UMS faculty to meet on strategic plan

University of Maine System faculty members will have “a serious discussion” about the proposed draft strategic plan during a meeting this month at the Orono campus, where they will examine the feasibility of the controversial restructuring and spell out ways to change it.

Twenty-eight professors representing all seven UMS campuses plan to attend the gathering July 29-30.

Participants include faculty representatives to the UMS board of trustees, representatives of the faculty union, and outgoing and incoming faculty senate presidents.

“This is not going to be a meeting to rubber stamp the plan, but to have a very serious look and see if it can be implemented as currently written,” said Dana Humphrey, a civil engineering professor at the University of Maine. “If it can’t, we’ll make serious comments and recommendations on items that need to be changed.”

Humphrey proposed the meeting along with Lucinda Cole, a University of Southern Maine professor, both of whom are faculty representatives to the UMS board.

The meeting marks the first time that faculty from across the system are coming together to review the proposal.

Issued in March, the plan is expected to be considered by trustees at their September meeting. It has drawn fire for proposing, among other things, that the seven campuses be merged into four and that two-year degree programs be taken over by the Maine Community College System.

Other facets of the plan “may end up affecting more faculty for a longer period of time,” said Cole, referring to the recommendations to centralize program planning and research programs, consolidate libraries through the Orono campus and change the method of allocating state money to each campus.

“One purpose of the faculty summit is to try to anticipate … the effect of this plan on the everyday lives of students, faculties and communities in Maine,” Cole said.

She added, “If change is going to happen – and I believe it will – we have the responsibility to try to ensure that it doesn’t generate more problems than it solves.”

Humphrey noted that the meeting is supposed to be a way to “get more than one campus talking about the strategic plan at once rather than getting concerns raised by individual campuses.”

UMS officials will attend the meeting.

Chancellor Joseph Westphal said Friday he is “looking for some ideas and for some creativity” from faculty about ways to put the strategic plan into place.

Vice Chancellor Elsa Nunez said faculty recommendations would be reviewed by the chancellor and the board of trustees as they develop a final strategic plan.

Meanwhile, Ron Mosley, University of Maine at Machias professor and president of the systemwide faculty union, has not given up on the idea of scrapping the current plan and beginning anew.

Mosley, who has criticized trustees for not including faculty in the development of the proposal, acknowledged that “there may be some good things in their plan. If there are, we could use their ideas in a plan created by an all-inclusive group of stakeholders,” he said.

The UMM professor, who will attend the meeting, is unequivocal about what system administrators should expect: “We will discuss how a workable plan could be created rather than falling into the trap of helping to legitimize or implement the system office’s plan,” he said. “We probably will take a vote on whether we endorse the plan; if we do, the result will be a defeat for the plan.”

Mosley has asked trustees to delay approval of the strategic plan until next year after a committee organized by Gov. John Baldacci has completed a report laying out a statewide educational plan. Faculty will ask legislators and legislative candidates also to push for the delay of the plan’s adoption, Mosley said.

But during interviews last week, Rep. Glenn Cummings and Sen. Mike Brennan, both Democrats from Portland and members of the Legislature’s Education Committee, said they would hold off recommending a timeline change.