July 2008 Archives

A fairly packed mid-to-late week just gone by, with a good bit (too much!) time spent on the highway:

        Wednesday featured a visit to Don Thompson, new head of the Mississippi Department of Human Services, in the company of Chad Driskell (USM's assistant to the president for external affairs) and VPR Cecil Burge.  We wanted to welcome the MDHS director to his post, and emphasize that he can rely on USM as a good partner - a message I think we got across clearly.  More good news: On the ride back to Hattiesburg, Dr. Burge and I (Mr. Driskell stayed on in Jackson) managed to solve about half the world's problems, and are planning another road trip to solve the other half....
 

        Thursday kicked off with a favorite activity - College Council with chairs/directors, college staff, and key "external" staffers like Jeannie Peng in Marketing/PR and Rachel Lowrey, the CoH-assigned development officer.  This is an exciting group to convene.  Given enough time there are precious few things we couldn't accomplish.  But probably two hours at a clip is about all one can expect from these busy hard chargers.... 
        The early afternoon was bittersweet, with HPR hosting a collegial send-off for Lindsey Blom, Rosalie Ward and David Morris, all moving on to new ventures.  Best of luck to them, and good luck to Sue Burchell as she labors to fill the gaps and make it all work.... 
        Later I paid a short visit to the CoH digs at the Gulf Coast Student Services Center, planning with Annie Easterling the distribution of information on the college convocation on August 22, before heading to the Hard Rock Casino for the "Southern Miss Gulf Coast Beach Bash" - part of a rousing run-up to the football season.  Great place, great event.  If you didn't make it, cry your heart out, sports fans - you missed a chance to bid on a Brett Favre-autographed copy of Sports Illustrated; for any price over $375, it could have been yours!
 

Friday found me making one more run to Jackson, this time to chair a meeting of the "Citizens Review Board."  This group meets a federal requirement for broad based, "citizen" oversight of the state's often-struggling child welfare agency.  Once a routine and sharply constrained activity, work with this group is now super-charged in light a federal court order for far-reaching agency reform.  Meetings have grown long and lively, but considerably more meaningful and of greater potential consequence.  I'm glad that USM is part of this spirited movement for change.

I spent the end of last week in Natchez at a conference co-sponsored by the Mississippi Department of Human Services and Southern Christian Services, a private child welfare agency.  I had a paper to co-present on child welfare worker retention with Dr. Joohee Lee, an outstanding up-and-coming assistant professor in the School of Social Work who is making original contributions to the literature on "turnover intention." 

Our session went very well.  But the highlight of the event was casual-yet-serious conversation with the public agency administrators about new opportunities for collaboration between the university and public child welfare.  Don Thompson, the brand new MDHS executive director, inherits a daunting federal court-ordered lawsuit settlement and faces a truly steep learning curve, but the former navy captain gives every indication that he's up to the task.  Kate McMillin, the child welfare division director charged with day-to-day management of the long-troubled agency, brims with energy and enthusiasm.  (Did I mention that Kate is an alumna of USM's School of Social Work?)  Karla Steckler, chief of field operations under Kate, and Patricia Shannon, the principal writer of agency contracts, are top fans of USM based on the School of Social Work's turnaround work in the Forrest County child welfare office. 

The details of our discussions are fascinating, and certainly no secret, but a bit too "dense" to go into here.  Suffice it to say that the opportunities arising for collaboration around service and major system reform of Mississippi's child welfare system are exhilarating.  Hats off to Lori Woodruff and John Reynolds, remarkable social workers and indefatigable USM staffers whose stellar work in Forrest County have opened new doors of possibility.

    A recent conversation with KathyYadrick, chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Systems, and new chair of USM's Council of Chairs, got me to thinking about the pivotal place of the chair-leader in the university structure.  Today's department chair is a far cry from the "spare time" unit administrator of years ago.  The chair is now closer to a kind of 24/7 junior-CEO of their own complex enterprise - and success of the enterprise requires that planning, personnel recruitment and management, budget and finance, organizational development, and 'customer relations' flow together seamlessly.  An increasingly prominent addition to the mix is the need to generate substantial external funding by multiple means.  And yet the level of support that chairs receive is mixed, at best.

    As interim dean, I am exceptionally fortunate to have an outstanding team of chairs.  They are competent and committed, campus and professional servant-leaders, for the most part highly seasoned veterans, intensely loyal to both their units and the university (there's no better example than Kathy Yadrick, by the way).  But I must confess that my chairs are under-supported in the demanding work that they do.  Training and development opportunities afforded them are paltry and piecemeal.  Systematic goal-setting and evaluation efforts are uneven and too dependent on the individual chair's motivation to specify measurable targets and garner feedback on performance.  And financial compensation?  I haven't done the math, but my guess is that five of seven chairs could earn more money on a nine-month contract and teaching in the summer (leave aside mini-session calculations!) than as a 12-month chair with an administrative supplement.  I'm thinking that something in this picture needs fixing, folks.

All days have their lessons and pleasures, but yesterday was especially well packed.  I spent a good part of the morning in the stimulating company of Vafa Kamali and Sue Burchell, trading ideas on aging-related research, education and services.  The social tsunami of aging is upon us, colleagues, and Hattiesburg is on the leading edge of an unprecedented boom in the elder population.  I (and others) see challenge and opportunity here for every unit in the College of Health.  Vafa's new role as coordinator of centers and institutes will be a great help in launching new projects.

Later in the day I had a chance to spend time with Dr. Sheila Davis, our new graduate coordinator in the School of Nursing.  A seasoned scholar and administrator, Sheila is brimming with ideas and energy, and is already "out and about" making solid campus connections.  Welcome, Sheila!

In late afternoon I was privileged to spend a couple of hours with the faculty and staff of Speech and Hearing Sciences.  It was my first time attending a departmental meeting as interim dean, and I must say SHS is one outstanding group, boasting of a complete "package" of academic and clinical components.  Our main topic was strategic planning for the department (including the vital DuBard School and Children's Center) in line with university and college goals.  To be sure, we have some hurdles to overcome, mainly in the realm of resource constraints, but I see only great things happening here.  An unexpected extra treat - John Muma's fishing lure collection!  If you haven't seen it (and John's gorgeous book on lures), you're missing out.  Now, what other college can brag about having a published scholar-angler in its ranks? :-)

In the course of my first full month as interim dean, one question kept coming up - "So, Mike, how's the dean thing going?"  One way or another I kept saying (I hope convincingly), "Great! A bump here and there, an unpleasant surprise or two - but it's been almost nothing but sunshine so far." 

Of course, it doesn't hurt to be sliding into the seat Pete Fos ably occupied for four years during the summer semester, well ahead of frantic fall.  Also easing my transition to "the dean thing": A competent and enthusiastic dean's office staff; an engaged and talented group of chairs/directors that I've worked with for years; trustworthy and accessible executive administrators; and maybe best of all, the sense of energy and commitment that I've found crackling throughout the CoH ranks of faculty and staff.  Could I ask for more?  (Well, maybe for twice as much money in the dean's development account, and for half as many messages flooding my email inbox!)

The purpose of this dean's blog is simple - to share from time to time my perspective (I hope a "big picture" perspective) on moving forward the great work of the College of Health.  Please check out my posts and share any thoughts.  Just kidding about the email inbox :-) .