DRAFT Minutes 12 November 2025

Disclaimer: These are draft minutes, which are scheduled for approval at the next open meeting of the University of Maine Faculty Senate.

Attendance

Present:

Senators: Amanda Klemmer (President), Amber Roth, Amy Booth, Bill DeSisto, Briar Chapin (Undergraduate Student Government Representative), Carter Emerson (Graduate Student Government Representative), Colleen Marzilli, Craig Mason, Danielle Pelletier, Dean Astumian, Derek A. Michaud, Ellen Hostert, Eric Landis, Esther Enright, Glenda Pereira, Grant Miles, Greg Howard, Heather Falconer, Jay Wason III (Secretary), Jean Henri Akono Ada (Vice President), Jennifer Perry, Jianjun Hao, Jonathan Barron, Kathryn Slott, Kelly Jaksa, Lauren Jacobs, Lee Karp-Boss, Liliana Herakova, Matthew Chatfield, Michael Grillo, Nils Haëntjens, Paula Drewniany, Sara Flanagan, Sarah Lindahl, Seth Campbell, Shannon McCoy, Steven Kimball, Sudarshan Chawathe, Susan Smith, Timothy Bowden, Timothy Waring, Vince Weaver, Will Manion, William Gramlich, William Otto

Guests: Andrea Gifford, Angela Fileccia, Brenn Borror, Debra Allen, Ellen Weinauer, Emily Haddad, Gabriel Paquette, James Ward IV, Jason Charland, Jeff St. John, Jenny Boyden, Joan Ferrini-Mundy, Joseph DiSalvo, Karen Pelletreau, Megan Walsh, Ryan Weatherbee, Sabrina DeTurk, Scott Marzilli

Absent:

Senators: Alexis Foster, Bashir Khoda, Benjamin L. King, C. Matt Graham, Camerin Seigars, Daniel Sandweiss, Ek Han Tan, Jack Buttcane, Karen Beeftink, Keith Berube, Matt Hawkyard, Philip Fanning, Phillip Dickens (Phil), Roberto Lopez-Anido, Tingting Ye

The meeting was called to order at 3:00 pm. The land acknowledgement was read by Sen. Falconer.

Approval of Minutes

The minutes from the previous open senate meeting on October 15 were approved with no revisions.

Vice Chancellor Jeffery St. John

Announcements from Vice Chancellor (VC) Jeffrey (“Jeff”) St. John:

Arts and Humanities Taskforce: The system-wide strategic plan sets a goal to establish an “Arts and Humanities Taskforce” to revitalize the arts and humanities across the system. Despite an initial enthusiastic response from the Faculty Governance Council (FGC) and many others, some faculty raised concerns about whether material support would be available to act on the taskforce’s recommendations. VC St. John has communicated these concerns to the Chancellor and trustees and is awaiting more information. If he learns that funding is forthcoming to support the taskforce’s work, he plans to report back to the FGC and the provost by September 2026 with a plan to launch.

Your Pace: Your Pace, a competency-based education program originally launched at the University of Maine at Presque Isle (UMPI), has now been expanded to UM Farmington and UM Fort Kent. That expansion was developed with the Associated Faculties of the Universities of Maine (AFUM) and the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE).

90-Credit Degree Program Proposals: The 90-credit degree programs approved by the Board of Trustees (BOT) in July 2025 are expected to receive a decision from NECHE after Thanksgiving (if not sooner). Any new 90-credit degree program proposals will need to be separately approved, first by the BOT and then by NECHE.

Questions for the Vice Chancellor:

Sen. Grillo expressed that a revitalization of programs arising from a system-level “Arts and Humanities Taskforce” would be preferred to program eliminations, which are currently being evaluated through the ongoing Strategic Re-Envisioning (SRE) process on the UMaine campus. Given that the work of said taskforce may not begin until next academic year, Sen. Grillo asked whether there had been any discussion about syncing up these priorities. VC St. John responded that there had not been, citing budgetary timelines and constraints with system- versus campus-level decisions. He offered to speak with President Ferrini-Mundy and Provost Gabriel Paquette regarding SRE-related work on the Arts and Humanities that might support the work of the taskforce.

Sen. Enright asked a question regarding data sharing related to microcredentials across the system. VC St. John agreed to connect David [MacMahon?] to President Klemmer and copy Sen. Enright with an update within a month. View the UMS Cluster Micro-Credential Policy here.

