USM should be run like a business. Having said that, let me explore some ramifications that spring from this assumption.

I see today that Thames has created a University Council to “improve communication across every facet of our campus.” Once again, Thames has missed the point. The problems at USM are not those of communication. Most students and faculty know very well what he is doing, and, apparently, he knows very well what they think of what he is doing. The problems at USM stem from poor management. If Thames wants to “make our university stronger,” he needs to spend less time trying to convince people that he is doing a good job and more time making changes to correct fundamental errors he has made as an administrator. To that end, he could start by shaking up his management team.

Thames’s identified management team responsible for academic matters consists of Provost Hudson, Provost Grimes, Vice-President Dvorak, and Associate Provost Moore. Do you realize that this team has been in place for almost two years?

If you were an investor with a substantial holding in the USM corporation, how you rate the return on your investment after two years? Has the corporation’s product, education, flourished under the leadership of this management team? Are customers satisfied with the product, and what are the projections for a growth in sales? Are the factories that produce this product running efficiently? Are manufacturing costs low, and is productivity high? Does the corporation have a stable workforce? Is the corporation able to recruit new workers with skills comparable to those who retire or leave? Finally, would a business in the “real world” tolerate two years of missteps, reversals, and controversy without changing a single person among its executive leadership?

Doubtlessly, some people will answer these questions with a resounding yes. Others, however, will conclude that USM as a state university with great potential has fallen behind its competition under the leadership of this management team. Many people think so, yet the same people who promised us efficiency, effectiveness, and innovation a year and a half ago are still there. Apparently, at least one cohort on campus is against change, but it is not the faculty.

Given this assessment, one should ask, what is Thames going to accomplish by getting a group of people to sit around the table and talk to the people who got us in this fix? Although opinion pieces in newspapers seem to miss the point, Thames’s door is not open even when he says it is. The notion that it is now up to the faculty to step forward with good-will and short memories ignores two years of previous attempts rebuffed and ridiculed. Unfortunately, many of us who post to this web site can say; been there, done that! It didn’t work before, why should it work now?

NO QUARTER!

Jim Hollandsworth