Progress Report

The overall purpose of this progress report is to discuss how effectively our group has been able to put together a plan to help raise/save funds for The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) to get it out of the budget crisis that has plagued the entire nation. We believe that if the economy continues down the road it currently on, the university will have to raise tuition again for all students, scholarships will be cut, classes will be cut due to instructor manning, ultimately leading to USM closing its doors.

Our group was established in June 2010 during the summer class of ENG333. It consists of Jill Bailey, Shardae Foley, Sarah St. Pierre, and myself, Christine McGill. At the direction of our instructor, Ms. Jill Robinson, we were given the instruction of brainstorming what type of intervention we wanted to pursue. We chose to do a fundraiser weekend, which we will call “Keep the Eagles Soaring”. The theme will be “Don’t Let Our Eagles Become Extinct”. We have met weekly. Our first meeting was on June 26, 2010. We plan on meeting more frequently as required as the date for the event gets closer. The fundraiser weekend will culminate on July 31-August 1, 2010. I fully expect us to meet the challenge of a successful fundraiser for USM.

As of this report being published, we are on target! We have pitched our proposal to USM administration and it has been accepted. After the proposal was accepted, Ms. Bailey began to assess which organizations on USM we could talk to about joining in on the fundraiser and what they would be interested in doing. Our next step is to start advertising for the event (my department). We will design fliers, mailers, posters, contact WUSM, and the Student Print. We will mail applications out to all organizations, clubs, activities on and/or associated with USM. Those applications should be emailed, faxed or mailed back to Ms. St. Pierre, who will work in conjunction with Ms. Foley to determine and keep track of who is doing what for the event weekend. The week prior to the event, we will confirm attendance, gather the donations received and begin the set up on campus. On the day of the event, we plan on having lots of fun!

There were a couple of problems that we thought we thought we ran into. The first problem we felt we had as a group was that we fully didn’t understand that we needed to have our first Skype meeting with our instructor. This misunderstanding caused us to meet again the following evening and work things out. The other problem that I have specifically is that it is difficult for all of us to meet at specific times and that when we do meet, our time is so short and precious that we don’t get all the information to everyone. We have fixed this problem with text messages and email. One final issue that I can think of that may arise is during the event weekend is our weather in southern Mississippi. It is so hot and humid. There may be a problem with the heat and/or storms. We cannot predict what the weather will be doing, and do not have a rain location or date.

I would strongly suggest that there be a maximum effort of all USM students, faculty, administration, alumni and local business to participate in this event. All parties named have a vested interest in keeping USMs doors open for current and future students.

Overall, I believe that this can be a fruitful event for USM. If this proves to be beneficial in assisting to help alleviate raising the cost of tuition, keeping scholarships alive, keeping qualified instructors on board, and preventing classes from being cancelled then perhaps the administration will look for future events such as these to “keep our Eagles soaring.”

Thank you for your time. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me at christine.mcgill@eagles.usm.edu.