New president makes first visit at UMPI

PRESQUE ISLE – The newly designated president of the University of Maine at Presque Isle made the rounds Wednesday, meeting and greeting people at a campus where the previous president received a no-confidence vote within months of his arrival.

The new president, Donald Zillman, characterized himself as a communicator who intends to be visible on campus and in the community. He was on hand for various meetings Wednesday.

He has been recommended to serve a two-year term and will be formally considered when the University of Maine System board meets Sept. 10.

He will succeed Karl E. Burgher, who resigned this summer after being on campus less than a year. Faculty members asked for his removal after a vote of no confidence. Few detailed reasons were given for the vote, but some said Burgher had lost respect within the university.

Zillman served as dean of the Maine Law School in Portland from 1991 to 1998 and he has served as interim provost at the University of Maine in Orono, and as president at the University of Maine at Fort Kent.

“I’m very pleased and upbeat about UMPI, even though there are many different issues to take up,” he said after more than three hours of meetings Wednesday. “It’s better than I expected.

“I believe in sharing the decision process,” he told members of the campus community. “I believe in communications, and in the chain of command,”

He said discussions make for sound discussion. The discussions will begin within days of his expected Sept. 12 arrival with a series of group discussions he will host at the president’s house on campus.

He expects people will have questions for him and he expects people to disagree. Campus members were also told he is a person who reaches out to people in the community, an area he described as a 50-mile circle around UMPI.

“Let me know about issues and problems,” he said. “I need to get to know the campus and the community, and you can all help me.

“I expect to spend 80 percent of my time on campus, and 80 percent of my time off campus,” he said. “Time off campus is essential to the campus, because when I am off campus I am elsewhere drumming up support for the campus and the system.”

Zillman said he expects 14-hour days, while taking one day a week off, and hopes that people will fill his calendar with opportunities to talk.

Faculty members were told of his plans to enhance the campus Web site because that is where potential students, their families, donors and potential staff get their first indications of what the university is like.

Zillman also said he likes athletics and the arts. He said the campus needs to look at itself as part of a partnership with the Northern Maine Community College, also in Presque Isle, and area schools, from kindergarten through 12th grade.

“This is a fast look at me,” he told a general assembly. “I have no preformed agenda, because that’s not my style.

“I expect it will take a few months, maybe most of the first semester, getting acquainted,” he told each group. “Then we can move on with issues and problems.”

One member of the UMPI faculty told Zillman that the morning’s meetings were “good for morale.”

Members of the faculty raised many issues, including recruiting, programs, a campus vision, empty positions, athletics, governance and communications. Communication was the issue most often mentioned.