It seems obvious now. I should have known it then. I’d learned plenty of practical psychology from Dr. Parra. And from my Mom while we chatted, playing tennis. From the many books I’d read on the topic.
Professors have giant egos. Aerospace professors in the middle of the NASA culture have even BIGGER egos.
NASA Culture? UT Austin? Well, all the Mars data was processed at the Texas Center for Space Research out in north Austin where Dr. Fowler and all the other ASE professors had second offices. NASA in Houston is right down the road. Most of the nerds at JPL you see celebrating after a successful space mission are UT graduates. In short, UT Austin was “JPL East.”
Big egos despise bright young students bursting with bright ideas.
When big egos realize that brilliant idea came from a schizophrenic brain?
EXPLOSION!
It didn’t help any that 9-ll happened that semester. The Twin Towers attack in NYC.
I stopped by Dr. Fowler’s office right after that. Ready to set up a practice exam with him for my oral qualifying exam. He was playing a child’s video game on his gigantic Mac computer screen: BOP Osama bin Laden in the Bora Bora caves to kill him.
“Go away. Can’t you see I‘m busy?”
I just stood right there, watching him. He stood up and then proceeded to tell me ALL about – his prostate cancer treatment. How they put little radiation pellets down there. He’s on hormones. I feel all so very weird, he says.
I backed out of his office. That was the last time I talked to him. (He survived the treatment. He’s on the faculty to this very day, spent radiation pellets and all.)
I submitted the document explaining my situation to the Disabilities Office, as they had requested. They suggested I talk with somebody in the engineering administration over in the dean’s office. Dean Armstrong, I think. I never did. Clearly, they could care less.
Note: The following January, the Disabilities Office denied ever receiving any document from me – and told me to resubmit it. This is how they got out of not handling my grievance at the time, thereby giving the ASE Department time to expel a disabled 45 year old Viet Nam veteran post haste.
About this time, I tell Dr. Hull in his office that I’m schizophrenic and that just I talked to the Disabilities Office, seeking extra time to prepare for the oral qualifying exam.
“You’re not schizophrenic,” he said emphatically. You still have to go easy on me because I’m a Viet Nam veteran and older than average student.
You know that demeaning look. Blank stare.
I went to the library, found the website for ABET, and submitted a grievance. ABET is the licensing authority that allows universities to award engineering degrees.
I’d already contacted the Graduate Dean the previous summer. They said it sounded like “neglect,” and told me to come in and talk about it. I never did. I should have. But every time you appeal to a higher authority, it comes back like a ton of bricks.
Dr. Fowler quit after that.
It’s called retaliation and retribution for me contacting ABET. ABET never even did anything. (I later told them in excruciating detail all that I’m telling you now. They studied it. Their response? “Texas didn’t do ANYTHING wrong.”)
Dr. Fowler said in his letter, “I’ve done ABET audits all my career. This is an outrage.”
Yeah, so is professors doing oversight on their own damn programs. No wonder you people aren’t afraid of anything I do. You aren’t even afraid of putting all this in writing. On University letterhead (I have whole stacks of documents detailing all of this in great detail. I’m only providing a brief outline here.)
Fortunately, I was ahead of Dr. Fowler. I’d already found five other professors (you need four to be on your dissertation committee – that would be three plus Dr. Fowler – but I’d gotten five just in case so I didn’t need the sick bastard anyway) and set up a time and date for my oral qualifying exam.
Not a damn thing Dr. Hull my Graduate Advisor could do now.
Except.
They set up an “ad hoc committee” to review my research. (A review mandated by Dean Armstrong I believe; proof positive the Disabilities Office DID receive my original grievance and DID act on it.)
It’s now just two short weeks before the oral qualifying exam – in the middle of the Thanksgiving Break, actually – and now they ORDER me to show up for a meeting to DEFEND my research.
Excuse me, but what exactly is the priority right now at this minute? For the last THREE YEARS, you people have been telling me, “No comments on your Mars research until you pass the qualifying exams.”
So now I’m supposed to drop everything. Spend three days writing everything up nice and formal, then another whole day to go to campus to talk about it. FOUR DAYS when I should be cramming for the #1 priority of all grad students, passing the qualifying exams?
I copied a few of my Mars documents and sent them in. See you at the oral exam.
The exam was in two weeks. I put a stop on my mail. Unplugged the TV and the computer and crammed my heart out. Come D-Day, I cleaned up and headed to campus.
I arrive at the appointed time at the Department office. The secretary Rita (a friend of mine, she lived in Lago Vista too) told me. “Didn’t you get our letter? You were expelled already.”
Who expels somebody with a – LETTER???
Clearly, the “ad hoc committee” did not understand my Mars research. Apparently, they disliked it SO much that they found it just cause to EXPEL ME on the spot. In so doing, they have just required me to show evidence of having done dissertation-quality research before I ever entered the doctoral program whose very purpose is to teach you how to do research.
As an aside, observe if you please, that it’s the Disability Office who set this all up. The people who were supposed to DEFEND me.