Sen. Miles asked VC St. John to clarify his views regarding how each university campus can work together to complement one another’s role in the larger University of Maine System (UMS), particularly regarding enrollment. VC St. John said he views the UMS like a high-functioning confederation, where universities are not disconnected from one another but have distinct leadership, goals, and identities. Recent enrollment data indicates that a very small percentage of students (~1%) apply to a Your Pace program at UMPI and to another program at the same school or at another school in the System. VC St. John suggested that we can infer from this data that competition between campuses due to Your Pace is insignificant. He felt that competition between non-CBE online programs is a more substantial concern.

Announcements

The senate congratulated Giovanna Guidoboni on her interim appointment as the Vice President for Research and Scott Delcourt on his appointment as Dean of the Graduate School.

Brenn Borror, Interim Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, gave an update on upcoming changes to the umaine.edu website. More information can be found in the website transition brief, linked here.

Jenny Boyden, Interim Vice President for Finance & Administration, announced that the Budget Advisory Committee had its first meeting the week of November 3, 2025, the Administrative Excellence Committee met on November 12, and the Space Advisory Committee will meet the week of November 17.

Angela Fileccia announced that the Counseling Center and Student Wellness Resource Center offers workshops for faculty and staff on topics like stress reduction, suicide prevention, and other mental health topics. President Klemmer proposed doing a workshop for the Faculty Senate. Click here to view additional resources from the counseling center.

Questions of the Administration

President Klemmer asked the administration for their thoughts on the mental health of faculty and staff in light of the work of the “Task Force on Faculty, Staff, & Student Mental Health and Well-being.” (See the Spring 2024 Task Force Report here.) President Ferrini-Mundy thanked President Klemmer for raising these issues and offered the possibility of benchmarking the practices/services that are currently available at UMaine against those of other peer institutions. If faculty are interested in seeing UMaine do this work, she invited them to let her know.

Provost Paquette mentioned that the Provost’s Office is invested in providing professional development and mentorship opportunities for faculty and invited feedback on whether these are the types of opportunities that can best serve faculty.

The conversation segued to a discussion about the System-wide climate survey conducted in 2022 as part of the DEI steering committee. Sen. Roth expressed a desire to see more results from the faculty portion of that survey, beyond the high-level results that were shared with the senate in 2023. Provost Paquette said that additional data had been shared at the college level and with groups such as the President’s Advisory Council on Equity. He offered to look into whether a more granular report was ever disseminated and to report back to the senate by the next public meeting in December.

Sen. Roth also expressed that it would be valuable to conduct these surveys on a more regular basis to get a better understanding of how the campus climate is changing over time, as well as to identify specific areas of improvement and decline. President Ferrini-Mundy clarified that the System is not currently planning another survey of this kind. Provost Paquette expressed interest in the idea of doing a regular climate survey that would be broader than the current practice of surveying individual units on an ad hoc basis. Sen. Karp-Boss expressed that any surveys that do occur need to be accompanied by timely dissemination of results, or else survey fatigue might lead to low response rates.

Sen. Miles raised additional questions regarding his perceived disparities between the quality of educational programs at various institutions in the UMS and how these disparities are being acknowledged or not acknowledged by System leadership. President Ferrini-Mundy responded that the University of Maine is evaluated with similar metrics as other institutions in the System, namely enrollment. She encouraged faculty to continue thinking about and prioritizing ways in which UMaine can increase its enrollment to improve the fiscal outlook of the UMaine campus. At the same time, she affirmed that the System acknowledges UMaine as the System’s flagship R1 university.

The conversation returned to the topic of Your Pace. Sen. Jacobs expressed concern that this competency-based education program has directly impacted enrollment at the University of Maine at Machias (UMM), namely their Early Childhood Program. Megan Walsh, Dean and Campus Director of UMM, added that it would be difficult for her to draw a clear connection between Your Pace and enrollment challenges in UMM education programs, which she views as a much more complex issue related to local shifts in demographics, retirements, and changes in cross-linking of courses with UMPI since UMM became a regional campus of UMaine. Provost Paquette invited faculty to attend the info session on Your Pace at UMaine the week of Nov. 17 to learn more about how this program works. 

