USMPride - USM Forum -- Message Board

Date: Jul 16, 2006

USMPride

Date: Jul 16, 2006

Dr. Dupree:

The IHL board under the Klumb leadership was complicit in the mess in which we find ourselves. However, Klumb and his cronies have largely escaped scrutiny and accountability in this whole sordid affair. This is one of the saddest aspects of the past four years.

The laws that should limit nepotism and cronyism are quite weak in Mississippi. When I spoke to Mr. Tim Hood about several specifics, he informed me that unless SFT's signtaure was on a document directly benefiting cronies or family, or we could find someone to corroborate a series of events under oath, it is almost impossible to move forward with a case here. In contrast, there is little legal protection for workers, whether staff or faculty, in Mississippi. The Deans at the moment have little incentive for advocating for change or confronting wrongs. In fact, they seem to be busy solidifying their positions and appeasing the VP AAA, Provost, and President so as not to rock their fifedoms. Much of this involves placating card carrying members (and their progeny) of the good old boy and girl system that has formed the backbone of USM since the end of the McCain era.

In our state, unfortunately, we have to rely on shedding light on wrongdoing as best we can, and then rely on the integrity and good will of those in power. The big question for us is is Dr. Meredith a Klumb clone or a reformer. The picture should become clear for us quite quickly in the fall semester, so hang on to your hats.

GL

Date: Jul 16, 2006

Chauncey DePree wrote:

USMPride demonstrates, among other things, that administrators cannot be trusted with the confidentiality they use to evaluate faculty.

We know we can't trust people who operate in secrecy. Openness and transparency keeps us all honest. Therefore, I believe faculty should undertake to determine the criteria for the scope and application of confidentiality and see that it is implemented. Like the use of deadly force, confidentiality should be rare, well defined, and constantly monitored. USM is our school. It doesn't belong to a coterie of administrators, many of whom chose an administrative track because they were not particularly effective teachers or researchers. Revealing as many hidden facts as we can is part of an effort to take our University from their control.

Dr. Depree,

One of the items posted earlier on usmpride inidicates that the Sedona data base used by the COB to track faculty productivity was supposedly confidential. The usmpride discussion stated that an "unnamed" administrator nonetheless disclosed the Sedona logon and password on May 2, which allowed some COB faculty to access the information. In addition, usmpride states that of 40 tenured faculty members, only three have agreed to have their Sedona information made public. You may believe that others have the right to tamper with confidential information and to disregard the wishes of faculty who thus far have chosen to keep their Sedona information private, but I cannot see how such behavior conforms to the high ethical standards you advocate.

Faculty productivity ratings for the period 2000-present are reported in four usmpride tables. In three of the tables you are ranked number one and the fourth table ranks you number five. I agree that your research record for the period is respectable, but based on the information in the tables, in my opinion a dispassionate reviewer of the data would not likely place you in the top 20 COB researchers, certainly not the top 10 or top 5, and absolutely not first. In another thread, I have called for information on who constructed these tables since if it were you it would taint the results. However, you have chosen not to disclose the compilers. Nonetheless, the authors should be willing to make public the rationale for their methodology, which to me seems contrived to produce a foreordained result. As you note, "Openness and transparency keeps us all honest." I am simply encouraging you to play by this rule.

Date: Jul 16, 2006

Why would any faculty member wish to keep their vita from being public information? If you are ashamed of your record, get to work. You work for a public university that provides you with time and resources to produce research. Any research that is published in a book, journal or proceedings is public information. Fortunately, the power of the web and Google is such that one can easily find what every faculty member has published. It is a little more difficult, but possible.

Date: Jul 16, 2006

The information on USMPride is verifiable. Publications like salaries are just that - public. That is openness and transparency. Furthermore, as offered at USMPride, consider my offer to you or anyone else who wants more information but chooses anonymity. Note to OldCBAer -- My offer is still open to you or anyone else who chooses anonymity. I will act as a go between so that the evaluation researchers and you may exchange the information you requested and answer any questions you may have. My email address is marcdepree@comcast.net.

Date: Jul 16, 2006

GL--who is tim hood?

Date: Jul 16, 2006

tim hood----in charge of mississippi ethics commission....and ironically the brother of jim hood mississippi attorney general

Date: Jul 16, 2006

tom hood is head of the ethics commission.

