So there we all were, anxious, hoarse from cheering, nearly spent,  and the game went into overtime.  D’Andre Brown had been carried off the field earlier with a broken leg and things were looking tough.  The team’s best bet was to block an attempted field goal by our opponents (and how often does that happen?)  We held our breath, the ball was snapped and Michael Magee (from Magee, Mississippi) came round the corner and batted it away.  Final score:  Southern Miss 30, Troy 27. 

It just doesn’t get any better than that.

Thousands of Golden Eagles fans are en route to New Orleans to cheer the football team on in the New Orleans Bowl.  It’s rewarding to have watched them come back from a mid-season slump to this happy finish.  Our players and coaches have a lot of heart, and heart makes all the difference.

Speaking of heart, we participated in an awards ceremony last night recognizing a successful Heartwalk.  Southern Miss employees truly stepped up on that beautiful day in September to put us over the top and exceed all our goals.  We had hoped for 500 walkers…we recruited 1200!  We had hoped to raise $95,000…we raised $98,000.  To all involved I offer my heartfelt J thanks.

I just received the final report on behalf of this year’s campaign for the United Way of Southeast Mississippi.  It was a successful campaign.  We surpassed our goal of $100K with a final total of $110,512.26!  Congratulations to our team captains and a special thanks to our co-chairs Mike Giles and Dolly Loyd.

You are in for a treat if you are planning to attend commencement exercises on Friday.  Our guest speaker is Dr. Betty Siegel, a long-serving university president who is passionate about education.  She’s a great storyteller and riveting speaker.

Dr. Betty Siegel, of Kennesaw, is Distinguished Chair of the Siegel Institute for Leadership, Ethics & Character and President Emeritus at Kennesaw State University. Dr. Siegel was the first woman to head an institution in the 35‐unit University System of Georgia and was the longest serving woman president of a public university in the nation. She was President of Kennesaw State from 1981‐2006. Under her administration Kennesaw State grew from 4000 students with 15 baccalaureate‐degree programs to an

18,000 student University with 55 baccalaureate and graduate degree programs. Dr. Siegel is a long‐time member and former chair of the Board of Directors of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU). She serves on the Commission on Women in Higher Education as well as  numerous corporate and community Boards. Dr. Betty Siegel and her husband Joel have two sons who

are professors and two grandsons.

Since her retirement from Kennesaw State, Dr. Siegel has implemented many global initiatives that have  taken her worldwide to spread the message of leadership, ethics and character. The signature program of Dr. Betty Siegel is The Oxford Conclave on Global Ethics, an initiative in higher education launched in 2005. The Conclave serves as a catalyst for a movement to renew higher education’s commitment to the

development of ethical leadership, and to explore its role as a change agent for social responsibility. As a visiting scholar, Dr. Siegel spent three months in 2007 at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, developing new programs for leadership development and expansion.

There has been quite a bit of discussion in recent weeks about the use of customized textbooks at Southern Miss.  Although the important points of debate have been well covered in the media, I thought I’d throw in my two cents.

Southern Miss is a place that has always met, head on, the intellectual and human issues of the day.  That includes doing whatever we can to make a college education accessible and affordable for our students. 

The spiraling cost of textbooks is an issue of great concern, not only in Mississippi, but at colleges and universities across the country.  Our Faculty Senate has been discussing solutions to the problem and the Student Government Association is well-aware of the complexity of the issue.   It is not an easy problem to solve but we will do all we can to minimize the impact of high textbook costs to our students. 

At this point I am not prepared to call for an outright ban.  When customized textbooks provide superior quality materials tailored to the unique needs of a course, they are worth the price.  Any royalties and income that departments receive from customized textbooks and put back into the instructional process to provide for the needs of our students.  One good example of these monies being put to good use is the purchase of computers for the Math Zone.  The Math Zone is a project that has proven to help students by producing double-digit improvement in pass-rates in college algebra.  Without the computers, the project would not have been possible.

Still, the use of customized textbooks must be reviewed carefully and should only be considered when suitable publications are not available.  I have asked the Provost to work with the faculty to develop appropriate guidelines for their adoption.