Officer & Position Reports

President: Feedback collected from faculty regarding the switch from Cigna to Anthem was sent to Provost Paquette. Shortly after, an agreement was reached between Anthem and Northern Light Health, however additional questions remain regarding 1) the claims and provider statistics shared by the System, 2) uncertainty about mental health services under Anthem, and 3) System-level decision-making.

There was no report from Vice President Akono, Secretary Wason, or Faculty Governance Council Representative DeSisto.

The Board of Trustees Representative, Sen. Marzilli, gave the following report:

Committee Reports

Committee on Committees: Sen. Jacobs thanked the 55 faculty members that stepped up to serve on a variety of committees and task forces for the Offices of the President, Provost, and the Interim Vice President for Finance & Administration and Chief Business Officer.

Program Creation and Reorganization Review Committee (PCRRC): Sen. Pereira (Chair) reported that PCRRC met on November 7 to review 2 proposals: 1) the proposal for a new graduate degree Doctor of Philosophy in Nursing and 2) the proposal for a new blended graduate degree Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) with a concentration in Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP). The committee discussed feedback/questions, forwarded feedback to proposers, and agreed to forgo a public hearing. It will recommend that the Senate endorse both proposals at the next open meeting in December.

Environment Committee: Sen. Waring (Chair) read SM 2601 for the senate and argued in favor of the motion. There were a couple minor clarifying questions about process and timing. The motion was called to a vote and approved unanimously.

Cultural Environment Subcommittee: Sen. Grillo (Chair) reported that the subcommittee is working on two related foci: 1) writing a motion on the need for the university to fully commit to academic freedom and 2) calling for the university to reject any offers to join the federal government’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.

Finance and Institutional Planning Committee (FIPC): Sen. Enright reported that FIPC is working on the administration’s request to analyze emails received from the concerned University of Maine professors. The committee plans to share their analysis soon. FIPC also expressed appreciation for campus leadership’s recent separation of the Vice President for Research (VPR) and Dean of the Graduate School positions, which it views as the administration being responsive to senate conversations over the past 2 years. The committee looks forward to working with Interim VPR Giovanna Guidoboni and Dean Scott Delcourt in future FIPC and faculty senate meetings. Finally, FIPC is actively exploring ways to help mitigate the predicted $20 million AY 2027 budget deficit and hopes to continue participating in those discussions with the administration.

Academic Affairs Committee: Sen. Perry (Chair) reported that the Academic Affairs committee is currently working on the grade grievance policy, the syllabus repository, and the development of some optional syllabus language around recording in classrooms.

General Education Stewardship Committee (GESC): Sen. Michaud (Chair) reported that GESC met on October 31 to discuss the ongoing transition of general education courses to the new Core Curriculum and the idea of thematic pathways through the Core. The committee discussed a discrepancy in the motion that established the Core Curriculum between how Lab Science courses are described in the category description and in the policy section of the motion. GESC would like to adopt the more flexible policy section language, which allows Lab Sciences to count as Science courses but does not mandate it. This would involve changing the Science credit hours to 6 while keeping the minimum Lab Science credit hours at 1 for a total of 7 credits in Scientific Literacy. The basic contours of a pathway are taking shape around a collection of 3-4 courses, arranged around a common theme, with a two-year lifespan. GESC also discussed Core assessment and the Maine Part Time Faculty Association (PATFA) faculty, as well as ideas for spreading the word about the new Core website.

Library Advisory Committee: Sen. Barron (Chair) reported that the Library Advisory Committee met on November 7 to discuss various strategies to demonstrate the multiple ways that the library’s resources, staff, and facilities are foundational to the academic enterprise of research and teaching at the University of Maine. To that end, the committee recommended that, in order to enhance faculty and student access to library resources in Brightspace, a dedicated link to Library Resources be placed as a permanent link on the navigation bar of the Brightspace course shell. The committee plans to present SM 2602 at the elected members meeting on November 19. If approved, CITL will be able to make the change in time for next semester’s classes.

Research and Scholarship Committee: Secretary Wason (Co-Chair) reported that the committee would meet next on November 13. Ongoing projects include developing a collaboration with the Office of Research Administration (ORA) to look into deadlines for notifications about proposal submissions. Secretary Wason asked faculty to share concerns or perspectives on this topic with him. Research and Scholarship will be inviting the interim VPR to all upcoming meetings.

Faculty Information Technology Committee (FIT): Sen. Marzilli (Co-Chair) reported that FIT is working on two motions regarding Artificial Intelligence and the website, respectively.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:32 pm.