Date: Jul 16, 2006

stinky cheese man wrote:

tom hood is head of the ethics commission.

SCM:

Correct. Sorry for the typo.

Date: Jul 16, 2006

Chauncey DePree wrote:

The information on USMPride is verifiable. Publications like salaries are just that - public. That is openness and transparency. Furthermore, as offered at USMPride, consider my offer to you or anyone else who wants more information but chooses anonymity. Note to OldCBAer -- My offer is still open to you or anyone else who chooses anonymity. I will act as a go between so that the evaluation researchers and you may exchange the information you requested and answer any questions you may have. My email address is marcdepree@comcast.net.

Good departments usually have links to faculty CVs or abbreviated faculty CVs on the webpage (which are difficult to keep up to date but provide a snapshot of a department). Departments with minimal to no concrete data in this area either do not want others to know what they are doing or aren't doing much or just don't want to be bothered. Compare CISE to Psy in COEP, for example. CVs traditionally have been public documents--I can't imagine why any self-respecting professor would have it any other way.

Date: Jul 16, 2006

You're seeing why the CoB administrators and many others want their records kept in the dark. When you're making up articles, dates, relying on others to write your papers, etc. you can't have it any other way.

Date: Jul 16, 2006

i guess i weary of argument-by-definition. GL says "good departments" have links to faculty cv or abbreviated cv's. i guess that's GL's definition of a good department. if you don't have these links, your department "either does not want others to know what they are doing or aren't doing much or just don't want to be bothered." i suspect it's the last option rather than the other ones for many departments. but to me it doesn't define a good department.

i did a quick and dirty survey of premier departments in my discipline (tier 1 universities) and found few cv's or abbreviated cv's online. i know some of the people, and frankly they are too busy to put their cv's up, and they are well enough known that they don't need them on the web. since my cv is online i guess i'm not busy enough.

why is the issue of the "publicness" of cv's an issue at USM? why should cv's be available for the entire university community to see? who are we trying to impress? accuracy is one thing, but publicness is a different issue. is this an issue at other universities?

and to dr. dupree--what are your criteria for the scope and application of transparency and openness? i know plenty of mid-level administrators who have solved some embarrassing situations for faculty without making it known publically. you don't know the number of complaints about faculty made to college board members that get routed to USM and then have to be addressed by mid-level administrators. i know of at least one faculty member that physically threatened a staff member. several administrators addressed the problem. should they have made it known publicly?

Date: Jul 16, 2006

oldCBAer,

Here's the way research works. Somebody publishes an article, book, or study. You may or may not agree with that publication's thesis. If you disagree with the thesis, the burden is on you to disprove it. It is up to you to develop theory or to find data from verifiable sources that you can use to show how and why the original study is incorrect. The burden is on you.

I think I speak for many here on the board when I say that your incessant droning about authors providing their basic data to you so that you can pass judgement on their methods is anti-intellectual and illogical.

I would also like to echo Cossack's and Godless Liberal's sentiments. Good academics and good departments are proud of their records in research. Likewise, good administrators are proud of their decisions and are willing to sit in a glass house while making those decisions so that all the world can watch what goes on. From what I've seen at USMPride, one of two things is happening. Either administrators are making decisions using a black box method or they are not communicating the method effectively to faculty in the b-school. No matter which one is correct I am of the mind that the fault lies with those who are making decisions. If the process were clear and followed properly, we shouldn't expect to see anything published at USMPride.

I'm not going to argue with you like others did on the deleted thread because it's clear to me that you're like a 179-degree angle. Just know that many of us who watch this board with regularity recognize your agenda for what it is: obfuscation.

Date: Jul 17, 2006

Thanks for you comments, Stinky Cheese Man. I've found you thoughts on this Board over many months to be interesting, but I respectfully disagree here. Please review USMPride in detail. You'll find careful research that addresses you concerns.

