitri
-----Original Message----- From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [mailto:bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu] On Behalf Of David B. Janes Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2010 3:56 PM To: Jeff Goecker Cc: Weaver, John R; BNC Faculty Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver
BNC Faculty Colleagues:
As part of this thread, Eric and Steve have made suggestions regarding how to rectify the situation. I would like to point out that the Policy and Procedures committee has discussed this general issue several times in the past (although not the specific recent situation addressed in John's email). While "suspend privileges" or "charge the account even if the equipment is not used" may be valid approaches in some situations/equipment, there are legitimate cases where a reserved slot cannot be used. For example, in many processes, a number of pieces of equipment are needed in sequence; if one piece of equipment is down, there is no use for the next piece of equipment. Likewise, if a prior processing step does not work properly. Couple this with the fact that we have a number of time-critical process steps, and there will be unavoidable times where a sign-up slot would not be used - and would not likely be of use to other people (since they would not have time to perform the prior processing steps).
That being said, the situation described in John's email is way beyond these circumstances. Please discuss the situation with your students -- particularly those who have been frequent violators. I view this as one of several "citizenship" issues that we have at Birck -- other issues include mis-use/breakage of equipment, failure to clean up after one's self, and use of other groups' specialty chemicals/supplies without permission and/or without contributing to replacement costs.
By way of cc, I will ask John and/or Jeff to provide a copy of the spreadsheet (omitted from the original email),
As I said in an earlier email, we have put the P&P committee on indefinite hold -- primarily due to lack of participation by faculty. If you would like to participate in shaping BNC lab access and safety policies, the P&P committee would be an excellent venue.
Dave
Jeff Goecker wrote:
BNC Faculty –
I need your help on a situation that is impacting the ability of researchers to use the BNC equipment. We are beginning to reach epidemic proportions of people reserving equipment and not using the equipment – and not cancelling their reservations so that someone else can use that equipment. This practice causes false bottlenecks and leaves the equipment unused. In the first 8 weeks of this fiscal year, we have had 1165 incidents.
An example is one user who has 20 unused and not canceled reservations on the MJB-3 aligner in 8 weeks – that’s 2 ½ unused reservations every week. This is a very highly used piece of equipment, and we are receiving complaints that this equipment is not available. This same user has 12 unused and not canceled reservations on the CHA evaporator – another critical piece of equipment.
The CHA evaporator has had 82 unused and not canceled reservations in the last 8 weeks, more than 10 per week.
Please ask your students to be more courteous to the other researchers in the BNC. The attached spreadsheet shows those users with at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations in the past 8 weeks by Coral user name. I have also highlighted incidents where one user had at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations on a particular piece of equipment.
While it is understood that there are legitimate incidents where a user reserves a piece of equipment but cannot use it, this happening at a very high frequency is more likely abuse.
Thanking you for your consideration,
John
*/John R. Weaver/*
*/Facility Manager/*
*/Birck Nanotechnology Center/*
*/Purdue University/*
*/(765) 494-5494/*
*/jrweaver@purdue.edu/*
*/ /* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- --
_______________________________________________ Bnc-faculty-all-list mailing list Bnc-faculty-all-list@ecn.purdue.edu https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/mailman/listinfo/bnc-faculty-all-li st
All, Just a technical question: do those missed reservations include the slots within the equipment down time? It would still be important for students to remove reservations when the equipment is down, but if they did not, then they perhaps should not be penalized for not cancelling their reservations when the equipment is not usable anyway. Thanks, Minghao From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [mailto:bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu] On Behalf Of Appenzeller, Joerg Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 1:54 PM To: David B. Janes; capano@ecn.purdue.edu Cc: Weaver, John R; BNC Faculty; Jeff Goecker Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver All, While I agree that some students like to ignore the rules that are in place intentionally and only care about their own research, there is also always a set of students that are a little more careless but without mal-intent. I agree with the notion to have a thorough conversation with the respective students on the list and to make sure that the advisors and students are both aware of the action that will be taken if the situation does not improve. Best