Daily MU embarassment

[teedubya]

Missouri hires Lay professor from within



COLUMBIA, Mo. — The University of Missouri has turned to one of its own professors to fill a long-vacant endowed chair named for the late Enron Corp. founder Ken Lay, an alumnus who became synonymous with his company's corporate accounting scandal.


Joseph Haslag, a faculty member since 2000 and executive director of the Economic Policy Analysis and Research Center, is the new Kenneth L. Lay Chair in Economics, the university announced late Monday. The job has been vacant for nearly a decade as the university struggled to fill a position created by a $1.1 million donation in Enron stock that Lay made to his alma mater.

Haslag, who will earn $165,000 annually, plus an additional $20,000 in yearly research money, said he has no qualms about taking the job.


"He gave the gift to the university in good faith," Haslag said of Lay, who died of a heart attack two months after his May 2005 conviction, before he could be sentenced. "My job is not to deal with whatever the name (connotes), but to create and disseminate knowledge with the resources I've been given."


Four outside candidates were offered the job since Lay's 1999 donation, with each rejecting the position after their own schools responded with counteroffers.


After the most recent rejection by a University of Pittsburgh scholar in 2006, Arts and Sciences Dean Michael O'Brien sought to expand the search to internal candidates, Haslag said.
University rules stipulate that "those appointed to endowed chairs or professorships must be newly recruited to the university and must add materially to the university's quality."


But according to a Jan. 9 memo by then-interim President Gordon Lamb, exceptions to that rule are allowed "in unique cases" — including in cases "where there has been a full and complete external search ... that has failed on at least two consecutive searches."


Provost Brian Foster, the Columbia campus' chief academic officer, said, "It is not that unusual" for sitting professors to wind up with endowed chairs.
He acknowledged that the university can't always respond to the generous counteroffers some campuses make to keep prized professors from jumping ship, a tactic he said Missouri also uses.


"Whenever you search for people to fill an endowed chair, you're looking for really good people," Foster said. "And really good people are hard to get in external searches. They're often in jobs where (their employers) are going to move heaven and earth to keep them. ... That just goes with the territory."


At one point in the protracted search for a Lay chair, Haslag was part of the search committee, documents released to The Associated Press under the state's open records law show.


But David Mandy, the economics department chairman who helped lead the search, said Haslag was not a search committee member when he sought the job.


Lay was born in southern Missouri before moving to Columbia as a teenager with his father, a Baptist pastor. He received bachelor's and master's degrees from the university in 1964 and 1968, respectively.
In 2005, Lay asked his alma mater to redirect the proceeds from his donation to help Hurricane Katrina evacuees in Houston, the city where he rose to prominence as a corporate, civic and philanthropic leader as well as a confidant of President George W. Bush and his father, the first President Bush.


The university refused that request and a subsequent one by a Lay attorney to return the unspent endowment to offset Lay's legal fees.
Lay donated the Enron stock to Missouri in 1999, two years before the company's plunge into bankruptcy cost thousands their jobs and wiped out billions of Enron stock held by company retirees and other investors. The university sold its 16,500 shares of Enron stock before the company's collapse, with the endowment growing to nearly $2 million with state matches and interest.

[kcchiefsus]

Who gives a shit? Seriously. You dumbass gaybundle of sticks fans are reaching.

[Stewie]

Ken Lay and Gary Forsee. Now THERE are a couple of people to lead you down the hall of shame.

[Silock]

404 Embarrassment not found

[eazyb81]

a swing and a miss.

[Tits McGee]

What kind of fantasy land are ku fans living in?
Do I need to a little digging?
I'm sure one of your alums never made a mistake.