[Bnc-faculty-all-list] Coral Reservation Abuse -ACTION REQUESTED - on behalf of John Weaver

[Yong P. Chen]

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 at purdue.edu

   

  From: bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces at ecn.purdue.edu [mailto:bnc-faculty-all-list-bounces at 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 at purdue.edu





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