From the article:

Some faculty have expressed fears about the possible loss of accreditation and the leadership of Southern Miss President Shelby Thames. A group of faculty members will be at today's College Board meeting.

But Sullivan gave high marks to her experiences at Southern Miss so far: "From a professional point of view, I have never been treated as well at an institution and never before have I ever gone through the number of committees that I have without one negative remark about anything on the campus."

Hello????  Who has she been talking to????  Anyone know????

folks--let's get it clear (and Sullivan mentions this in the HA article)--we are coming up for reaffirmation as well in december, 2005. we are not merely dealing with the distance-education issues that got us on probation.

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Originally posted by: Hearing Is Not Believing
" But Sullivan gave high marks to her experiences at Southern Miss so far: "From a professional point of view, I have never been treated as well at an institution and never before have I ever gone through the number of committees that I have without one negative remark about anything on the campus." ***Asked by board vice president Virginia Shanteau Newton how long she had been on the campus, Sullivan said she had been to the campus five days.*** Sullivan is scheduled to return to Southern Miss May 9-10. Sullivan left the meeting before taking any questions from the media. President Shelby Thames did not comment about the report during the meeting. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No one can say Ms. Newton lacks a sense of humor!"

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HINB, you are right on!  Thanks for pointing that out...perhaps Dr. Sullivan needs to spend more than 5 days on campus to get the real story.

Surely SOMEONE on at least ONE of these committees would have tipped her off about the mess at USM?  Surely she would have checked the web before visiting campus to find out what has been going on at a school that has just been placed on probation?  I find her remarks incomprehensible.  Can anyone explain why she would say such a thing?  If the five days when she was on campus were five days last week, all she would have had to do was read the HA to learn about the turmoil and about the Thursday meeting in particular.  Does anyone know when, exactly, she was on campus?

Could her statements actually damage SFT's credibility with the IHL?  Would members of the IHL, who KNOW about all that has been going on, wonder whether Ms. Sullivan has been kept in a cocoon during her time on campus?

Surely you don't think faculty get to talk to Sullivan alone, do you?

I asked for a meeting between Dr. Sullivan and the General Education Committee of Academic Council because we are really worried about assessing the core. We got the meeting, but we were not alone.

Amy Young

i guess i am puzzled what people think Sullivan would do if given packets of information or the like. realize, when at USM she is not working for SACS, she is working for USM. she probably doesn't have to report things to SACS. note that she did not stay for questions at the IHL. as i said earlier, the ground rules are laid out at the beginning. she is here to help us with accreditation but does not guarantee that the visiting team or commission on colleges will approve all that we generate. remember, the SACS associate directors are liaisons between the visiting team and the university. the associate executive directors (Lord in our case) don't decide our accreditation fate.

I have read and reread the statements by Sullivan. They are very general and read to me like the boiler plate statements made by consults. As a consultant, and a for profit business person, she is not likely to say it is hopeless and any future payments you make to me are a waste of resources. She talked mostly about inputs, about how hard faculty and staff are working, and how cooperative staff and faculty have been. She was optimistic about getting the short run probation lifted, but it would be unlikely that a consultant would say anything else. I also think that the faculty and staff can point to the complimentary comments made about them to counter the rumors spread by the Pro-SFT group about how the faculty are sabotaging the efforts. I see it as helping the image of faculty although it will not make a dent in the claims of SFT kool-aid drinkers.

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Originally posted by: Cossack
" I also think that the faculty and staff can point to the complimentary comments made about them to counter the rumors spread by the Pro-SFT group about how the faculty are sabotaging the efforts. I see it as helping the image of faculty although it will not make a dent in the claims of SFT kool-aid drinkers."

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Good point; thanks.