qwerty wrote:

---

Can anyone speak to the differences between what the IHL had defined as USM's mission, and the new mission developed by Exeline and Thames?

---

From the thread "SACS Delay?" :

Robert,  SFT laid out his goals and mission statement very early.  From the minutes of the Sepetember 13, 2002 F.S. meeting at http://www.usm.edu/fsenate/minutes/2002-09-13.html  I found:

"Mission Statement: IHL Board instructed institutions to rethink mission statements.  We altered ours some, got Cabinet and Dr. Cabana involved, and submitted a new mission statement, which was approved at the August IHL retreat.  In the past those issues were controversial; people have thought that some institutions wanted to take programs from others.  This is not that environment.  The intention is to make sure that mission statements are appropriate for the day and for ten years ahead.  The statement is available at: www.usm.edu/usmweb/mission.html."...

and further we have...

"Goals: We need to improve our faculty and staff salaries.  This will be hard to do.  We will try to change the attitude of the legislature. 

We will try to get to the $100M level in research funding.  This frees up money in the general budget.  Dr. Dvorak and I have had intense discussions on how to get to $100M. 

We need to improve our physical infrastructure. 

We need to grow to 20K students.  We're stretched already, but you're either moving ahead or falling behind.  Let's grow our population, and demand what we need to teach those students.  When our population is going up the legislature has to pay attention.  We need to grow this university. 

We need to increase our average ACT score, because that's a perception of quality.  We need to be seen as the first rate institution that we are.

We must achieve the $100M capital campaign goal (now at $78M)."

It appears obvious that SFT composed it with very little input.