WEfiTHER Today I N C I n I? s P orts ••• see Page 3 ii ^ 1 1/ C Opinion ... see Page 5 IIGH IW Tomorrow IIGH ,04 ,E YEAR • ISSUE ISfe - 6 PAGES TEXAS AOM UNIVERSITY ■COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS Tomorrow Front page: Students get a new view of Kyle Field as The Zone takes shape. MONDAY • JUNE 22 • 1998 rprisea mine g me," to Deiiij medical first professor inducted as first AMA female president I Staff and Wire Report m f 'Mlancy W. Dickey, M.D., a board-cer- fied family physician from College Sta- on became president of the American laical Association (AMA), one of the tost influential voices in American ledidne, Wednesday. ^Bickey will dedicate her year-long |Hidency to several issues vital to pa- ent care, among them: universal access iaealth care, new opportunities for ealth system reform and a recommit- lent by physicians to the highest level Professionalism. jHl have known and worked with Hickey 1 for 20 years," Lonnie Bristow, former AMA President, said. ^Kre is no question in my mind that h.eis the right person at the right time )lead the AMA. ■The emphasis of [Dickey's] career as been on patient care, but she also as a thorough grounding in medical is les, particularly ethics, on a national ;vel. L BShe will bring her talent and vision othose who need it most of all — our latients, the county's physicians and he Association itself. We will benefit greatly from her leadership." Dickey, who was named president elect of the AMA in June 1997, has been a member of the AMA Board of Trustees since 1989. She served as board chair from November 1995 to June 1997 and as vice chair from 1994-1995. Dickey was a member of the AMA Ad Hoc Committee on Women in Organized Medicine from 1979 to 1980, a member of the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA) from 1980 to 1989 and its chair from 1984 to 1987. Dickey also chaired the AMA's Ad Hoc Technical Advisory Com mittee on Health System Reform from 1993 to 1994. She chaired the Finance Committee from 1993 to 1994 and served as a mem ber of the Board's Subcommittee on Membership from 1993 to 1994. She was an AMA commissioner on the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) from 1989 to 1995, serving on the Accreditation Committee, the Standards-Survey Proce dure Committee and the Task Force for Psychiatric Facilities. In addition to her service at the AMA, Dickey is an associate professor at the Texas A&M University Health Sci ence Center College of Medicine and is the program director of the Brazos Val ley Family Practice Residency Program. She is also a fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians and has served as vice president of the Texas Med ical Association (TMA) and as a delegate to TMA from the Fort Bend County Med ical Association from 1984 to 1989. Born in Watertown, S.D., Dickey re ceived her medical degree in 1976 form the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. She completed her residen cy in family medicine at University of Texas affiliated Memorial Hospital Sys tem in 1979. Dickey has fulfilled several roles in her community, including coaching a youth soccer league and serving as sponsor for the United Methodist Youth Fellowship. She has also served on the Boards of Directors of the Hastings Center, a na tional ethics think tank, the Family Health Center, a local center for low-in come health care, and the local chapter of the American Heart Association. Dickey is married to Franklin Dickey, a teacher and coach at Allen Academy in Bryan. lurec; kent Provisional program gives students chance to attend A&M By Patrick Peabody ^ Staff Writer ,, ' ■There are already a few of the members of the Class of 20(12 walking around the campus and attending classes. Bese freshmen are part of the Provisional Student Program. l)e program, held each summer, allows some students an opportunity to gain entrance to Texas A&M University they ptherwise would not have. Because of the service mission of state universities, they lave some mechanism for allowing access that is not lim ited by standardized test scores or high school ranking. These freshmen are part of one such program at A&M. We have to learn it all on our lawn. We don’t have the time to recover bm mistakes like freshmen in the fall id spring.†— Nathan Renaud Provisional A&M Student [Some gain entrance through provisional admission be- fise of extenuating circumstances ranging from students Mio just miss the quartile at very competiti ve high schools Bthose students who don't excel at standardized tests, but lave demonstrated a good work ethic. [Kriss Boyd, a director of the Provisional Student Pro- pm, said that this program gives the students a good start college. "Our program is structured to be supportive, but to pro vide a realistic challenge so students can demonstrate the ability to succeed here with all the distractions in the fall se mester," Boyd said. "The reality of 18-year-olds is that many are works-in-progress and hit academic, emotional and physical growth spurts when they transition to a new envi ronment." The basis of the program is for the students to take a full load of classes during the summer including Succeeding in College (CAEN101). Also, instead of a student taking the CAEN 101 class and three other classes during the summer sessions, they may take Algebra (MATFI 102) or Functions, Trigonometry and Linear Systems (MATH 150), 10-week class, the CAEN101 class and one other solid class each summer session. The students must maintain at least a 2.0 GPR with no failing grades to be fully admitted in the fall. Boyd said once admitted beyond