Date: Jul 17, 2006

stinky cheese man,

Seldom have I read any of your posts that I disagree with. However, your reasoning for not having the research records of faculty public is quite lame. It is imperative that information and knowledge is disseminated in a university. It promotes good outcomes and reduces bad outcomes. Without full information, we get silliness, such as “USM is World Class.” Your survey of top schools not having vitas online makes my point. How could you verify these are top schools if you did not have information about their research output? Either you know what the faculty have published because you have seen it in journals and books, or you are merely assuming they are well published based on the reputation of the school. USM does not have that reputation. Hence, it is important to have the information of scholarly successes by USM faculty public knowledge.

Lastly, I view with suspicion anyone who maintains a secret resume.

Date: Jul 17, 2006

cossack and depree--i'm not arguing for secretness in terms of one's resume. mine's online, for example. my department requires faculty cv's to be turned in each year for annual review. remember what part of my argument was--just because a department posts cv's online does not make it a good department (nor is the converse true either). and my ability to judge whether a department is good is based more on reputational rankings and familiarity with scholars' research in journals. again, not on whether the department's faculty cv's are publicly available.

but again, is this an issue more generally than usm? i suspect what is going on in COB (and maybe USM more generally) is a function of the level of trust. in fact, i talked with some friends at other universities and they said that this issue is not even an issue at their universities.

Date: Jul 17, 2006

Posting resumes does not make a department good. It stops a bad department from calling itself good and making others believe it. Secrecy and trust are mutually exclusive. Trust comes from having a string of verifiable actions preceding the action one trusts will occur next. Comparing USM to good universities is a non sequitur since good universities have much more faculty governance and a preponderance of faculty have been productive. I doubt that few would claim that trust and the SFT regime are compatible. All in all, I do not think an argument can be made to not make vitas public at USM.

Date: Jul 17, 2006

cossack--i suspect we probably don't agree much, but i do know faculty that would disagree with you. i also have an open classroom--if you (or anyone) want to come in my classroom while i teach, you are more than welcome. i don't do anything in my classroom that i'm afraid of the world seeing. but i know faculty that would have reservations about that.

i think the measure of a department is more than the cv's of its faculty. but i also wonder who people are trying to impress. i frankly don't care whether colleagues in another department in my college are impressed with my cv. i do care with colleagues at other universities in my discipline and their impression of my research. but i can't mislead these colleagues at other universities--my research is published and easily accessible. if i'm making up stuff or taking authorship credit where it isn't due, they'll know.

Date: Jul 17, 2006

OMG, Becky! wrote:

oldCBAer, Here's the way research works. Somebody publishes an article, book, or study. You may or may not agree with that publication's thesis. If you disagree with the thesis, the burden is on you to disprove it. It is up to you to develop theory or to find data from verifiable sources that you can use to show how and why the original study is incorrect. The burden is on you. I think I speak for many here on the board when I say that your incessant droning about authors providing their basic data to you so that you can pass judgement on their methods is anti-intellectual and illogical. I would also like to echo Cossack's and Godless Liberal's sentiments. Good academics and good departments are proud of their records in research. Likewise, good administrators are proud of their decisions and are willing to sit in a glass house while making those decisions so that all the world can watch what goes on. From what I've seen at USMPride, one of two things is happening. Either administrators are making decisions using a black box method or they are not communicating the method effectively to faculty in the b-school. No matter which one is correct I am of the mind that the fault lies with those who are making decisions. If the process were clear and followed properly, we shouldn't expect to see anything published at USMPride. I'm not going to argue with you like others did on the deleted thread because it's clear to me that you're like a 179-degree angle. Just know that many of us who watch this board with regularity recognize your agenda for what it is: obfuscation.

Becky,

Are you really arguing that the four usmpride tables portraying COB faculty scholarly productivity are research? The only peer review of the usmpride tables is the scruitiny it is receiving on this board. The tables show the research record of the usmpride webmaster in a very favorable light given the raw data on his publications. Is everyone supposed to just say, "how wonderful" and leave it at that? What would happened if the COB Dean's office had constructed a set of research productivity tables and make them public with the dean ranked first in three tables and fifth in the fourth?. Your approach to any curious faculty member would be, "this is research buddy, if you don't like the tables, do your own." These tables are NOT research, They are an attempt to rank research productivity in a way that I suspect is favorable to the authors. Every faculty member ranked in that table deserves to know the rationale and methodology for the ranking system. Finally, how many COB faculty members were consulted when these tables were being developed? Should they have been?

