Interim Associate Coast Provost? - USM Forum -- Message Board

Date: Aug 4, 2005

RE: Interim Associate Coast Provost?

Date: Aug 4, 2005

Coast Watcher wrote:

coastliner wrote:
Two pages to discuss a coast non-issue? What? Interim provost...not needed... being held up for a good reason. Needed....and coming....a Chancellor for a Mississippi Gulf Coast Universities Center. It is coming down with the new Meredith regime.....the coast operations will change.....no more USM dominance.....look for UM, MS, JS, DS, MVS, AS, MUW, and multiple other institutions (from out of state) to be involved in a Universites Center operation. USM has lost their opportunity on the Coast. 1972-2005 is long enough to try to attempt to meet the needs of the Gulf Coast. USM has failed and has failed by design... miserbly. It is time for a new plan. Let all the institutions in the state and others have an opportunity to deliver programs to the Gulf Coast.....this will satisfy UM, MS, JS, and will show USM that they have failed to deliver. Mississippi Gulf Coast Universities Center. Sounds pretty good.... This is a move that will be made.....watch it....and USM H will fall further behind on the pecking order in the state and will be on the level of JS and DS. Get on board....competition...are you afraid to compete? The Gulf Coast would be much better served by a "center" concept than by being held hostage by the Hattiesburg gang. It's coming.....

Breaking development: Below is a job description for a new Associate Dean in CoEP, just posted to the Professional Education Faculty List, from CoEP Dean W. Lee Pierce. Note the italicized portion: the new CoEP Associate Dean will be "helping with the expansion of our educational offering on the coast . . ." The original had a link to a place in the USM website where the full job posting's just been put up, but I somehow lost the link when I cut and pasted. Has anybody else gotten this message, somebody with hot-linking chops? Here's the quote:
"I am very pleased to announce that we have just posted a new position in the Dean's office for the College of Education and Psychology. The position is for a second Associate Dean. This will be a great help to Mitch Berman and me as we work to better support and nurture the academic programs in the College. We are particularly looking forward to this position helping with the expansion of our educational offerings on the coast as well as the Hattiesburg campus. Please review the position posting at the website below and consider encouraging suitable candidates. "
OK Coastliner and Doubting Thomas, what do you make of this? Another coast non-issue? Another sign that USM is pulling out of the Coast? That MSU and MU and JSU and Yahwah knows who else, maybe MIT, is moving in? Another instance of "failure by design"? The last isn't necessarily out of the ballpark, of course; there's no mention anywhere in the ad of a requirement for actual residence, or even presence, on "the coast" as DT likes to call it. Or is this another elaborate ruse, such as most recent thread respondents think the Associate Provost non-hire is? Would the CoEP really try to hire an administrator with responsibility for "the coast" if s/he was going to be supplanted by some "Chancellor" for a multiuniversity Coast center? Could it be, perhaps, that nobody at USM-Piney Woods knows "It's coming" as Coastliner put it? Not even the Dome Gnome? Hades knows, with that crew, it's possible.
I guess the answer to these and other "non-issue" questions will come when we see who, if anyone, steps forward to scoop up this ripe administrative plum.
Whoever does, be sure to bring your driving gloves and night vision gear. Hwy 49 grows ever more dangerous and crowded as more and more people flee the pine barrens of Forrest and Lamar Counties, and kindred upcountry hinterlands, to live and work on the beach in what will, within ten years, be the largest urban area in the state. Provided we don't get another Camille, I guess . . .

As a colleague of mine says, "The Mississippi coast is the Alabama or Florida coast twenty years ago...minus the pretty water and the sugar white sand." Once condos start going up, it's just a matter of time before you become a transient community filled with Snowbirds and vacationers. You won't find a lot of residential increase because most people really don't want to live at the beach...they want to vacation at the beach, because if you live at the beach, it loses its luster.

People who live in Mississippi probably prefer a more rural environment to a more urban environment, because otherwise, they'd move to Atlanta, Birmingham, Charleston, Dallas, or any of the more urban cities in the South. While the coast has a fairly nice mall (taken a look at the Target center and its occupants in Hattiesburg lately?) and some good restaurants (I can easily be at the Chimneys in an hour and 15 minutes), it is a military base area with tattoo parlors, Chinese takeout, and adult bookstores. If you like those things, then great! I just don't think you're going to outperform Hattiesburg in an overall quality of life sense.