regards, Joerg Joerg Appenzeller Professor and Scientific Director of Nanoelectronics School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Purdue University Birck Nanotechnology Center, Box 1006 1205 West State Street W. Lafayette, IN 47907-2057 Tel. 765-494-1076 Fax. 765-496-8383 Email: appenzeller@purdue.edu ________________________________ From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu] On Behalf Of David B. Janes [janes@ecn.purdue.edu] Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 1:27 PM To: capano@ecn.purdue.edu Cc: Weaver, John R; BNC Faculty; Jeff Goecker Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver I generally agree with the sentiments expressed by Mike and Xianfan. However, I would like to point out that 12 hours is way too long. My students routinely process samples where certain process steps must be done within a few minutes of each other. This implies that students need to reserve slots on several pieces of equipment in relatively rapid sequence (or perform wet-chemistry steps immediately prior to using a given piece of equipment), and problems with the process at any step makes the next reservation unnecessary (often with just a few minutes notice). The "equipment down" exemption that Xianfan has proposed would also need to be extended to cover this case. Perhaps we could institute a financial/access penalty for those students who have an unusually large number of "no-shows" or un-justified late cancellations. Rather than criminalize every case where a reservation goes un-used, I think we broadly need an environment in which we acknowledge that various circumstances will arise. This should be balanced with an expectation that all users act responsibly. Since there are apparently a relatively small number of students who have accounted for a relatively large fraction of the overall un-used slots, I think Dimitri's suggestion of meeting with the specific students is a good short-term approach. In addition, I would hope that their faculty advisors would understand that this reflects poorly on them (the advisor), and make it clear to their student(s) that this behavior needs to stop. In a broader sense, I think this is part of a "my research comes first, and I don't particularly care about other people's ability to be productive/safe" mentality exhibited by a small, but significant, subset of our users. I listed a few examples in an earlier email in this thread. Based on numerous discussions with the BNC staff, there are a small number of users who cause a large fraction of our equipment down-time, messes in chem hoods, etc.. In many instances, the individual with this attitude actually degrades their owe research (as well as that of others). As faculty, I think we have a responsibility to make it clear to students that this overall attitude is not acceptable in a facility such as BNC. Dave capano@ecn.purdue.edu wrote:
All,
It is not at all clear to me why we need a bureaucratic solution to this problem, and setting up a small committee to deal with it is a bureaucratic solution. The situation Dave Janes describe is largely correct. Students hedge their bets and schedule multiple slots for equipment because they cannot predict how quickly earlier processing steps will be successfully completed. It's logical, but creates unnecessary delays and is inconsiderate of other users.
I would like to see the following policy implemented:
1. Signing up for any piece of equipment implies a commitment to pay for the time scheduled unless cancelled at least 12 hours before the start time reserved. 2. Missed reservations First offense: loss of privileges for 5 days. Second offense: loss of privileges for one month. Third offense: loss of privileges.
Part of our problem is the "three strikes" culture. I favor an environment where all of us are accountable for our actions and we accept the responsibility to conduct ourselves in a manner suitable for a share-user facility FROM THE START. The culture Dave described has been in place as long as I've been here (1997). This culture will only change if we install a new culture with well-defined guidelines and real consequences. Telling the faculty that one of their students missed a reservation is a complete waste of time. Let's take real action!
Mike Capano
Quoting "David B. Janes" <janes@ecn.purdue.edu>:
Dimitri,
A small group to address this specific issue sounds like a good idea -- this could certainly address the short-term issues. Involvement by the faculty advisor has been an important part of the process used by the disciplinary sub-committee, and I suggest that we include that also.
In the longer term, I think that we need to update our policies re equipment sign-up and cancellation, so that it's clear to everyone what is expected.
Dave
Peroulis, Dimitrios wrote:
Dave,
Thanks for your email. Besides Eric's and Steve's suggestions, there was also a proposal from me yesterday.
As for the P&P committee handling the issue, I believe it is a bit too big to handle this. The P&P only gets together once a month or so and many times there are irresolvable conflicts for faculty (e.g. teaching - that was the case for me last semester). On the other hand, the subcommittee that handles violations (headed by Tim Fisher) is much smaller and has meetings on a need-to-discuss basis when a problem arises. I believe we need to handle this issue that way.
