I did a little checking into Auburn University's governance system and from what I can tell it is a very different situation than USM's is.

First, Auburn has a board of trustees for only Auburn University and Auburn University at Montgomery that is made up of "Auburn supporters". It appears that there is not conflict if interest on the baord as there is with the Mississippi IHL.

Second, from my readings of documents about Auburn's SACS situation, there was a weak president who was being controlled by one trustee, and that trustee had complete control of the Auburn board, the president, and, therefore, the university. In these ways, USM's situation is very different than Auburn's. Auburn's board was charged with violating Alabama's sunshine laws and with manipulating the athletics department, circumventing the president. The one rogue trustee was the focus of board micromanagement of Auburn.

In USM's case, while one may say the board is possibly detached from the USM situation, one cannot point to concrete evidence of wrongdoing. The IHL could say that it doesn't want to micromanage, since that's what got Auburn in trouble. Our problems stem directly from SFT, and there is no evidence to suggest that the "wrongdoing" stems from anyone else.

I think the IHL in Mississippi has a very easy "out" of this with respect to SACS. The IHL can simply say that Thames has been given time to fix the situation and then he's gone. What can SACS say about that? Will they say that the IHL has to replace Thames now? Not likely. Will they intimate that he needs to be gone sooner? Perhaps, but how can SACS encourage a regime change in the middle of such a situation when SACS is bound by its own rules: 1 more year of probation and then return USM to good standing or remove accreditation completely? This would be like throwing gasoline on a fire, and things would get worse instead of better.

I believe it's most likely that SACS will give us another year of probation but that SFT will remain in place until his fifth year is complete. I believe SACS will lift sanctions after the second probationary period.

However, the little voice in my head tells me to be wary, that when the fifth year is up and SACS probation is lifted that there will be a call to extend Thames' term to a full four years.

Advocate's Devil wrote:

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I did a little checking into Auburn University's governance system and from what I can tell it is a very different situation than USM's is. First, Auburn has a board of trustees for only Auburn University and Auburn University at Montgomery that is made up of "Auburn supporters". It appears that there is not conflict if interest on the baord as there is with the Mississippi IHL. Second, from my readings of documents about Auburn's SACS situation, there was a weak president who was being controlled by one trustee, and that trustee had complete control of the Auburn board, the president, and, therefore, the university. In these ways, USM's situation is very different than Auburn's. Auburn's board was charged with violating Alabama's sunshine laws and with manipulating the athletics department, circumventing the president. The one rogue trustee was the focus of board micromanagement of Auburn. In USM's case, while one may say the board is possibly detached from the USM situation, one cannot point to concrete evidence of wrongdoing. The IHL could say that it doesn't want to micromanage, since that's what got Auburn in trouble. Our problems stem directly from SFT, and there is no evidence to suggest that the "wrongdoing" stems from anyone else. I think the IHL in Mississippi has a very easy "out" of this with respect to SACS. The IHL can simply say that Thames has been given time to fix the situation and then he's gone. What can SACS say about that? Will they say that the IHL has to replace Thames now? Not likely. Will they intimate that he needs to be gone sooner? Perhaps, but how can SACS encourage a regime change in the middle of such a situation when SACS is bound by its own rules: 1 more year of probation and then return USM to good standing or remove accreditation completely? This would be like throwing gasoline on a fire, and things would get worse instead of better. I believe it's most likely that SACS will give us another year of probation but that SFT will remain in place until his fifth year is complete. I believe SACS will lift sanctions after the second probationary period. However, the little voice in my head tells me to be wary, that when the fifth year is up and SACS probation is lifted that there will be a call to extend Thames' term to a full four years.

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A.D., I don't think USM's current SACS probation has anything to do with SFT as far as SACS is concerned.  It is totally connected to "assessment of distant learning" and has nothing to do with the governance of USM.

Now the next SACS review, which begins in 2006, will include the whole deal, including governance.  When that review is completed then SFT may be the focus of the problem and USM probation.  But that should be some time much later.

Please correct me readers if I have this wrong. 

Robert Campbell wrote:

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While the situation at USM is very different from the situation at Auburn, the case could be made that Thames was put in, via a rigged search, to carry out the designs of a powerful faction of the IHL Board--one ill-disposed toward USM.

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I knew sooner or later you'd come over to the Conspiracy Theory camp, Robert!

Robert,

I agree that if USM gets off SACS probation that it will be in spite of SFT, not because of him. However, I see SACS as standing on a slippery slope with respect to USM. SACS could demand (though we know SACS wouldn't overtly do this) the removal of Thames. However, if SACS does so, it will have to take on a greater police role.

The parallel I can think of is NCAA athletics and the "death penalty." The NCAA informally will never use the death penalty again because of the drastic effects it had on SMU in the 1980s both athletically and academically.

Loss of SACS would mean a loss of federal loan dollars, which is a major component of many USM students' finances. In a town like Hattiesburg, loss of a functioning USM (i.e., loss of a large number of students) could mean tremendous economic impact that could ruin many local businesses and could cripple USM to the point that it could never recover.

I don't disagree that SACS will probably give us another year probation. However, I don't think SACS can afford to get in the business of affecting regime changes in situations where boards like the IHL have already "taken action" to make changes themselves. Again, what does it profit SACS to have USM faculty and staff working on SACS compliance just to have SACS accreditation removed?