As to the public nature of resumes, your comments miss the issues in this particular situation and are mere platitudes. I also agree that faculty members should be willing to share information on their scholarly activities. However, in this situation we are talking about a confidential data base, to which unauthorized individuals gained access. Moreover, according to usmpride, only 3 of forty tenured faculty had authorized the release of their Sedona data. Does it occur to you that the reluctance to release the information may be something other than trying to hide their level of research productivity? Perhaps, it is the format of Sedona, the newness of the system, or some other factor that makes them uncomfortable about Sedona. These faculty might rather share their public information in a format other than Sedona. It is not uncommon for faculty to have multiple resumes--for accreditation, for introductions, for job applications. etc. The issue here is not openness, it is that faculty have the option to keep the Sedona information private and the authors of the tables have overridden this option. Again if administrators had done what the authors of the tables have done, just iimagine the outcry.

It is the process of this situation that disturbs me most. Initially, why did not the authors of the tables contact COB faculty and inform them that they were interested in constructing alternative measures of faculty research productivity? To do so, they would need information from each faculty on research output and some feedback on what factors might be incorporated into productivity rankings. With the then available information, the authors could have constructed some alternatives and then sent them out for review and discussion. (Does this sound like research?) Instead, the authors tapped a confidential database, and with no faculty-wide discussion, created a set of tables that you say is "research", and for some reason is off-limits to scrutiny and revision, even though I suspect that many faculty feel that the tables rank them unfairly. I guess you would respond, "tough luck, if you don't like your ranking construct your own tables."

Date: Jul 17, 2006

cossack--what i meant to say in my first line is that you and i probably don't disagree much on this issue.

Date: Jul 17, 2006

stinky cheese man,

On the contrary, we agree quite often and I have always valued your insights on issues even when I view them differently. I particularly value your historical knowledge about USM and the events that have transpired. The argument being presented on USM Pride is that money is being allocated under false pretenses. That is, faculty are being paid for activities that did not happen. Once that becomes evident, the trust you refer to cannot exist. It may be that one cannot change the process, New Orleans as a corrupt city comes to mind, but that does not mean it should be ignored. Indeed, as members of the academy of academicians, we have a duty to help maintain the integrity of our disciplines and the university. There is a another consideration; we faculty consistently complain about the lack of resources for education in Mississippi. If the university spends the resources it currently receives in a manner that does not comport with its stated mission, it is in a weak position to ask for more. We appear to disagree on this issue, but I do not think we can afford to be cavalier about faculty hiding behind a claim of confidentiality about their lack of research.

Date: Jul 17, 2006

What would happened if the COB Dean's office had constructed a set of research productivity tables and make them public with the dean ranked first in three tables and fifth in the fourth?.

I think it would be great. It would be the first time the dean's office revealed anything about faculty research. At least then we could have a starting point to discuss the issue. It sure would beat the "my vita is a secret" silliness that occurs currently. Giving the Dean his due, while his research numbers are not huge, he has hit the top management journal and is on its editorial board. His research record is by superior to any COB dean prior to Dean Doty. By the way, in the time that you have spent complaining about tables constructed by others, you could have put together your own set of tables.

Date: Jul 17, 2006

cossack--what i meant to say in my first line is that you and i probably don't disagree much on this issue.

Sorry stinky cheese man, I had sent my response before I saw your correction.

Date: Jul 17, 2006

stinky cheese man wrote:

i guess i weary of argument-by-definition. GL says "good departments" have links to faculty cv or abbreviated cv's. i guess that's GL's definition of a good department. if you don't have these links, your department "either does not want others to know what they are doing or aren't doing much or just don't want to be bothered." i suspect it's the last option rather than the other ones for many departments. but to me it doesn't define a good department. i did a quick and dirty survey of premier departments in my discipline (tier 1 universities) and found few cv's or abbreviated cv's online. i know some of the people, and frankly they are too busy to put their cv's up, and they are well enough known that they don't need them on the web. since my cv is online i guess i'm not busy enough. why is the issue of the "publicness" of cv's an issue at USM? why should cv's be available for the entire university community to see? who are we trying to impress? accuracy is one thing, but publicness is a different issue. is this an issue at other universities? and to dr. dupree--what are your criteria for the scope and application of transparency and openness? i know plenty of mid-level administrators who have solved some embarrassing situations for faculty without making it known publically. you don't know the number of complaints about faculty made to college board members that get routed to USM and then have to be addressed by mid-level administrators. i know of at least one faculty member that physically threatened a staff member. several administrators addressed the problem. should they have made it known publicly?