Thanks Dimitri
-----Original Message----- From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [mailto:bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu] On Behalf Of David B. Janes Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2010 3:56 PM To: Jeff Goecker Cc: Weaver, John R; BNC Faculty Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver
BNC Faculty Colleagues:
As part of this thread, Eric and Steve have made suggestions regarding how to rectify the situation. I would like to point out that the Policy and Procedures committee has discussed this general issue several times in the past (although not the specific recent situation addressed in John's email). While "suspend privileges" or "charge the account even if the equipment is not used" may be valid approaches in some situations/equipment, there are legitimate cases where a reserved slot cannot be used. For example, in many processes, a number of pieces of equipment are needed in sequence; if one piece of equipment is down, there is no use for the next piece of equipment. Likewise, if a prior processing step does not work properly. Couple this with the fact that we have a number of time-critical process steps, and there will be unavoidable times where a sign-up slot would not be used - and would not likely be of use to other people (since they would not have time to perform the prior processing steps).
That being said, the situation described in John's email is way beyond these circumstances. Please discuss the situation with your students -- particularly those who have been frequent violators. I view this as one of several "citizenship" issues that we have at Birck -- other issues include mis-use/breakage of equipment, failure to clean up after one's self, and use of other groups' specialty chemicals/supplies without permission and/or without contributing to replacement costs.
By way of cc, I will ask John and/or Jeff to provide a copy of the spreadsheet (omitted from the original email),
As I said in an earlier email, we have put the P&P committee on indefinite hold -- primarily due to lack of participation by faculty. If you would like to participate in shaping BNC lab access and safety policies, the P&P committee would be an excellent venue.
Dave
Jeff Goecker wrote:
BNC Faculty -
I need your help on a situation that is impacting the ability of researchers to use the BNC equipment. We are beginning to reach epidemic proportions of people reserving equipment and not using the equipment - and not cancelling their reservations so that someone else can use that equipment. This practice causes false bottlenecks and leaves the equipment unused. In the first 8 weeks of this fiscal year, we have had 1165 incidents.
An example is one user who has 20 unused and not canceled reservations on the MJB-3 aligner in 8 weeks - that's 2 ½ unused reservations every week. This is a very highly used piece of equipment, and we are receiving complaints that this equipment is not available. This same user has 12 unused and not canceled reservations on the CHA evaporator - another critical piece of equipment.
The CHA evaporator has had 82 unused and not canceled reservations in the last 8 weeks, more than 10 per week.
Please ask your students to be more courteous to the other researchers in the BNC. The attached spreadsheet shows those users with at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations in the past 8 weeks by Coral user name. I have also highlighted incidents where one user had at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations on a particular piece of equipment.
While it is understood that there are legitimate incidents where a user reserves a piece of equipment but cannot use it, this happening at a very high frequency is more likely abuse.
Thanking you for your consideration,
John
*/John R. Weaver/*
*/Facility Manager/*
*/Birck Nanotechnology Center/*
*/Purdue University/*
*/(765) 494-5494/*
*/jrweaver@purdue.edu/*
*/ /* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- --
_______________________________________________ Bnc-faculty-all-list mailing list Bnc-faculty-all-list@ecn.purdue.edu https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/mailman/listinfo/bnc-faculty-all-li st
That is a good point, I suggest we have a meeting of the people who use the facility a lot (myself, Dimitri, Minghao, Joerg, etc.) and have more at stake here. I know some of the faculty who are occasional users although i do not want to sideline them but they would be less affected by a major decision or policy shift. Although i totally agree with John that if this is an epidemic issue it must be addressed but would like to mention that based on my informal conversations with colleagues we have several other major issues that has hampered effective use of BNC and have caused frustrations. BZ Quoting "Qi, Minghao" <mqi@purdue.edu>:
All,
Just a technical question: do those missed reservations include the slots within the equipment down time? It would still be important for students to remove reservations when the equipment is down, but if they did not, then they perhaps should not be penalized for not cancelling their reservations when the equipment is not usable anyway.
Thanks, Minghao
From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [mailto:bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu] On Behalf Of Appenzeller, Joerg Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 1:54 PM To: David B. Janes; capano@ecn.purdue.edu Cc: Weaver, John R; BNC Faculty; Jeff Goecker Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver
All,
While I agree that some students like to ignore the rules that are in place intentionally and only care about their own research, there is also always a set of students that are a little more careless but without mal-intent.
I agree with the notion to have a thorough conversation with the respective students on the list and to make sure that the advisors and students are both aware of the action that will be taken if the situation does not improve.
