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FROM: Interim President Joseph S. Wood
Newsletter #20: Moved Forward: Reflections
June 23, 2008
Dear Colleagues:
My reflection starts by looking back to The USM Plan: Achieving National Recognition for Regional Excellence, which was itself a response to the original USM Board of Visitors’ report of 2000, A Southern Maine Imperative. The USM Plan called for “USM to become a highly regarded and vital community of inquiry and learning which provides its region with outstanding academic programs, rigorous research and creative activity, and valued services.”
Well, look at the most recent U.S. News and World Report rankings: Once more, we have the highest academic quality rating in our regional tier, a rating that would place us in the top half of the tier above ours, if that were the only criterion. We fail to do as well on those ratings that are explicitly related to resources and funding, but we should be proud of the high regard others have of our academic quality. Indeed, the 2008 Princeton Review cited USM as a “wellspring of educational opportunity,” and added, "USM's price tag would be much higher if dollars equated with the faculty's dedication to the students." Clearly, we have shaped a vital community of inquiry and learning. And the new Southern Maine Imperative II promises further to help us invigorate USM as we emerge healthy and strong from the particular fiscal situation of the last several years.
In that regard, The USM Plan’s four goals remain fresh today. We have made considerable strides with respect to each goal, and we can point to specific accomplishments and achievements over the last year:
Goal 1. Actively embrace and support a highly regarded and enduring community of intellectual inquiry and learning. The actions related to this goal of building a cadre of strong teacher-scholars and artist-scholars committed to liberal learning included valuing scholarship, relating learning to experience, and employing technology appropriately.
*In the last year, the USM Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity Council (RSCA) has evolved to ensure faculty involvement and review of support mechanisms to ensure continued faculty learning, this year enhanced by appointment of Jack Kartez as Associate Vice President for RSCA. The council, under the leadership of Judy Spross, also organized and hosted a one-day celebration of discovery and collaboration at Pineland Farms, and is planning another showcase of faculty work for this fall.
*Three faculty members, whose work received wide press exposure, exemplify this goal of enhanced scholarship capacity within USM:
-John Wise and other researchers documented toxic levels of chromium in the endangered right whales of the Gulf of Maine, the first such documentation of chromium exposure in the right whale population.
-Daniel Sonenberg wrote an opera based on the life of the great Negro League baseball star, Josh Gibson.
-Susan Fineran’s research on teenage workers who are sexually harassed on the job is producing widespread response.
*Increasingly too, students have demonstrated a high level of intellectual inquiry and learning through engagement with USM’s teacher-scholars.
-This year, 230 students presented papers or posters as part of Thinking Matters, our annual two-day symposium highlighting student research, scholarship and creativity, thanks to faculty cochairs Adam Tuchinsky and Chris Scott.
-Luisa Deprez and students in her course, “Poverty: Policy and Perspective,” participated in the Alternative Spring Break to Louisiana as their class project, and USM nursing students administered free health screenings and low-cost inoculations to Chebeague Island residents.
-USM’s SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise) team, led by John Voyer, won the SIFE USA Regional Competition for New England.
-A team of two USM students working with Clare Bates Congdon created an artificial intelligence program and won an international competition at the World Congress on Computational Intelligence in Hong Kong.
*The Maine Campus Compact, a consortium of 18 higher education institutions dedicated to promoting community service, civic engagement, and service-learning, honored USM students and faculty.
-Students Khadra Jama and Becki Quimby of USM Lewiston-Auburn College were named the 2008 recipients of the Heart and Soul Award for their commitment to using campus resources to address community needs.
-Professors David Harris, natural and applied sciences at LAC, and Lynn Kuzma, political science, were named the 2008 recipients of the Harward Award for Service Learning Excellence.
*Finally, the 2008 Convocation addressed academic freedom, as has the 2007-2009 Russell Chair in Education and Philosophy holder, George Caffentzis.
Goal 2. Deepen and enrich the organizational culture in support of inquiry and learning. This goal focused on University-wide engagement in support of students, starting with recruitment and persistence and extending to the enhanced opportunities for engaging in learning.
*Admission officers increased their visits to high schools and realized a 16 percent increase in visits with prospective transfer students. A record 1,016 prospective students and their family members attended open houses, where USM had for the first time 100 percent participation from representatives of schools, colleges and departments. In addition, Accepted Student Days in Bangor, Gorham, and Portland attracted a record number of prospective students. As we strengthen advising and keep focused on student success across the institution, we should continue to increase our retention and graduation rates as well.
*Our new 296-bed residence hall in Gorham, designed for green LEED certification, became the site for programming and events focused on environmental sustainability and environmental science. This continues a trend of cultivating learning communities that make significant contributions to student success:
-The Community of Arts in Robie-Andrews Hall is flourishing.
-Our only academic residential program, Russell Scholars, now boasts a retention rate of 88 percent.
-Our 450-plus student-athletes form another learning community and have an overall GPA approaching 2.9.
*And we have expanded support for undergraduate research. Portland resident Sri Dhyana, a USM physics major with a minor in biochemistry, was the first recipient of USM’s John S. Ricci Fellowship. Established in 2006 by USM alumnus and Auburn native Ray Stevens (Class of 1986) the fellowship is named after Professor Emeritus of Chemistry John S. Ricci, whose mentoring turned Stevens from a lackluster student into the brilliant researcher who today has his own lab at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., the largest biomedical research institute in the U.S. This year's winners are Samuel Giles and Pongprapat ‘James’ Suriyodorn.
