A press release sent out by the FAMU administration last
week said that the Joint College of Engineering Governance Council passed a
resolution on May 20, 2015 to shift the COE fiscal agent duties from FAMU to
FSU. The FAMU voting representatives on the Council are President Elmira Mangum
(or her designee), Provost Marcella David, Vice-President for Research Timothy
E. Moore, and Chief Financial Officer Dale Cassidy.
The FAMU press release did not state how the FAMU
representatives voted on the resolution. But an investigative story published
today by the Florida Times-Union reported that “the committee agreed
unanimously” to the change.
According to the newspaper Mangum “said she kept trustees updated about the College of Engineering changes, but backup documentation that she shared with the newspaper shows her report lacked details about the transfer of duties to FSU that raised the most concern.”
The Times-Union also reported that “members of the FAMU
board say they have yet to hear directly from Mangum about what she had agreed
to — or why.”
This is not the first time that a FAMU president has chosen
to go along with a planned transfer of the COE fiscal agent duties to FSU that was inconsistent
with university policy.
Back in 2007, Interim President Castell V. Bryant told the Tallahassee Democrat that she
had no problem with a legislative plan to make FSU the fiscal agent for the COE instead of FAMU.
The FAMU Board of Trustees met days later to reaffirm its
policy that FAMU should be fiscal agent for the COE. It then sent out a press release stating that: “During an emergency meeting of the
Florida A&M University Board of Trustees Monday (April 9), board members
decided in a unanimous vote to let Florida legislators know they want the
fiscal control of the joint FAMU-FSU College of Engineering to remain with FAMU.”