If the board is forced to remove Thames, who would be the replacement? How long would that take? How much time would that buy us RE: probation? I just don't see a lot of clear-cut advantages to anyone except us (the faculty) from removing Thames from office. Every way I think of it, there seems to be some sort of counterargument that points to him completing his extra year.

Further, there are so many more issues on the USM campus that could bring Thames down that I don't see how they haven't been exposed already.

Correct me if I have misinterpreted the logic laid out that has SACS restoring our accreditation both short run and long run. It is not that USM will correct all of the wrongs, send a crackerjack report to SACS and SACS will turn up nothing untoward on its visit. The USM approach is to confuse SACS sufficiently so that USM will get reaccredited. Even though SACS probation usually leads to the president being fired, USM keeps its president who failed to send in routine reports and the IHL Board signals to SACS that they have confidence in the President who did not turn in his homework. The IHL Board also signaled to SACS that its members were not very familiar with SACS and were not even embarrassed by the failure of SFT to report. This brilliant strategy by the IHL Board now puts SACS into situation where they must accredit USM or SACS will look bad. This rope-a-dope strategy is based on a theory that SACS does not know how to handle a situation where the university displays overwhelming incompetence because SACS is used to dealing with universities and Boards that would be embarrassed if they had done what USM has done. SACS will be so dumb struck that they will accredit USM because they do not know what else to do.

This approach will come to be known as the SFT approach to accreditation. SFT and his staff will give seminars on how to rope-a-dope SACS and other accrediting bodies.

I'd like to know too. Last I heard, the whole unit had been dismantled, but I didn't hear what happened to Independent Study. We were told a while back that all the other credit activities had been given back to the departments.

Cossack:

Why don't you just title every thread "SACS Will Bring Thames Down"? It is obvious that you do not desire dialogue or discussion and that you do not welcome different opinions. You only want to hear that SACS will bring down SFT. News Flash: It's already happened! Further, you want SFT gone tomorrow? Is tomorrow too late? What difference does it make to SACS whether the correct paperwork is turned in by SFT or another president? It seems to me that SACS' ability to get SFT to do it their way would be viewed as a victory to SACS, kind of like a criminal offender who truly goes straight. Your "let's talk" routine is getting old. You don't really want to talk, you just want people to agree with you. Unfortunately for you, no one on this board has even 75% of the facts with respect to USM's SACS situation. There's all sorts of stuff out there that no one outside the Dome knows. That means that nobody knows exactly what will happen with SACS. It's not a done deal any way you look at it.

VX700

SACS Comm Member wrote:

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Lin Harper is coordinating Independent Study under the Learning Enhancement Center which reports to the Provost.
 

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What happened to Ray?

SACS Comm Member wrote:

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Classes for credit have been returned to the academic departments.  Deans have been given a position to help manage that process.

I'm not sure I understand your post--were the deans each given a position or is there one position for all colleges?  What about the people in continuing ed?  Are any of them going into these new positions?

 Lin Harper is coordinating Independent Study under the Learning Enhancement Center which reports to the Provost. Non-credit programs are less of an issue and are being reorganized under a coordinator for noncredit programs --- probably will be in place in another month or so. 

Where will non-credit programming be located administratively?  Who will the office report to?

 Advisory committee is looking at policies and procedures for getting a better handle on noncredit programs and conferences. The second probation issue dealt with assessment by teaching site.  The new assessment system through Institutional Effectiveness addresses that concern. In summary, systems are in place that will get us off probation.  

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So there's no evals for Spring 2005? That's going to look great in my 3rd year review packet.

He is working with Independent Study, etc.

By "gutting" I meant the whole CE operation, not any particular office. I apologize if my information is inaccurate. I've been gone a couple of years and get everything second or third hand.

The online teaching evaluation idea did not orginate with Dr. Exline.  It has been discussed for over two years.  She agreed to pilot it this spring. She didn't develop the questions - a faculty committee did.  SACS is aware of the pilot.

The results are being mailed to the individual faculty members by Institutional Research.  She told me that she has heard about other incentives that boosted response rates at other MS schools and wants to pilot them this summer.  She is waiting on representatives from the various councils and faculty senate to be appointed to work with her on this.

As for not having a spring evaluation, that is not uncommon since most USM depts consider FALL evals as being the only required evaluations.  It is true that accrediting agencies at the program level don't like this, but one spring without an evaluation won't hurt you with tenure and promotion.

 

Evaluator wrote:

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The online teaching evaluation idea did not orginate with Dr. Exline.  It has been discussed for over two years.  She agreed to pilot it this spring. She didn't develop the questions - a faculty committee did.  ...  

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It is true that a committee from the Council of Chairs and Faculty Senate were charged (by the provost I believe) to study and developed "on line teaching evaluations".  However, the committee found many problems that had to be address BEFORE the process could be implemented.  They developed an evaluation instrument, but recommended things that needed to be done BEFORE such an evaluation process would work.

The committee’s recommendations were never addressed.  Exline didn't "agree to pilot the evaluations this spring", but rather "ordered" that at pilot be done this spring against the wishes of the committee and the advice of Faculty Senate. The issues the committee raised were never addressed. 

Exline's excuse for the "rush to evaluate on line" was that it was needed for SACS to have distance learning evaluated the same way as the rest of campus.  It was pointed out to her that the past paper evaluations all used the same instruments and that data was available, but that didn't sway her from rushing to the on line evaluation.