Best regards,
Joerg
Joerg Appenzeller
Professor and Scientific Director of Nanoelectronics School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Purdue University Birck Nanotechnology Center, Box 1006 1205 West State Street W. Lafayette, IN 47907-2057
Tel. 765-494-1076 Fax. 765-496-8383 Email: appenzeller@purdue.edu ________________________________ From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu] On Behalf Of David B. Janes [janes@ecn.purdue.edu] Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 1:27 PM To: capano@ecn.purdue.edu Cc: Weaver, John R; BNC Faculty; Jeff Goecker Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver
I generally agree with the sentiments expressed by Mike and Xianfan. However, I would like to point out that 12 hours is way too long. My students routinely process samples where certain process steps must be done within a few minutes of each other. This implies that students need to reserve slots on several pieces of equipment in relatively rapid sequence (or perform wet-chemistry steps immediately prior to using a given piece of equipment), and problems with the process at any step makes the next reservation unnecessary (often with just a few minutes notice). The "equipment down" exemption that Xianfan has proposed would also need to be extended to cover this case. Perhaps we could institute a financial/access penalty for those students who have an unusually large number of "no-shows" or un-justified late cancellations.
Rather than criminalize every case where a reservation goes un-used, I think we broadly need an environment in which we acknowledge that various circumstances will arise. This should be balanced with an expectation that all users act responsibly. Since there are apparently a relatively small number of students who have accounted for a relatively large fraction of the overall un-used slots, I think Dimitri's suggestion of meeting with the specific students is a good short-term approach. In addition, I would hope that their faculty advisors would understand that this reflects poorly on them (the advisor), and make it clear to their student(s) that this behavior needs to stop.
In a broader sense, I think this is part of a "my research comes first, and I don't particularly care about other people's ability to be productive/safe" mentality exhibited by a small, but significant, subset of our users. I listed a few examples in an earlier email in this thread. Based on numerous discussions with the BNC staff, there are a small number of users who cause a large fraction of our equipment down-time, messes in chem hoods, etc.. In many instances, the individual with this attitude actually degrades their owe research (as well as that of others). As faculty, I think we have a responsibility to make it clear to students that this overall attitude is not acceptable in a facility such as BNC.
Dave
capano@ecn.purdue.edu wrote:
All,
It is not at all clear to me why we need a bureaucratic solution to this problem, and setting up a small committee to deal with it is a bureaucratic solution. The situation Dave Janes describe is largely correct. Students hedge their bets and schedule multiple slots for equipment because they cannot predict how quickly earlier processing steps will be successfully completed. It's logical, but creates unnecessary delays and is inconsiderate of other users.
I would like to see the following policy implemented:
1. Signing up for any piece of equipment implies a commitment to pay for the time scheduled unless cancelled at least 12 hours before the start time reserved. 2. Missed reservations First offense: loss of privileges for 5 days. Second offense: loss of privileges for one month. Third offense: loss of privileges.
Part of our problem is the "three strikes" culture. I favor an environment where all of us are accountable for our actions and we accept the responsibility to conduct ourselves in a manner suitable for a share-user facility FROM THE START. The culture Dave described has been in place as long as I've been here (1997). This culture will only change if we install a new culture with well-defined guidelines and real consequences. Telling the faculty that one of their students missed a reservation is a complete waste of time. Let's take real action!
Mike Capano
Quoting "David B. Janes" <janes@ecn.purdue.edu>:
Dimitri,
A small group to address this specific issue sounds like a good idea -- this could certainly address the short-term issues. Involvement by the faculty advisor has been an important part of the process used by the disciplinary sub-committee, and I suggest that we include that also.
In the longer term, I think that we need to update our policies re equipment sign-up and cancellation, so that it's clear to everyone what is expected.
Dave
Peroulis, Dimitrios wrote:
Dave,
Thanks for your email. Besides Eric's and Steve's suggestions, there was also a proposal from me yesterday.
As for the P&P committee handling the issue, I believe it is a bit too big to handle this. The P&P only gets together once a month or so and many times there are irresolvable conflicts for faculty (e.g. teaching - that was the case for me last semester). On the other hand, the subcommittee that handles violations (headed by Tim Fisher) is much smaller and has meetings on a need-to-discuss basis when a problem arises. I believe we need to handle this issue that way.
