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(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.

(October 19, 2009) CoB News, 19 October 2009 Things are Bad In the “things are bad” file, CoB faculty are urged to attend future meetings of USM’s faculty senate if they are interested in just how disastrous the Mississippi budget situation will be in 2011 and 2012 for USM.

(October 29, 2009) GH Chatter Speaking of program cuts, the recent report about low teaching loads over in ECO is causing a stir. Some chatter has it that several of the ECOers were recipients of lower teaching loads so that they could actively engage the 2009-10 job market. They may be safe for now, but if you heard one of USM provost Robert Lyman's recent presentations to the faculty senate, you understand that their future remains uncertain. Lyman indicated that the remaining four are simply being given some time to see if they can build the ECO major up over in the CoAL.

(December 8, 2009) breaking news . . . USM Suspends Admissions into CoB MIS Program HATTIESBURG – USM provost Robert Lyman reported to the USM Faculty Senate (on 4-Dec-09) that USM will suspend admissions into the CoB's MIS program beginning in January of 2010. In explaining this decision, Lyman told senators that the MIS program was slated for elimination by the old APG during the 2010 budget cut talks that took place during spring/summer 2009, however the APG ultimately decided to place MIS on the second(ary) cuts list instead. The APG's recommendation to eliminate economics, though, put MIS in continued jeopardy given its departmental affiliation in the CoB with ECO.

(November 16, 2009) Whither productivity? Dr. Lyman has been dutifully informing the Southern Miss constituents that he, Martha, and the school itself will no longer actively defend low-productivity academic programs

(March 3, 2010) Breaking News USM Could Lose 100 Faculty HATTIESBURG – USM provost Robert Lyman told USM constituents that USM could lose 100 faculty in the coming months as the institution struggles to deal with what some believe will be a total budget cut of $30-$35 million from 2009 levels. This information comes via Ed Kemp's 3-March-10 The Hattiesburg American report entitled "Unparalleled fiscal challenges." According to Kemp, about 250 members of the USM family attended the recent town hall meeting on the USM budget wherein Lyman painted a bleak fiscal picture.