Seventy-Fifth Year of Publication
trojan
Volume OH. Number 44
University of Southern California
1912 — 1986
Monday, November 3, 1986
Jack Steele quits unexpectedly
Administrative differences cited in business dean's resignation
By Danielle Sanford
Staff Writer
The resignation of Jack Steele, dean of the School of Business Administration, may have been the. result of administrative differences between he and President James Zumberge.
Steele, who resigned on Thursday, was not available for comment, but Joan Hill director of public relations for the school, said Steele and Zumberge reached a culmination of differences, and Steele finally realized that it is "Zumberge's university.”
"The deans and the department chairmen serve at the wish of the president," Hill said.
"When there are differences, the president takes precedence," Hill said. Steele felt that he was not accomplishing all that he could, she said. "He felt (the resignation) was for the good of USC and the good of the business school."
Members of Steele's office staff were notified of his sudden resignation in a memo distributed on Thursday. His resignation took effect immediately.
Cornelius Pings, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, accepted Steele's resignation, but was unavailable for comment on Friday.
However, in a news release, Pings said, 'The university as a whole has benefited from (Steele's) contributions."
Janet Chaudhuri, assistant provost, will serve as liaison between Pings and the selection committee in charge of finding a replacement for Steele. However, no definite time frame has been set for the selection process, Chaudhuri said.
In the interim, Doyle Williams, dean of the School of Accounting, will serve as interim dean.
Steele joined the university as dean of the School of Business Administration in 1975. Earlier he held the same position at Texas Tech University for five years.
He has taught at Stanford University, the University of Kansas, Harvard University and Texas A&M University.
Steele has also served as general manager for the New York operations for the Xerox Education Group.
Hill said Steele has not announced his future plans but said he serves on the boards of several organizations. Although unsure which organizations or how manv he might be involved in, Hill said, "I'm sure he will continue to serve on those boards."
PETER ZAKHARY DAILY TROJAN
Here comes the bride? Students paraded their Halloween costumes Friday.
Dumping of excess books creates many objections
them, and I have other duties," Wise said.
In the past, library employees did make arrangements with other organizations to pick up the books, but "people made great arrangements and then left us with all the books," Wise said.
Although a number of organizations that came forward will, in the future, be allo.wed to take the library's extra books, students will not since the library's first choice is to sell the books, Wise said. Students can take books only if they can prove they will put them to "good use," he added.
Computer aids administration
MIT] Stanford look to learn from management system
By Hortensia Lopez
Staff Writer
Following the book-dumping at Doheny Library last week, several students and private organizations have said, in the future, they will take the books that will not fit on the shelves of the library.
Although the library held a book sale last week to get rid of most of its excess books, the nearly 2,000 books that were not sold were thrown away to make room for new books.
Two professors from the California Institute of Technology, the California Prison System, the president of the Cape of Good Hope Society and three students contacted the library after hearing that books were being discarded, said Lee Wise, Gifts and Exchange librarian.
Last Monday, Wise said that the university had to throw the books away because it could not afford to pay the cost of shipping them elsewhere and the library needed the space.
By Friday, he said, the Cape of Good Hope Society offered to pay the expenses of shipping the books to South Africa and distributing them.
"We give them to groups that will take all of (the books) within 48 hours because we need the room," Wise said.
Wise said that the number of books left over from the book sale was so great that they had to move furniture out of some rooms to make additional temporary space.
Library employees do not make telephone calls to charities and organizations to offer the books.
"I'd be the one to be calling
By Lori Grange
Staff Writer
in November 1981, the university's top administrators called for a revolution.
The target for overthrow was apparent: a costly, ineffective, time-consuming computer information system that could meet neither the growing financial nor technological needs of the expanding research university.
With a platform called revenue center management, a system of decentralized control in w'hich deans would be directly responsible for developing, managing and financing their schools' budgets, the university began its attack by surveying financial information systems at other institutions.
What it found was an assortment of inadequate systems that could not keep pace with the demands of the new revenue cen-
ter management plan.
At that point administrators recognized the onlv viable solution to the problem. Thev would try something no other school had tried before: to develop their own on-line, completely computerized system.
In February 1982, Administrative Information Systems was bom, and the revolution had begun.
The story of how the university developed its own computer information program to manage its financial and administrative affairs is true — just ask administrators.
Then ask administrators at Cornell, Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology or any of a number of top-name, private research institutions who all have visited this campus to study the system; hoping to sink their teeth into the revolu-
Student senator gives up post
By Bryon Okada
Staff Writer
The resignation of a graduate student senator last week has raised the number of vacant seats in the Student Senate to two.
Ahmad Ghaith Al-Sowaidi, a graduate student representing the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, verbally announced his resignation to Wally Bobkiewicz, senate president, after he received a letter signed by Bobkiewicz and three other senators that suggested his resignation.
Mark Decker, vice president of the senate, said inat Al-Sowaidi had been "delinquent in representing his constituencies at Student Senate meetings."
Though Decker said Al-Sowaidi must have had a good reason for his repeated absences from senate meetings, he said Al-Sowaidi was simply not there to voice the views of his constituents.
Decker said that he and Bobkiewicz, along with two other senators, sent a letter to Al-
Sowaidi saying that he should resign if he could no longer fulfill his obligations.
"It's a normal thing," Decker said of the resignation. "It happens every semester."
He said sometimes resignations indicate "a positive statement toward academics. We're students too."
Bruce Clausen, graduate assembly speaker and chairman of the assembly's meetings, said that Al-Sowaidi missed more than three meetings despite the fact that only three absences are permitted under the senate's constitution.
Clausen said he tried to contact Al-Sowaidi by telephone and also by mail, but received no response.
Apparently before the -letter reached Al-Sowaidi, Bobkiewicz ran into him on the street and Al-Sowaidi agreed to resign his post, Clausen said. This verbal resignation was announced at Wednesday's meeting.
Clausen said that although the assembly is still waiting for a formal written resignation
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tion started four years ago.
"The fun thing about this is that people doubt it's going to work. Thev just don't believe the system will help them. Then when you show them, it's a very rewarding experience," said Dennis Dougherty, vice president of finance.
The system comprises four programs which help 23 deans manage their schools more effectively than they could at any other university, Dougherty said.
The programs were designed, he said, to allow the actual users and managers of operations to control their own financial and administrative affairs, hence the decentralized approach. In fact, the users helped develop their own systems.
"The participation of the users is a key ingredient to the success of the system," said Lyn Hutton, senior vice president of administration. "Because everyone who uses it helped develop it, there is a sense of ownership toward it."
The first system, the Financial Accounting System, was implemented over a 10-month period. The system immediately provides and processes to users information in five areas: purchasing, accounts payable, cashier, general ledger and budget administration, according to the university's 1984 financial report.
This system allows deans to access computers and receive facts instantly on their budgets and accounts, purchase orders and other financial matters, the report says.
The Budget Development System, which was implemented in the spring of 1983, creates and updates employee payroll records and allows deans to re-budget their programs easily, Dougherty said.
"Each fiscal year (beginning (Continued on page 3)