[ale] [OT] Merger of Southern Polytechnic State with Kennesaw State

Mon Nov 4 15:45:15 EST 2013

David,

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.

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.

Regards,

Jonathan

On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 12:18 PM, David Tomaschik
<david at systemoverlord.com>wrote:

> 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.
>
> Unfortunately, I can't find line-item budgets for either school to break
> out the administrative overhead, but it's definitely not trivial.
>
> KSU's "president's cabinet"[1] salaries add up to at least $1.4 million:
>
> Dr. Dan Papp, President: $319k
> Dr. Ken Harmon, Provost: $270k
> Dr. Randy Hinds, CIO/CBO/VP: $192k
> Dr. Jerome Ratchford, VP: $150k
> Mike Harders, VP: $40k [Partial year]
> Arlethia Perry-Johnson, VP: $164k
> Dr. Flora Devine, VP Legal: $143k
> Dr. Erik Malewski: [No data]
> Dr. Maureen McCarthy: $76k
> Vaughn Williams, Athletic Director: [No data]
> Lynda K. Johnson: $72k.
>
> (All salary data from "Open Georgia", FY2012 records.[2])
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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?
>
> David
>
> [1] http://www.kennesaw.edu/president/cabinet.php
> [2] http://open.georgia.gov
> [3] http://www.usg.edu/fiscal_affairs/documents/usg_budget_fy12.pdf
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 4:13 PM, Jonathan Meek <jonathan.l.meek at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> 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.
>>
>> Below is the news article announcing the merger: (link 1 at the end of
>> the email)
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> I have added the change.org 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.
>>
>> link 1:
>> http://www.spsu.edu/newsroom/news/Consolidation_initial_announcement.htm
>> link 2:
>> http://mdjonline.com/view/full_story/23971909/article-SPSU-community-petitions-to-stop-merger
>> ?
>> link 3:
>> http://www.change.org/petitions/university-system-of-georgia-board-of-regents-stop-kennesaw-state-from-merging-with-southern-polytechnic-state
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
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>
>
> --
> David Tomaschik
> OpenPGP: 0x5DEA789B
> http://systemoverlord.com
> david at systemoverlord.com
>
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