Thanks Dimitri
-----Original Message----- From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [mailto:bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu] On Behalf Of David B. Janes Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2010 3:56 PM To: Jeff Goecker Cc: Weaver, John R; BNC Faculty Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver
BNC Faculty Colleagues:
As part of this thread, Eric and Steve have made suggestions regarding how to rectify the situation. I would like to point out that the Policy and Procedures committee has discussed this general issue several times in the past (although not the specific recent situation addressed in John's email). While "suspend privileges" or "charge the account even if the equipment is not used" may be valid approaches in some situations/equipment, there are legitimate cases where a reserved slot cannot be used. For example, in many processes, a number of pieces of equipment are needed in sequence; if one piece of equipment is down, there is no use for the next piece of equipment. Likewise, if a prior processing step does not work properly. Couple this with the fact that we have a number of time-critical process steps, and there will be unavoidable times where a sign-up slot would not be used - and would not likely be of use to other people (since they would not have time to perform the prior processing steps).
That being said, the situation described in John's email is way beyond these circumstances. Please discuss the situation with your students -- particularly those who have been frequent violators. I view this as one of several "citizenship" issues that we have at Birck -- other issues include mis-use/breakage of equipment, failure to clean up after one's self, and use of other groups' specialty chemicals/supplies without permission and/or without contributing to replacement costs.
By way of cc, I will ask John and/or Jeff to provide a copy of the spreadsheet (omitted from the original email),
As I said in an earlier email, we have put the P&P committee on indefinite hold -- primarily due to lack of participation by faculty. If you would like to participate in shaping BNC lab access and safety policies, the P&P committee would be an excellent venue.
Dave
Jeff Goecker wrote:
BNC Faculty -
I need your help on a situation that is impacting the ability of researchers to use the BNC equipment. We are beginning to reach epidemic proportions of people reserving equipment and not using the equipment - and not cancelling their reservations so that someone else can use that equipment. This practice causes false bottlenecks and leaves the equipment unused. In the first 8 weeks of this fiscal year, we have had 1165 incidents.
An example is one user who has 20 unused and not canceled reservations on the MJB-3 aligner in 8 weeks - that's 2 ½ unused reservations every week. This is a very highly used piece of equipment, and we are receiving complaints that this equipment is not available. This same user has 12 unused and not canceled reservations on the CHA evaporator - another critical piece of equipment.
The CHA evaporator has had 82 unused and not canceled reservations in the last 8 weeks, more than 10 per week.
Please ask your students to be more courteous to the other researchers in the BNC. The attached spreadsheet shows those users with at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations in the past 8 weeks by Coral user name. I have also highlighted incidents where one user had at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations on a particular piece of equipment.
While it is understood that there are legitimate incidents where a user reserves a piece of equipment but cannot use it, this happening at a very high frequency is more likely abuse.
Thanking you for your consideration,
John
*/John R. Weaver/*
*/Facility Manager/*
*/Birck Nanotechnology Center/*
*/Purdue University/*
*/(765) 494-5494/*
*/jrweaver@purdue.edu/*
*/ /* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- --
_______________________________________________ Bnc-faculty-all-list mailing list Bnc-faculty-all-list@ecn.purdue.edu https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/mailman/listinfo/bnc-faculty-all-li st
I agree with Babak here. If there will be a meeting to discuss issues, let's certainly solve this one but there are other issues about our cleanrooms that also need to be discussed. On Aug 30, 2010, at 7:56 AM, bziaie@purdue.edu wrote:
That is a good point, I suggest we have a meeting of the people who use the facility a lot (myself, Dimitri, Minghao, Joerg, etc.) and have more at stake here. I know some of the faculty who are occasional users although i do not want to sideline them but they would be less affected by a major decision or policy shift.
Although i totally agree with John that if this is an epidemic issue it must be addressed but would like to mention that based on my informal conversations with colleagues we have several other major issues that has hampered effective use of BNC and have caused frustrations.
BZ
Quoting "Qi, Minghao" <mqi@purdue.edu>:
All,
Just a technical question: do those missed reservations include the slots within the equipment down time? It would still be important for students to remove reservations when the equipment is down, but if they did not, then they perhaps should not be penalized for not cancelling their reservations when the equipment is not usable anyway.
