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(August 6, 2009) Dear Skip: Congratulations on the presentation at the AAA meeting. While this is your national meeting, is this worth the huge price of going to and staying in New York City? Did Gwen go too? Two CoB administrators travel to a high cost city to “present” the same paper in these budget times? Are you blazing the research path with this “accounting research”? Or are you just like the directors who preceded you in that you are going to do and spend what you like simply because you can? And if so, is this yet another pathetic attempt to try to get poor old Gwen to full? She is already deeply feeding at the administrative trough; isn’t that enough? And finally, in the spirit of school and college transparency, are all SPA faculty members getting this level of travel funding this year? If not, why not? Please feel free to respond.

(August 7, 2009) Special Report Another Nail Pal in the Bad Column? Am Investigative Report on CoB Teaching Quality The recent USMNEWS.net report Another Trip Down Memory Lane? covered the recent hiring of Arthur Sorochinsky, who is coming from the University of Alabama – Birmingham to teach the SoA's new accounting information systems course. That report speculated that, because of Sorochinsky's Birmingham roots, new SoA director Skip Huhges was either coaxed or instructed by CoB dean Lance Nail to hire the finance professor for an accounting spot. As reported previously, Nail's academic area is finance, and before coming to USM Nail was the finance chair at UAB.

(August 11, 2009) Special Report The GS Cites Trap An Investigative Series on CoB Faculty Research Credentials Recent reports here at USMNEWS.net have examined Google Scholar cites to research conducted by various CoB faculty. As in past reports in this series, the data examined recently have been unadjusted GS cites. That is, there has been no accounting for self-cites in the overall data. This report addresses that issue by subtracting self-cites from the overall data, using a 6-Aug-09 GS cites search for ACC.

(August 13, 2009) Dear Skip: There are stories circulating that you want to change the orientation of the MPA degree program and increase the rigor in all the accounting classes. The MPA focus – one would assume to be a tax focus – is probably a better attraction for potential students. There seems to be enough faculty members to teach it, but it does not seem like much tax research is published; will that be an accreditation issue? Increasing “rigor” can be accomplished in various ways; most of them seem unlikely given the cast of characters you have. It is foolish to focus on a cross-country team with all field athletes. We await your efforts to transform the current accounting faculty into a more professional group of academic researchers.