The Mississippi State Faculty Senate recently released the results of the 2007 Robert Holland Faculty Senate Faculty Confidence in Administrators Survey. Some of the major concerns indicated in the survey dealt with the budget and the lack of funding for the faculty’s salaries and retention. Several faculty members also expressed concerns about President Robert “Doc” Fogelsong.
Faculty Senate president Robert Wolverton said the survey was sent out to all faculty and participation was completely optional.
“Roughly 481 [faculty members] responded, which is about 40 percent of the faculty,” Wolverton said. “So, it isn’t an overwhelming number, but it’s reasonable and a little better than we normally expect.”
Respondents were asked to rank administrators on a scale of one to five, one being the lowest and five being highest, and also to offer written comments about some of the positive and negative aspects of the university. Respondents were told all comments would be published unedited and complete anonymity would be guaranteed, Wolverton said.
Foglesong received harsh criticism in some of the unedited responses for his lack of experience in academia. Others said he lacked the ability to communicate and relate to the faculty effectively.
One respondent wrote: “I would like to see President Foglesong work more with the faculty and staff to understand their issues. He seems very good with working with the students, but he needs to transfer some of that energy to understanding the needs of the faculty.”
Wolverton said he believes that in time, some of the issues with the faculty and Foglesong will be worked out as Foglesong learns to relate to the faculty and their concerns better.
“He spent 30 years in the military culture where things are done in a very certain type of way, and when he reached the level he had reached, things were done pretty well nearly always from the top down,” Wolverton said.
Despite many negative responses from the survey, the numbers used in ranking Foglesong indicated that 65 percent of respondents gave the president satisfactory to high rankings.
“I think it is just a matter of time in order for some of the faculty’s issues with the new administration to be worked out,” Wolverton said. “The virtue [Foglesong] is having to learn is patience.”
Another big concern of survey respondents is the low salaries MSU faculty are paid.
Offering considerably lower salaries plays a major role in the university’s trouble in recruiting and retaining faculty, Wolverton said.
“We can bring in some good faculty, but once they become a little bit known, we usually can’t compete- and we lose them,” he said.
It is necessary for the university to recruit more faculty in order to bring more students to the campus, he said.
Other budget concerns expressed in the survey dealt with the need for more funding for the library and for graduate students and graduate programs.
“If you were to look at the stipends we have for our graduate students and compared them to other institutions, they’re pitiful,” Wolverton said. “In order to bring our graduate program up to a more competitive level, we really have to have higher stipends. We have to have better coverages for them as well.”
Foreign language graduate student Peyton Hunter said she thinks the stipends are too low.
“I make what would probably be considered the medium range for stipends, and it’s hard to live off of,” Hunter said. “Bills come out to be more than my first paycheck of each month, and … all the bills are due at the beginning of the month.”
Even though graduate assistant positions come with a tuition remission, which is a certain amount off the tuition that the student has to pay, the student is still left with the rest of the tuition to pay, she said.
“I don’t pay for the rest of my tuition from my stipends because there is not enough money,” Hunter said. “I have to use money from a savings account that has money saved from when I was an undergraduate.”
Wolverton added that the survey pointed out some definite positives for the university.
“One of the major strengths perceived by the faculty is the people. We are not an elitist school,” Wolverton said. “We really are a people’s university.