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I attended the Department of Theatre and Dance opening performance of Pride & Prejudice last night. A full house enriched a great show. Our theatre program is truly one of the jewels in our academic crown. The faculty and students have found that magical level of interaction indicative of quality programs. They
bring out the best in each other.
A young woman sitting next to me said she had driven up from the coast just to see the performance of "her favorite book." She was not disappointed.
Faculty and staff can now add their physical location to their directory info which is accessed via our website. I firmly believe that it will help students on our campuses if they have a physical location for our offices. It only takes 30 seconds to add this info to your directory listing.
Here's how:
Log into SOAR with your employee ID and password.
Click on "Self Service"
Look under "USM Self Service" and select "Update Online Directory". This screen allows you to choose how your name, contact information, and location details are displayed.
Once completed, select "Save" to record your information. It usually takes a few hours before your updated information appears in the directory.
Please take advantage of this capability to help our students. For assistance, contact the iTech Help Desk at 601.266.4357.
Students have complained to me that the stadium lights seem to be staying on all night. I checked with members of my cabinet and have been told that the problem has been corrected.
The Roberts Stadium is used Monday through Thursday nights for Intramural club sport practices. The lights will be out by no later than 11pm each night. There is now a back-up plan in place to insure that the lights are turned off.
We have several sports clubs (men's soccer, men's and women's rugby, ultimate Frisbee) that compete against other university clubs. The intramural fields stay packed with regular intramural sports. I hope we can soon provide additional intramural/recreational sports fields to meet the needs of our students.
Tailgaters started early.
Gerald MacRath broke away from his Tennessee Titan duties to hang out with the Eagles and one of his biggest fans.
Final score: Golden Eagles 43 -- Tulane 6
My Executive Cabinet and I recently discussed the status of several of our University Standing Committees. As a result of this discussion, we decided that it is time to conduct a full audit of all of our Standing Committees. I have asked Mary Dayne Gregg to take the lead on that project. No doubt, a few of the standing committees and/or their purposes may need to be restructured and some current ad hoc committees may need to be upgraded to standing committees. I expect this audit to improve both our system of committees and the opportunity for faculty, staff and students to serve the University in a more effective manner.
Do any of you remember eating lunch and visiting with your University colleagues in the Charcoal Room? What about ending a busy day by having a time of fellowship with some friends at the University Club that was located in the old Southernaire or in the Peck House?
In the past, our faculty and staff have enjoyed some of these opportunities, and such occasions provided the foundation for that Southern Miss family feeling. About nine months ago, I named two committees to investigate the re-establishment of a University Club on both of our campuses. The
First, let me reassure you that this venture is not coming from University funds. Instead these open houses are financed completely by the reserves left by the original University Club organization. Conestoga is allowing us to use their facility on certain Tuesday evenings at no charge.
Second, let me encourage you to take these opportunities to get to know your colleagues across campus and to see what a University Club has to offer to our faculty and staff. In these difficult economic times, we need each other more than ever as we unite to make our University even stronger. An open house with complimentary hors d'oeuvres sounds pretty good to me!
Not sure you heard that our men's athletic program won the Mississippi Halbrook Award for the highest graduation rate in the Public University Division for the seventh consecutive year. The overall rate for our men's program was 73 percent-- that's about 20 percent higher than national averages.
Congratulations to Athletic Director, Richard Giannini, and his talented staff for setting high goals for success for our student athletes and sticking to their values.
I thought I would write about replacing Cecil Burge when he retires this year, but that is a hopeless task. Replacing Cecil Burge will be next to impossible. He is leaving an amazing legacy as our VP for Research and the bar is set very high for his successor.
The Provost will chair the committee overseeing a national search. I expect many good candidates will be attracted to Southern Miss, not only for our established research enterprise, but also for our great potential.
This came in yesterday's mail. Great compliment to our students and fans.
Dear Dr. Saunders:
I attended the University of Virginia-Southern Miss game last weekend. It was certainly an exciting game, although my Wahoos eventually got worn down by your team. The fact of the win or the loss is not the reason for this letter.
I did want you to know that I was extremely impressed with both the school spirit of your students and alumni, but more particularly in their appropriate response to college football and the competition. Before the game, Virginia had a small tent with some pretzels, nuts, etc. One of the tailgating Southern Miss fans decided that we were certainly suffering, invited us to their much larger tent, and offered us barbecue ribs, barbecue chicken, briskets, and all the trimmings. They went above and beyond in offering hospitality.
After the game we were stopped by at least a dozen students or alumni who paused to say "good game" etc. I thought this was particularly impressive considering the general attitude the you see in students and fans at some schools in the Southeastern Conference.
Congratulations on presiding over a school that sees college sports in the proper perspective.
Yours very truly,
KARL W. BOYLES
One of the best things about the Kansas game was the ride home. Just as we were landing, the flight attendant told us that she had worked a lot of charters for athletic teams and that our guys, by far, were the nicest and best behaved. She said, "They're well brought up!"
Congratulations to our coaches and team for setting good examples on and off the field.
