Dots become connected wrote:

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Whoa, this makes a lot of sense. I'm sure she's a great person, but surely she could become a likely prez candidate without Aubrey selling out.  On her own merits, it appears she's got a lot to offer, but for Aubrey to remain silent in exchange for her to become a viable candidate is truly sullied and sickening.

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IRGU4U wrote:

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She will not get it.  Another is planned for that seat.

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whoever another is had better be good.  this place is going to need a president, a provost, associate provost, vp finance, it manager, 5 new deans, a few dozen chairs, an ad, a bb coach, a fundraiser, new alumni affairs.  am i missing anything?  since the crew that brought us SFT is dumber than a bag of hammers, what's the likelihood that whoever is "planned for that seat" is going to be very competent?

now this "planned president"  will have to hire virtually all of these adminstrators from the outside or hire internal candidates who don't know their business because nearly all of the ones that do have gotten the hell out of dodge.  i'm sure this new president will find that the candidate pool, for say provost, will just be chock full of great people dying to come to ms to work for the incompetent president of a shattered institution with employees that have the look of survivors of a plane crash.

imho, this place is cooked.  i hope i'm wrong but it would take a public sector version of j.j. bethune to bring usm back from anything other than being a woobly degreee mill.  if the paychecks don't bounce, i'll take until 25.

the only cold comfort is that um and msu will follow us down the same path just with a less steep slope.  they will get a succession of resume pumpers on their way up with all of the administrative turnover that entails.  both of them are the doormats of the sec now.  just wait ten years and see where they are relative to their "peers" when the pers crowd has left and the good students find they can go anywhere in the country without paying out-of-state fees.  at that point roy you could throw the whole ihl budget at msu and not catch memphis.

jacobin wrote:
whoever another is had better be good.  this place is going to need a president, a provost, associate provost, vp finance, it manager, 5 new deans, a few dozen chairs, an ad, a bb coach, a fundraiser, new alumni affairs. 

 am i missing anything? 

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Angeline wrote:

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I wish all the new chairs starting this summer the best, but since they were chosen by their respective deans and not by their departments, I will be surprised if they were the best qualified candidates for chair in most cases.

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Angeline,

What a masterful piece of understatement.  Just walking down the hall and asking so and so if they wanna be the chair is just so . . . words fail me.  Wouldn't want to ask any of those nasty faculty, they might get uppity and start talking about shared governance again.  A search with ads and everything?  Good thing we got rid of that silly AA office.  Or did we?  Does anyone know? 

stinky cheese man wrote:

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in the old CLA there was seldom anything that resembled a search for a dept. chair. all you had to do was curry favor with the dean.

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how typical, at usm and most other places.  no let's run a thought experiment.  everytime a chair position opens up, you run a real national search.  let's say the winners get $30k more than hiring whoever wants to be chair locally.  this $30k is short run.  the short run premium to the local hire is usually  a $3 to $5k bump in salary.  however, over a few pay cycles the local ends up making what a "real" hire would have been paid.  this allows the deans to buy some loyalty by overpaying some chairs.  weak deans need all the support they can get.  you now have a subpar chair making what a real hire would have made.  the cost of getting the best person really isn't that high, is it?  just a little more money for a few years.  we also all know how much more productive a dept. with a good chair is.  now what's the real cost of doing the right thing?  maybe 20 to 30k spread out over 5 years?  this is peanuts.  there's a long run effect.  good chairs are the training ground for associate deans, graduate directors, etc.  get quality at the start and there's a further payback later.

i've been shaking my head for years over this penny-wise, pound-foolish way of hiring chairs by walking down the hall.  fortunately, i haven't been hurt too badly by this.  many others aren't so lucky.

Attitude wrote:

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A problem with the way some chairs are appointed at USM is that many are appointed with the unwritten implication that the position is permanent.

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A few years ago, after prolonged discussions with the adminstration, the Faculty Senate managed to win agreement that "department chair for life" appointments would not be the norm, and all chairs would have a five-year renewal cycle.  Those deemed effective could be reappointed, but for only another five-year term.

Of course, this was before all the deans were fired, the colleges were "reorganized" and all "institutional memory" was expunged from the system.

Attitude wrote:

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oldtimer wrote: A few years ago, after prolonged discussions with the adminstration, the Faculty Senate managed to win agreement that "department chair for life" appointments would not be the norm, and all chairs would have a five-year renewal cycle.....My opinion at the departmental level was never solicited at any five year interval.

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Robert Campbell wrote:

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At Clemson departmental faculty are sent questionnaires about their chair's performance every year, and there is a full-dress review (with a special committee) after 5 years. Back when chairs were called "department heads," there was a tacit assumption that they would be around till retirement.  The new system is much better. It's up to the deans whether there is a national search for a new chair or not (and short-term budgetary calculations do play a role in their thinking).  The results are nearly always better when there is.  I'd like to see internal hires of chairs become an occasional exception instead of a frequent pattern. Robert Campbell

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Robert:

I am a grad of Kent State's psychology department, and all chairs since my grad school days have been internal. They seem to view the chair as a relatively short term duty (about five years) that is a necessary but inconvenient department obligation (it distracts from research). The chairs have all been superb researchers (e.g., Jack Graham of MMPI fame). In a solid department with seasoned tenured folks who play nice together, "rotating" chairs seems to work reasonably well. In departments with a lot of deadwood at top, or bottom heavy with untenured folks, or experiencing departmental or institutional strife, an external search may be the way to go. My point is that one size may not fit all. The merits of an internal versus external chair appointment depend on various factors, and it takes a savvy administration to know when to pull the trigger on one versus the other (metaphorically speaking, of course).  

In the Know wrote:

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 If his daughter applies for presidency and is selected, she will earn it on her own merits.  

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Mitch wrote:

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Robert: I am a grad of Kent State's psychology department, and all chairs since my grad school days have been internal. They seem to view the chair as a relatively short term duty (about five years) that is a necessary but inconvenient department obligation (it distracts from research). The chairs have all been superb researchers (e.g., Jack Graham of MMPI fame). In a solid department with seasoned tenured folks who play nice together, "rotating" chairs seems to work reasonably well. In departments with a lot of deadwood at top, or bottom heavy with untenured folks, or experiencing departmental or institutional strife, an external search may be the way to go. My point is that one size may not fit all. The merits of an internal versus external chair appointment depend on various factors, and it takes a savvy administration to know when to pull the trigger on one versus the other (metaphorically speaking, of course).  

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Mitch,

I actually think that department chairs need to be selected on the basis of their management skills.  You may be right about depeartments with seasoned tenured faculty who get along with one another--but my department is like that, and I doubt that many of my colleagues would be happy with a "rotating" chair.

I definitely agree with you about the kinds of departments that don't function well with chairs hired internally for relatively short periods of time.  When I was in grad school, none of our rotating department chairs could get the truly nasty factional strife under control.

Robert Campbell