March 28, 2024
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UM candidate Kennedy ready to capitalize on relationships

ORONO – University of Maine interim President Robert Kennedy has spent the past year forging relationships with people and agencies in the state and beyond and now is ready to capitalize on them, he said Wednesday.

“Relationships are critically important in terms of fund raising and in terms of public support for this institution for the future,” said Kennedy, one of four finalists for the president of the flagship campus. “And I feel I’ve got good relationships and could capitalize further on them.”

Speaking to about 30 faculty members at the Memorial Union, Kennedy said he worked behind the scenes with Gov. John Baldacci and other state officials on many campus budget requests.

“Literally, what we hope to get out of the Legislature this year could be record amounts at a time when the state is facing a fiscal crisis – and that’s because of relationships,” he said.

Support for UM by people across the state and the country is “overwhelming,” said Kennedy, who hopes to begin a major development campaign as soon as this fall.

The campaign would supplement state funding and tuition, according to Kennedy, who said the aim would be to raise $150 million to $250 million over the next five to seven years from private and public sources for scholarships and faculty positions.

“We’re poised to have a major impact on this campus, to reach out for additional sources of funding that we haven’t capitalized on as much as we need to,” he said. “It’s an avenue that’s available to us, and frankly we’ve been criticized as an institution for not cultivating it as much as we need to. There are people out there who want to help this institution.”

Connecting with the campus community would be a priority for him as president, Kennedy said. He recalled that, as provost, he conferred with associate English professor Tony Brinkley, who broached a plan to use the existing budget and faculty openings to offer new programs and take the department in a new direction.

The partnership “worked so well I’m not sure why it wasn’t employed elsewhere,” said Kennedy, calling it a good model for faculty governance.

Also as provost, Kennedy was responsible for coordinating the campus diversity plan. “We outlined a series of initiatives and programs and have pursued those vigorously,” he said. UM has taken particular advantage of a policy that abbreviates the search process, if justified, and makes it easier to hire minority faculty, he said.

UM’s success depends on the campus’s ability to “develop a cohesive voice, mission, focus and niche,” and then to lobby for state funding by articulating those things to the public and the Legislature, said Kennedy. Emphasizing the “recognition and achievements of faculty” also is vital, he said.

A president must be “wise enough to know when we need to put faculty and students out there to make our case,” he said.

One way of working within the university system is to point out why UM “is different and needs to be different” from other campuses when it comes to such things as faculty salaries, Kennedy said.

While the University of Maine System’s strategic plan is “good for this campus,” Kennedy said it’s up to UM itself to determine where it’s headed, establish priorities and garner support.

While the president has a unique opportunity to lobby for the university in Washington, Kennedy said it’s also important to find those same opportunities for department chairmen, deans, faculty and even students and staff.

Faculty play an important role in promoting the university, he said. Each of UM’s 600 faculty members are development officers who can help bring in money to the institution, he said.

The state is starting to get the message about UM’s importance in providing a liberal arts education to give students vital analytical and communication skills, said Kennedy. At least 60 percent of those involved in businesses in the state have a liberal arts education, he said.

The other three finalists for UMaine’s top administrative position also have visited the campus in the past two weeks to participate in public meetings with faculty, staff, students and others. The other candidates are Brian Foster, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the University of New Mexico; P. Geoffrey Feiss, provost at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.; and Mary Ann Rankin, dean of the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin.

UMS Chancellor Joseph Westphal expects to make a recommendation to the system board of trustees “reasonably soon,” according to spokesman John Diamond.


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