The HA also has a link to Doty's letter to Grimes: http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/assets/pdf/DB1550210.PDF

Thames's response to all this:

Grimes couldn't be reached Wednesday, but Southern Miss President Shelby Thames said late Wednesday that he and other administrators are still waiting on Doty to present plans to them for creating a hybrid MBA. Without more information Thames said he did not know if it would affect the university's standing with SACS.

Thames emphasized that he would not do anything to endanger the school's standing with SACS.

"We don't have enough information to make a decision at this time," Thames said. "It would be like asking you to make a decision on something you never saw."

. . . .

Thames said he does not like discussing internal matters in the media and "having to have this conversation about managing the institution in the newspaper. I'm disappointed in that."

Thames said no executive MBA program exists as of yet. The project hasn't been approved and the plans for the Gulf Park campus' library were for implementation over a 10-year period.

Malone is also quoted as deflecting information about the new MBA program to Doty.

More quotes:

That project [the executive MBA on the coast] has a budget of $368,000, would offer a degree in "flexible format" for managers already employed and would have an enrollment of 60 students, a planning document obtained by the newspaper shows.

Doty, who is not listed on the project planning committee, only found out about the library project recently and was never told of it by Thames or Ken Malone, chief operating officer for the Gulf Coast campus who is a committee member.

"This is something that they had planned to do but had not consulted the business school and we did not know about it until those plans were revealed," Doty said.

Again, where are they getting almost $400K from to start this executive MBA program that has been planned with NO faculty input?  Could this be why they wanted to sweep the departmental accounts?  And why wouldn't the dean of CoB be listed on the project planning committee??

This just gets stranger and stranger....

quote:

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Originally posted by: Budget Watcher
"Truth, where you been child?  The $400K is mere pocket change;  it undoubtedly comes out of the initial $2mil savings from the great Thames engineered USM reorganization.  That seed money was no doubt invested in Shelboo's paint factory and under his stewardship has now grown to at least a gazillion bucks.  Face it, the man's a financial genius cut from the same cloth as the robber barons of yore. "

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