Add to that the fact that a large portion of the coast faculty are retired on the job and you get a dysfunctional situation that no sane person would step into. For the sake of everyone involved, someone should gut the Gulf Park campus program and start over fresh.

Date: Aug 4, 2005

Doubting Thomas wrote:

Add to that the fact that a large portion of the coast faculty are retired on the job and you get a dysfunctional situation that no sane person would step into. For the sake of everyone involved, someone should gut the Gulf Park campus program and start over fresh.

Bosh and double bosh DT, there aren't enough senior people on the Coast for "retired on the job" faculty to be "a large portion" of the whole. I don't know the exact proportions but the Coast has suffered just as much as H'burg in the sense that there's now larger percentage of untenured people here than three years ago. You have no idea what you're talking about, which is not uncommon when Piney Woodsers condescend to speak of "the coast" as you put it.

And ditto about your tatoo parlors and military bases vision of the Coast. It may have been that way back in '94 ,before the casinos got here, but it's not now. It's . . . something else, but its not that. It's vital and frenetic and full of contradictions, and new construction, but it's no longer the tacky, parochial teeshirt shop and tatoo Redneck Riviera that you were thinking of.

And geeezuz, DT, who among the people who might move here is going to care a hoot in Hades about "quality of life"? I mean, I do and you do, but the vast majority of the great American booboisie wouldn't know "quality of life" if it up and slapped them alongside their big ole behinds! And those are the folks who 'll come to the Coast, from all sort of places, including and besides the Magnolia state. Just as they came to Las Vegas. For jobs. And although these jobs will be in an industry that may seem, to us, to be exploitive and despicable--gambling and "tourism"--they will eventually create a larger middle class than, again, anywhere else in the state.

When enough of these folks get here and get established, they'll demand, one would hope, some of the wonderful amenities you lucky Piney Woodsers have up there in "Hattiesburg."

I will agree with you, DT, on one thing, however: the Coast USM campuses (that's plural DT, there are FOUR besides Gulf Park) would be better off under new management, with separate accreditation, and a new organizational form, one whose shape and direction aren't dictated by the very people who most fear its success: the Old Boys/Gals Network of the Pinebelt.

Date: Aug 4, 2005

Doubting Thomas wrote:

the coast . . is a military base area with tattoo parlors, Chinese takeout, and adult bookstores.

You forgot to mention those lovely 24-hours-per-day pawn shops that grace the highways and byways down there.

Date: Aug 7, 2005

Coast Watcher wrote:

Friday before last, Jay Grimes told a packed house at Gulf Park that the name of the interim Associate Provost for the Coast would be announced in the coming week. That week has now come and gone w/no announcement. What's the whispering gallery saying on this? Have candidates been approached and turned the job down? Is there some sort of unexpected resistance to the Coast Provost idea? If so, from where? And who would the administration want in the job? Who would the readers of this board want in the job? Note: the interim Associate Provost will hold the position during the SACS review and during what Grimes assured was going to be a national search for a Coast Associate Provost. So considerable is at stake in this appointment.

The "Friday before last" referred to on the original posting on this thread was July 8. There has been no announcement of an interim Associate provost for the Coast, and it is now August 7, four complete weeks after Jay Grimes said that the interim Coast under provost would be announced within a week. Maybe he meant a month? Or a year maybe?

Is the failure to appoint someone just more incompetence? Or is there some underlying method or reason? Or maybe they just lied.

By the way, Shahdad Naghshpour denies having even been approached about the job. At least that's what he said.

Anyhow, Week Five of Provost Watch began last Friday . . . and the September SACS visit to the Coast looms ever more near

Date: Aug 8, 2005

I find the idea that "the coast" -- as Doubting Thomas calls it -- is an underfunded effort laughable. Four campuses besides Gulf Park? You can drive from one side of the MS Gulf Coast to the other in about an hour and fifteen minutes! If my long division is correct, then that means there's a campus every 15 minutes! In many of the programs I've heard about, there are fewer than 10 students per class per site.

