Who said this board is not concerned with the coast campus? Here we've got Snowbird asking coast faculty about the history of reorganization down there. No answer. No interest?

I have taught on both campuses.  We are terrified that someone even worse will come to Gulf Park!  We have no organization here, only disorganization and chaos. 

Snowbird wrote:

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Does the recent turnover in the administration of the coast campus mean that yet another reorganization is in order? How many reorganizations have occurred there since 2002. Someone on the coast campus should be able to chronicle that.

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As David Crosby put it, "I shall now untangle the entire area" Caveat: this all from memory. I wish I had exact dates to hand, but here is an overview of various organizational forms at USM-GC in the last 5 years or so.

When Thames became president in Spring 2002, USM-Gulf Coast was organized in the following manner.

Jim Williams had been elevated by Horace Fleming to the status of VP for USM-Gulf Coast. He had cabinet status, and oversaw the entire operation, including the budget. He was a wizard at building and harnessing public support for USM on the Coast. There's a brick under the Gulf Park Library portico that refers to Jim as "Visionary". There's something to that, anyhow . . .

Under Williams was Joe Hill, who was designated Academic Dean for USM-GC. In effect, Hill was provost for the Coast operation. He had a seat on the Dean's Council, I believe. He oversaw and coordinated scheduling, room assignments, curriculum planning and development for the Coast operation.

Hill oversaw four USM-GC academic "divisions":Education and Psychology; Business; Nursing; Liberal Arts/Science and Technology. Each Division was organized rather like a college except that the head of each division was called a chair.

The administration professional staff under Williams and Hill had considerable clout. One was, in effect, comptroller of the Coast operation. Others ran student services, financial aid, PR and various other non-academic operations. This Old Guard in the professional staff had a lot of institutional memory between them and a good deal of influence because of it. At times they might have been a little parochial, but this was mitigated by a killer work ethic and close ties to the community.

In the academic divisions the chairs had relatively little input into faculty personnel matters--that was the baliwick of department personnel committees and deans and chairs on the H'burg campus--except that the Coast division chairs had the final say so over division budgets, so they had to sign permission to hire forms and all that. And they did control salaries, sometimes in accord with and sometimes in conflict with the recommendations of the H'burg departments. The Coast division chairs also had control over incidental and development budgets, to provide travel money, supplies and technology, etc.. Coast and H'burg Budget lines were kept pretty scrupulously segregated, as I remember.

The only exception to these rules was in the Divsion of Education and Psychology, which in the Fleming years had moved in the direction of autonomy in personnel matters and which actually voted, as a division, on a couple of tenure/promotion decisions, during the Lucas interregnum I think. The Division was headed for well over a decade by Nancy Maztal, who retired about the time Fleming left.

Each of these Divisions had about a dozen faculty. Some faculty were what was then called "program coordinators." These proposed and configured department course schedules for the Coast, hired adjuncts, ordered textbooks for all courses not taught by resident faculty in discipline, stuff like that. In the Division of Business this work was, and is, done by a professional staffer, who also advises majors.

This was pretty much the structure that Thames found upon beginning his administration in Spring of 2002.

The sweeping reorganization instituted by President Thames--the 2003 conversion into five colleges and all that--hit the Coast differently than the main campus.

First there was the obvious stuff: Tim Hudson was appointed Provost for the Gulf Coast. VP Jim Williams was demoted and given some nominal administrative position just prior to his retirement, which followed soon after Thames took control. Joe Hill had retired just before. Then Hudson was replaced by Jay Grimes. Hudson went to H'burg as Provost there. Then when Hudson left for Texas at Arlington, Grimes was still officially Coast Provost while acting as Interim Provost for USM as a whole. Then Grimes simply became THE Provost for the entire system, last Spring I think, when the Provost search was cancelled. Got that?

The four divisions at USM-GC became five colleges, the same as in H'burg: CosT, CoH, CoEP, CoB, CoAL. The old Liberal Arts/S&T division broke in two.

The Deans acquired much tighter control over all fiscal aspects of the Coast operation than previously. In fact, it is no longer possible, if I'm correct, to talk about separate Coast and H'burg budget lines. All Coast academic fiscal decisions are run out of the five Colleges.

