USM: Settling Scores and Endangering Accreditation (Again)
On May 19 Shelby F. Thames, the notorious President of the University of Southern Mississippi, was told he would be leaving office in two years. The Mississippi IHL Board of Trustees, which controls USM, also gave him a list of tasks to accomplish. Number one on the list, for obvious reasons, was getting USM out of the jam it is in with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, and with the various specialized accreditation bodies.
You would be pardoned for thinking that Thames would at least refrain from any activities that would further jeopardize USM's accreditation.
But Thames doesn't understand accreditation, despises accrediting bodies because they expect him to follow their rules, and--according to people who know him--has a consuming desire for revenge on anyone who has crossed him. Besides, when relegated to lame-duckitude, upper administrators who are a good deal more moderately endowed in the malice department have purposely left messes behind for their successors to clean up.
Thames is so eager to settle scores that he is about to embroil USM in still another accreditation crisis.
Education programs at American universities are accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. The Ed programs at USM are well along in their NCATE cycle; a site visit will be taking place in Spring 2006.
Thames' dismal track record on accreditation is enough to justify apprehension about the way the NCATE process is going. When Thames conducted his purge of the academic deans in January 2003, in the guise of reorganizing to save administrative expense, he fired Carl Martray, a respected administrator who was reputed to be on top of NCATE issues. (Martray is now at Mercer University.) Thames then begged NCATE to put off its next site visit--because a new dean had just taken over the College of Education and Psychology.
Although he was hired on Thames' watch, my sources at USM agree that Willie Pierce, the current Dean of CoEP, has performed pretty well under difficult circumstances. It's hard enough trying to shield the college from the excesses of Thames and his crew in the central administration...
But Pierce also has also faced a constant threat from below. The department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education is chaired by one Dana Thames. No one at USM thinks that her skimpy record of research and publications, and her distinct shortage of management skills, would have gotten her the post--unless the fix was in. Shelby Thames pushed for his daughter to get the appointment before he became President in 2002; she then proceeded to undercut Dean Martray and clamor for his removal. (She apparently wanted the deanship for herself, but nervousness about the precise scope of Mississippi's anti-nepotism laws kept the prize out of her hands.)
Although Pierce has tried not to antagonize Dana Thames, simply occupying the office and doing his job are sufficient. He, too, has been targeted for removal.
Last week an NCATE consultant arrived at USM under unusual circumstances. Pierce had already brought in a different consultant, had not requested this one, and was given no warning that he was about to show up on campus. The new consultant had been invited by President Thames and given the specific charge of determining (hint, hint) whether the dean's office was hopelessly remiss in dealing with NCATE issues and needed clearing out. In the end, much to Thames' displeasure, the consultant concluded that Dean Pierce, Associate Dean Mitch Berman, and Assistant Dean Carole deCasal were taking care of business.
But, of course, no one thinks that was the end of it. Reports are that Dana Thames is not particularly knowledgeable about NCATE, or proactive in handling NCATE material. But none of this has restrained her from selling the upper administration on the proposition that she is an NCATE expert, while no one in the Dean's office should be allowed anywhere near an NCATE issue. What's more, she has apparently obtained the support of Joan Exline, Thames' special assistant. Exline would like to be seen as an accreditation guru, even though her knowledge is based on a 6-month crash course in dealing with SACS, and the professors who have been spending most of their spare time doing SACS-related committee work don't trust her.
At a rather eventful meeting of the President's Council on June 8, Tammy Greer, an Associate Professor of Psychology conducted a lengthy exchange with Shelby Thames, during which she asked him what he had in mind for the next two years:
"Now that you have an end in sight, are you going to do something dramatic before you go out?" Greer asked."People are also saying that because there has been such vocal opposition to some of the things you proposed, you are going to use your final two years to retaliate or that the faculty is going to use these two years to beat down on you."
Thames, who announced last month that he will resign in May 2007, said he has no intention to do those things.
He said the university reorganization of early 2003 was the only major change he had planned when he took office in 2002, and the university is still dealing with its repercussions.
"We've already had the major change, and while it did happen very fast it was also very effective," Thames said."But just like planting a tree, the roots need to grow.
"As far as the other goes, I'm not in the business of retaliating. I have to do what I think is best for this university, and if I spend all my time retaliating, this university won't move forward."
These statements did little to allay fears in the College of Education and Psychology. After all, Shelby Thames probably believes that chopping off more roots will help a tree grow.
If Pierce, Berman, and deCasal (deCasal is an NCATE expert with years of experience as a consultant) are pushed out, and Dana Thames is put in charge of accreditation, the college will be put on probation after the NCATE site visit next spring. And it is doubtful that NCATE will fall for the same Thamesian ploy twice in a row:"Hold it, we're not ready, I just fired another dean."
What's more, if one tenth of the stories about her are true, Dana Thames is completely unfit to run an academic department. Here's just one story that has circulated widely on the USM campus. On more than one occasion, Education classes taught on the Gulf Park campus have gone without instructors for a week or more because Dana Thames neglected to hire adjuncts before the semester started. And while questions and complaints from students poured in, she sat in her office playing Solitaire, instead of contacting potential instructors.
If Dean Pierce judges that he is about to be fired, he should call Shelby's bluff and take a long overdue action: firing Dana Thames. His predecessor didn't fire her, maybe because he was afraid of getting fired for doing it... but he ended up getting fired anyway. Up to now, Dana Thames has drawn little scrutiny from the press--because the Thames regime so done so many other boneheaded things, she has driven nearly anyone who looked like a rival out of her department, she has packed the junior faculty positions with obedient followers (many of whom got their doctoral degrees at... USM), and students are said to be afraid that they won't get their degrees if they complain about her. But if Pierce fires her, then Shelby Thames fires him, Thames will be obliged to explain exactly why he did it, to newspaper reporters who have come to pay close attention to everything that he does and to believe virtually nothing that he says. The ensuing publicity might be enough to try the patience of at least one more member of the IHL Board, and expedite Thames' departure from office.
It isn't just Pierce who is on the hot seat. Dean Harold Doty of the College of Business did the unforgivable in February, when he challenged the Black Friday memo, which ordered immediate implementation of an MBA program desired by Thames' lieutenant, Ken Malone, and commanded an immediate halt to any"basic research" by Business professors. After the memo became public, IHL Commissioner Richard Crofts ordered Thames to retract it, because that implementing it would threaten USM's accreditation with SACS as well as the College's accreditation with the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Recently Provost Jay Grimes (who was simply carrying out orders by issuing the memo, but has since decided to stand or fall with the Thames regime) refused to approve a change in the Business curriculum that had been requested by the IHL Board. Now Thames and crew are said to be trumping up a case against Dean Doty; they want to fire him for... endangering SACS accreditation!
Shelby Thames never knows when to quit. But if he continues down his current path, he may be compelled to quit, well before May 2007.