FROM: Interim President Joseph S. Wood
September 19, 2007
USM Work Plan for Moving Forward
Objectives:
1. Balance budget
2. Restore reserves
3. Maintain reputation
4. Prepare for next president:
Principles:
1. It took a couple of years to get into this situation, and it will take a couple to get out.
2. Growth is not a solution; creativity is.
3. A focus on mission is the critical criterion. See “Guiding Principles”.
4. Transparency and team work are critical to success.
5. Everyone and every unit has a role and is expected to make some contribution.
Steps to achieve objectives:
1. Institute a sustainable budgeting process, including re-implementation of position management and instituting an annual budget review process for each unit.
2. Institute/continue a hard, multi-year hiring freeze extending to all classes of employees and with strict exemptions (compliance, health and safety, accreditation, revenue generation) leading to sufficient attrition and position elimination (and potentially necessary reallocation); augmented by layoffs.
3. Implement other efforts at spending control -- e.g. freezes on equipment, travel, other operating, non-contract promotions, etc.
4. Undertake reduction in administrative overhead through reorganization leading to reduction in numbers of colleges and non-academic administrative units and required staffing through mergers, etc. Simultaneously seek new synergies.
5. Eliminate, reduce or merge academic, administrative, and public service programs marginal to the mission (tied to a tighter mission statement).
Guiding Principles:
1. USM is student-centered, student-focused. Retention and student success is everyone’s responsibility.
2. USM can no longer be all things to all people. Instead it is Maine’s comprehensive university with a liberal arts and sciences orientation and selected professional and graduate programs.
3. USM’s budget process/system reinforces and is reinforced by its mission.
4. USM is a diverse university community that reflects the growing diversity of the communities it serves.
5. USM’s public service commitments flow from its core academic competencies.
6. Research at USM reinforces undergraduate education and selected professional and graduate programs.
7. USM offers high quality programs that will be sustained well into the future and within its institutional capacity.
|
