Great to have you back, Robert.  The thread 'Faculty Senate President's Report" on this page has a summary of the latest struggles the Senate is having with SFT. We are looking forward to the next Liberty and Power.

Welcome back Dr. Campbell.  I am looking forward to reading your insightful words.

Robert Campbell wrote:

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How (and where) has USM Gulf Park been functioning since Katrina rendered its campus unusable? How many faculty members there are living in trailers?

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CL, 10/12/05

Faculty housing void called 'threat' to USM

Plans for "University Village" fall through at school's coastal campus

Richard, a medical doctor, sleeps on the floor. Edith, a mathematician, sleeps on someone else's sofa, and Eric, a medieval history expert, well, he's not sure where he'll be sleeping by the end of this week.

And, oh yeah, they all have to wake up every morning to teach your children.

"This is a dangerous situation that flat-out threatens our institution here," said Pat Smith, a history professor at the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast campus, where scores of teachers and staffers were left homeless after Hurricane Katrina.

"The housing problem is the worst single threat over the next six months," Smith said. "If we can get people housing, we'll be OK. If we can't, then we're going to be set back 10 years in faculty development."

He said he was unaware of any faculty members who had left, but at least five are in such dire straights they might be forced to leave soon.

The hurricane left 149 faculty and staffers at USM's coastal campus homeless, said Cecil Burge, the university's vice president for research and economic development.

Burge and Smith have been helping find faculty members places to live. Most of the original 149 have found something, but for about 40 others, the restart of classes on Monday put them in a serious bind.

And it got worse on Tuesday.

Officials abandoned a plan to build a "University Village," a makeshift mobile home park where faculty members could live.

They'd been hoping to use a piece of state property in Pass Christian. The site, known as Huckleberry Hill, would house about 100 mobile homes, Smith said.

The plan's first two stages went well, Burge said: Get faculty members declared "essential personnel," meaning they were higher up on the Federal Emergency Management Agency's priority list, and get the state's approval to use the site for the mobile home court.

But step three, installing functioning utilities and getting approval from FEMA and state environmental regulators, proved too difficult.

"Our energies have, in effect, been wasted," Smith said. Faculty members were told Tuesday to go through the normal FEMA process and try to get a mobile home placed in one of the agency's public sites.

So, for now, Dr. Richard Hadden, the university's director of strategic venture development, will continue sleeping on the floor of his 5 foot-by-12 foot office at USM's newly renovated facilities in Gulfport.

Hadden lost two houses in the hurricane, including one he bought just a few weeks before that he'd been planning to move into.

Edith Adan-Bante, a math professor whose apartment building was destroyed, will continue sleeping on the sofas of other faculty members.

She said she feels like she is imposing on people, but with school back in session, what else can she do? There are no apartments or hotel rooms available.

History professor Eric Nelson also lost his home. He'd been staying with relatives in Florida, then with a sister who has a hotel room on the Coast, but she's leaving at the end of the week.

Then, he said, he'll have nowhere to go.

"I'm not going to be able to teach," Nelson said.

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CL, 6/11/06

School strives to recover
USM Coast campus still coping with losses


[sidebar]USM SURVEY

Some results from a survey answered by 38 faculty members at USM’s campus on the Gulf Coast:
13 of 38 lost their home
26 of 38 were displaced
Faculty lost an average of $178,000 apiece, plus $4,500 in books, $1,900 in materials and $1,700 in equipment
38 of 35 no longer have office space
Average respondent rated their long-term commitment to the Gulf Coast at 3.4 on a scale of 1 to 5.
Average respondent rated their long-term commitment to USM at 3.2 on a scale of 1 to 5.
When asked the degree to which they had considered taking another position, average response was 3.5[/sidebar]


GULFPORT — They stuff themselves into tiny trailers in a parking lot or commute from Mobile, Hattiesburg and New Orleans.
They counsel students in shared offices that aren't much larger than bathrooms and conduct their research on the kitchen table.
The faculty at the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast campus is wearing down.
"The hardest part is finding housing," said math lab coordinator Marlene Naquin, who teaches classes and tutors students.
"It's a big hassle, really, because I don't have an office," said Monica Marsee, a psychology professor. "We have an office we share. It makes it really difficult for the students sometimes."
Though more trailers are on the way, which will provide office space, it may not be soon enough for some.
Thirteen of the 78 faculty members at the main campus in Long Beach already have left for jobs elsewhere, said Douglas Bristol, a history professor and president of the Gulf Coast Faculty Counsel.
More are looking to leave, according to a survey taken this spring.
"So there's a serious concern," Bristol said. "I get anxious about trying to recruit people to our campus."
USM's coastal operation was largely wiped out by Hurricane Katrina last August. The main campus, Gulf Park, remains closed.
Classes were delayed more than a month while school officials raced to renovate the old Garden park Hospital that the school's research foundation already owned.
Jennifer Vonk, a psychology professor, said the department has lost two members.
"I think probably everybody is keeping their eyes open for other opportunities," Vonk said.
And though everyone agrees it was a remarkable effort to get classes started again at all, the school went from operating in buildings with more than 300,000 square feet to one with about 50,000 square feet.
"We're really cramped, but we'll get along until we can do something different," USM President Shelby Thames said at a recent community forum on the future of USM on the Coast.
"A lot of people are leaving because they can't do their research," Naquin said.
She is not a professor, so she does not have to conduct research to keep her job or advance her career.
Many faculty members say their research was all but destroyed. Every one who answered the survey said their research is still not up to where it was before Katrina.
"Some of our space we've had to dedicate to labs," said Naquin. "A lot of people have to do their research at their homes. We kind of coordinate the office space so we're not here all at the same time."
Administrators say relief is coming.
Aside from more trailers headed to the campus, the university's research foundation just purchased a plot next to the renovated hospital. Plans are to use the land for classrooms and office space.
"The new offices will make a huge difference," said Bristol, whose house in Bay St. Louis made it through the storm, though with three feet of water.
The make-shift plans will have to do for a while.
Expecting huge growth on the Coast, higher education leaders announced intentions last week to renovate the Gulf Park campus and to build another USM campus.
But it could be five years or more before any new campus is built, and nobody knows how long it will take to renovate the old one.
And so, faculty members are left wondering what to do.
Vonk, who was renting a place near the beach, moved to Mobile in the storm's aftermath.
"I literally had nothing left and nowhere to go," she said.
Across the state line in Alabama was the only place she could find an apartment. She's still there, commuting 150 miles every day she teaches a class.
Faculty members wonder if they should buy new homes near the old campus or near where a new one will be built, wherever that might be.
Naquin, Marsee and Vonk had moved to the area just before Hurricane Katrina struck. They were starting new jobs, still moving in and getting settled.
Now Naquin and Marsee are living in Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers most of the time, while Vonk is in Mobile.
Naquin, who had taught high school in Louisiana for 15 years, had just moved into an apartment that was wiped out by the hurricane.
She spent some time living with friends, then with her mom in Louisiana, and finally got a FEMA trailer in November.
Now, she's on a 90-day waiting list for an apartment in Gulfport. She is certain she wants to stay; she is uncertain how long.
"I want to be part of the growth," she said. "I might not still be here when the new campus is built, but I'll be here for a while. I feel like I can't give up on it right now."
Marsee, whose husband is a professor at the University of New Orleans, had bought a house last summer just a couple blocks from the beach.
It was destroyed by Katrina.
"There was a pile of stuff that used to be our house, across the street," she said.
Now, she lives in a FEMA trailer during the week, and commutes to New Orleans to stay with her husband on the weekends.
She said she and her husband aren't sure what they're going to do with the slab that used to be their new home.