FROM: Interim President Joseph S. Wood
September 13, 2007
Dear Colleagues:
In the interest of sharing information as often as possible, I've replaced the monthly UPDATE with Moving Forward. My intent is to distribute this more than once a month, and to keep each issue focused on a few major topics of community-wide concern.
For this first issue, I want to reinforce some of the key points in my breakfast address. That address is available by clicking on "Moving Forward."
The feedback on the address, which calls for a focus on our primary mission resulting in a smaller, stronger and better USM, can be summed up as follows: “It's about time.”
Your ideas sent confidentially to movingforward@usm.maine.edu have been helpful. Please keep them coming. I intend to post the essence of these suggestions soon in anticipation of our town meetings. Those meetings will be held on Monday, September 24 (9:30 a.m. in Rooms 214/215 of the Abromson Community Education Center, Portland, and at 2:30 p.m. in the Presidential Dining Room, Gorham), and on Tuesday, September 25 (9:30 a.m. in Room 170 of LAC).
Here, in summary, is what I said at the opening breakfast and in subsequent meetings with many of you:
We no longer can be all things to all people. That’s because the days have ended when we could do so using across-the-board cuts, reallocations, and enrollment growth revenue to solve financial problems. The higher education marketplace has changed and we must change with it.
In the short term, we'll use the hiring freeze, reductions in travel, and other such strategies to bring our spending in line with our resources. But those are short-term fixes. They will not support this university over the long term. We need real institutional change.
To undertake real institutional change, we have to reorganize ourselves in a fashion that reduces administrative overhead while creating new synergies. This effort will promote long-term, fiscal stability and focus our financial and human resources on what we do best: highly engaged, transformative teaching and learning, based on a liberal arts and sciences foundation and supportive of professional and graduate education in such fields as health research, policy, and practice; the innovation economy; education and human services; and environmental sustainability.
I know that many of you also have ideas on how to reorganize and focus USM on our core endeavors. Some non-academic units and offices that support our educational mission already have made some difficult decisions, including elimination of positions. Other ideas on how to reorganize our work are being suggested. It’s imperative that all of us become engaged in these conversations.
Because there are good ideas out there, there are also, naturally, rumors about how reorganization might play out. Please know that the final shape of the change we must undertake is NOT decided. To move forward, we must put ideas on the table for frank and difficult discussions, which need to begin over the next several weeks. As I said at the Opening Breakfast, I will not prejudge the outcome of inclusive and vigorous discussions. But again, those discussions must begin.
What do you think we should do to reorganize in a fashion that ensures new synergies and reduces administrative overhead? Please share your ideas with me by e-mailing movingforward@usm.maine.edu.
Sincerely,
Joe Wood
Interim President
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