Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Enrollment in Decline and why didn't Larry Deitz think of that?

Click title for Caleb's top of fold article about SIU's enrollment decline. Kind of looking forward to Chris Wissman's article in the "night life," he does a good summary of how everyone else is going up in the state while SIU goes down. Like a stock going down in an up market, hard to do year after year.

I'm in a hurry today, so need to make this quick. Dunn says, need to do more PR. Wendler says, no money in the budget, but after 5 years I'll get some. Dunn says, I'll change the way I manage the professors to give them credit when they have more majors.

It is a pretty screwed up management system where Deitz gets screwed because Dunn and Wendler don't do the things they need to do. Once Dunn takes control, he carries out the plan old Larry has been asking for in one meeting a month for 4 years.

Just a guess as the band plays "Send in the Clowns."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Personally I prefer the Micheal Robertson (former New York Knicks player) quote "The ship be sinking."

http://www.salukitalk.net/st/viewtopic.php?p=116022#116022

Did you see the board agenda?

PeterG said...

A few years ago a professor told me that Wendler and the boys are "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic."

As far as your link, I don't think the posters have a clue about what is happening at SIUC. I'm sure they mean well, but analysing screwed up messes is best left to the experts. :)

I'm sorry I didn't respond to your earlier comment about the football stadium before. I approved it being posted and couldn't find the blog entry (but I'm busy today working) it was in, part of the problem of blogging too much I guess? The football stadium doesn't really matter in the big picture. Sure it would be nice to build new football palace, but no matter what you aren't going to draw a crowd like Nebraska and make the program break-even. I think fixing the Arena up would be smarter if I had to choose between the two. Already posted about new academic buildings, don't really need them, too expensive, smoke screen because they will never raise the Saluki Way program. Have you seen one of the alumni from your bbs pony up dollar one for the football stadium yet?

One of the realities of our world is that no one has unlimited money. Saluki Way is a list of projects that would be great to have if you had unlimited funds. If you don't have unlimited funds it would be cheaper and better to do the work you can afford and stop wishing for things that are impossible.

I think that Wendler is trying to manage SIU like an architect. Put together a grand plan and leave the details for someone else. The problem is the clients (the tax payers of Illinois, alumni and students) don't want to play.

Sorry if this isn't well written, need to work.

I always enjoy your comments,
Peter

Anonymous said...

What did Hitler and his architect do in the bunker during the last days of the Reich? Scale out a masterful plan for a new, greater, grander Berlin after he won the war (with bombs falling over his head)!

nobody said...

John A. Logan is having the benefits of SIU 70s style marketing, as you have said:

* Wide open opportunities to be first, build something, a new frontier.
* Rank based on merit and leadership.
* Oriented to people and performance.
* Growth and excitement.
* Small town living, great parties, nice people.
* High standards and excellent results.


Logan enrollment reaches an all-time high