Thanks, Minghao
From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [mailto:bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu] On Behalf Of Appenzeller, Joerg Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 1:54 PM To: David B. Janes; capano@ecn.purdue.edu Cc: Weaver, John R; BNC Faculty; Jeff Goecker Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver
All,
While I agree that some students like to ignore the rules that are in place intentionally and only care about their own research, there is also always a set of students that are a little more careless but without mal-intent.
I agree with the notion to have a thorough conversation with the respective students on the list and to make sure that the advisors and students are both aware of the action that will be taken if the situation does not improve.
Best regards,
Joerg
Joerg Appenzeller
Professor and Scientific Director of Nanoelectronics School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Purdue University Birck Nanotechnology Center, Box 1006 1205 West State Street W. Lafayette, IN 47907-2057
Tel. 765-494-1076 Fax. 765-496-8383 Email: appenzeller@purdue.edu ________________________________ From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu] On Behalf Of David B. Janes [janes@ecn.purdue.edu] Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 1:27 PM To: capano@ecn.purdue.edu Cc: Weaver, John R; BNC Faculty; Jeff Goecker Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver
I generally agree with the sentiments expressed by Mike and Xianfan. However, I would like to point out that 12 hours is way too long. My students routinely process samples where certain process steps must be done within a few minutes of each other. This implies that students need to reserve slots on several pieces of equipment in relatively rapid sequence (or perform wet-chemistry steps immediately prior to using a given piece of equipment), and problems with the process at any step makes the next reservation unnecessary (often with just a few minutes notice). The "equipment down" exemption that Xianfan has proposed would also need to be extended to cover this case. Perhaps we could institute a financial/access penalty for those students who have an unusually large number of "no-shows" or un-justified late cancellations.
Rather than criminalize every case where a reservation goes un-used, I think we broadly need an environment in which we acknowledge that various circumstances will arise. This should be balanced with an expectation that all users act responsibly. Since there are apparently a relatively small number of students who have accounted for a relatively large fraction of the overall un-used slots, I think Dimitri's suggestion of meeting with the specific students is a good short-term approach. In addition, I would hope that their faculty advisors would understand that this reflects poorly on them (the advisor), and make it clear to their student(s) that this behavior needs to stop.
In a broader sense, I think this is part of a "my research comes first, and I don't particularly care about other people's ability to be productive/safe" mentality exhibited by a small, but significant, subset of our users. I listed a few examples in an earlier email in this thread. Based on numerous discussions with the BNC staff, there are a small number of users who cause a large fraction of our equipment down-time, messes in chem hoods, etc.. In many instances, the individual with this attitude actually degrades their owe research (as well as that of others). As faculty, I think we have a responsibility to make it clear to students that this overall attitude is not acceptable in a facility such as BNC.
Dave
capano@ecn.purdue.edu wrote:
All,
It is not at all clear to me why we need a bureaucratic solution to this problem, and setting up a small committee to deal with it is a bureaucratic solution. The situation Dave Janes describe is largely correct. Students hedge their bets and schedule multiple slots for equipment because they cannot predict how quickly earlier processing steps will be successfully completed. It's logical, but creates unnecessary delays and is inconsiderate of other users.
I would like to see the following policy implemented:
1. Signing up for any piece of equipment implies a commitment to pay for the time scheduled unless cancelled at least 12 hours before the start time reserved. 2. Missed reservations First offense: loss of privileges for 5 days. Second offense: loss of privileges for one month. Third offense: loss of privileges.
Part of our problem is the "three strikes" culture. I favor an environment where all of us are accountable for our actions and we accept the responsibility to conduct ourselves in a manner suitable for a share-user facility FROM THE START. The culture Dave described has been in place as long as I've been here (1997). This culture will only change if we install a new culture with well-defined guidelines and real consequences. Telling the faculty that one of their students missed a reservation is a complete waste of time. Let's take real action!
Mike Capano
Quoting "David B. Janes" <janes@ecn.purdue.edu>:
Dimitri,
A small group to address this specific issue sounds like a good idea -- this could certainly address the short-term issues. Involvement by the faculty advisor has been an important part of the process used by the disciplinary sub-committee, and I suggest that we include that also.
In the longer term, I think that we need to update our policies re equipment sign-up and cancellation, so that it's clear to everyone what is expected.
Dave
Peroulis, Dimitrios wrote:
Dave,
Thanks for your email. Besides Eric's and Steve's suggestions, there was also a proposal from me yesterday.
