Faculty Senate Vote - USM Forum -- Message Board

Date: Feb 4, 2005

RE: RE: Faculty Senate Vote

Date: Feb 4, 2005

It has become obvious to me that stinky cheese man has some sort of agenda here that takes him closer and closer to the "Thames is not causing our problems" side of things, which I cannot understand. Some of his arguments sound like a football fan who blames a head coach's losing seasons on the previous coach's inability to coach and recruit. The current coach is in charge! He may not win every game, but (to use a pertinent example) there is no way MSU should have lost to Maine this year, regardless of how poor Jackie Sherrill was as a coach and recruiter. Sylvester Croom had D-I talent and should have beaten D-IAA Maine; the blame falls to Croom, not to Sherrill. Perhaps others (Fleming, Lucas) should have done more to support SACS activities, but the "game" was and is being played on Thames' watch as president, and I am quite sure that he did what he always does when faced with something that he wasn't involved in: he throws it away (see also: renaming streets, renaming the faculty newsletter, Nitchampburg, Larry Eustachy, "Southern Miss To The Top!", etc., etc.) and replaces it with something of his own design. I am sure that is what happened when he took over. He decided SACS wasn't important and threw out any existing work that had been done. His failure to recognize the importance of SACS is why we are in the situation we are. stinky cheese man seems to be a shill for the administration lately, and I am not sure why...his posts have taken a definite pro-Thames regime turn.

A large part of me hopes that SACS gets sabotaged so that we have a chance to beat Grambling's 8-year probation record.

Also, i hope stinky cheese man is in charge of SACS (instead of Exline), as he seems to know everything about every type of accreditation, from SACS down to college-level accreditation procedures. Since he admitted that he is not in ED or the COB on another thread, it amazes me that he thinks he knows more about the AACSB issue than some of the COB profs that were posting over there. They have a "specialist" within the COB that has done AACSB at USM before and who is handling AACSB now, and perhaps stinky cheese man needs to seek him out to learn why AACSB, though truly subordinate to SACS, has a focus that will care much more about ED than SACS will WITH RESPECT TO BUSINESS ACCREDITATION.

Date: Feb 4, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: stinky cheese man
"the nice thing about SACS is that the principles of accreditation are out there for all to see. why wait for the powers that be. empower yourself! "

SCM,

I was told to do RESEARCH, teaching and service. (Caps indicate the percent of my effort or time.) No one said to check on SACS principles. Heck, I never heard of SACS. The faculty that heard about it were preparing resumes to leave or have left. The people with the power (IHL) are ignorant of SACS. They and our top administrator decided what our Strategic Plan should be and SACS principles were never used as a guild. Heck, if faculty input was allowed maybe the word SACS would have been mentioned, but it wasn't. We are starting over from square one on the Strategic Plan because the people with the power and responsibility were ignorant and tried to run institution as a business as if they were in a world without the IRS. It didn't work.

Date: Feb 4, 2005

three things--i'm flattered. pro-thames, not hardly. i've made it clear my feelings about him. when a thread begins with a line little more than "the sky is falling"--it begs for comment. I do know about SACS a little more than the average bear--as do several others on this campus. AACSB --i've read (believe it or not) their principles. agree or disagree--i don't care.

I try to provide a "reality check" for some folks. that's all. sometimes maybe it's only my reality--you can choose to ignore it. i'm also very cynical about the university--but have been for years. i've said on other threads i weary of certain people's hypocrisy--say things publically, do other things privately. most of the time i roll my eyes and smile. sometimes i get on here and irritate people. but hey, it's a free country!

Date: Feb 4, 2005

Three Things,

Stinky Cheese Man (SCM) doesn't need me to defend him, but I will put in my two cents worth anyway. On this and other threads, SCM provides a lot of insightful and common sense analysis and information. What he has said about the current SACS situation rings true to me, and I have been at USM during the period in question (post 1995).

In short, I hope SCM continues to provide this board with his insights--he is better informed that most.

Date: Feb 4, 2005

SCM doesn't need me to defend him, either. I agree with him on some things, disagree on others. It is obvious that he has bothered to read the SACS principles & knows folks who are involved with the accreditation process.

Most faculty go along blissfully unaware of SACS (except when they get put on a self-study committee), simply because the folks higher up have been taking care of business. And yes, the business hasn't been taken care of for longer than Shelby Thames has been president.

But...

The rules were quite a bit different in 1995 when Lucas was ending his first term. USM was not sanctioned in 1995. It's follow-up report to that self-study was accepted.

