Hearing about the flak University of Maine System officials took recently as they traveled the state trying to enlist support for their newly proposed strategic plan, former Vice Chancellor Stanley Freeman couldn’t help but relate.

Thirty years ago when the system was new, he and then-Chancellor Don McNeil visited the University of Maine at Fort Kent, seeking reaction to a proposal that would have returned the campus to its previous two-year status.

“They rolled out the red carpet,” said Freeman, smiling at the recollection. “It was a marvelous town, and we had a wonderful meal. Students, townspeople, faculty were all there in the auditorium. They lectured us for two hours in French. We didn’t know what they were saying, but we could tell they were very unhappy with the plan. They had just barely become a four-year institution. ‘You’re gonna take that away from us? Who are you kidding?'”

When it comes to reforming the University of Maine System, it seems everything old is new again.

As UMS officials set about developing the controversial strategic plan about two years ago, they borrowed from many old reports and studies addressing concerns about quality, access and affordability.

“I don’t think we could have thought of a restructuring methodology that hadn’t been thought of before,” UMS Chancellor Joseph Westphal said recently. “I think they’ve all been thought of, both formally and informally.”

The current plan is “really about taking so many of those recommendations made earlier, both by people in the system and out of the system, and renewing our commitment to many of those things under the different set of conditions and challenges that we face in today’s environment,” he said.

Announced in March, the draft strategic plan was developed to reconstruct public higher education in Maine because of a forecasted $85 million shortfall in the system budget by 2008.

It proposes, among other things, to merge the universities at Fort Kent, Presque Isle and Machias into one University of Northern Maine with three campuses and one administration.

It also calls for the University of Maine at Augusta to become part of the University of Southern Maine and for all two-year programs to be shifted to the community college system.

Since the University of Maine System was created in 1968, legislative proposals, study recommendations and informal discussions have called for more centralization and less centralization; for incorporating the then-vocational technical colleges into the university system and for keeping them separate; for putting the other campuses under the University of Maine’s administrative umbrella and for making them autonomous; for moving the system office to Portland or Augusta and for keeping it in Bangor.

People have called for merging campuses and for closing them, for changing them to two-year feeder colleges and for keeping them as four-year institutions.

Despite the dozens of suggestions that have been broached over the years, only a few proposals have ever come to fruition: The University of Maine at Augusta was changed to a stand-alone campus from a satellite of the University of Maine in 1971; the University of Maine at Portland-Gorham was renamed University of Southern Maine in 1978; the name of the Orono campus was changed in 1986 from University of Maine at Orono to the University of Maine, distinguishing it from the rest of the campuses and restoring it to its original, pre-system name; and a board of visitors was created for each campus in 1997.

Timing, however, sets the current strategic plan apart from previous sweeping proposals that have buckled under political and academic pressures, according to UMS officials.

Ideas about combining administrative functions and merging campuses that once were seen as impractical now are doable because of new technology that reduces the cost of distance education and enables some behind-the-scenes services to be offered more efficiently, UMS spokesman John Diamond said.

Meanwhile, the state’s financial constraints have created an urgency as never before.

Other plans haven’t included budget projections, at least not ones that “showed such a scary financial future,” said UMS trustee James Mullen. He began dusting off some of the old reports several years ago when discussions about the new strategic plan began.

Attempts to change the system often were spawned by “anecdotal occurrences or disgruntled legislators,” not based on a comprehensive plan, Mullen pointed out.

One 1992 report, for instance, called on UM “to be the best, the greatest – to be all things to all people. But it didn’t … really have much in the way of strategy,” said Mullen, who helped write that document.

Of all the reports that set the stage for change, the “granddaddy of them all” was one issued by the Coles Commission in 1967 that actually created the university system, said John LaBrie of Cumberland, whose doctoral research concerned the history of the system.

By recommending that the state teachers colleges in Fort Kent, Presque Isle, Machias, Gorham and Farmington become part of the University of Maine and its satellite campuses in Bangor, Portland and Augusta, the report “was the state’s first attempt at developing higher education system policy,” said LaBrie, a graduate of the University of Maine at Fort Kent.

Although the word “system” wasn’t officially included in the name until 1986, creation of what was dubbed the “Super-U” “really put forth a plan that policy-makers could grasp, saying we need to consolidate schools, make sure they’re not going after the same degree programs and find a way to structurally improve the state’s higher education institutions,” LaBrie said.

