Every once in a while I read the Mechanical Engineering faculty meeting notes available on the chairman's webpage, and I was absolutely appalled at what I read in last week's minutes. One of the "Open Items" discussed during the January 6, 2010 meeting is:
"Develop department-level understanding of an appropriate scope and level of difficulty for a graduate project (vs. a thesis)."
So Ohio University Mechanical Engineering has been awarding graduate degrees for well over 20 years and they are just now trying to reach an understanding of the requirements. This is unbelievable. How can anyone trust the qualifications of Mechanical Engineering graduates when the faculty have not yet reached an "understanding of an appropriate scope and level of difficulty?"
Considering the number of bogus theses and dissertations that have been approved by these professors, I can only imagine what we would find if we could read some the project reports they have approved.
I would think that an accredited university would work out the basic details like what the academic requirements are before they start conferring degrees. I think President McDavis needs to suspend Mechanical Engineering's power to award degrees until they decide on what the requirements should be.
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4 comments:
Dear Tom
Greetings. I must congratulate and thank you for you service that you have done for your alumna mater. To me your more deserving for a honor rather than the billionaires which the dean at Ohio pursues for their tax evaded money.
I have been a student at Ohio for past 3 years and have witnessed the collapse of Ohio University into debris.
You had indicated about the widespread plagiarism in Electrical engineering too. Most gratefully, kindly could you tell us more about it.
Thanking you.
Karan
Graduate Student
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Dear Karan,
Thank you very much for your kind comment and your support.
You can see two cases of egregious electrical engineering plagiarism in two of my previous post.
If you go to this address, you can follow the link to see one EE case.
http://ohiouniversityplagiarism.blogspot.com/2009/09/ohio-university-gets-away-with.html
You can see another EE case by following the link in this post.
http://ohiouniversityplagiarism.blogspot.com/2009/10/blatant-ethics-violation-by-electrical.html
I will post some more EE cases for you in the next week or two. I am sure you will agree with me that the professors either had to know the students were plagiarizing or they were not reading the theses they approved; yet, OU leaders refuse to hold them accountable.
Thanks again for your interest and support.
Tom
Like karan_maverick, I too want to thank Tom Matrka for the commendable service he has done and continues to do. I also agree that Tom deserves to be honored for this and four years ago I asked President McDavis to do so. But I never even received the courtesy of a reply from him. You can read my petition below, and please note that I copied it to the following people: OU Board of Trustees Chairman R. Gregory Browning, Provost Kathy Krendl, Faculty Senate Chair Phyllis Bernt and Meyer-Bloemer Report co-author Professor Hubertus (Hugh) L. Bloemer. Only Professor Bloemer replied to me and his reply was “I could not agree with you more fully!!.”
Brian Manhire
Professor Emeritus
Ohio University
Here is my petition re Tom Matrka
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B-v3KyoKycaUNDQ3ZjBhMmYtNjhkMC00N2Y1LWJkMjMtYzIyZTQyZmFmNzBi&hl=en
Dear Professor Manhire,
Thank you very much for writing your thoughtful letter to President McDavis four years ago. That was incredibly nice of you.
In hindsight, it is not too surprising that President McDavis never responded to you. He even told one reporter that he didn't remember seeing a letter I sent to him when I told the governor and the board of regents that OU had a serious plagiarism problem.
Obviously, President McDavis lacks class, honesty, ethics, and respect for OU.
I thank you again for your very kind words and your continued support. Eventually, we will convince OU leaders to clean up their mess and start showing some respect for the value of their degrees.
Tom Matrka
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