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Unix Guru

By Saira Suleman
Staff Writer

Dr. Tim Gottleber’s quest for excellence takes him out of the classroom and into the world of publishing

Tim Gottleber was at Michigan State in 1980 when Ross Perot called him and invited him to come work for him in Dallas.

That's how Gottleber wound up at EDS for three years, followed by a three-year stint at Digital Equipment Corporation before ending up at E-systems in Garland for five years. After a short time at Consulting Partners, he made a life-changing decision to leave corporate America and follow his passion for teaching.

Today he is one of the prominent names at North Lake College as a professor in Information Systems. He has published four books, the two most recent ones being: Bullet Proof Unix and More Excellent HTML, the latter to be published in October by McGraw-Hill.

Because Unix has always been Gottleber's passion, he wanted to write a Unix book for his students. But when he went to his publisher with the idea, she persuaded him to write an HTML book instead. Since Gottleber had been teaching HTML at NLC for a long time and because writing his thoughts on paper was never a challenge for him, he wrote one on HTML before venturing to write BulletProof Unix.

Gottleber and other Unix professors have seen a 10 percent increase in Unix test scores this semester with the help of this book. Gottleber says the students understand his conversation-style better than traditional books.

"It's like two people sitting together to learn Unix. The book has a lot of examples and the students can implement exactly what is stated in the book," he said.

Gottleber's students concur. Ben Jacob is taking two classes from Gottleber -- Unix I class where he is using BulletProof Unix and HTML/Web Page Development where he is using More Excellent HTML.

"BulletProof Unix adds quite a value," Jacob said. When he reads other Unix books, he finds them boring, but Gottleber's style of writing makes BulletProof Unix "less stuffy. "He makes the book a lot more readable," Jacob added. "He has these little jokes that he throws," Jacob says. He has similar sentiments about More Excellent HTML.

Rich Wehmas, another Unix I student of Gottleber, believes that 99 percent of the books written for Unix are not targeted towards beginners. BulletProof Unix is unprecedented in that it provides complex information in piece-meals rather than over-whelming the reader.

Bob Nelson, an adjunct professor teaching Unix I at NLC, corroborated the 10 percent increase that Gottleber attributed to BulletProof Unix. Nelson believes the book to be the only contributing factor, since every other aspect of the Unix curriculum has remained unchanged since last year.

Nelson's students echoed Jacob's and Wehmas's appreciation for BulletProof Unix. One student told Nelson, "The book is written as if it is a friend of yours who's got ten years of experience in Unix explaining it to you." Others commented on the plethora of examples and screen shots available in the book.

Both Wehmas and Jacob enjoy Gottleber's class. Where Jacob likes the hands-on experience of the class, Wehmas enjoys the informal nature of it. The students "interact with the computer while Gottleber is lecturing. "They see his teaching actually transpire on the screen of the computer," Jacob said.

Wehmas, on the other hand, says the class is "less of 'everybody pay attention to the front of the class and listen to the professor' and more long the lines of group discussion."

Wehmas compares taking Gottleber's class to taking art appreciation. Just as an art history professor has an appreciation and a deeper sense of understanding for what he is teaching, so does Gottleber in the way he approaches Unix.

While Gottleber loves and admires Unix, he feels the opposite about Microsoft. Gottleber's reasons: Unix was written by people who loved to write programs. They wrote the operating system not because they wanted to make money but simply because they had passion for programming. As a result, Unix is secure, reliable and free. On the contrary, Microsoft came up with products with the sole intent of maximizing profits but failed to produce reliable software.

Despite serious reservations about Microsoft, Gottleber acknowledges the necessity of NLC students to learn about Microsoft. North Lake College, by providing Microsoft certification courses, adequately meets the needs of such students, he said. But for those studying Unix at NLC, he said fervently "what we are doing here at North Lake is providing probably the best training in Unix in the world."

Bob Agnew, the Dean for, Math, Natural Sciences & Sports Sciences Division, says about Gottleber: "It was largely on the strength of his being here that North Lake became one of the training centers in Microsoft."

"Gottleber," Agnew said, "thinks big and so he is always looking for what would be the next program: Microsoft, then Unix. I have every confidence that he would attempt to bring to North Lake College whatever that next level of technology is."

But can one professor like Gottleber have such a strong influence in shaping events at NLC? "Sure," Agnew said emphatically, "The person that has the vision, the person that can articulate that vision, the person that can educate in our case the administration who controls the budget." Agnew believes Gottleber is that person.

Agnew nostalgically reminisced about the time when he was with Gottleber on the Search Committee to find North Lake a president. Gottleber probed the presidential candidates with insightful questions like, "How important should the Internet be in the life of any college?"

