UMS plan earns praise, concern on Orono campus System reorganization explained at forum

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ORONO – University of Maine System leaders, calling a draft strategic plan for the system an exciting reaffirmation of the Orono campus’s role and mission, said Tuesday that the proposal, for the first time, would allow the land grant institution to reach its full potential.

While pleased overall that the plan emphasizes the University of Maine’s prominent position among the seven campuses, administrators, faculty and other employees nevertheless voiced a steady stream of concerns during the first of the public forums being held statewide on the proposal.

The draft plan calls for, among other things, reorganizing the seven universities into four and shifting all two-year programs to the community college system.

During Tuesday’s forum, participants questioned the community college system’s ability to effectively take on all of the two-year programs, aired concerns about the lack of faculty and local involvement in developing the draft plan, and wondered aloud about the number of staff positions that might be lost to centralization of many business and administrative functions.

History professor Richard Blanke expressed misgivings about the university system turning over its two-year courses “to the former vocational technical institutes … [that] do not currently even begin to meet the requirements of a community college as that term is understood elsewhere in the country.”

Blanke also took the administration to task for not including University College at Bangor in its plan, and said the omission “suggests a carelessness or a callousness, for which there is simply no excuse.”

Vice Chancellor Elsa Nunez, acknowledging the work done by University College at Bangor, apologized “if you feel we dismissed them.” The Bangor campus wasn’t treated separately in the plan because it’s part of the University of Maine at Augusta, she said.

Under the plan UMA, which offers the majority of the system’s associate degree programs, would become part of the University of Southern Maine to provide bachelor’s and some graduate programs in public policy and business administration.

It’s “unfair to characterize” the nascent Maine Community College System as ineffectual, Nunez added. With “a good strong leader and great faculty – it won’t look like that in five years.”

The UMS proposal “applies pressure” to the community college system “to plan and ask for additional resources to prepare for the future and grow more rapidly,” she said.

James McClymer, associate professor of physics and president of the local chapter of the faculty union, chided the system for not involving faculty in the development of the proposal.

Nunez told the audience that the plan wasn’t developed in secret but through an “open process” that involved nine days of visits to campuses and outreach centers, as well as discussions with the UM faculty senate and the faculty and student representatives on the board of trustees.

She said public comments will be taken through June and that the Strategic Plan Task Force – composed of six trustees and the seven campus presidents – would revise the plan based on comment from each campus. The UMS board of trustees plans to vote on the plan in September.

The proposal “isn’t just about reorganizing, but about making the academic infrastructure stronger,” she said.

Jeffery Mills, vice president for university advancement, said he was concerned whether the “political realities” would allow Orono to be re-established as the flagship campus. He worried that such plans could be negated by the political clout in southern Maine.

But UMS Chancellor Joseph Westphal said southern Maine legislators don’t necessarily “all vote in a block or support one institution.”

Trustee Margaret Weston, a graduate of USM, said while she believes strongly in the importance of the system’s southernmost university, she also believes in UM as “the flagship campus.”

“I don’t see this as a zero-sum game,” she said. By honing each university’s mission, competition would be blunted, she said.

Concerns that the northern campuses would lose their collective identities also played out Tuesday.

Under the proposal, the Machias, Presque Isle and Fort Kent campuses would be merged into the University of Northern Maine to become a “rural, comprehensive” university.

All three campuses would remain open, but there would be one administration and one faculty providing bachelor’s and master’s degrees to the northern and Down East regions.

System representatives Tuesday emphasized that the northern schools have “critical roles to play” and that they are the “cultural and economic centers” in their regions.

Mathew Troxel, a garage mechanic at UMaine, told the group that he anticipated when he returned from the meeting that his colleagues who weren’t able to attend would all be asking the same question: “Will there be job cuts?”

Westphal vowed the system would do “everything we can” to avoid layoffs by finding savings through attrition and “work force management.”

He said the system would continue “to fight for the budget, increase compensation, honor contracts with unions, and do the best we can to keep people employed and functioning with us.”

System administrators emphasized that the plan is “a vision for the future,” but not an implementation plan and that the UM community would be called upon to formulate the details to make it work.

“The implementation role is key and that’s where [faculty] will have a very important role,” said Westphal.

“We’ve been able to do some remarkable things, but they have been done … in patchwork fashion,” said Westphal. “President Hoff has never received an investment from the system that says here is something for you to start new programs or strengthen particular areas.”

At one point, Douglas Gelinas, associate vice president for academic affairs, said, “In all the years I’ve been at UM, this is the first time I’ve seen basic problems be addressed, but it will require enormous consistency on the part of the trustees.”

Trustee James Mullen agreed. “Unless we have the determination to stay on top of this … it ain’t gonna happen,” he said.

Tuesday evening found McClymer, the faculty union president, somewhat optimistic. The meeting appeared to lay some concerns to rest, he said.

“I think some people feel a little better today,” he said. “Some parts of the plan seem to be clearer.”

The next public forum will be held Thursday at the University of Maine at Machias. For a complete list of locations and times, visit the UMS Web site at: http://www.maine.edu/pdf/campusvisits.pdf.