The concept that USM or any institution should deliver its services like Domino's Pizza delivers its product is insulting. I agree with Doubting Thomas' assessment. Let the residents who want a degree make the sacrifice to drive the 30 minutes to Gulf Park.

Date: Aug 8, 2005

Dissertation Topic wrote:

I find the idea that "the coast" -- as Doubting Thomas calls it -- is an underfunded effort laughable. Four campuses besides Gulf Park? You can drive from one side of the MS Gulf Coast to the other in about an hour and fifteen minutes! If my long division is correct, then that means there's a campus every 15 minutes!

This is probably the most insightful comment made yet on the coast situation. "The local businesses need accessibility to higher education" has been used an an excuse for proliferation for far too long. The coast doesn't even have a pharmacy evey 15 minutes.

Date: Aug 8, 2005

"The coast doesn't have a pharmacy every 15 minutes." Where on earth are you writing from? Fargo?? Have you ever lived anywhere other than Hattiesburg?

The Gulf Coast needs more education, not less. The state of Mississippi needs more education, not less. I am so tired of the "old saw" of no duplication of programs in this small minded state. Is this state so poor and pitiful that maybe we should close all the universities except one and everybody can go to community college or out of state for an education.

Date: Aug 8, 2005

just coasting wrote:

The Gulf Coast needs more education, not less. The state of Mississippi needs more education, not less.

You're right, just coasting. Mississippi needs more education, not less. A USM facility every 15 minutes is not nearly enough. I'll not be content until we have one every 10 minutes. The quality is not important as long as they are convenient. Come to think of it, if we had one every 5 minutes we might jump to 1st tier instantly.

Date: Aug 8, 2005

just coasting wrote:

I am so tired of the "old saw" of no duplication of programs in this small minded state.

Program duplication normally refers to graduate programs, not undergraduate. At the graduate level you don't have to worry about lack of program duplication in Mississippi. The IHL has allowed graduate program duplication at an extent which is not tolerated even in the more populous adjacent states.

Date: Aug 8, 2005

Don't fret guys and gals about the number of USM campuses on the coast. USM's days are numbered. They have not delivered, the number of campuses is irrelevant, and dialogue is taking place with the real decision makers about how best to meet the higher education needs on the coast.

Two present IHL board members are MS grads and coast residents. Do you think they would like to give MS a piece of the coast? The Chancellor from Ole Ms has coast ties and a good understanding of the needs of the Gulf Coast. (When Ole MS was established it missed coming to the coast by one vote...at the site of the VA hospital on the beach......and with the VA gearing down that site could be available for the "Universities Centers" base of operations. Gautier and NSTL, Keesler, and Gulf Park will still be teaching/research/service centers.

Look at the population...the growth in the state...the growth on the coast in the six coast counties.

Take a look at UAB, not long ago it was a part of the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa. UAB is closer to Tuscaloosa than H'burg is to the Gulf Coast. The Tuscaloosa power structure fought the development of their own center in Birmingham and ended up with an institution (UAB) as large or larger than the UA Tuscaloosa campus.

The void will be filled on the Gulf Coast....just as it was met in Birmingham...maybe in a different way....but it will be met.

Date: Aug 8, 2005

just coasting wrote:

Is this state so poor and pitiful that maybe we should close all the universities except one and everybody can go to community college or out of state for an education.

Yes.

Date: Aug 8, 2005

coastliner wrote:

The void will be filled on the Gulf Coast....just as it was met in Birmingham...maybe in a different way....but it will be met.

A similar story could be told for UNO which was formerly LSU-NO. New Orleans is about as far from Baton Rouge as Gulfport is from Hattiesburg. But the coast should be content with an undergraduate institution. The biggest fear is that an autonomous state school on the coast would want to develop slouch graduate programs.

Date: Aug 8, 2005

I am sure there are many other examples other than UAB and UNO. I don't think either of those institutions were satisified with just undergraduate programs. Why should Gulf Coast residents be satisfied?