The official chain of events was this: After the “ad hoc” meeting, whatever they decided – Dr. Hull polls everybody in the department. Nobody will be my advisor. I’m thereby expelled.
I didn’t receive a copy of the “ad hoc committee’s” evaluation until the following April. That means they did not look at my materials at that time.
Early the next semester, I submitted a nice, clean, formal thesis report. Went to Dr. Fowler’s office at the Center for Space Research to submit it.
The security guard SHREDDED it. . . As I watched.
(This was so offensive to me that I didn’t think – until this very moment as I write these words on 11.2.2023 – I should have submitted that Thesis to the appeals committee; as it was, they had no idea I had completed the Thesis – which was basically a triple DISSERTATION.)
Immediately after I was expelled, which was in early December 2001, I emailed 20+ experts all over the country and asked them to please look at my Mars website, download my program, and give a few comments.
Every last one of them did just that (each one spent more time on my Mars project than the sum total of the time spent on it by the totality of professors on campus in the previous THREE effing YEARS). I gave their letters to Dr. Hull as part of my appeal.
He threw them out. Said they had no bearing on the situation.
(AGAIN! I was so damn outraged by what he said that – you guessed it, I did not occur to me until 11.2.2023 that I should have submitted those comments to the appeals committee. That would have changed EVERYTHING.)
If Dr. David Hull had read those comments, he would have seen that at least five of those exerts wanted to be on my dissertation committee. You can do that. But you still need one UT professor.
I never had a chance to shop around for that one professor – and there were several who were interested. Dr. Bedford, for whom I’d worked as a TA all those years already said he was interested. Dr. Chambers was another, an orbits associate professor. My friend Dr. Abusali.
But no, I was – gone.
The final report from UT President Faulkner (now the Chancellor of the whole UT System) had excuses for everything.
Dr. Broucke’s neglect? Professors aren’t required to help you on your research when you sign up for “Thesis Research” or “Research” classes.
“All you had to do was knock on our door for comments on your work.”
Ultimately, I was told by Dr. Lee Smith, J.D. the chief legal officer on campus, that I was prohibited from contacting anybody involved in any of my research. Furthermore, if I ever tell anybody anything about what happened, the University will “file a civil suit against you and take away your home, your property, and all your belongings.”
Like everything else, I have his letter saying just that (plus whole pages of unmitigated malice against me).
Look at this chapter. Look at all the hundreds of man-hours devoted to interviewing all those people on campus and preparing their final report (10 pages from UT President Faulkner).
It could have all been avoided if somebody, at any point, had sat me down for five minutes to let me explain how I got to Mars. Not some ad hoc committee of professors outside the orbits group. That’s entrapment!
Even Dr. Schultz, who did the final evaluation clearly didn’t understand. My only fault is that he didn’t understand my explanation – that hundreds of students and those 20+ professors at other universities clearly did.
The Disabilities Office asked for another statement the next spring. Said they never received the first one. They investigated all my claims. Interviewed many professors.
Dr. Broucke has been retired for three years. Don’t blame him for ignoring you.
The paper to the AIAA was taken down because it wasn’t accepted at a Department Seminar that semester by Dr. Lightsey. (Sorry, I sent the paper to the AIAA. The AIAA accepted it. The AIAA liked it.) There WAS no such department seminar that semester.
Are you keeping track of the hundreds of ADDITIONAL man-hours needed to prepare this second six-page letter from the Disabilities Office?
“You should have taken the qualifying exams one year after starting graduate school” was the main reason cited by the President of the University.
The ACTUAL rule is one year after earning your Master’s Degree. You take one or two years to get an MSE. (Or maybe longer if you got your undergraduate degree in another discipline AND that was 20+ years previously, as was my case.) Then the following year you take the math course to prepare for that qualifying exam.
I could have filed a lawsuit for a hate crime. But it was a whole year before their final decision came back. You guessed it: the statute of limitations for a hate crime in Texas is – one year.
That last semester, after 9/11 and until I was officially expelled, Mom had issues with back pains. We played just a little tennis on Saturday mornings, then none at all.
The day I got expelled my sister Regan drove Mom to the doctor’s office. When they stopped by my house that afternoon to see how my oral qualifying exam went – well, Mom had just been diagnosed with terminal bone cancer.
She had at best one year to live.
The following summer, after I had submitted my grievance and tried to submit my formal Thesis/Dissertation and then the letters from the 20+ experts, I got a call from Jasmine’s attorney. Remember Jasmine Azima, P.E. the “Persian” entrepreneur P.E.?
The City of Austin had filed a $1 million lawsuit against the firm for gross negligence. This was for the South Austin Transfer Station (SATS), where they compact garbage and send it away on a giant trailer. It was the last project I sealed at the firm. All the plans were already done. The only thing I changed was to alter a restroom HVAC to handle more humidity.
According to the architect of record, the contractors had installed many windows backwards. Water leaked in. The HVAC can handle normal humidity levels from doors opening and closing, but not a massive amount from an influx like that. The moisture caused mold on the walls. People got sick.
The City Attorney was asking $1 million for renovations. I was brought in at the very last minute, a Haily Mary. That’s me, everybody’s go-to man. Even the loyal opposition.
