CS labs understaffed

The problem of understaffing has reared its ugly head in the Computer Science department. Students recently raised concerns about the maintenance of Computer Science laboratories.

There are two CS labs; one is located in King 201 and the other in King 135. Between the two there are 44 networked computers available to students. Stephen Wong, who is an assistant professor of Computer Science and the Computer Science program systems administrator, currently maintains both labs.Wong also teaches in the department.

According to Computer Science Department Chair Christian Koch, as a condition of his hiring, Wong was given two ten-hour per week student assistants by Clayton Koppes, the dean of the college. Both positions were to begin this fall but have yet to be filled. Wong said he has been forced to put in long hours between teaching his classes and administering the systems. "The department is very disappointed that more students did not jump at this education and career-enhancing opportunity. There is no doubt that we desperately need the student assistants. The sustained administering of the lab systems is impossible without them," he said.

"The point was to present the students with an unparalleled opportunity to do many more things with regards to administering NT and Unix systems than they would normally be able to do as an undergraduate," said Wong.

Currently, the CS department is authorized to pay student assistants seven to eight dollars an hour. According to senior Seth Lepzelter, head of the Computer Science Major's Committee, this pay-range does not coincide with the responsibilities and knowledge necessary for the job. He said "Right now, I get the same eight dollars an hour working in the Computing Center. The knowledge required there is minimal compared to what is required for the job in the CS lab." As far as what he feels is an appropriate wage, he said "It's really hard to say what our wage would be good, but [they] would have a hard time convincing me for less than 10 dollars, for others it would be at least nine dollars, depending on their level of knowledge."

This is something that does not go unrecognized by the department faculty. Wong said, "The wage issue is a real problem and one that with the Review's and students' help we can hopefully remedy. There is a huge problem that the CS department has been unable to offer wages higher than those offered by the Computer Information Center."

In fact, other jobs are lost to the CIT as well, where jobs attract large numbers of upper division students with a combination of higher wages and relatively low requirements for CS students. "The deptartment has a terrible time getting graders, tutors, research assistants and other positions filled for this reason."

Not only is the CS department losing out when students choose CIT jobs, but Wong said he believes that the students are as well. According to him, those jobs are not particularly useful in terms of their education. He said, "Almost any CS job, and especially the assistant systems administrator positions, would be tremendously more valuable to the CS students." In addition, if CS students are taking CIT jobs for which they are overqualified, then other students on campus who would benefit from those jobs are denied those positions.

Another reason there have been problems filling the positions is that students in the department feel that the job requirements have not been made clear enough. Lepzelter explained that along with other members of the majors committee, he recently spoke with Wong about what would really be involved in the job.

During their discussion, they told Wong that a message he posted to a discussion board advertising the job was unclear. It appeared to be a description of Wong's own responsibilities, many of which the student assistants would not have, leaving their actual responsibilities quite vague. "One reason no one has applied is that the job description is really open-ended," Lepzelter said, "It doesn't specify what students would be doing.

"We are in the process of clarifying this matter, as presented in a job advertisement, and of then getting on with the hiring of these assistants," said Koch, "It should be noted that Mr. Wong is seeking only 'assistants,' not persons to shoulder and carry out his own responsibilities."

Wong explained that the exact duties would vary depending on the knowledge of the student hired for the job. According to him, the more a student knew the more responsibilities he or she would have. He stressed that students would not have blanket responsibility in ongoing, mission critical situations. He said, "The department is well aware of the ever changing demands on students' time."

As of Wednesday, four of the 44 machines in the lab are out of commission. "We do have more machines down at the moment than I want, though we are slowly getting them all back on line. I expect to have 100 percent up very shortly," he said. However, the lack of assistants has had a negative impact on his ability to track down some problems in the lab. "At the moment, there are not any problems that prevent people from getting work done (other than the machines that are down). There are problems that make some tasks inconvenient however," he said.

One other factor that should be noted is that the lab usage is higher this year than it has ever been. More intensive usage by the CS150 class, plus the new usage by the CS221 class lead to the high demand of more the lab hardware. Sometimes the crowded labs turn away upper-level students. Lepzelter said, "I know personally that when I go to the lab to work on whatever I do, when I see 50 students in the lab I just don't bother and come back to work at home."

"I think some of the community has been lost," he said. Most computer science majors take at least one upper level class per semester, and therefore most have big projects due and need to use the labs to work on them. "When you have 10-15 upper level students in the lab that can help each other out, if they have a problem they can talk to each other to figure out what's wrong with their logic or syntax," he said, "Since the community is lost, there may be two upper levels in the lab. That's not a whole lot of interaction."

"I agree with Seth that it is very important to keep the labs as operational as possible to foster as much community interaction as possible. At the moment, it's taking a Herculean effort by me to get everything up and keep it running," Wong said, "Like everyone else on campus, we need more staff, more computers and more money. The issue shouldn't be restricted to just the upper division students however, as the health of the labs affects our students across the board."