EECS Instructional Support, University of California at Berkeley
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Policies for Instructional Support Staff
  • General Conduct
  • Accounting for your Time
  • Planned Absences
  • Lateness and Unplanned Absences
  • Access to Privileged Data
  • Reading Users' Files
  • Disciplining Students
  • Work-Related Injuries
  • Computer Usage

    • General Conduct

    Instructional support staff are expected to adhere to the rules of conduct that are required of all University employees. These are detailed in     UC Berkeley Policies and Governance.

    Most important:

  • Staff should use University resources only for tasks related to their work at the University. This specifically rules out any personal business uses. It implies that there should be no personal uses at all, but the use of minimal resources for personal email, local phone calls and WEB pages is generally overlooked.

  • Staff are often given physical access to restricted areas and should not allow unauthorized persons to share that access.

  • Communications with our clients and colleagues should always be courteous and professional.

    • Accounting for your Time
  • Staff are expected to post their work hours, with approval from their supervisor, and to be on the job during those hours. When you are away from your desk for extended periods, please post a sign in an appropriate place to notify others of your location, when you expect to return and/or how you can be reached.

  • Students should work no more than 49.5% time (about 19 hrs/wk) during the academic year. Students should arrange a work schedule with their supervisor. Students may be asked to schedule some office hours and also to work unscheduled hours on evenings or weekends as their time permits. The unscheduled work is typically troubleshooting technical problems that occur in the labs during these extended hours.

  • All staff are required to keep track of their work hours and to submit a monthly time sheet (number of hours worked each day). Students submit the time sheet on the 25th of each month. Career staff submit the time sheet on the last day of the month. Supervisors sign the time sheets before they are submitted to our personnel office.

  • All staff should maintain records of the work they did and be prepared to present summaries of their efforts to their supervisor and at periodic group meetings. Some staff will complete work reports that match their time to job requests for which the client is billed.

  • Reference:   http://hrweb.berkeley.edu/labor/contracts/crft11.htm.

    • Planned Absences

    Staff should     contact the ISG or ESG supervisor for approval of planned absences for vacation, professional development, exams, etc. The supervisors must insure that there will be adequate staff coverage and that planned absences are distributed fairly amongst the staff.

    Lateness and Unplanned Absences

    If you are to be more than 15 minutes late or will be absent due to sickness or for other personal reasons, please notify your colleagues before you are due to be on the job. You should contact a real person, rather than only leaving a message, to be certain that your message is received.

    These are good methods to inform the group of your absence:

  • call Kevin (643-6141), Ferenc (642-6952),
    391 Cory (642-6744), 387 Soda (642-1042)
    or one of the staff listed in the     ISG/ESG Organization Chart.

  • keep calling until you reach a live person

  • send email to inst@cory or isg @ eecs.

    • Access to Privileged Data
  • Staff are often given computer access to the files of faculty, students and other staff. This access must be used with great restraint: we should never read, copy or alter those files unless the user has requested it or there is an emergency that justifies it. Discuss this with your supervisor if you are uncertain about this: errors in this area can expose you or the University to legal retributions.

  • We cannot read email in a faculty account without approval from the faculty member or from the Academic Senate and Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs.

  • We cannot read email in a student account without approval from the student or from University counsel.

  • We cannot divulge any information about any of our users to anyone outside of our group unless the user has requested it.

  • See the UC Berkeley Model Privileged Access Agreement for a summary of the rules.

    • Reading Users' Files

    Before looking at a user's files, we should consider these guidelines:
  • Student must have been notified that we might look into their files (we do, on the account forms that we give them and in http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/policies.html).

  • It is best to have the user's permission to look at the contents of any of their directories or files.

  • Student should be notified and given time to respond before disabling the account, except where the delay would cause more damage than good.

  • Staff should be self-restrained in looking at the files; first look at sizes and names of dirs and files. There should be a good reason for needing to look at all.

  • Read the contents of any files only if there is good reason to suspect that they are pirated software or active security risks (such as a password cracking program). Don't read email.

  • That rules out reading for evidence for harrassment complaints, etc.

  • In a case where the account is the source of continued and frequent undesired email or other transmissions, it could be disabled for a warning period to get the user's attention, but only after an effort has been made to contact the account holder, and only if the account holder will be able to find us right away to get the access restored.

  • When in doubt, a "higher authority" (sometimes UCB legal cousel) should be consulted first.

    • Disciplining Students
  • Students cannot be denied the use of their computer accounts unless the rules and procedures have been presented to them in advance (as with an account form and initial login message). So if a student is suspected of an infraction, usually we should just contact the student and resolve the problem without disabling any computer accounts.

  • If the situation warrants more immediate disciplinary or preventative action, we can disable the account, as long as we provide the student with information about it (via a login message, etc) and make ourselves available to restore access soon. If more severe restrictions are to be placed on the student, then the chairman of the department and the Office of Student Conduct should be consulted and presented with the evidence against the student.

  • UCB campus computing managers' committee draft documents (Nov 1998):
  • Responding to Inappropriate Use of Computing and Network Resources
  • campuswide guidelines for consistent responses to allegations of computer misuse
  • Guidelines for Administering Appropriate Use of Berkeley Campus Computing and Network Services
  • Model User Agreement/Notification

  • Staff should never have to do battle (verbal or physical) to enforce the rules, so it is sufficient to get the login of any offender and let your manager (Kevin or Ferenc) deal with the individual later. A user's ignorance of the rules is no excuse for arguing with you.

    The rules on their account forms specify that

    "I agree to abide by the following rules of conduct. I acknowledge that my failure to do so may result in the denial of my access to the Instructional systems and may also warrant further disciplinary action by the University.
    ...
    7) I will not bring food or drinks into the labs."

    The account form is duplicated under

    •

    Work-Related Injuries

  • Students on the University payroll, including Work Study, are covered by the University's Workers' Compensation progeam for injuries sustained on the job, and by the University's general liabilty self-insurance program for any other injury or damage resulting from their employment (and for which the University is legally liable).
  • Students have the same access to Workers' Compensation and Vacational Rehabilitaion programs as regular University employees.
  • Student employees with work-related injuries should contact the Occupational Health Clinic at University Health Services (Tang Center, 2222 Bancroft Way, 642-2000) or Urgent Care (643-7197).

    • Computer Usage

    You must abide by the campus and department computer usage rules, which can be accessed from     http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/policies.html.

    Notable rules include:

  • You must not share your account with others or give anyone access to the computers or labs.
  • You must not use the accounts or computers for copyright infringement or any other illicit behavior.
  • You must not create user accounts.
  • You must not alter the network access of a computer or change the network port that it is plugged into.
  • Computers on the campus networks must be secured, firewalled and patched to current levels. If the computer you are working on cannot maintain that standard, then it should be unplugged from the network.

    • Monday, May 21, 2007 kevinm@eecs.berkeley.edu