Now there you go again Stinky, putting words in my mouth. I never said that posting CVs is the sine qua non of a good department, merely that good departments USUALLY follow this practice. In your discipline this may not be so, but you don't mention what that might be (I think in the past you said you were in COAL), nor do you mention what what programs you surveyed (or how close you were to a representative search).

It is clear that YOU value public disclosure of your professional activities as do I. That's agreement, and I appreciate that. As you said, it is a non-issue at most universities (most have support systems to maintain this information accurately at websites)--another point with which I agree. I don't believe, however, as you do, that departments follow this practice to impress people (at least we don't). We do this to communicate our current scope of activities to others who may have similar interests (this has lead to fruitful collaborations), and to let prospective graduate students know a bit about the opportunities here. This practice may be less relevant to people in your field, however.

Why are some people raising the CV/publicness issue? (Caveat-I strongly believe that there are personnel actions and communications for which there is a strong expectation of confidentiality). I think it goes beyond the social responsibility that we have as scholars.

This is my speculation-I believe it is coming about because some people and units here have been know to exaggerate their accomplishments for a variety of reasons and ends. Some have had a pattern of inaccurately portraying who we are and what we do that flies in the face of independent metrics. Others here seem frustrated and fed up and would like to see that culture changed. It's great to brag on the good things going on at USM, but we also have a long history here of being short on reality-testing.

Date: Jul 17, 2006

What good is for OldCBAer to complain about the table when some of the numbers (e.g., story about Carter) are made up anyway?

Date: Jul 17, 2006

oldCBAer wrote:

OMG, Becky! wrote:
oldCBAer, Here's the way research works. Somebody publishes an article, book, or study. You may or may not agree with that publication's thesis. If you disagree with the thesis, the burden is on you to disprove it. It is up to you to develop theory or to find data from verifiable sources that you can use to show how and why the original study is incorrect. The burden is on you. I think I speak for many here on the board when I say that your incessant droning about authors providing their basic data to you so that you can pass judgement on their methods is anti-intellectual and illogical. I would also like to echo Cossack's and Godless Liberal's sentiments. Good academics and good departments are proud of their records in research. Likewise, good administrators are proud of their decisions and are willing to sit in a glass house while making those decisions so that all the world can watch what goes on. From what I've seen at USMPride, one of two things is happening. Either administrators are making decisions using a black box method or they are not communicating the method effectively to faculty in the b-school. No matter which one is correct I am of the mind that the fault lies with those who are making decisions. If the process were clear and followed properly, we shouldn't expect to see anything published at USMPride. I'm not going to argue with you like others did on the deleted thread because it's clear to me that you're like a 179-degree angle. Just know that many of us who watch this board with regularity recognize your agenda for what it is: obfuscation.

Becky,
Are you really arguing that the four usmpride tables portraying COB faculty scholarly productivity are research?    The only peer review of the usmpride tables is the scruitiny it is receiving on this board.  The tables show the research record of the usmpride webmaster in a very favorable light given the raw data on his publications. Is everyone supposed to just say, "how wonderful" and leave it at that? What would happened if the COB Dean's office had constructed a set of  research productivity tables and make them public with the dean ranked first in three tables and fifth in the fourth?.  Your approach to any curious faculty member would be, "this is research buddy, if you don't like the tables, do your own." These tables are NOT research, They are an attempt to rank research productivity in a way that I suspect is favorable to the authors. Every faculty member ranked in that table deserves to know the rationale and methodology for the ranking system.    Finally, how many COB faculty members were consulted when these tables were being developed? Should they have been?
As to the public nature of resumes, your comments miss the issues in this particular situation and are mere platitudes. I also agree that faculty members should be willing to share information on their scholarly activities. However, in this situation we are talking about a confidential data base, to which unauthorized individuals gained access. Moreover, according to usmpride, only 3 of forty tenured faculty had authorized the release of their Sedona data. Does it occur to you that the reluctance to release the information may be something other than trying to hide their level of research productivity? Perhaps, it is the format of Sedona, the newness of the system, or some other factor that makes them uncomfortable about Sedona.  These faculty might rather share their public information in a format other than Sedona.   It is not uncommon for faculty to have multiple resumes--for accreditation, for introductions, for job applications. etc. The issue here is not openness, it is that faculty have the option to keep the Sedona information private and the authors of the tables have overridden this option.   Again if administrators had done what the authors of the tables have done, just iimagine the outcry.
It is the process of this situation that disturbs me most. Initially, why did not the authors of the tables contact COB faculty and inform them that they were interested in constructing alternative measures of faculty research productivity? To do so, they would need information from each faculty on research output and some feedback on what factors might be incorporated into productivity rankings. With the then available information, the authors could have constructed some alternatives and then sent them out for review and discussion. (Does this sound like research?) Instead, the authors tapped a confidential database, and with no faculty-wide discussion, created a set of tables that you say is "research", and for some reason is off-limits to scrutiny and revision, even though I suspect that many faculty feel that the tables rank them unfairly.   I guess you would respond, "tough luck, if you don't like your ranking construct your own tables."

