A Metropolitan State College professor could face disciplinary action because a laptop containing student data was stolen from her office.

It's the second such theft within a year. After the first one, Metro slapped strict limits on maintaining such data in laptops, President Stephen Jordan said Friday in a prepared statement.

In the Wednesday theft, someone made off with a laptop containing the names and Social Security numbers of 988 former students.

Almost exactly one year ago, a laptop was taken containing 93,000 names and Social Security numbers.

The latest theft occurred when a faculty member stepped out of her office briefly. The machine was gone when she returned, said Metro spokeswoman Cathy Lucas.

Lucas did not name the faculty member.

The student data was password-protected, and so far there is no evidence of identity theft, Lucas said.

Metro stopped tracking students by Social Security number in 2002. It's not clear why the psychology professor still had the data on the laptop, Lucas said.

The laptop stolen last year from a school employee's home has never been recovered, but so far no identity theft has been detected, Lucas said.

After that incident, Metro began inspecting all of its 800 laptops for sensitive data. Faculty members were to bring them to the school's information technology department.

So far only about 25 percent of the laptops have been inspected, Lucas said.

Data stolen

• Those concerned that their information was on the stolen computer can go to www.mscd.edu/securityalert/ or call (866)737-6622.

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