UMS trustees OK new program Schools to offer tourism studies

BANGOR – The University of Maine System board of trustees on Monday unanimously approved a new program that aims to help build the state’s tourism industry.

Based at the University of Maine, the Center for Tourism Research and Outreach will look for ways to boost tourism, gather and share information with tourism businesses, and determine the academic programs necessary to train a new generation of entrepreneurs, managers and skilled employees to work in the industry.

“We need to integrate the teaching, research and public service missions of our universities with the tourism industry just as we have done so successfully with Maine’s other natural resource-based industries,” UMS Chancellor Joseph Westphal said Monday.

The center, a collaborative effort between the Orono campus and the University of Southern Maine, will open July 1 with a first-year budget of $310,000 financed with funds provided by the state, university system, tourism industry and federal grants. Trustees plan to review the program in two years to make sure state and industry funding is in place.

“Tourism is our largest industry and we need to support it with academic and research programs,” Jeffrey Sosnaud, deputy commissioner of the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development, said Monday. Sosnaud, who oversees the Maine Office of Tourism, attended the meeting at the Bangor system office to brief trustees about the new tourism initiative.

Also attending the meeting were UM resource economics professor Kevin Boyle, director of the new center, and USM public policy and management professor Charles Colgan, assistant director.

Sosnaud reminded trustees that Gov. John Baldacci asked UMS to develop a center of tourism research last year in his State of the State address. Also during his speech, Baldacci asked UMS and the Maine Community College System to develop degree programs in hospitality and tourism.

The new tourism initiative could help stem the flow of young people leaving Maine by creating new jobs and new academic programs that will interest students pursuing careers in tourism, Sosnaud said.

Tourist businesses lack timely information that could improve their decision making, said Boyle. Professors and students doing research for the center could develop ways to forecast turnpike traffic and interpret how weather affects tourism. They also could determine the number of tourists staying at local hotels and inns.

While there are a number of research projects going on throughout the state, their results often don’t get pulled together and don’t get out to the industry, said Colgan.

The center could help interpret and disseminate information through a newsletter, a spring conference for tourism businesses and the creation of a Web site, he said.

Another goal of the center is to create and coordinate academic programs in tourism. Businesses have said they need students who are better equipped to take jobs in the tourism industry, Boyle said.

“Tourism isn’t about changing sheets and working in kitchens.”

UM is working on a program that would offer a concentration in the creative economy for business students so they would be better prepared to manage advertising and graphic design companies and museums and recording studios.

Also in the offing is a program that would provide a business concentration for liberal arts majors. Students then would be better able to manage arts-based businesses, among other things.

Another program that could be developed is a concentration in tourism for psychology students. They then would be equipped to perform tourism research and figure out why people head for certain destinations.

The program concentrations would link the Maine Community College System’s two-year culinary and hospitality programs with the university system’s bachelor’s degree programs, the professors said.

Chancellor Westphal will create a committee of representatives from each of the seven campuses who will make sure there’s no duplication of courses, Boyle said.