Trustees to examine UMS plans

ORONO – Some University of Maine System trustees today will consider recommendations from faculty, administrators, staff and students about how to carry out the university system’s strategic plan, Vice Chancellor Elsa Nunez said Wednesday.

While updating members of the University of Maine faculty senate about the strategic plan process, Nunez said the recommendations include creating:

. A separate fund of state research and development money for which the smaller University of Maine System campuses can compete. Currently only the University of Maine and the University of Southern Maine receive state research and development funds.

. A pool of money from which all faculty can compete to develop and design new distance education programs and majors. Currently UMA does most of the distance education programming, followed by the Orono campus.

. A statewide campaign to increase the amount of financial aid money for students.

. Merit scholarships for all freshmen as well as for students who transfer from the Maine Community College System to the University of Maine System.

. A digital library that will be funded by both the university system and the Maine State Library so it will belong to the state as well as to UMS.

Nunez also said that a model for allocating any new state money to each campus is being developed by Jim Breece, UMS executive director of the Office of Planning and Policy Analysis, and USM President Rich Pattenaude. The new model will be based on comparisons with similar schools from across the country.

The vice chancellor also made some welcome assurances to UM professors.

She said that the system fully supports the idea that the Orono campus is the state’s land grant and sea grant university and that it leads the state’s research and development efforts.

Nunez pointed out that UM’s role is clearly stated in the university system’s strategic plan, and said that the University of Maine also should highlight this mission in its own strategic plan which currently is being rewritten.

In addition, Nunez told faculty that UMS wants to centralize some administrative functions to make them more efficient, but that curriculum development, recruitment and faculty governance are among the tasks that would never be done at the system level.

By creating a University Processing Center, the system wants to relieve each campus of the burdensome paperwork that prevents staff from having the time to interact with students, Nunez said.

But, “we don’t intend to ever centralize curriculum,” she said. “Those programs belong on campus and need to be developed by faculty.”

The recommendations, which were made by the more than 350 representatives from all seven campuses who serve on the Strategic Planning Implementation Committees, will be reviewed and prioritized by the UMS board of trustees’ Strategic Planning Subcommittee. Then a draft of the recommendations will be sent to each campus for feedback.

That feedback will be reviewed by the trustee subcommittee and the chairman of each planning committee before a final report is written and submitted to the full UMS board of trustees in May.