Fruitbasket turnover - USM Forum -- Message Board

Date: Mar 10, 2006

Fruitbasket turnover

Date: Mar 10, 2006

I am so sorry to hear this.

As for what gives, well the Dome hasn't yet figured out that most of our faculty are good enough to get better jobs other places; when you make their lives a living hell, they leave. Simple enough.

Date: Mar 10, 2006

What gives in English? wrote:

What gives over there? How many chairs has English had during the past three or four years?

4 chairs in 4 years: Salda, Ball, Wheeler, and Kuskin. Has to be come kind of record

Date: Mar 10, 2006

Do we have some sort of independent verification that William Kuskin is leaving? Anyone in English Dept. care to comment? Jameela?

Truth

Date: Mar 10, 2006

It is confirmed. Pood made counter offers that were insufficient. Colorado is supplying a job for William's spouse. Plus, its Colorado-Boulder, simply one of the most beautiful towns in America and a top-notch school. A great coup for Kuskin. Keep your eyes and ears open for more major CoAL departures soon.

Date: Mar 10, 2006

truth4usm/AH wrote:

Do we have some sort of independent verification that William Kuskin is leaving?

I thought the departure lists at the top of the board were sort of official.

Date: Mar 10, 2006

I heard it from an English faculty member this evening.

Date: Mar 10, 2006

Angeline wrote:

It is confirmed. Pood made counter offers that were insufficient. Colorado is supplying a job for William's spouse. Plus, its Colorado-Boulder, simply one of the most beautiful towns in America and a top-notch school. A great coup for Kuskin. Keep your eyes and ears open for more major CoAL departures soon.

Kudos to William Kuskin and his wife...great people and wonderful scholars to boot. I had Kuskin for two classes that I took as a grad student at USM...he was a dynamic, marvelous teacher who knew his subject and always empowered his students. USM's loss once again, sad to say.

Truth (Andrea)

Date: Mar 10, 2006

Larger question: who is left among senior faculty to be chair now? Jonathan Barron? Ellen Weinauer? Jameela Lares? Stan Hauer? Maureen Ryan? Will be interesting to see how this shakes out in the English Dept.

Truth

Date: Mar 10, 2006

University of Colorado at Boulder ---- 78th Best University in USA!

Date: Mar 10, 2006

What's USM???? 906th i guess

Date: Mar 11, 2006

Aubrey Lucas understood that if you didn't have money to give people,and you didn't have nice facilities for them, you could give them respect and a pleasant place to work. For twenty years that approach fostered a number of pockets of excellence on the campus and anamazingly high faculty retention rate. Now we see that a life time ofwork and caring has been undone in a few short years. This university will never recover given the recent successes of Ole Miss and the bias of IHL. USM is becoming a big Delta State. I can only wonder how long it will take for the athletic boosters and the alumni to figure out they have been duped. The only thing that has prevented a total collapse is PERS and a tight academic market.

Date: Mar 11, 2006

SOS, I know you hope you're wrong.

Does anyone have a handle on numbers of "PERS" slaves vs. tenured faculty who have TIAA-CREF or one of the other plans?

Are new hires going into PERS or are they taking one of the optional plans?

In other words, how long until the PERS situation won't hold things together?

Date: Mar 11, 2006

LVN wrote:

SOS, I know you hope you're wrong. Does anyone have a handle on numbers of "PERS" slaves vs. tenured faculty who have TIAA-CREF or one of the other plans? Are new hires going into PERS or are they taking one of the optional plans? In other words, how long until the PERS situation won't hold things together?

My imperfect memory is that 1989 was the first year TIAA-CREEF was available.

PERS persons are still a pretty high percentage of the faculty. There was a nice burst of hiring in the 1980s.

No sane new hire gets into PERS. I've yet to meet one.

If 1989 is correct, then we've got about a decade. This won't be a bomb, just a slow fall into a lower average quality of faculty. We would need to start paying premiums with money we don't have. The effects aren't just USM specific. My friends at UM and MSU are also counting the years, watching their depts. slowly melt away, and buffing their resumes. Nobody asks why you are leaving MS, everyone knows.

Date: Mar 11, 2006

LVN wrote:

SOS, I know you hope you're wrong. Does anyone have a handle on numbers of "PERS" slaves vs. tenured faculty who have TIAA-CREF or one of the other plans? Are new hires going into PERS or are they taking one of the optional plans? In other words, how long until the PERS situation won't hold things together?

LVN, one way to think about this is to look at the ratio of retirees to total departures using babbs' (now ceces') lists. Across the fours years of Thames, these are (approx) 0.33, 0.43, 0.22 and 0.25. Notice the dropoff from the first two years to the second. My guess is that the last ratio will be more like 0.20 or lower when all is said and done for this year. The "PERS slave" is already on the endangered species list, and falling.

Date: Mar 11, 2006

Angeline wrote:

...Colorado is supplying a job for William's spouse. ...

I thought this was a bad thing that lead to academic corruption.

Date: Mar 11, 2006

This came up the other night, and I recall commenting that it's common in higher ed. Remember my "wife-swapping" doctors? I don't recall this board getting too bent out of shape over it.

In many venues, help finding spouses a job is part of the recruitment process.

Date: Mar 11, 2006

asdf wrote:

... I thought this was a bad thing that lead to academic corruption.

I wouldn't think it would be a problem as long as one of 'em ain't working for the other one.

Date: Mar 12, 2006

Angeline wrote: ...Colorado is supplying a job for William's spouse. ...

asdf responded: I thought this was a bad thing that lead to academic corruption.

In all probability, Colorado advertised two different tenure-track jobs for which they qualified.

Since women have entered the profession, and since many couples meet in graduate school, academic couples are increasingly looking for tenure-track jobs in the same locale or even the same institution. But good attracts good, so it is not so surprising that two great hires would be married to each other.

Date: Mar 12, 2006

Angeline wrote:

It is confirmed. Pood made counter offers that were insufficient. Colorado is supplying a job for William's spouse. Plus, its Colorado-Boulder, simply one of the most beautiful towns in America and a top-notch school. A great coup for Kuskin. Keep your eyes and ears open for more major CoAL departures soon.

Welcome to God's country!! We'll be all the better with you and your wife joining us. And it is . . . Boulder. A complete no-brainer.

Date: Mar 12, 2006

asdf wrote:

Angeline wrote:
...Colorado is supplying a job for William's spouse. ...
I thought this was a bad thing that lead to academic corruption.

Kuskin's wife taught at Tulane--no schlub department--and she's a sharp, first rate scholar. How do you know that Williams wasn't the spousal hire? Both will contunue their good work in Colorado. Congrats to them both.

USM's salaries have fallen so far behind the fourth-rate institutions with whom we compete for faculty that it is becoming very difficult to fill positions with good people, even in the humanities.