As for the P&P committee handling the issue, I believe it is a bit too big to handle this. The P&P only gets together once a month or so and many times there are irresolvable conflicts for faculty (e.g. teaching - that was the case for me last semester). On the other hand, the subcommittee that handles violations (headed by Tim Fisher) is much smaller and has meetings on a need-to-discuss basis when a problem arises. I believe we need to handle this issue that way.
Thanks Dimitri
-----Original Message----- From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu [mailto:bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces@ecn.purdue.edu] On Behalf Of David B. Janes Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2010 3:56 PM To: Jeff Goecker Cc: Weaver, John R; BNC Faculty Subject: Re: [Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse - ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver
BNC Faculty Colleagues:
As part of this thread, Eric and Steve have made suggestions regarding how to rectify the situation. I would like to point out that the Policy and Procedures committee has discussed this general issue several times in the past (although not the specific recent situation addressed in John's email). While "suspend privileges" or "charge the account even if the equipment is not used" may be valid approaches in some situations/equipment, there are legitimate cases where a reserved slot cannot be used. For example, in many processes, a number of pieces of equipment are needed in sequence; if one piece of equipment is down, there is no use for the next piece of equipment. Likewise, if a prior processing step does not work properly. Couple this with the fact that we have a number of time-critical process steps, and there will be unavoidable times where a sign-up slot would not be used - and would not likely be of use to other people (since they would not have time to perform the prior processing steps).
That being said, the situation described in John's email is way beyond these circumstances. Please discuss the situation with your students -- particularly those who have been frequent violators. I view this as one of several "citizenship" issues that we have at Birck -- other issues include mis-use/breakage of equipment, failure to clean up after one's self, and use of other groups' specialty chemicals/supplies without permission and/or without contributing to replacement costs.
By way of cc, I will ask John and/or Jeff to provide a copy of the spreadsheet (omitted from the original email),
As I said in an earlier email, we have put the P&P committee on indefinite hold -- primarily due to lack of participation by faculty. If you would like to participate in shaping BNC lab access and safety policies, the P&P committee would be an excellent venue.
Dave
Jeff Goecker wrote:
BNC Faculty -
I need your help on a situation that is impacting the ability of researchers to use the BNC equipment. We are beginning to reach epidemic proportions of people reserving equipment and not using the equipment - and not cancelling their reservations so that someone else can use that equipment. This practice causes false bottlenecks and leaves the equipment unused. In the first 8 weeks of this fiscal year, we have had 1165 incidents.
An example is one user who has 20 unused and not canceled reservations on the MJB-3 aligner in 8 weeks - that's 2 ½ unused reservations every week. This is a very highly used piece of equipment, and we are receiving complaints that this equipment is not available. This same user has 12 unused and not canceled reservations on the CHA evaporator - another critical piece of equipment.
The CHA evaporator has had 82 unused and not canceled reservations in the last 8 weeks, more than 10 per week.
Please ask your students to be more courteous to the other researchers in the BNC. The attached spreadsheet shows those users with at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations in the past 8 weeks by Coral user name. I have also highlighted incidents where one user had at least 8 unused and not cancelled reservations on a particular piece of equipment.
While it is understood that there are legitimate incidents where a user reserves a piece of equipment but cannot use it, this happening at a very high frequency is more likely abuse.
Thanking you for your consideration,
John
*/John R. Weaver/*
*/Facility Manager/*
*/Birck Nanotechnology Center/*
*/Purdue University/*
*/(765) 494-5494/*
*/jrweaver@purdue.edu/*
*/ /* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- --
_______________________________________________ Bnc-faculty-all-list mailing list Bnc-faculty-all-list@ecn.purdue.edu https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/mailman/listinfo/bnc-faculty-all-li st
_______________________________________________ Bnc-faculty-all-list mailing list Bnc-faculty-all-list@ecn.purdue.edu https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/mailman/listinfo/bnc-faculty-all-list
participants (14)
-
Appenzeller, Joerg -
bziaie＠purdue.edu -
Cagri Savran -
capano＠ecn.purdue.edu -
David B. Janes -
Dmitri N. Zakharov -
Eric Stach -
Gerhard Klimeck -
Jeff Goecker -
Leonid Rokhinson -
Peroulis, Dimitrios -
Qi, Minghao -
Wereley, Steven T. -
Yong P. Chen