Concerns at Maine Maritime Academy

How would you feel? Suppose you are the captain or mate of the historic schooner Bowdoin, and you have been performing your job in an exemplary fashion for years, as attested to by the perfect condition of the vessel, and by the rave reviews of every group of students and visitors that you have taken sailing on Penobscot Bay and far beyond. One day during the busy fall sailing season you are called into Maine Maritime Academy’s administration building and told that, in an effort to reduce costs, your position has been eliminated, and you are to be laid off.

But don’t worry, a new position much like yours is opening, and you are welcome to apply for the job, but the salary will be about 25 percent less than yours. And the jobs of the captain and mate of MMA’s research vessel RV Argo have also been eliminated in the same manner.

How would you feel? Suppose you are a faculty member at Maine Maritime Academy, and you have been working since September without a contract, and during contract negotiations you are told by the administration that the college cannot afford to give you a raise sufficient to make some partial progress in closing the gap between your pay and that at comparable institutions, including the other state maritime academies.

How would you feel? Well, you would feel disappointed, to say the least, but you might realize that the college must contain costs, and if budgets are tight then that’s just the way it is, right? But wait a minute. Why is the school’s budget under such a squeeze? Enrollment is at an all-time high. There have been regular increases in tuition and fees. The state has been making increases to the college’s yearly appropriation. These should be the best financial times in MMA’s history. What’s going on here?

A look at the structure of the academy’s upper administration adds to your confusion. With job titles such as “Special Projects Coordinator,” “Special Assistant to the President,” “Vice President of Administration,” “Director of Administrative Operations and Compliance,” and so on, these positions, with salaries ranging from nearly $70,000 to more than $90,000, are as expensive as they are nondescript.

Then, in September, President Leonard Tyler announces that the retiring “Director of Advancement” will be replaced with not one person, but with two. Are all of these positions needed to run a small college of slightly more than 700 students? Is the administration immune to cost containment?

We faculty members at Maine Maritime Academy have been wondering about these questions and are striving to find some answers. We are assisted by the Maine State Employees Association (MSEA), which represents all MMA non-administrative employees. The answers do not come easily.

As an example, consider our attempts to learn details about administrative compensation. Our thinking is that changes in administrative salaries (or the lack of changes) would be a good indicator of the health of the college’s budget, so we have requested a history of salary adjustments for upper administrators. At the University of Maine, this sort of data is on file at the university library; however, at MMA, also a publicly funded institution, the Faculty Union must have MSEA file an official request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), also known as the “Sunshine Law.” Now we wait while the lawyer engaged by the administration (at school expense) drags his feet in obtaining the requested data.

We learned of a report generated in 1997 by Palmer Associates of Burlington, Vt., whereby MMA’s Board of Trustees funded a study of our administration’s salaries and how they compare to those at like institutions. As a response to our FOIA request, we received an apparently edited portion of that report, which revealed that our administrators are quite well paid, with salaries ranging from 100 percent to more than 130 percent of median levels of other schools in the comparison sample. The MMA Faculty Union is currently at an impasse in contract negotiations, unable to obtain a commitment to bring faculty salaries up from well below industry norms, while our top-heavy administration receives those generous salaries. How would you feel?

As we await the scheduling of a fact-finding and arbitration pro-cess, we have been hoping that the MMA Board of Trustees would recognize that items that directly impact the students, such as the Bowdoin, the RV Argo and the faculty, should receive a high level of priority in the budget. At first we were heartened when the board chair, Bill Haggett, took an early interest in our negotiations, saying that he recognizes that the faculty are “the lifeblood of the academy.” However, at the trustees’ quarterly public meeting held Nov. 3, the tone was somewhat muddled. One trustee defended the Bowdoin and RV Argo cuts saying that the trustees carefully monitor all spending at MMA, while Chairman Haggett at the same time was unaware of the new administrative position just created, nor of how much cost savings will result from the Bowdoin and RV Argo layoffs.

Based on the above concerns, many MMA employees, both faculty and others, are struggling to maintain a good morale. Yes, we continue to serve the students and provide a truly excellent education, but it’s a difficult task, made even more so by the divisions described above. We also support the academy’s recently an-nounced $21 million capital campaign, which will raise important funds for scholarships and infrastructure improvements.

What we ask of the Maine Maritime Academy trustees is that they work with the college’s employees toward achieving a work environment that will enable MMA to thrive.

Bill Corbett is an associate professor of physics at Maine Maritime Academy. Thirty-one other faculty and staff members at MMA also signed this commentary.