England, who was selected by this particular search committee, was surprisingly familiar with the Internet and its benefits at a time when the Internet was not that prevalent in the society. Therefore, Agnew believes that Gottleber "was very instrumental in driving the college in that (technical) direction. He's just got this passion. He is kind of like a politician," said Agnew.

Gottleber attributed the recent dearth in Unix administrators in America to Unix's reliability and increased popularity. This shortage of skilled labor was the driving force behind College Resource and Instructor Support Program (CRISP).

CRISP was initiated in 1999 by Sun Microsystems as a response to the increased demand for skilled Unix system administrators. Back in 1999, there were 70,000 unfulfilled Unix System administration positions. Sun wanted to remedy the situation and created this program that we now call CRISP. The intent behind
CRISP was to create a Unix community for sharing ideas, knowledge and content. It helps the instructors and students by providing them with syllabi, exercises and notes.

Gottleber envisioned the need for a program like CRISP long before Sun did. He initiated a program similar in concept to CRISP at NLC albeit on an embryonic scale. Fortuitously Gottleber was invited to the Dallas focus group that Sun was hosting. Their reason: the dearth of skilled Unix system administrators, in Sun's opinion, needed an effective strategy. On hearing this, the participants who were from colleges as diverse as Richland started brainstorming. Ideas like "bringing the philosophers and the psychologists and the psychiatrists and the historians and do all this community thing around computing" were discussed.

Surprisingly Gottleber was silent during this exchange. When asked for this input, he said, "I don't think Sun needs all this. What sun needs is a community of Unix professionals and I have already started that at my college."

When the focus group was over, Jerry Neece, head of the Sun Educational System and responsible for the Sun Network Academy, came to Gottleber. "We have been through seven focus groups looking for you," Neece said.

Sun Microsystems is deeply satisfied with the progress of CRISP and the program, in Neece's words, has been, "more successful than we had anticipated." Gottleber's efforts to host the CRISP Web site, Neece said, has put "NLC on the map at least in the Unix world. Tim's passion made this happen. I don't have the time to find someone like Tim."

Sun Microsystems has given NLC about $100,000 dollars of hardware. And that is $100,000 dollars that NLC can use anywhere else. "Someone who has a passion like Tim needs to be supported," Neece said.

Neece credits Gottleber with doing a very effective job fund raising for NLC. Gottleber's experience with corporate America and his comfort with industry culture have helped him establish strong relations with industry leaders, according to Neece.

Chip Ates, Dean for Information Systems division at North Lake College, also thinks Gottleber has done a wonderful job raising a lot of money for NLC in hardware. "Gottleber has been able to partner with Sun Corporation and through his leadership and through his relationships with corporate leaders, he has been able to equip the Unix lab with pretty much new equipment through donations... I am not sure anybody else on this campus has done this," he said.

Articulating his vision for the future, he discussed modifying the Unix degree program and adding a couple of classes. His motivation: to raise the bar on what students learn at North Lake.

Currently recruiters are telling Gottleber that his students have the equivalent of five years on-the-job training. His goal
is to increase this figure.

Comparing his Unix program with that of some four-year colleges like UTD, UTA and SMU Gottleber says, "SMU has a really nice Unix program. I have nine students who went to SMU and then came back to us to learn the stuff they didn't learn there. So yeah, we've got the best Unix program around. No question
about it."

Expressing his opinion on the notion that community colleges are easier, he went on to say, "The students will rise to our expectations. If we expect not much of them we will not get much from them. If we expect a great deal from them, they will give us a great deal. We push hard-no question."

"I think in North Lake we do have a standard of excellence," he said. "I think my peers expect from the students what should be expected from a student." Gottleber's son is attending NLC despite the fact that Gottleber can afford to send him to any other college.

Why choose North Lake College when he could be in industry or at any four-year university? Why travel the path that leads to less money and success? " I'm not doing it for the money. I am doing it because I love to do it," Gottleber said.

According to Gottleber, professors at four-year colleges are more interested in research than they are in teaching. But as much as Gottleber enjoys research, he enjoys teaching more. "What is the focus here? Teaching," he said. "What am I evaluated on?
Teaching."

He wrote books not for the sake of writing books, "I wrote those books because my students needed them. There was not a good Unix textbook. There was not a good HTML textbook. I have the ability to write and I am using that ability."

Gottleber said he encourages his students to love whatever they choose to do in life. "I don't think anybody should ever have a job. I think people should have a vocation that they can't stand not to do." He says, "Teaching is not a job for me - teaching is a delight," he said.

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