Page 11 - The Bell Tower - Summer/Fall 2015

Chancellor’s Breakfast
The University of Maine System Chancellor Dr. James H. Page visited the campus on March 5
to meet with University employ- ees, local business owners, and members of the community and discuss his vision for the future of the seven UMS campuses at the UMFK Board of Visitors’ Business Breakfast Series.
The chancellor began his remarks by praising the fiscal changes that UMFK has instituted the Rural U program, and the cyber security program. “What is going on here is exactly what we need to be doing system wide.”
Page explained why he felt it was important to share his vision with the public. “This is their system. We can’t do
it in isolation from the community. It’s the system for all the businesses and families in the community,” he said.
The chancellor shared his vision of for change, which he also outlined in a March 3, 2015 report to the 127th Legislature on the University of Maine System: “As we all know, our universities face an unprecedent- ed combination of economic, demographic, and competitive challenges. The most stark representation of these challenges is the approximately $75 million structural bud- get gap we will accrue between now and fiscal year 2019 if we make no changes.
Put simply, Maine cannot afford the system we now have, but we can afford a better system.” Page added that an overgrown administration and the system’s many outdated facilities are two of the areas in which he plans to initiate change.
Page sees “one university for all of Maine” as the solution to the budget woes, and said the University System will achieve this through action along three categories. First, the System must achieve “strategic unity through campus diversity.” He said each campus will develop a local strategy to focus on specific regional strengths and academic programs, such as UMFK’s con- centration on nursing.
Second, the System must cut admin- istrative costs by creating a distributed administrative structure that eliminates duplicate services. For example, there will be only one human resources office for the entire system. He noted that he will be closing the chancellor’s office in order to participate in this portion of the plan.
The final leg for the new structure is systemwide academic collaboration and integration. He cited the cyber security program at Orono, which gained success through extensive interaction between UMFK’s cyber security expert Dr Ray Albert and the Orono professors.
With a $75 million budget gap across the University System, Page said doing nothing would be a mistake. “This is bank- ruptcy,” he said.
The practice in the past, according
to the chancellor, was for the University System to bridge budget gaps by raising tuition costs for students. He said this prac-
tice is unsustainable and unfairly burdens students and their families.
Page said he considers balancing the UMS budget a priority and the campuses throughout the system, including UMFK, can expect to see some cuts in positions over the next few years; but he could nei- ther pinpoint a specific timetable for nor identify which departments will face such cuts.
“These are hard changes,” he said. “It’s necessary to have the right size structure so we can meet our major responsibilities but in a way that’s financially sustainable and a way students can afford.”
Kelly Martin, one of the many St. John Valley business leaders and BOV chair asked the chancellor about his plans to appropriate funding to the various UMS campuses. “There is no funding formula; it doesn’t exist. I’m really looking forward to the day that I can put a stake through this (notion of a) funding formula. We need to fund by function, not by geographic loca- tion. Let’s fund by function. What we are doing well and what we need to be doing will be the stronger for it,” Page said, add- ing that the UMFK nursing program is one which functions well.
Though UMFK President Wilson Hess noted at the beginning of the morning meeting that “these are perilous times for publicly financed educational institutions,” he did share afterwards that he found the chancellor’s remarks encouraging. “I think it’s important that he showed the com- munity and the businesses what they can expect in the future,” he said.
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