Hoff rejects chancellor’s view of UM

ORONO – University of Maine President Peter Hoff, challenging “negative and critical” comments made last week by the head of the University of Maine System, said Wednesday the flagship campus is a vital, exciting place with a “culture and direction” that has been responsible for numerous achievements during the past seven years.

Hoff told professors assembled for a Faculty Senate meeting that he was concerned about negative statements regarding the campus attributed to Chancellor Joseph Westphal in a Bangor Daily News article about the newly proposed UMS strategic plan.

The chancellor’s remarks “appear to be quite negative and critical about UMaine’s current state of affairs,” Hoff said.

Commenting on the strategic plan in the NEWS article published last Friday, Westphal said that UM spreads budget cuts “throughout the campus instead of strategically investing in the future,” that it “needs reform and change … in its culture and direction,” and that “people there need to be excited about the place and we need to give them the tools to get vitality back into the institution.”

Noting that he himself has been misquoted in newspapers, Hoff told the faculty, “I am certain that Chancellor Westphal did not say the things that were attributed to him in this regard.”

The draft plan calls for reorganizing the seven universities into four, moving all two-year programs to the community college system, and enhancing the prominence of the flagship campus in Orono.

In his speech Wednesday, which ended with a round of applause, Hoff said UM specifically has invested in “key priorities” such as the library, the honors program and graduate education.

He said UM’s “culture and direction” have been the reason for the flagship campus being able to increase the size of the entering class by 50 percent and add more than 2,000 students; hire “outstanding” new faculty members; triple the amount of research funding; and receive private gifts that “have never been more generous and plentiful.”

People “recognize the vitality and excitement that characterizes us” and that has helped the campus “move forward socially, economically and culturally,” Hoff said. “If the people of Maine would like to give us tools for vitality, let them respond with better pay for our employees who have devoted themselves to UM, seldom complaining, and working long and hard for its success.”

After the meeting the president said that “it was easy to read [the article] as serious criticism of the university,” but that he is confident Westphal “didn’t intend to attack the university.”

The chancellor was unavailable for comment Wednesday evening.

UMS spokesman John Diamond said Hoff simply was assessing “the progress UM has achieved over the past few years as well as the challenges and opportunities ahead of it.”