financialissues25

(May 19, 2009) Reach Out and Touch a FINRELSer? Not During the Summer of 2009 The first act by the chair of the CoB's new FINRELS department, Francis Laatsch, was to cut the departmental phone service during the summer of 2009. In a recent communiqué, Laatsch informed his new charges that the FINRELS budget was bone dry, and that eliminating phone service will be only a partial fix to the budget issue facing the FINRELS during its first summer of existence.

(June 3, 2009) Dollars for Doughnuts Administrative salaries in USM's CoB have skyrocketed in recent years. For example, the CoB dean (Lance Nail) now earns $225,000 per year in salary alone. Chairs routinely earn over $125,000-to-$130,000 per year these days. Now there is more than one handful of these. On top of this recent trend, CoB administrators are, these days at least, doing less and less. In fact, it seems that they do all they can to escape work.

(July 15, 2009) The Hounds of Travel The budget cuts of 2008-09 were deeply felt in USM's CoB. At a latter point in the academic year the response by the CoB administration was to eliminate all travel. Now, one year later and facing another budget cut of at least 4.5%, CoB faculty travel is again on the endangered list.

(July 19, 2009) Another Trip Down Memory Lane? A Look at Skip Hughes' Decision to Staff AIS The recent USMNEWS.net report entitled "Skip to My Inbox" indicated that new CoB ACC director Kirby E. "Skip" Hughes pushed the CoB administration for an accounting information systems (AIS) course for the ACC core and that he was granted both support for the new course as well as an effort to hire an AIS professor. The search for the AIS professor during 2008-09 failed, as so many other CoB searches did. CoB dean Lance Nail, however, allowed Hughes to (1) make a visiting AIS hire for 2009-10 and (2) continue the search for a permanent AIS faculty during 2009-10.

(July 21, 2009) THA Reader Incorrect About USM Salaries As expected, a recent (19-July-09) article in The Hattiesburg American about the budgetary crisis facing USM's athletics department sparked a lot of interest among THA readers. A number of them used the THA's online comments feature to express their thoughts and opinions. Part of that discussion devolved into the usual "academics vs. athletics" battle that so often characterizes the USM community. One athletics supporter remarked that there are a number of USM faculty who earn $100,000 or more who are not directly affected (salary-wise) by the current budgetary crisis facing the institution.

(August 6, 2009) breaking news . .. CoB Announces New Honors House HATTIESBURG – According to a 6-Aug-09 USM presser by Van Arnold entitled "College of Business Set to Unveil New Honors House," USM has renovated the old Kappa Sigma fraternity house, which was lost to the fraternity as a result of a hazing incident in Sept-08, to create a new Honors House for USM's b-school.