CL, 8/28/06: College Board: Now, two searches at hand - USM Forum -- Message Board

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CL, 8/28/06: College Board: Now, two searches at hand

Southern Belle · Status: Offline

Does everyone remember: "Here we go round the mullberry bush?"

stephen judd · Status: Offline

I am pasting in a message that Myron Henry wrote to a faculty Senator who missed the retreat and he copied it to the facsen listserv.

I saw your inquiry [. . . . ] about the Faculty Senate retreat last Thursday. In my (unbiased?) judgment, we had a very good retreat. We started with lunch at 12:15 pm at the Tom Rhea Phillips and Barbara Phillips "Camp." Dr. Phillips dropped by for a few minutes during the lunch hour.

As you know, Ms. Robin Robinson of Sanderson Farms and the IHL Board of Trustees was our featured guest. She was scheduled to arrive at 2:15 pm. In preparation for our conversation with Ms. Robinson, we briefly discussed issues about the search process to find a new USM president. Several senators had interviewed on Thursday morning with a special transition committee from the USM Alumni Association, and they shared a sense of what they had conveyed to the transition committee as well as responses from the transition committee. Ongoing Katrina recovery efforts were then discussed, particularly from a faculty point of view. Don Radalje updated us on Stennis, but we did not have any Gulf Park faculty present, so our conversation lacked specificity with regard to issues from a a

stephen judd · Status: Offline

a

stephen judd · Status: Offline

-- Edited by stephen judd at 19:40, 2006-08-28

stephen judd · Status: Offline

Sorry folks -- for some reason i can't get this thing to accept the last half of the paste. I'll keep trying.

stephen judd · Status: Offline

a Gulf Coast Student Service Center or Gulf Park point of view.

We then moved to shared governance and the newly formed shared governance committee. There were various views on why this new committee was formed and what might be the most likely outcome from it. The first meeting is August 23 at 3 pm. The committee has four faculty members unencumbered by administrative duties among its ten or so members. We also discussed a possible response to the SACS on-site team's report (which gave minimal verbiage to either issues in the letter from the Faculty Senate to it or the issues Executive Officers raised in a meeting with three of the SACS team members). We will discuss this matter at our September 8 meeting, perhaps with a draft response in front of us. Ms. Robinson arrive right on time, so we deferred discussion on the rest of our agenda [pre-tenure review (third year review), promotion and tenure process, planning and budgeting, and Senate Committee appointments].

In my judgment, the conversation with Ms. Robinson was very open, respectful, and informative. After introductions, we covered an array of issues about the search, including the anticipated process, selection of the campus advisory committee, the involvement of a search firm, the depth of involvement of the campus advisory committee, how one or more finalists might be presented to campus constituents, etc. We also touched upon a few other topics with Ms. Robinson including the status of the on-going initiative by the USM administration to out source comprehensive physical plant services.

In accordance with our prior understandings with Ms. Robinson, our conversation with her ended just after 4:00 pm. I think colleagues felt very good about this conversation (I know I did), and we think other meaningful conversations with Ms. Robinson and maybe other members of the Board of Trustees are possible, especially on the search. Although a "wrap up" session was scheduled for after Ms. Robinson's departure, it was close to 4:30 pm by the time we fully concluded our interactions with Ms. Robinson. Some how, the wrap up session just ebbed away.

Joe, I invite other senators who were at the retreat to add whatever they think is appropriate to this brief response to your Message Board inquiry. Feel free to share this sketch of our retreat with others.

-- Edited by stephen judd at 19:39, 2006-08-28