Ken Malone came on board as COO, in about Fall 2002 (?). This position had no precedent at USM-GC. It combined certain functions of VP, provost, comptroller, student services, public relations, and recruitment heads. It also came to encompass, through osmosis and diffusion, perhaps, a good bit of planning, both academic and for the physical plant. Malone instituted a system of dedicated student advisors in each college--the infamous "customer services" reps, although that's NOT the official name--who do year round enrollment and registration and advisement. Over the whole "customer service" division is Richard Farley. Malone's and Farley's ascent was contemporary with a decline in the influence of the Old Guard among the experienced administrative staff. Some of them are no longer with USM-GC. Some now work in offices they formerly managed.

Currently, there is no Coast provost per se. Academic decision making and planning are supposed to be done by the H'burg departments and deans.

As I understand it, both the Department of Nursing and the College of Science and Technology still retain Coast "chairs" who must play some role in such planning.

In the CoB, department chairs come to the Coast pretty frequently to plan, confer with faculty, expedite and handle student matters. At least they used to. I used to run into the Economics chair a good bit on campus. Harold Doty used to visit some too.

I'm not sure what 's going on in Ed/Psych. I hear department chairs sometimes visit the Coast, as in CoB, but I don't know. There are very unsavory rumors about one of them. Just kidding. Perhaps an Ed/Psych informant might fill us in. Is there an Associate Dean for CoEP on the Coast or something? See, even I don't know . . .

In Arts and Letters, VonHerrmann lingered as chair for a brief bit after Thames took over. Then she took over Joe Hill's old job and held it concurrently w/the Arts and Letters chair. Then she was elevated to Associate Dean of Arts and Letters, where, as I understand it, about 20 percent of her workload pertains to the Coast CoAL.

After DVH moved up, Arts and Letters then went through a brief period when there was no Coast-dedicated college administrator, until Tom Lansford was appointed Assistant Dean for the coast CoAL in 2003-2004. Lansford has signature authority for things like grade changes, change of major, course substitutions, graduation applications etc.. He's also supposed to expedite things like permission to advertise, interview and hire forms and permissions to travel. He also troubleshoots student problems in CoAL, much as a chair does in H'burg.

Arts and Letters still has "program coordinators" in some of the larger programs: English and History, for instance. There may be others.

The final factor to be considered in understanding the Coast organization is the influence of the ominously titled "Master Planning Group." Seated around April of 2004, this group meets monthly and is composed of university administrators, architects, and members of a planning firm retained by the University to develop a long range plan for the campus at Gulf Park. Although not really answerable in any formal way to any of the organs of academic self-governance, it does from time to time to come up with plans that will have a decided impact on the academic mission of the university, such as the plan to convert the Gulf Park Library into classrooms, for instance. It would be good for the Faculty Senate, Grad and Academic Councils, and AAUP to take an interest in this group. They are, I'm afraid, dangerous if left untreated.

In conclusion: Is this chaos and old night? Or am I too close to individual trees to make out a forest? Or perhaps, as Willy Loman put it, "The woods are on fire." In any case, hope this helps. Emendations from qualified corners are invited.

PS: About the ostensible silence of Coast faculty: they are overwhelmingly junior and untenured. From about 60 full time faculty, I can only name two full professors, although I might be slightly wrong about that. Three? Four, tops?

Thank you so much for this historically important account.

JoJO wrote:

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Put Ms. Newton in charge.  She is a USM Gulf Coast Graduate dressed in Red and Blue.  She bleeds Ole Miss and has you fools at AAUP at her beck and call. 

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I think if anything, VSN would tend to favor the "W". I don't think she has any particular connection to the University of Mississippi.

Sometimes, though, I think that she is -- like a lot of ladies from the "W" -- running interference for some boys from State.

Thanks to Will Watson for a very fine narrative.

Check again!!!  Her husband and father-in-law are major UM alums.  In football season you never see her in H'burg.  She is in the GROVE.  Again,  AAUP has been fooled!

What I Know About Ed/Psych on the Coast wrote:

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since he's Assoc. Dean, that could mean he's overseeing those few remaining Psych people. .

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Shouldn't that fun trip should be the chair's job?