UMFK board rises against system plans

FORT KENT – The University of Maine at Fort Kent board of visitors Friday joined the ranks lined up against a University of Maine System plan to merge colleges.

After more than an hour of discussion Friday, nine members of the group unanimously approved a resolution that the identity of UMFK, developed over decades of educating people of the St. John Valley and beyond, needs to be retained.

The strategic plan proposed last month by the UMS board proposes to merge UMFK, the University of Maine at Presque Isle and the University of Maine at Machias, as well as centers at Houlton and Ellsworth, into one institution that would be called the University of Northern Maine.

The UMFK group becomes the third UMFK organization to line up against the plan, which will be discussed next week at daylong meetings in Fort Kent and Presque Isle. The UMFK faculty and the UMFK chapter of the Associated Faculties of the University of Maine System loudly disagreed with the plan last week.

“We need to approve a resolution now,” UMFK board of visitors member Rick Daigle said. “Why wait?”

“We express strongly our conviction of retaining the identity of UMFK,” Daigle proposed within a minute. “[We believe in] exercising due diligence in responding to economic and organizational issues within the University of Maine System that have brought us to the point we are.”

A few words were changed in Daigle’s proposal by the time they finished it, but the businessman’s quick action averted waiting to make the campus’s feelings known.

UMFK President Richard Cost said some parts of the plan are excellent, but “others need to be modified.”

“I have no quarrels with the goals,” he told the board. “It’s how they plan to get there, and there may be better ways to accomplish [the goals].”

Members wondered out loud how UMS officials believed a $50 million shortfall in the university system could be made up on the back of the system’s smallest institutions.

They also said they would be creating a longer, more detailed statement of opposition to the plan by the time Chancellor Joseph Westphal comes to the campus Thursday.

“We need to develop a strong position statement [to show that] we are not ready, willing or able to accept the plan,” board member Paul Bouchard said. “We cannot, at all costs, lose our identity.”

“We need to preserve what we do well,” he said.

Board member Norm Fournier wondered why three smaller institutions were targeted. In a $176 million budget, UMFK receives 2.3 percent of the money, he said.

The board fears losing associate degree programs, which are those sought by many nontraditional students who cannot uproot families to attend community colleges south of the St. John Valley.

UMFK has a two-year forestry program that is one of only two such programs in New England. It also has a highly sought two-year program in criminal justice.

Members hoped aloud that the UMS board of trustees will be “open to rational changes.”

“We need fair and frank discussions [on the plan],” board chairman Jim Thibodeau said. “We have to establish our position, and convey it as strongly as we can.

“We need to protect our identity,” he said at the outset of the discussion. “We should also offer cost-saving suggestions.”