Restructuring UMS didn’t stop there.

Soon after, the Augusta campus separated from the then-University of Maine at Orono, based on a recommendation by Winthrop Libby, president of the flagship campus.

“Win thought it was time for the campus to be on its own,” said Mary Elisabeth Randall, then an assistant dean at UMA.

While there wasn’t a lot of hoopla, people at UMA were pleased just the same. “We were a campus without much funding, so we didn’t do a lot of fancy parties. But the idea of being put on an equal footing with the other campuses was really important to faculty and students,” Randall said.

At about the same time, the Gorham campus was merged with the University of Maine at Portland to become the University of Maine at Portland-Gorham.

Things got off to a rocky start. The Portland and Gorham schools – one a former teachers college; the other, an affiliate of the flagship campus – had different cultures and different missions, said Richard Spath, then-president of UMFK.

The Gorham campus felt “people perceived them as inferior little brothers,” said Spath, who in 1977 was asked by Chancellor McNeil to fly down to southern Maine several times a week to smooth the waters.

Spath’s strategy was simple. “I involved faculties on both campuses on a personal basis to understand what their problems were. When the name change to University of Southern Maine occurred, it was a resolution of many problems,” he said.

The most dramatic effort to restructure the university system came about in 1974 as part of the Maine Cost Management Survey, a report from a group consisting mostly of business people who were charged by then-Gov. Kenneth M. Curtis to come up with ways to streamline state government.

Chaired by James Longley, it drew a torrent of protest by recommending that the campuses in Orono, Portland-Gorham and Farmington be the four-year degree-granting institutions. The Machias, Fort Kent and Presque Isle campuses were to join with the then-vocational technical institutes to offer two-year programs only.

The small enrollments in the outlying campuses prompted Longley to consider the merger as a way to achieve savings and efficiency, Curtis said during a telephone interview recently.

“You could argue it in those days, although not many agreed,” he said.

Recalling the ensuing brouhaha, Allen Pease, then-administrative assistant to Curtis, said he advised Longley to forget about recommending program changes to UMS and to stick to altering only management practices.

“Later on, Longley told me, ‘You know, I think I should have taken your advice,'” Pease said.

Bangor lawyer Susan Kominsky, a UMS trustee at the time, said Longley’s proposal was on the agenda of her first meeting.

“There was a lot of media coverage and a lot of campus turnout. I walked in thinking, ‘My goodness, these things can get heated. What did I get myself into?’ I was somewhat concerned that all of my future meetings would be filled with similarly high emotions,” she said.

That wasn’t the only instance in which the survival of the University of Maine at Fort Kent was thrown into question.

“There have been seven or eight different proposals to close it,” said Sen. John Martin, D-Eagle Lake, part of the Aroostook County delegation, which, along with others from northern Maine, quickly stepped in to halt the process each time.

“Over the years the campus has always been challenged because it is the northernmost campus,” he said. “Each time, people come up and study and review it and find out the university is carrying out its mission and doing the job it’s supposed to be doing.”

In 1986, the Report of the Visiting Committee to the University of Maine recommended a number of sweeping reforms. It emphasized the importance of each campus’s distinct mission and requested that the state appropriate $15 million “as a down payment on the long-term investment necessary to develop the university system Maine needs.”

In an effort to distinguish the University of Maine at Orono from the other campuses, the plan also called for changing that institution’s name to the University of Maine.

That report was “the most pivotal because it established an adhered-to vision that focused on concentrating efforts on the health of the land-grant campus,” said James Libby, a Thomas College professor who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the history of UMS.

But not everyone was happy with the report’s recommendation to rename the system State University of Maine and to call each campus a state college instead of a university.

“It would have been a psychological blow,” said Gwilym Roberts, a retired UMF professor. His campus would have been known as Farmington College of the State University of Maine.

“We had gained a reputation in 15 years as UMF, and it was Orono’s attempt to shove us back down,” said Roberts, who holds two degrees from the flagship campus.

