Reorganization - USM Forum -- Message Board

Date: Mar 13, 2005

Reorganization

Date: Mar 13, 2005

Excellent post; thanks, Bud!

Date: Mar 13, 2005

What did the great reorganization do?

From the perspective of serving on Graduate Council and Academic Council, I can tell you that the fallout from that reorganiztion meant that most of our efforts were essentially catching up. I understand that there were many frustrations at the apparent lack of action on the part of these two bodies last year, this is because we were literally drowning in course proposals and course modifications and course deletions and program changes that we had very little time to focus on policy.

MOst of that is over now, thankfully, and both bodies have been spending more time on SACS and other important issues.

The impact on academics resulting fromthe reorganization (and that is the most important aspect), I think, have been detrimental. The former College of the ARts has suffered a loss of prestige and probably funding as well. The former College of Nursing, which I understand was quite good, is in a dire situation, at least the Hattiesburg program. Criminal Justice, now administration of justice, also has not received the support it needed to thrive and now I cannot see how they are going to make that work. Time will tell more.

Amy Young

Date: Mar 13, 2005

If the reorganization were so great, why did USM have to reorganize the reorganization?

Date: Mar 13, 2005

Amy,

We had a Big Reorg at Clemson in 1994-95. It was also accompanied by lying press releases about less money being spent on administration (in fact, administrative spending plateaued for a couple of years, then resumed growing).

It took 3 years for our curriculum committees to catch up with it. Some of the fallout was delayed further (for instance, departments trying to exert leverage on other departments' curriculum when they were no longer in the same college and no longer had any effective leverage).

Our reorganization helped some programs, left life pretty much the same for others, and hurt a few. The social sciences have been treated better since they put us in with Business. The humanities are just as badly off as before--intradepartmental feuds are still allowed to fester for years because the upper administration expects so little out of the departments that it doesn't work to put a stop to the feuding. Education is just as badly off as before. Architecture used to have a little money of its own, but being thrown in with the despised humanities means it is now just as broke as they are. The natural sciences, except biology, were thrown in with engineering and are often at loggerheads with their engineering dean. Nursing is part of the same college as Education but is holding its own.

The Clemson reorganization probably did a little good on the whole. But it was expensive to implement, and a lot of the expense will never appear in a press release or as an item on one of those ridiculously sketchy state university financial reports.

Thames appears to have thought his reorganization would be costless. Instead, it doesn't appear to have brought any benefits to USM at all.

But then at Clemson the deans of 4 of the 5 colleges, after the reorganization, had been deans before the reorganization.

Robert Campbell

PS. Clemson also had to reorganize its reorganization. For a year, Education and Nursing were part of the same college as Business and Social Science. (The snarkies called it the "College of Unrelated Studies.") When Ed and Nursing were split off again, there were hard feelings because the Business dean had grabbed up the office space that their deans had used.