*Our partnership with a number of non-profits enhances our ability to provide learning opportunities. Perhaps the most visible and increasingly significant of these for most within the USM community is with the Maine Center for Enterprise Development, housed on the second floor of the Science Building’s newest wing. The success of USM graduate Rebecca Stockbridge is but one example of how our relationship with the Center creates synergies that benefit university programs and individuals. Rebecca, who transferred to USM because of our program in Art and Entrepreneurial Studies, was granted business development services in the Center and now runs two Web design businesses out of a Congress Street office.
*It is worth repeating that the profile of the typical USM student is changing. This year USM had more students taking a full load of courses than ever before in its history, and more students lived in residence halls than ever before. As part-time and non-matriculated students seek higher education elsewhere, USM’s students are reflecting a more traditional student demographic profile.
*USM online education continues to grow by leaps and bounds. In the fall of 2005, there were 15 USM courses available online. The following year, the number had reached 56. Last fall, there were 70 such courses.
Goal 3. Build a responsive and coherent curriculum aimed at student success and regional needs. The curriculum obviously is core to student success, and I am gratified with the work we have done under the leadership of Judy Tizon in achieving a shared vision and set of goals and outcomes for general education.
*As I have noted before, our work in general education has been garnering national attention.
-LAC faculty implemented their version of the new general education, How, Then, Shall We Live? Citizenship in a Global Society, this year.
-With tremendous faculty leadership from Michael Hillard and Jane Kuenz, the Faculty Senate approved implementation of the new first-year program of EYE (entry-year experience) courses as part of a stratified approach that ends with a capstone seminar.
-With a third award from the Davis Education Foundation, this one for some $350,000 for implementation, we should see a significant change in our core curriculum with little infusion of new resources.
*Two School of Business programs exemplify curricular responsiveness to regional need.
-This year we began offering a bachelor of science degree in business administration with a concentration in sport management. Sport management is an estimated $221 billion industry and is growing nationally and internationally.
-Thanks to the financial support of Maine’s insurance industry, USM has also created a new risk management and insurance concentration. The program prepares students to work as underwriters, risk analysts, agents, claims adjusters, actuaries and in related fields throughout the insurance and financial services industries.
Goal 4. Mobilize institutional resources in an innovative fashion through a more inclusive budget process leading to a clear alignment of budget with plans and priorities. Years of financial shortfalls clearly have impeded accomplishments on this fourth goal, critical to full success of the previous three. What we accomplished this year perhaps most importantly is to stop trying to do more with less, and to make mobilization of institutional resources much more inclusive.
*One significant success in this regard was creation of the University Council, effectively merging the President’s Senior Staff with the Provost’s Deans Council. We also established a process of regular review of budgets, including development of new annual budgets on a timely basis. Budgets this year were developed a full four to five months earlier than in previous years.
*Certainly we have mobilized private philanthropy and earmarks to complement bond funding in support of USM. Private philanthropy is increasing in support of student scholarships as well. This year we completed the second capital campaign in this decade, allowing us to bring close to completion building construction on each of the three campuses, perhaps most visibly epitomized by University Commons. In fact, earlier this week we were notified that USM has been selected as a winner of the Council for Support of Education's (CASE) 2008 WealthEngine Awards for Educational Fund-raising. This award honors superior fund-raising programs across the country. USM was selected to receive an Overall Improvement award based on judges' analysis of three years of fund-raising data.
*We have not tackled the seemingly intractable problem of renovation of Bailey Hall and other classroom buildings, nor have we generally dealt with deferred maintenance due to the tightness of budgets. At the same time, however, we have moved to sell Portland Hall, which has been a fiscal drag on USM for too many years.
*We also undertook significant, if not readily visible, reorganization as a part of our budget work this year. There will be fewer divisions (and hence fewer vice presidents) after this year, and some divisions will be scaled back.
*We have also extracted costs out of certain important, but not core functions, by reducing institutional subsidies -- for instance in Lifeline and in Child Care.
*And we initiated a sustained conversation about how to use instructional resources more effectively than we have. Curriculum management has led to reduced expenses relative to revenues in Summer Session, for instance. We will continue to struggle with assessing the effectiveness of programs, but any university should be doing that routinely.
*Communication -- telling our story to ourselves -- has been key to our increasingly transparent work this year, of course. But we also have to do a better job of telling our story to others. Funding implementation of our integrated marketing plan has been a critical investment this year, even in the face of cuts elsewhere. Roll out of the first phase of Web redesign will occur July 1, followed this fall and winter by an image campaign. The plan is built on input of more than 500 members of the campus and external communities. The goal of the first phase is to build undergraduate student enrollment. The central theme of the plan, as expressed by students, is that their USM experience, working with accomplished faculty and staff, is transformative, giving them a powerful, real-world experience.
My purpose with this last Moving Forward is not to diminish how difficult, and for many wrenching, this year has been. but I hope this summation of accomplishments helps us reflect on, and take pride in, our core work: engaged learning that transforms lives and communities. USM is emerging truly as “a highly regarded and vital community of inquiry and learning which provides its region with outstanding academic programs, rigorous research and creative activity, and valued services,” despite the significant fiscal constraints under which we operate.
Sincerely,
Joe
For more information, please click on http://www.usm.maine.edu/mcr/update This site includes the breakfast speech; the latest digest of ideas e-mailed to movingforward@usm.maine.edu; our work plan; and notes from the recent series of town meetings.
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