the summer, provision al students graduate at very similar rates to the entire stu dent body. Nathan Renaud, a provisional student, said he really en joyed the chance this program gave him. "We have to learn it all on our own," he said, "We don't have the time to recover from mistakes like freshmen in the fall and spring." Boyd said these students are the ultimate 12th men - academically. "They had to wait until after the first of April to find out that they have to be here June 1st for the program, and some have their first college exam one week after arriving," Boyd said. "They have to give up a lot of parties and trips after grad uation — I have even had a couple miss graduation because they felt not missing class here was more important. They have to endure minor illness or injuries, unkriown of chal lenging roommates, changing relationships, financial hard ships, and family problems without missing a step academ ically in the short summer terms. JAKE SCHRICKLING/The Baitauon Heather Demere, a junior international business major, putts in during a round of frisbee golf at Research Park on Sunday afternoon. Professors assume student role at Wakonse By Amber Benson City Editor // ’ y name is Pete, and I've been teaching large classes for , nine years." In a scene reminiscent of the first meeting of a 12-step program, a group of professors exchanged a mixture of both angst-ridden stories and hope-filled tales of teaching. Some told of light bulbs being turned on, others of minds slowly dimming with every lecture. Sighs of empathy were heaved with every familiar word. But these professors were far from quoting the Serenity Prayer in unison. The atmos phere was more like a testimony night at the Memorial Student Center. One by one, pro fessors and students stood to praise the lec ture-changing experience called Wakonse. Wakonse is a word from the Lakota Indi an language meaning to teach or inspire. The Wakonse Foundation, run by the University of Missouri, takes professors to Shelby, Mich., for a time of renewal and in spiration of their own. Texas A&M sent 24 faculty members, known as Wakonse fellows, to the camp, where they joined other faculty campers from universities across the country. "There was a good combination of people there," Gail Thomas, a professor of sociology, said about the session. "There were people who were burned out and needed to be rekin dled and those who were really fired up." Philosophy professor Manuel Daven port said he learned from experiences of other professors. "People who care about teaching are in dependent of discipline," Davenport said. "You don't have to know chemistry to learn how to teach from a chemist." see Wakonse on Page 2. lole playing as hackers gives computer science students valuable knowledge By Rod Machen Assistant City Editor Every semester on the Texas A&M campus, hackers try to break into protected computer systems. Some times they succeed. Instead of doing harm with their intrusion, they are padding their GPRs. These graduate students are taking Advanced Networking and Security (CPSC 665). The class is designed to teach future system administrators to defend computer networks against un wanted break-ins. Dr. Udo Pooch, professor of computer science, and Willis Marti, senior lecturer and com puting services group director, teach the class. They begin the course with a lecture on ethics, which teaches students what is and is not appropriate behavior for a system administrator. They learn what is legal for them to look at as system ad ministrators. Students are divided up into two teams: the gold team de fends the system while the black team attacks it. Rob Mixer, a computer sci ence graduate student, took the class last spring. The course began two years ago after a National Security Ad ministration workshop where Marti discovered the lack of training available for system ad ministrators to deal with hackers. The course uses an isolated computer system called the sandbox. The students can at tack it at will without any possi bility of hurting another system. "In this simulated environ ment, the only thing a hacker can destroy is electricity and time," Bryan Fish, a former student, said. Students get points in the class for gaining entry to the computer system. "Some of these attacks are in genious," Mixer said. Mixer said UNIX has been used for so long, most of the bugs have been found. "Windows NT still has tons of bugs," he said. Hackers make their way into a system through "holes," usually software bugs. Sometimes these bugs are undocumented features which slip into the software. Mixer said there is a network of system administrators who share what they learn with each other. Any bugs that are found are posted on the Internet, some times with temporary ways of dealing with them until the soft ware can be corrected. "The more software you're running, the more bugs you have," Mixer said. Mixer said the hardest part of hacking is not gaining entry, but accessing protected parts of the system once entry is gained. "It's not that hard to get into a system," he said. "The hardest part is covering your tracks and leaving a way back in." The system defenders look for evidence of tampering by the attacking team. This can happen at anytime of day. Last semester's only successful at tack was at 3 a.m. "This attack-defend environ ment gives students the needed deeper comprehension of com puters in a network system," Marti said. "After this course and lab, both attackers and defenders have an intricate understanding of how to protect against or pre vent unauthorized intrusions of a computer system."