SACS was a lot more lenient on institutional effectiveness issues then, too. But it was pretty normal for institutions to be asked to detail their institutional effectiveness work on the fifth year report. This is the report that triggered the chain of events leading to the present probation.

From what I can gather, under Fleming there was an concerted effort to develop a strategic plan & begin moving toward a modern system of planning & assessment (aka "institutional effectiveness"). Anybody can slap together a bunch of paperwork to "demonstrate" that an institution is attending to institutional effectiveness. That's what Joan Exline has the thankless job of doing right now. But without an underlying strategic plan, well, it's a lot like peeing on somebody's leg & telling 'em that it's raining.

When Fleming went out, the whole thing was put on hold. That is totally normal for an interim presidency. Lucas really can't be blamed for that. And when Thames came in, he had no clue about "modern" planning & assessment. Had he thought about it -- and I don't think he really did -- he probably thought that the whole thing was a nuisance standing in the way of his "management style." (In my experience, institutional effectiveness systems don't work well under an autocratic administrator.) So, the whole planning & assessment project was delegated to a relatively young & inexperienced assistant provost. The president was not engaged in institutional effectivess, because it wasn't something that was important to him.

I wonder where USM would stand right now vis-a-vis SACS had Fleming gotten a second term. My bet is that it wouldn't be on probation right now.

Date: Feb 4, 2005

i'm one of those people who figure that you shouldn't dish out what you can't take. my only take on this whole issue is that SACS accreditation in 1995 changed to a continuous one, and we didn't take it seriously--neither administration nor faculty. some voices said "we need to begin" but it didn't happen. What we got was a serious of new plans, missions, etc, with no attention to assessment. It was assessment where we needed to go, but each successive administration wanted to do more planning.

As a bit of a historical note, I have a copy of the January 17, 1992 special edition USM Update. This is (was?) the employee newspaper. One headline reads: "Planners seek feedback from campus Jan 21-24." Another headline reads "Officials chart five-year course for future" Inside is a list of the members of the Planning Advisory Committee and the University Planning Team.

For those of us who have been here a long time (sometimes it seems too long) we've planned out the ying-yang. As Invictus says, we don't go to the next stages--assessment and evaluation. Every administration since 1995 has failed us in this regard.

Date: Feb 4, 2005

Invictus,

I agree with just about everything you say except I am not so sure about the final paragraph. Horace Fleming might have avoided probation, but nonetheless he was a woeful president. His ineptitude was a key factor precipitating the present debacle.

Date: Feb 4, 2005

i agree with bemused on both points. Fleming was not prepared to lead a public university. He was too used to a private university with a board that is concerned with that university. He was not prepared to deal with a governing board that has split allegiances or with politicians. I also always felt that much of his administration looked at USM as being another vita entry. They also felt (and I heard some personally say this) that people at USM were country bumpkins and it was his administration's job to show us hayseeds how to run a university. (Don't forget people didn't like his search process either.)

Because of that (we brought in an outsider and it didn't work) we then get the failed and flawed search that resulted in Thames.

Date: Feb 4, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: stinky cheese man
"i'm one of those people who figure that you shouldn't dish out what you can't take. my only take on this whole issue is that SACS accreditation in 1995 changed to a continuous one, and we didn't take it seriously--neither administration nor faculty. some voices said "we need to begin" but it didn't happen. What we got was a serious of new plans, missions, etc, with no attention to assessment. It was assessment where we needed to go, but each successive administration wanted to do more planning. As a bit of a historical note, I have a copy of the January 17, 1992 special edition USM Update. This is (was?) the employee newspaper. One headline reads: "Planners seek feedback from campus Jan 21-24." Another headline reads "Officials chart five-year course for future" Inside is a list of the members of the Planning Advisory Committee and the University Planning Team. For those of us who have been here a long time (sometimes it seems too long) we've planned out the ying-yang. As Invictus says, we don't go to the next stages--assessment and evaluation. Every administration since 1995 has failed us in this regard. "

At the recent FS meeting we heard that in Fall 2003 the University Planning Council was working on the Strategic Plan using the faculty input from the focus groups. The Council’s work was disrupted because an administrator was removed because of an "enrollment report" error. The Council continued to work but was again disrupted in early Spring 2004 by the famous "problems” that arose then and they were never again reconvened. During the summer of 2004 the draft Strategic Plan appeared, but no one is sure who wrote it. It wasn't the UPC. According to the yesterdays Independent the IHL Board's and SFT's Strategic Goals were released about this time. This implies that SFT had an active role in creating the problems and that SACS problems were not just benign neglect.