It appears that the people on the Gulf Coast are not "married" to any one solution....all they want is a plan for delivery.

Date: Aug 8, 2005

coastliner wrote:

I am sure there are many other examples other than UAB and UNO. I don't think either of those institutions were satisified with just undergraduate programs. Why should Gulf Coast residents be satisfied?

Because Mississippi has too many duplicated graduate progrms at the present time.

It appears that the people on the Gulf Coast are not "married" to any one solution....all they want is a plan for delivery.

From what you say, it sounds like it is the coast that does not have the "plan." It sounds like you'd be satisfied with just any old thing regardless of need. Just what is it specifically that you do want? I think you need a four-year undergraduate institution and I think it should be autonomous from USM. But just to have a graduate playtoy because the other kids have a graduate playtoy won't cut it.

Date: Aug 8, 2005

Move the graduate programs to Gulf Coast if they are needed more there than where they are presently located.

A new plan for the whole state should be formulated by an INDEPENDENT BLUE RIBBON TASK FORCE....for both ug and grad programs.

The residents of the Gulf Coast. and some other underserved areas, would fare much better than some areas now receiving massive higher education funding. A "Needs-Based" system of higher education would be far better than the pork barrel system that is now in place.

Date: Aug 8, 2005

coastliner wrote:

Move the graduate programs to Gulf Coast if they are needed more there than where they are presently located.

Fair statement. Although I suspect that your idea of what graduate programs are all about is probably quite different than mine, but let's examine the matter. Please give me examples of graduate programs that are needed more on the coast, and specify why they are needed there. Let's not consider applied masters degree programs such as business, nursing, and education programs which are often legitimately found at predominately 4-year schools and which I assume will exist on the coast no matter who is in charge. {;ease focus on doctoral programs you believe should be relocated to the coast.

Date: Aug 8, 2005

Areas of study typically associates with night classes in areas of high population:

MBA
JD
Engineering (areas where you must stay current - Environmental, etc.)
Education

Date: Aug 8, 2005

View from a Distance wrote:

Areas of study typically associates with night classes in areas of high population:

MBA

JD

Engineering

Education

The coast will get an M.B.A. and a masters in education (if they don't offer those already). Are you suggesting that a law school be placed on the coast? Wouldn't a better solution be to move the Ole Miss law school to Jackson State?

Date: Aug 8, 2005

You must be joking. There is no chance whatsoever that USM would ever get a law school.

Date: Aug 8, 2005

Coast voter wrote:

You must be joking. There is no chance whatsoever that USM would ever get a law school.

Why not? There's lots of crime here.

Date: Aug 8, 2005

There are already two law schools in Mississippi. Jackson State wants one. Ole Miss would never allow us to get a law school. Never. It is no more likely than was ST's attempt to get a medical school. Besides that, law professors would NEVER put up with ST.

Date: Aug 8, 2005

Coast Voter wrote:

There are already two law schools in Mississippi. Jackson State wants one.

Jackson State also wants an engineering school.

Date: Aug 8, 2005

Let's do it right. The headlines could read: BLUE RIBBON TASK FORCE DETERMINES NEW DELIVERY SYSTEM FOR MISSISSIPPI HIGHER ED..(an editor would shorten the headline but the message would be the same)

I could speculate about doctoral programs and programs at all levels, but this needs INDEPENDENT and UNBIASED study. Is there anyone out there that would disagree? If so, you are for the status quo, protecting your turf, and don't have the best interest of the state on your agenda.

INDEPENDENT AND UNBIASED?????????????

Date: Aug 8, 2005

coastliner wrote:

I could speculate about doctoral programs and programs at all levels, but this needs INDEPENDENT and UNBIASED study. Is there anyone out there that would disagree?

What you propose would be hard to disagree with. I believe an independent and unbiased study would recommend that no program be moved to another location within the system, but that quite a few graduate programs be dropped. But whatever the recommendations, I don't think the college board or the legislature would act on them.

Date: Aug 12, 2005

I cannot believe the intercampus rancor that I see on this list. I knew that the Coast operation has been shafted for years within USM, but the rancor that SFT adm has brewed is beyond my imagination.

