financialsituation9

(September 1, 2009) ECO Plan Calls for Sacrifice of Five Faculty According to higher education reporter Ed Kemp’s 1-Sept-09 article in The Hattiesburg American entitled “USM terminates 3 professors,” the CoB’s senior economists proposed a plan to the USM administration – during a closed-door meeting on 24-Aug-09 – that would have five members of its group retire after 2009-10 so that four other economics professors can continue on with their careers at USM after the end of 2009-10.

(August 28, 2009) Fruit from the Grapevine As talk continues to swirl around the campus at Southern Miss, more and more of the focus is on the more clearly emerging triad of President Martha Saunders, Provost Bob Lyman, and Dean Denise von Herrmann (College of Arts and Letters [CoAL]). This is a liberal arts trinity that appears to be protecting the CoAL from any major budget cuts in the roughly $8.5 million university academic budget cuts for next fiscal year.

(September 1, 2009) Unanswered Questions Take a look at today’s Hattiesburg American: USM Terminates 3 Professors. The report leaves some open questions. Did economics professors negotiate a deal last week with the executive cabinet in which five professors have agreed to retire, while the remaining four younger professors will move to the College of Arts and Letters?

(September 1, 2009) 31st & Pearl Now is the Time for Martyrdom? Whether or not the ECO group’s plan to save the four untenured professors will work, and that is by sacrificing the tenured professors through retirement, remains to be seen. One thing is certain – if former CoB associate dean and economics professor Farhang Niroomand were still around and on the block, he never would have gone for it. Judging by the documents available in USMNEWS.net’s library, Niroomand hated “martyrdom,” and surely would have opposed Mark Klinedinst’s plan to send five, or six with Niroomand, ECO faculty into forced retirement so that four others could continue their USM careers uninterrupted. We can see the e-mail’s subject line – “Now is not the time for martyrdom!”

(September 1, 2009) breaking news . .USM President Throws Down Gauntlet on CoB ECOers HATTIESBURG – Reeling from the sting of being told that their academic programs are being cut and that the 9 tenured/tenure-track ECO faculty will be eliminated after 2009-10, the CoB's economists have been "takin' it to the streets" as it were, and telling every media outlet who would listen that the ECOers are being targeted as part of a subterfuge on the part of the USM administration. Apparently, USM president Martha Saunders has had about all she is willing to take from the CoB's economists.

(September 2, 2009) breaking news . . . ECO Strikes Deal with USM HATTIESBURG – The topsy-turvy world that is USM these days just got a little weirder. According to Meryl Dakin's 2-Sept-09 report for The Student Printz, USM has accepted the CoB economists' proposal, wherein the 5 mostly senior professors – George Carter, Trellis Green, William Gunther, Mark Klinedinst, and Edward Nissan – will retire at the end of this year (2009-10) so that the economics department at USM will survive.