quote:

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Originally posted by: Jean Moulin
"Each dean found his own way to blast SFT.  He knows, and they know he knows.  They're now waiting uneasily for the first real cue as to how Thames will react (so far he's been subdued, brief and "businesslike").  The fear is that he will launch painful, beneath-the-radar assaults on each in turn; the hope is that he will be content to prettify the campus and feather his nest for a supersoft landing back in Polymer Science.  Unfortunately, they don't seem to recognize that Thames is in a very tight box, and that if the deans were to act collectively and with backbone, they could nail the box lid down once and for all. "

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I certainly hope that these deans will not be let off the hook for their actions. They were not the originator of the plans but they were complicit up to their collective noses.

Come one...he's not going to teach...he's going to be a "distinguished research professor."  He'll putter around in his lab at a very inflated salary for a couple/few years, then retire with great fanfare as the polymer king.

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Originally posted by: Reporter
"
I believe SFT paid his own salary through grants.  I believe he hasn't had a "state" salary as a professor in many years."

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This is true is a strict accounting sense. He has paid back his "state" salary with money, mostly federal, that was obtained using the "bandit with a briefcase" method. Let's just say, though, that his paycheck was largely still funded by taxpayers.

Ask any long-time science prof at USM & you're likely to hear that SFT really isn't the "researcher" he's made out to be. I know that he's not generally regarded as a "scientist" & I cringe when newspapers & other media outlets hang that label on him. He's an entrepreneurial grant-scammer. It would be very interesting to see how "current" his actual knowledge & bench science skills in organic chemistry actually are. If he were truly a world-class researcher, the university -- and I'm going back tot he Lucas administration -- would have never risked taking him out of the lab to do administrative work. In other words, his skills as a teacher & researcher were entirely dispensable when AKL needed a "hit man."

Former presidents do return to the faculty at other universities. This is nearly always when they are close to retirement or have zero chance of becoming a president anywhere else. In most cases they become extremely highly paid, not terribly active professors. There is generally an understanding that they will stay out of the internal politics of the institution.

It's hard to believe that any new president at USM will tolerate the least bit of wire-pulling by Thames. And he will be a pariah among the faculty.

Robert Campbell

On more than one occassion Thames boasted to his lab employees during meetings that he did not receive a salary.  After hearing this several times one employee took the liberty of going to the library and looking it up.  At that time, Thames salary was listed as about $100K.  Would someone please explain Thames' reasoning or the process involved in not accepting a salary.  No one ever really believed him except the very niave (sp?).

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Originally posted by: Reporter
"He would "buy out" his time 100% from "research" grants.  Or, as some would say, he reimbursed the state for his salary from his grant money."

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Hmmm.... So the state paid him X dollars, which he reimbursed with X dollars obtained from a federal research grant. OK. Fair enough.

But isn't that 6 of one or a half dozen of the other? Would Thames have been allowed to keep both his P.I. money from "research" & his state salary? I don't think so...

To carry this a little further, my understanding is that Shelby Thames' professorship has always been a "hard money" position, not a "soft money" position. In other words, if Thames ever ran out of grant funding, his job would not go away--and the state of Misssissippi would be obliged to pay his salary.

Robert Campbell

quote:

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Originally posted by: Presidential historian
"I'll try to reconstruct the time line of the presidential search. ..."

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Presidential historian,

I went through my old notes and wrote out this timeline for the CAC.  Hope this helps.

 

 

October 25, 2001:  Campus Advisory Committee (CAC) members contacted to serve on the committee.  Potential members were nominated to Andy Griffin (Provost) who worked with IHL board to determine membership.  39 people were invited to the CAC.  24 were from inside the university and 15 from outside.  On the university side, there were 3 VP level, 4 Deans, 3 Chairs, 8 profs with no administrative title, 2 staff, 1 athletic, and 3 students (I lumped together things like ass dean with dean, etc.).  6 were from the various parts of USM on the coast.

 

October 31, 2001:  First meeting of CAC at 11:30, Oak Tree Room in Payne Center.  Introductions, overview of process, introduce Virginia Newton, Thomas Layzell, and Bill Funk.  Griffin is the CAC chair and Newton is the Search Committee chair.

 

November 13:  Meeting to discuss desirable qualities and how to evaluate applications.  Applications were kept in the Dome and could be checked out by CAC members.  Gulf Coast could view copies at the VP’s office, and there were copies in Jackson at the Board offices.  At this time there were no applications.  The job ad was posted in the Chronicle of Higher Education on November 9, 2001.  Applications were sent to Bill Funk and then distributed to the viewing locations.

 

I do not have direct notes on the sub-committee that designed the brochure for the presidential search that Maureen Ryan chaired with Shelby Thames, and one or two others (Bud Kirkpatrick evidently helped).  A final draft was sent out to the members on November 21 based on discussions of the Nov 13 meeting.

 

November 27:  Meeting with similar agenda to previous meeting, discussed desirable qualities and evaluation protocol.

 

December 5:  Letter is sent to CAC members stating that Funk had received 20 applications.  Viewing times for applications are established.

 

January 24, 2002:  Meeting to make the first cut in applications.  CAC members are asked to rate each application on a scale of 1 (low)-4 (high) or unacceptable.  Applications are not discussed to any detail in the interest of time.  Only numbers are used to determine the short list (those with more unacceptable than acceptable were cut).  13 applicants advanced to the short list. 

 

According to my notes, we had 33 applicants at that time.  Thames was application #33.  Thames receives 6 unacceptable, 3 1’s, 4 2’s, 7 3’s, and 8 4’s (my notes were quick but all of the applicants had 28-29 scores).

 

January 30:  Letter to CAC members stating that 6 new applications had arrived.  All new applications went on the “short list.”

 

February 7:  Meeting at USM-Gulf Coast.  Members were asked to list their 12 top candidates.  At this point I have notes on 41 applications.  If I add all of the number up, I get 43 applicants.  I believe that a couple of new applications were passed around during that meeting.  There was some discussion of the candidates during this meeting.  After the lists were tabulated, all candidates that were on at least 50% of the lists were recommended to the IHL for an interview.  9 candidates made this cut.  Thames was #8 with 23 out of 32 votes.

 

February 8:  Letter sent to IHL with recommended list of 9 people to be interviewed.

 

February 11:  Letter sent to CAC members indicating that a late candidate will be added to the list by recommendation of Funk (he had been trying to recruit this person and from what I understand, this was a very good candidate).

 

February 21:  IHL board sends out list of 10 applicants that were invited to an interview in Jackson.  Only 6 names from the 9 submitted make the IHL list.  The other 4 include 2 late candidates and 2 that received 15 and 9 of 32 votes from the CAC.  The IHL indicates that additional people may be added, and evidently they did since one of the 3 finalists’ name does not appear on the list.

 

March 20:  IHL completes the first round of interviews to decide which candidates to invite to an on-campus visit.  There is a meeting scheduled for March 28 so that the 2 CAC members that sat in on the interviews can debrief the other members.  After this point, the CAC’s job turned into planning for the various group meetings with the candidates.