marvasti10

(April 24, 2008) How Much Lettuce Can You Consume? In and Around USM’s College of Business Things in USM’s Joseph A. Greene Hall often border on the bizarre. For example, reporters at USMNEWS.net were recently sent a link to a nationally syndicated webcast involving ECO’s Akbar Marvasti. The whole strange conversation involving Marvasti and others centered around barter, and at one point during the webcast Marvasti asked the question (of someone who had traded for some lettuce): “How much lettuce can you consume?” The whole thing was humorous, at best – not something that necessarily shines a positive light on the CoB, at least relative to other uses of faculty time.

(May 11, 2009) GH Chatter By many GH chatter accounts, the recent report speculating that the selection of Donna Davis to chair the new BEDS may have involved a circumvention of faculty governance was spot on . . . well, at least partially so. Word around JAG is that ECO's Akbar Marvasti wanted to chair the new BEDS as well, but he was unable to overcome a particularly "sensitive issue" that some of the powers-that-be deemed would put USM at too much risk, at least in terms of a Marvasti-chaired BEDS. Thus, according to new accounts at least, Davis easily ascended to her new position atop BEDS. Very interesting.

(June 25, 2009) Carter Still Up to Old Tricks Long-time EFIB chair George Carter may be done with administration given the CoB's recent reorganization, but that didn't stop him from tossing one more uneven course schedule out to his friends and administration sycophants. The snapshot below from the fall 2009 course schedule guide for ECO shows that Akbar Marvasti continues to be a Carter favorite in terms of the scheduling game.

(July 19, 2009) As the CoB Turns While CoB economics professor William Gunther, currently the director of the CoB's Bureau of Business and Economic Research, drones on about "consumer confidence" at the BBER's mid-year economic conference down on the Mississippi coast, recently hired finance professor Francis Laatsch finally took the in-person reins of his new department, the FINRELS (finance, real estate and legal studies). Meanwhile, Laatsch's new department seems in disarray, partially due to the last-
minute departure of associate professor John Clark.

(July 30, 2009) Carter Nailed It Former EFIB chair, and CoB economics professor, George Carter nailed it a while back when he said that the CoB's economists tended to be intemperate, or not collegial, and as a result they had become pariahs in Joseph A. Greene Hall. Fortunately for USMNEWS.net readers, Carter did not know his comments were being saved for posterity (they are now in the USMNEWS.net audio library), otherwise he would not likely have been so candid. He is, after all, as big a part of the ECO cabal as anyone else, so his condemnation applies to him just like it does to some of the other dismal scientists roaming the halls of USM's b-school.