Certainly, anyone connected with the Coast operation must be depressed and angry about the opportunity that was pissed away by SFT to build that four year undergraduate program on the Coast. Coast got hooked up with Hudson, ditched a hopeful and experienced administrator in Williams? -- Hudson, ever the opportunist, bailed out on the Coast just as his house remodeling on the Beach was finished. Hudson was no hero, but seemed to have energy and direction. Maybe SFT made clear that the direction that was possible was not the one SFT wanted--- so Tim jumped to Hattiesburg just as the posse was raising against clueless JAY Grimes. THe Coast got the clueless one in the great provost switch, and the clueless one got the SFT clone, Malone, to 'run it like a business" until the staff was miserable and accreditation seemed unable to bear with the abuses, from invaded class rooms to plans for facility destruction.

Faculty hired on the Coast in that momemt of optimism right after the courts ruled USM could admit freshmen on the Coast -- must be terribly disappointed that the crew that took over was totally clueless as to how to make it work. This group of young -- not old and dead-- highly productive folks have to feel betrayed.

THE FAILURE IS IN SFT. Hattiesburg and Coast faculty do not need to throw arrows at each other. USM is a patient in the emergency room. They tell us it will take two years to remove the cancer that is slowly suffocating us all. That cancer is Shelby F. THames. He hired boobs without doing national searches. They have royally screwed everything they could on both campuses.

The cancer seems closer to people on the Coast because, being a smaller operation, it is most easily hurt by incompetence. Incompetence is harder to hide in a small group than in a large one. Heaven knows this "dearly bought institution," as Bo Morgan called it, is suffering from top level incompetence on a scale that people in any other institution would have difficulty comprehending---our own board cannot believe our scale of trouble.

God, who would want to take any administrative job at USM under the conditions of the SFT regime? ONLY a fool, we have them, or an incompetent, or a carreerist who thought that even a few months in a job would check an important box on the resume score card.

The real ememy is SFT administrative incompetence. USM had a solution for the coast--dual campus, four year program, and moving toward stand alone accreditation for the coast that would allow that operation more freedom to innovate to serve the needs of the 400,000 in the bottom three Coast counties--(is that close Coastliner?).

That vision came from within USM. Horace Fleming and Jim Williams and maybe some of the old faculty at Gulf Park -- that Smith guy on the faculty down there maybe and some legislators who love USM came up with it. We have the way forward. It came from USM. IHL bought our USM plan. SFT did not understand why things had evolved to that point. He made very bad selections of really very inexperiences succession of administrators for the Coast . SFT and these boobs pissed away an opportunity.

Now, there may well be another opportunity for USM and USM Gulf Coast. HOwever, the new Coast "interim" provost will have little impact on that opportunity if it materializes. WE are spinning or wheels in many areas of USM until we can replace the incompetents at the top who surround the supreme paint maker himself.

Date: Aug 12, 2005

Well stated Old Cur. Shop!!!

How about that BLUE RIBBON COMMISSION? IF MISSISSIPPIANS REALLY WANT TO GET THEIR HIGHER ED HOUSE IN ORDER. (AN INDEPENDENT COMMISSION TO LOOK AT THE HIGHER ED NEEDS WHOLE STATE....INCLUDING THE GULF COAST WITH ITS 400+K CITIZENS.

UNTILL SFT IS GONE THERE WILL BE NO DIRECTION FOR USM. THOSE THAT ARE INTERESTED IN RIGHTING THE SHIP SHOULD UNITE AND GET THINGS ON TRACK......

TIMES A WASTING!

Date: Aug 12, 2005

coastliner wrote:

TIMES A WASTING!

Patience. The IHL gave you a two year cooling off period, did they not?

Date: Aug 12, 2005

UNTILL SFT IS GONE THERE WILL BE NO DIRECTION FOR USM

Saw in USA Today this am that Tom Meredith's replacement has been named in Georgia. Is it possible that TM will be here soon, and that he will take some action? Cross your fingers.

Date: Aug 12, 2005

astonished wrote:

Is it possible that TM will be here soon, and that he will take some action?

Did you have in mind any action in particular?