A state representative at the time, Roberts recalled the speech he gave during one public hearing. “I stood up and said we didn’t object to having Orono become the University of Maine. But anyone who thinks we’re going to put things back to where we were is kidding themselves. We can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”

Meanwhile, in Orono and Augusta, UM’s name change was cause for celebration, said Brewer City Manager Steve Bost. He was then chairman of the Legislature’s Education Committee, which approved the legislation that came out of the report.

“We were very proud of that,” he said. “At the time it was very significant because it restored some of the prominence of the flagship, land grant campus. Many people at UM felt their image as the flagship had been diluted somewhat by the term ‘at Orono.'”

Later, he “had the honor” of painting over the offending phrase on the road sign welcoming people to the campus, Bost said.

It was smooth sailing for UMS during much of the 1980s, according to former Chancellor Robert Woodbury. The financial picture improved, and there was unprecedented cooperation among the campuses.

Centralization was the watchword then, as the system assumed responsibility for a number of administrative services, said Woodbury, chancellor from 1986 to 1993.

These included an electronic library catalog and interactive television systems, as well as collective bargaining, financial and legal services, and architectural planning. The first systemwide capital campaign was launched, ultimately raising $20 million to enhance academic programs.

Also around this time, the University of Maine System received some national attention. It was hailed by the Chronicle of Higher Education as having received the largest percentage increase in state support in the country. The system also was cited as one of just two in the country successfully working with the state to address “growing social needs.”

In addition, it was featured in a book published by the American Association of Colleges and Universities in 1992 highlighting state systems that were models of “effective governance systems,” Woodbury said.

But it wasn’t until the mid-1990s that the distinct missions of each campus emphasized in the 1986 visiting committee report really began to take shape.

Under then-Chancellor Terrence MacTaggart, the campus presidents were given greater flexibility to market their particular programs, to set financial aid and use scholarships to attract students, and to conduct private fund raising.

The slogan at the time was “entrepreneurial universities, efficient system,” MacTaggart recalled. “The presidents would have greater freedom to advance their institution. But by the same token we wanted to be as efficient as possible and to make use of the system where it made sense.”

Also under MacTaggart, the creation of a board of visitors for each campus – an idea that had been proposed twice before in different forms – finally came to fruition in 1997.

While each campus had an advisory board, it was thought that a formal board of visitors would “strike a better balance between local input and leadership and system control,” MacTaggart said.

The board of visitors approves campus strategic plans, major budget requests and capital plans. At least one member of the board serves on presidential search committees.

Each campus’s board of visitors also has “informal responsibilities” of championing its university as well as the system as a whole, assisting with fund raising, and advising the president and the chancellor, MacTaggart said.

Over the years, University College at Bangor also has seen a lot of proposals and changes, both in name and affiliation.

Known in the beginning as the “South Campus” of the University of Maine, its name changes have included University of Maine at Bangor, Penobscot Valley Community College, Bangor Community College of the University of Maine at Orono, and University College of Augusta.

Finally in 1994, rather than move all classes to the Orono campus as one proposal suggested, it was decided instead to affiliate the campus with UMA, leave the Bangor campus where it was, and call it University College of Bangor.

“We always say we’ve had more name changes than Elizabeth Taylor had husbands,” said Tracy Gran, dean since 1997. “With all the name changes over 30 years, it’s obvious the system really had some misgivings as to what we were all about.”

Only time will tell what happens with the current proposed strategic plan for the University of Maine System, which will be revised by trustees after a public comment period at the end of June.

Despite the hue and cry from faculty, administrators, staff and students since the draft was issued in March, officials are optimistic it will ultimately be supported.

UMA President Charlie Lyons said he spoke to about 80 lawmakers in the days after the release of the plan. “There were a whole lot of people who could have said, ‘Tell us what you want us to do. How can we help you kill this?’ But every one of them to a person said, ‘It’s a conversation that’s long overdue,'” Lyons recalled.

And while Vice Chancellor Elsa Nunez said people “are finding it hard to attack the basic underlying principles of the plan,” she worries “about it not happening and that political forces will prevail” as they have before.

Still, things appear different this time, she said.

In the past, people would argue “this is change just for change’s sake,” she said. But now, because of the troubled economy, public and business leaders see the need to help UMS chart a different course.

“So much of this is timing,” she said. “I really do think the plan is responding to the issues the state is facing and that’s why this time the plan may succeed. It’s not a plan in a vacuum.”