(January 16, 2009) CoB News, 16 January 2009 “[A] festering wound that would not heal” The quote above is how USM provost Robert Lyman recently described the customized textbook scandal at USM – one that began a few months ago, but will not seem to go away. Lyman’s quote above was captured for Lesley Walters’ 13-Jan-09 news story for The Student Printz entitled “Custom textbooks hinder buybacks.”
ARTICLES CONCERNING
MISCELLANEOUS ISSUES AND THOUGHTS
For more articles and editorials concerning miscellaneous issues and thoughts, please click here.
(January 19, 2009) 10% Solution Suggested salaries to cover the next 10% CoB budget cuts: 1. Farhang Niroomand – reunited with Tim Hudson. 2. George Carter – if I cannot be chair, I will retire. 3. Roderick Posey – a waste at everything he has ever been a part of in the CoB. 4. Bill Gunther – his search for a new CoB building yielded as few results as the BBER has produced. If he ever had a prime, he passed it in Tuscaloosa. 5. Harold Doty – Syracuse reports he was a pitiful chair, while Hattiesburg can attest he did more harm in four years than others did in decades.
(January 26, 2009) GH Chatter From the sound of conversations, it’s looking more and more like USM will soon be inviting the IHL to eliminate the CoB’s economics degree programs. Cutting low volume academic programs is one way the state’s eight public institutions are being asked to address the state’s dire budget situation. Each college/school within USM is expected to participate in this process. For the CoB, cutting ECO is the logical choice. When this happens, look for the staffing decline in EFIB (soon to be BEDS) to continue, and perhaps accelerate.
(January 29, 2009) CoB News, 29 January 2009 Integrity Policy Not Boilerplate, Says The Chronicle According to USMNEWS.net sources, Thomas Bartlett’s 29-Jan-09 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled “2 Universities’ Plagiarism Policies Look a Lot Alike” only deteriorates even further the arguments made by the Harold Doty/Farhang Niroomand administration of the CoB (2003-07), that a university’s or college’s academic integrity policy (or, for that matter, AACSB documentation) is simply “boilerplate” and open for use by any and all, even “without proper citation.” In his article (shown below), Bartlett describes how officials at Southern Illinois University adopted in 2007 a 139-word plagiarism definition that is nearly identical the definition adopted by Indiana University just two years earlier.
(February 11, 2009)“CoB UG Programs Committee, Start Your Engines!” With the dire budget/economic situation facing USM, many are now saying that the CoB’s economics major is destined for the chopping block. As part of the plan to scale back what sources refer to as the bloated ECO portion of the EFIB faculty roster, the CoB’s international business curriculum is facing changes that would reduce the number of economics courses required of IB majors.
(February 17, 2009) Breaking News ECO 336 Moved to File 13 HATTIESBURG – Reporters at USMNEWS.net have learned that the CoB has voted to replace the requirement that CoB students complete ECO 336 (international economics) as part of the CoB core curriculum with an option to complete any approved international course in the group containing international economics, international finance, international management and international marketing.