MY MEMORIES

Charles Glenn Petersen

1983 - Mississippi Years

Mississippi State University (continued)

About this time the Department Chairman decided to step down to a faculty teaching position. Then things started to fall apart. He stayed on one more year so we could find an outside replacement. Then we had an interim chairman for a year who lived elsewhere and had been one of our married female faculty’s long time out-of-town liaison. He drove in on Monday morning arriving about noon and left Friday at noon, obviously no leadership there. The following year we had the head of the Math Department doing double duty. It was a mess. We finally got 3 outside candidates to agree to come to campus for an interview. One backed out before he arrived, he took a job elsewhere. The other two came, one was obviously superior to the other but the faculty committee decided he was a New York Jew and wouldn’t end up coming to Mississippi, so a job was offered to the other.

It didn’t take long before the afore mentioned Math Chairman who became Dean of the College of Arts and Science and was well liked, decided to fire our Computer Science Chairman, who had been in that position only two years. I agreed, this guy was worthless. We had just moved into our own Computer Science building, a refurbished old dormitory. It turned out to be a great facility for us. We offered a joint program with the Electrical Engineering Department called Computer Engineering. The Dean of Engineering saw an opportunity to gain control of the Computer Science Department. Arts and Sciences Dean saw it as an easy way to get rid of the Computer Science Chairman by getting rid of the entire Computer Science Department. It solved a lot of problems for Arts and Sciences since financially we didn’t fit well with Arts departments. Our salaries were higher, more inline with Engineers, and our growing need for more expensive equipment. So we were moved to Engineering and were stuck with the Department Chairman for another 3 years.