Does this bring to mind the old IAQ/ADD controversy? Time to get rid of this guy once and for all?
Talk about a terrible feeling, walking into that courtroom to give my deposition, and seeing all the contractors lined up on the City’s side – people I’d worked with on AISD and other projects, anxious to destroy me. But why did the City Attorney call me in at the last minute?
Years before – but long after I had walked out at Jasmine – I had been asked to redo the engineering design for the SATS facility, as problems were developing in the building. I wrote back saying Jasmine was “the worst, most unorganized, most unethical company I’d ever worked for.” (Pop always told me, “You’d go a long way with a little tact and tolerance.” Sorry, not my forte.)
The attorney for Jasmine’s liability insurance carrier spent WEEKS coaching me on how to give the deposition. (“I’ve never spent so much time answering so damn many questions from a client.” Lawyers. Don’t’ you just hate them? Especially when they say this while earning, like – $250/hour.).
My attorney – paid for by Jasmine’s liability insurance company, was especially INSISTENT on CONVINCING me to “bend the truth” and help Jasmine get off the hook. Lawyers may find it easy to “bend the truth” – when it’s MY neck in the noose. But winding me up to send out to commit obvious PERJURY?
My own goddamn attorney????
When I arrived at the deposition, I told the insurance carrier’s representative that I was NOT going to commit perjury. They settled on the spot.
It was the end of my career as a Professional Engineer.
Ironically, I’d brought an autographed copy of Retrofitting for Energy Conservation as a gift for Jasmine. It was the only copy I ever autographed. Maybe it’s worth something how.
My life sure isn’t.
All this happened the summer of 2002, while Mom was still alive. (One last drama to entertain Mom with. . . )
Meanwhile. I was working furiously to smash together all my research into a formal dissertation to submit to the plutocrats on campus.
Yeah I know, I always have so much hope when none should rightfully exist.
That old NASA research? I had some time to think on all that. Makes me recollect a project I proposed to my solid state physics professor while I was working on the original Mars trajectory problem.
It was a model of the semiconductor junction diode, based on orbital mechanics principles. Very simple. Very elegant. What we know about transistors is all based on statistical methods. My model was 100% fundamental mathematics.
It’s too bad, in these 20 years working on my new MATHEMATICAL model, who knows? We could have transistors that are ten times as fast now. Solar panels (which are just great big transistors) ten times as efficient.
Global Warming could be a fading memory instead of an existential threat.
Oh. The NASA research. That model of the atom based on the Schrodinger Electron Cloud plots? That wasn’t a Unified Field Theory at all.
The REAL UFT is that little solid state physics model I just talked about. All the fundamental forces are there. Gravity (it’s an exact scaled-down model of the Mars trajectory algorithm), electrostatics – that’s in how the semiconductor behaves, and the weak and strong atomic forces.
Semiconductors have two halves, just like my Mars model. One weak. One strong. Held together by electrostatic forces. (The Mars model is, of course, “held together” by the Sun’s gravity.)
It’s too bad I couldn’t talk to my old EE professor about this model. But Dr. Smith banned me from talking to anybody. That ban is still in effect. Bummer. Don’t you just HATE lawyers?
That fall of 2002, right before Thanksgiving (Mom’s birthday is around that time and the whole family always gathered to celebrate both together), the last word came down in the form of President Faulkner’s letter. Appeals denied. You’re expelled.
Mom passed away the following day.
A few weeks later, I got an appointment with the VA. Before I went, I talked to my Texas State Veterans Representative. He told me, “When they ask how you’re doing, they don’t mean that very day but over the past year.”
In all my previous disability reviews over the past 15 years, I was real happy. I love hospitals and doctors. “How are you feeling, Mr. Bill?” Great. Excellent. Love hospitals. . .
This time I gave the doctor the whole shebang. My disability rating was increased from 0% to 100% almost on the spot. A year later it was upgraded to Permanent and Total.
Gee thanks, Texas. This is me. I’m so damn phobic I can’t even LOOK at a math equation anymore. All my machinations have since involved only the graphs; no new ones, just the 150+ illustrations in my final dissertation. That’s the sum total of my math efforts in the last 20+ years.
Once Mom’s estate was settled, I sold my little green house and moved out of Texas. I have not since set foot in that fu*king state. And all my family live there around Austin. Haven’t seen them – none of them – since.
Around this same time, as I was heading to Vicksburg, Mississippi to find a house to buy, there was a class reunion at the Naval Academy. Ex-Middies are always welcome at those events, whether or not you graduated.
Not me. Not this time. My company commander – a classmate who now represents us in the Class of ’78 activities and events – BANNED me from going. This was confirmed by the President of our Class.
Gee thanks, Annapolis.
Too bad. I was needing some quiet time in that beautiful Chapel in The Yard. A visit to John Paul Jones’s sepulcher under the Chapel and the granite dolphins over his coffin would have done me some good right about then.
That’s okay, some other time, Admiral Jones.
I’m on the VA payroll now, Sir.
I have a mission to finish.
Anchor’s Aweigh.