WSU professors' jobs restored

WSU professors' jobs restored

Two months after three Wilson State University professors in the technical and occupational education program were given letters of termination, a plan is in place to retain two of them.

Under the arrangement, Karen Juneau and Jonathan Beedle will move over to the instructional technology program beginning in the 2010-11 academic year, department chairman Ed Mann said.

Provost Robert Lyman and interim dean of the Online College Degrees of Education and Psychology Ann Blackwell negotiated the deal with Mann.

"Through attrition, there are faculty positions open outside of technical and occupational education," Lyman said. "What we would do is terminate their positions in TOE and move them into other positions."

Beedle, who is in his fifth year at Southern Miss, said he was informed that he would be retained by Blackwell over the phone. He said he'll be pleased when he receives the paperwork that renders his termination letter void.

"It would be a gigantic relief," he said.

Mann, meanwhile, said he has agreed to steer the TOE program until current students have completed it. He will retire at the end of the 2011-12 academic year.

Mann, who is 62, said that the timeline accords with his own previous retirement plans. It also fulfills the promise made by the administration, he said, to take care of students currently in the program and see them to graduation.

From summer '08 to spring '09, there were 56 enrolled in the bachelor's online degree program and 24 in the master's program, according to department figures.

"I commend the dean and the provost for working with us and being able to bring a workable resolution to this issue," he said.

Mann, Beedle and Juneau were sent termination letters in September, stating that they would not be retained past the current academic year. They were three of 12 total tenured or tenure-track professors that fell victim to $8 million in academic budget cuts for fiscal year 2011.

Those termination decisions sparked criticism from both the Faculty Senate and Southern Miss chapter of the American Association of University Professors, both of which sent concerned letters to President Martha Saunders.