Dr. X strikes again - indirectly

I thought I was finished with Dr. X, now that he is out of his office, and rumored to be moving out of state in a few days.  Not so. 

A group of students from one of his classes came to me complaining about their grades.  In the process of inquiry, I discovered several things that Dr. X done.

We, as faculty members, are required to put on the course syllabus the way we compute grades.  In looking at this course syllabus, there was a narrative and a chart on this subject.  They did not agree.  On top of that, Dr. X had sent all of his students information on how he computed their grades.  The method he used did not agree with either the narrative or the chart on the syllabus. 

But, the astonishing thing was that he had decided that this course, which was a 4 credit hour course, needed to meet only 3 days a week.  The Thursday classes were cancelled.  He told the students that the room he was assigned for Thursdays (the class met in a computer lab the other 3 days) did not have a computer, so that was the problem.  But, the room he was assigned for Thursday DOES have a computer.  Perhaps he was just mistaken?  No.  He never asked either me or the department secretary to find a different room.  This is not a fellow who is shy about asking for what he wants or needs. 

I supported the students' request for a grade adjustment, and sent all the material to the dean.  Now, I am wondering what else about Dr. X will come to light. 

Survived another semester!

Finals are over, graduation ceremony over.  Dr. X (see 2 posts previous) sent me only one more tacky email, but now he is gone, turned in his keys, left Dodge for good.  Summer school has fallen into place.  The last big (all day long!) committee meeting has been survived. If you saw the movie "Airplane" and remember the lady that hanged herself because she was sitting by the guy that wouldn't shut up, you have some idea how I felt in that meeting.  But, no more meetings until August.  I hope.

Now to tackle all the stuff I delayed to do in the summer, including one last heroic effort on my textbook in progress.  There seems to be ZERO textbooks in computer science education.  I would like to increase that count to one. 

I even treated myself to the new Star Trek movie.  It was entertaining, but, gee whiz, why can't they find some writers who can do something original??   I don't mind that they brought back a previous bad guy, but a dramatic part of the script was plagiarized (at least in concept) from that earler movie, also.  And that part really had nothing to do with the bad guy - they just used it anyway. 

Speaking of scripts, I just re-watched last year's Star Trek and was reminded of this dramatic device called Red Matter.  It's red, and it makes black holes.  I can just see the script writers around a table trying to figure out how to imagine a technology to create black holes, and someone says "Let's just have some red stuff, and we don't have to explain how it works."  And everyone says "Great!  Except Red Matter sound better than Red Stuff".  And there we are.