<div dir="ltr">David, <div><br></div><div>Thanks for the great points on budgeting and my mind has been trying to reconcile that one as well. I am a numbers guy at heart and have stood on the side of fiscal responsibility when it has come to things within SPSU. Personally, the more frustrating part is the fact that this was announced on Friday and the vote on the merger set to happen 11 days from the announcement. It appears that the SPSU staff/faculty has been not included in the decision to be made. At best, this is just a bad PR thing from University System of Georgia for not doing a good job of in timing the announcement. At worst, this comes across as a very heavy-headed move by the Chancellor of the Board of Regents where a bigger school with more need of resources is engulfing a smaller school without any considerations to people associated with the smaller school. </div>
<div><br></div><div>For me, it would have been nice to be able to find the financial line-item records of both institutions and have someone in the Board of Regents explain the merger well in advance to the November 12th meeting. As an SPSU alumnus, I shouldn't be finding out only a few days before the merger that the merger is set to be voted on and the administration of SPSU didn't find out until the day before the merger was publicly announced. Transparency would have gone a long way in this whole thing but now I think the Board of Regents will be stuck doing some form of damage control given the amount of student/faculty/alumni outrage this seems to have generated. </div>
<div><br></div><div>Regards, </div><div><br></div><div>Jonathan</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 12:18 PM, David Tomaschik <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:david@systemoverlord.com" target="_blank">david@systemoverlord.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">I don't know about students or about SPSU faculty/staff, but I remember this was actively being discussed when I worked at KSU in 2011. It probably is a hostile takeover more than a merger, and I suspect it would have negative implications for SPSU students, but I also understand why they are doing it. The USG is seriously top-heavy. Lots of relatively small schools (SPSU being one, KSU is less "small" but still not the scale of GSU/GT/UGA), each with their own President, Provost, Deans, IT staff, etc.<div>
<br></div><div>Unfortunately, I can't find line-item budgets for either school to break out the administrative overhead, but it's definitely not trivial.</div><div><br></div><div>KSU's "president's cabinet"[1] salaries add up to at least $1.4 million:</div>
<div><br></div><div>Dr. Dan Papp, President: $319k</div><div>Dr. Ken Harmon, Provost: $270k</div><div>Dr. Randy Hinds, CIO/CBO/VP: $192k</div><div>Dr. Jerome Ratchford, VP: $150k</div><div>Mike Harders, VP: $40k [Partial year]</div>
<div>Arlethia Perry-Johnson, VP: $164k</div><div>Dr. Flora Devine, VP Legal: $143k</div><div>Dr. Erik Malewski: [No data]</div><div>Dr. Maureen McCarthy: $76k</div><div>Vaughn Williams, Athletic Director: [No data]</div>
<div>
Lynda K. Johnson: $72k.</div><div><br><div><div class="gmail_extra">(All salary data from "Open Georgia", FY2012 records.[2])</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra">Yes, $1.4 million is a drop in the bucket compared to KSU's $320M FY2012 budget[3], but this is just the very top layer of all that administration.</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra">When I worked there, I went through furloughs and budget problems that made it difficult for us to serve the needs of the students. My department was lucky in that we had staff (myself, my manager, and my director in particular) who were strong open source proponents, so we built solutions without spending money on licensing fees & support contracts, but other departments depended heavily on those.</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra">I don't know that KSU and SPSU merging is the right combination, but the USG has 35 separate colleges/universities, each with its own administration and administrative overhead -- maybe there's a better way to spend that money?</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra">David</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra">[1] <a href="http://www.kennesaw.edu/president/cabinet.php" target="_blank">http://www.kennesaw.edu/president/cabinet.php</a></div>
<div class="gmail_extra">[2] <a href="http://open.georgia.gov/" target="_blank">http://open.georgia.gov</a></div><div class="gmail_extra">[3] <a href="http://www.usg.edu/fiscal_affairs/documents/usg_budget_fy12.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.usg.edu/fiscal_affairs/documents/usg_budget_fy12.pdf</a></div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div class="h5">On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 4:13 PM, Jonathan Meek <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jonathan.l.meek@gmail.com" target="_blank">jonathan.l.meek@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
</div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div class="h5"><div dir="ltr"><div><div>
For those of you haven't heard, the Board of Regents is proposing a merger between Southern Polytechnic State University and Kennesaw State University in order to control budget costs to the University System of Georgia this past Friday. The merger will happen in Fall of 2015 should the plan be approved. <br>
<br>Below is the news article announcing the merger: (link 1 at the end of the email)<br></div><br></div>I am reaching out to the ale list because I feel this affects you guys as much as it does me, especially the ALE-NW group since we all meet at SPSU for our monthly meetings. I am drumming as much attention as I can to this because I haven't heard anything on the local news about it and hope that there will at least be a conversation before it goes for approval by the Board of Regents. <br>
<div><br>Personally, I believe this a horrible move given that SPSU serves such a
unique popluation (us nerds). The SPSU staff wasn't notified
about the proposal until the day before the merger was announced (link 2
at the end of the email). As well as it has been decided that the president of Kennesaw State University will be the new president of the merged schools which shall be called Kennesaw State. This feels like hostile takeover rather than
merger. <br><br></div><div>I have added the <a href="http://change.org" target="_blank">change.org</a> petition that students of SPSU have created in order to help get our voice heard on this issue (link 3 at the end of the email). If you have any questions or want to talk further about this news, feel free to email me off list.<br>
</div><div><br>link 1: <a href="http://www.spsu.edu/newsroom/news/Consolidation_initial_announcement.htm" target="_blank">http://www.spsu.edu/newsroom/news/Consolidation_initial_announcement.htm</a><br>link 2: <a href="http://mdjonline.com/view/full_story/23971909/article-SPSU-community-petitions-to-stop-merger" target="_blank">http://mdjonline.com/view/full_story/23971909/article-SPSU-community-petitions-to-stop-merger</a>?<br>
</div><div>link 3: <a href="http://www.change.org/petitions/university-system-of-georgia-board-of-regents-stop-kennesaw-state-from-merging-with-southern-polytechnic-state" target="_blank">http://www.change.org/petitions/university-system-of-georgia-board-of-regents-stop-kennesaw-state-from-merging-with-southern-polytechnic-state</a><br>
<br></div><div>Regards, <br><br></div><div>Jonathan<br></div></div>
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<br></div></blockquote></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br>David Tomaschik<br>OpenPGP: 0x5DEA789B<br><a href="http://systemoverlord.com" target="_blank">http://systemoverlord.com</a><br>
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