Research was going on long before the formal "peer review" system of journals was instituted. Scientists reviewed each others' work by recreating experiments.

Becky was pointing out that you have some fear of actually trying to recreate this. You also have some fear of presenting your alternative method.

SEDONA is the only source of information nowadays in the CoB. No need to ask for any more. The SEDONA information is public because an administrator publicized the password and access code. Once the cat's out of the bag, it's gone.

you're whining now. and you're running out of things to say. the university's eyes are opening to corruption in the CoB. to quote Marc Depree, why don't you just enjoy being part of something bigger than yourself?

Date: Jul 17, 2006

All of the readers and posters to this board: I, and I alone, am responsible for the completeness and accuracy of the information on the Sedona database. This is "work in progress", and does not have enough information on it to be used for any decision making process. At faculty evaluation time, the decision was made to use the Sedona interface to enter that data which would normally be put on the yearly faculty productivity report. This was an effort to help faculty become comfortable with the process and remove redundant reporting. No data other than the current year research efforts were utilized in the yearly evaluation process.

Much of the other data was entered by secretaries and grad assistants from existing documents. No review has yet been done as to the completeness or accuracy of this data. For an example, look at the paper presented in "Hong Kong, Japan", which appeared on the vita as "Hong Kong" and the person entering the data assumed "Japan". The ONLY reason for not yet making the information available in a publicly accessable form is that it is incomplete. To make any inferences about the college as a whole or any individual faculty member using this data would be foolhardy.

The timeline for having up-to-date and accurate info in the database is October of 2006.

To use data that is known to be incomplete, as in not reflecting the true conditions as they exist at the time, is clearly unethical under all professional codes of conduct.

Date: Jul 17, 2006

oldCBAer wrote:

What would happened if the COB Dean's office had constructed a set of research productivity tables and make them public with the dean ranked first in three tables and fifth in the fourth?. Your approach to any curious faculty member would be, "this is research buddy, if you don't like the tables, do your own."

Administrators perform research evaluation behind closed doors every year. They are unwilling to share their methods. When raise information comes out (as can be viewed in USM Budget Books or on usmpride.com), it is PUBLIC. The CoB administrators are making public judgments using a hidden method. So, some faculty are doing their own research and are showing just how bogus and corrupt the current system is.

Date: Jul 17, 2006

I am having some difficulty with DD's post, aside from the problems I have of Harold Doty sending CoB females out in public to explain his mistakes and misdeeds. He did this with the HVAC disaster when he sent Gwen Pate, Director of UG Programs, to explain how bad the CoB decisions were in that regard for front page copy in the Student Printz.

Sedona was used to distribute about one-quarter of one million dollars in annual payments to a group of faculty. As usmpride has shown, secretaries are going to take the fall for misdeeds. I guess this week we will get to see how next year's raises from Doty and the Gang will be earned.

Date: Jul 17, 2006

Re: Donna Davis' post

A reminder that the vast majority of faculty in the College of Business are ethical professionals dedicated to research, teaching, and service rather than self-promotion, cutting down colleagues, and settling old scores. Thanks Professor Davis.