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(September 15, 2009) CoB News Gunther Continues BBER Activities Last month CoB dean Lance Nail recommended that the CoB's Bureau of Business & Economic Research be suspended after the 2009-10 academic year in an effort to secure $1 to $2 million in budget cuts during 2009-10. That recommendation has not, however, stymied BBER director William Gunther's efforts in any way, as evidenced by Gunther's 13-September-09 report for The Hattiesburg American entitled "State's sales tax revenues: Where are they headed?" In this report, Gunther (pictured at left) talks about why Mississippi relies on sales taxes as its primary revenue source, as well as what has been happening with this particular source of revenue over time. Gunther is also one of the five mostly senior CoB economists who have agreed to retire from USM so that the unit can survive (after moving in to the CoAL).

(October 22, 2009) 31st & Pearl Don�'t Cry for Bill, USM CoBers With his impending USM retirement after this, the 2009�-10, academic year, Bill Gunther�'s long academic career may have come to an end. That career will have spanned 25�-30 years at the University of Alabama, the institution from which he is currently drawing a large portion of his old salary. It will have also spanned about 12 years at the University of Southern Mississippi, five of which were spent as CBA dean.

(October 26, 2009) CoB News, 26 October 2009 ECONLINE The CoB's economists appear to be loading up on online courses in the spring of 2010. Associate professor Sami Dakhlia, who is reportedly taking a leave of absence during spring 2010, has been assigned one online section of ECO 336. The course is capped at 100, and currently has 22 enrollees. Sources indicate that Dakhlia is likely being paid as an overload (from $6,000 to $8,000) for teaching the course, or he has been hired on an adjunct-type basis for even greater compensation (possibly on a per-student basis).

(January 6, 2010) CoB News 6 January 2010 Gunther Martyrdom? --Though former CoB associate dean Farhang Niroomand may have never advocated such, CoB economics professor and Bureau of Business & Economics Research director William Gunther is getting set to go through with yet another state of the South Mississippi economy conference of the type CoBers have become accustomed to over the past few years.

(January 19, 2010) Gunther Gets Gevreked Retiring Professor Gets 3-Course Load in Final Semester CoB economics professor William Gunther has historically maintained a 2/2 teaching load as a result of his directorship of the CoB’s Bureau of Business and Economics Research. With the Aug-09 budget cuts, however, the BBER is defunct (as of 1-July-10) and Gunther will be retiring as part of plan to “save” the USM careers of the CoB’s four mostly junior economists. One of those junior economists, Deniz Gevrek, chose to not have her USM career saved when, over the 2009 Christmas holidays, she accepted a position with Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi. She began serving that post in January of 2010.