University of Maine and University of Maine at Machias Town Hall: Strategic Re-Envisioning — Sept. 12

University of Maine President Joan Ferrini-Mundy and Faculty Senate President Amanda Klemmer co-hosted a Strategic Re-Envisioning Town Hall on Sept. 12, 2024. Joining the President and Klemmer were Provost John Volin; Vice President and Chief Business Officer Kelly Sparks; SRE Project Director Sabrina DeTurk, and SRE Assistant Director James Beaupré.

The presentation slides are available here.

Transcript:

Alright everyone. I think we’re gonna get started.

Yeah, can everyone hear me in the back? We have a tight agenda. We want to get lots of opinions and feedback. So we wanna kick this off welcome to today’s humane and humane Matthias Town Hall on the strategic re envisioning. I’m Amanda Klemmer, the faculty Senate President. And today I’m going to start with our land acknowledgement.

We recognize that the University of Maine recognizes that it is located on Marsh Island in the homeland of the Penobscot Nation, where issues of water and territorial rights, and encroachment upon sacred sites, are ongoing. Penobscot homeland is connected to the other Wabanaki Tribal Nations — the Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, and Mi’kmaq — through kinship, alliances and diplomacy. The university also recognizes that the Penobscot Nation and the other Wabanaki Tribal Nations are distinct, sovereign, legal and political entities with their own powers of self-governance and self-determination.

So today’s Town Hall will provide updates on the strategic re envisioning initiative and lead into a Q. And a session throughout the presentation. You’ll see on all the slides a. QR. Code to collect your questions, and I’m going to be sitting up here monitoring those questions. I believe Michelle, and maybe a few others are going to be doing the same. We will be answering your questions during the Q. And a session at the end of the presentation, and you will also have an opportunity to scan the QR code at the end and continue to add questions and thoughts.

Now, I’m pleased to introduce Joan Ferrini-Mundy, President of the same of the University of Maine and the University of Maine, Machias and Vice Chancellor of Research and Innovation for the University of Maine System.

I really think about it.

Good morning, everybody. Good morning. It’s not getting any better. I keep trying this. Good morning. Lukewarm responses. But anyway, let me start by just saying, Hello, many of you I’ve not seen in the last several weeks, and I’m glad that we’re all back. What a vibrant beginning to the academic year with good enrollment numbers, with all kinds of building and activity on campus, with

new venues coming into online, and lots of tremendous work, particularly by our faculty and staff, who have this semester up and running.

And I appreciate that the work that that takes is significant. And so I just want to thank everybody for all that you do. I don’t know about you, but walking around the campus there’s a different feel a little bit different of a feel. I don’t think I don’t know what that is. Robert. Dana has his thoughts about it. What do you say? We’re sort of post Covid. The students aren’t coveted his language, you know. I think         there’s a vibrancy that’s really quite exciting. I also want to particularly focus on the faculty a bit. I know that many of you have been very busy in the summer with a variety of pursuits. Your research, your creative work, your rethinking of courses and your interactions with students. And that work is greatly appreciated, too, for all who are a part of it. So here we are back again to talk about the strategic re-envisioning initiative and to get into some detail. And you are going to be, I hope, very, very pleased with the amount of activity and inclusion that we’ve been able to achieve even across the summer, where folks are very busy with many things, and that’s due to an outstanding team of leaders who are doing the day-to-day driving of the SRE effort. So Vice President for finance and administration, Kelly Sparks, executive Vice Provost for academic executive

Vice President for academic affairs, and Provost John Colin, and then Sabrina Duterte and James au Pray, who have been leading the groups as we move forward, so that that crowd has been fantastic, and then the faculty members who are the provost, faculty and staff, who are the provost fellows. So we have a number of colleagues who’ve just been fully immersed in this work over the past several weeks, and I want to thank them for that.

So.

Oops?

Oh, I’m sure I’ve gone forward, too.

Okay? So why strategic re envision? We’ve talked about this a number of times. We’ve written about it more documents coming out shortly, a sort of a more comprehensive discussion, but just as a bit of a grounding and a reminder for everybody in talks that I’ve given. Previously I’ve been trying to frame this activity, this strategic re envisioning as exactly that. It’s a re envisioning of our university as we approach 160 years of being the University of Maine, and we look forward confidently to 160 more. borrowing from my friend Nabib, who talks about his own term here in those kinds of terms. So I think it’s important to take stock every now and then of why, we are a university where we are going as a university, what we want to be in the future, and that needs to drive a wide range of activity in what we do all kinds of planning, all kinds of thinking about programmatic emphasis, all kinds of efforts in terms of where we put dollars in, where we don’t. And it needs to drive budgeting. A budget is always, in my view, a planning exercise.

So my way of thinking about this activity is it’s a collective effort to come together and decide what might be some priorities. How do we envision ourselves? 5 years from now, 10 years from now? Because moves that we make today will set the groundwork for that going forward. So you’ve heard me talk before about how dynamic higher education is as an enterprise, and there’s a lot to say about that.

It is also a sector that is relatively slow to change over time and over the scope of the endeavor. And yet the world around us changes constantly, of course, and in other talks I’ve highlighted 1st of all, the role of higher Ed in the future of society. We are the place that educates those who will follow us, those who will be the leaders of tomorrow, those who will be the problem solvers of tomorrow, and the community members and the family members and the people of tomorrow.

We are the institution that has perhaps the biggest influence on how that goes. And we need to be intentional about how we want to do that, and who we want to be going forward as we think about our responsibilities towards social mobility, our responsibilities toward shaping a world that can engage in civic discourse and social justice. So we think about all of this, I think, from time to time. But right now, I think, is a good moment for us to just take stock would point to a few areas where the world is changing very rapidly around us, and these are not surprises to us at the University of Maine. These are things we all think about.

The climate is changing, and that is making a difference in every aspect of life across this planet, and in particular regions of the world, especially challenging right here in the State of Maine, with our coastline, for example, and our fisheries, and our forestry and our agriculture. So the role of the changing climate, and how a university like this, which has leading research and instruction going on across the domains of climate, science, and climate change needs to, I believe, consider whether a part of our re-envisioning is to bring to the foreground much more fully our commitment to understanding and making a difference in the climate domain. At the same time across the world widespread wars and violence, social unrest and injustice.

Those factors just continue to grow. Are we preparing our learners to play the roles that they may be needing to play in that world. And how does that happen in our education experience with them? And so and so, as we think about change, we need to consider the world around us. And I urge you to be doing that this year the University of Maine enrolls students from 91 countries outside of the United States.

We are a global university. And so we need to think of ourselves that way. And I know that we do at the same time programmatically, research, wise vision wise are we making that clear?

And we have our land grant roots that we need to stay. True to. We were founded as a part of the Land Grant movement through the Moral act.

Land-grant universities are meant to be problem focused, regionally oriented, and maybe most significantly to democratize education. So we are a place that needs to, I believe, adhere to our land-grant roots, and imagine and enact what it means to be a modern land-grant university. And so all of that is part of what is the basis and the foundation for thinking about.

I’ve been calling them visions of what we might be.

How people will describe this university. You see our new brand campaign with the blue horizons theme, and I think that gives us some possibilities at the same time. Can we be more clear? I just saw, and I only saw it on my watch as a LinkedIn thing, so I don’t really know much more about it than I can tell you, but I saw it 5 min ago. The State of Nevada has posted something that they’re calling a portrait of a Nevada learner.

And I think this is probably a K-12 initiative. But this concept of having an image or a representation, or a vision of who we are, what we are. What our learners are, I think, is a part of this strategic re envisioning work, because the more clear that we can be about that, the more able we are frankly to make budget decisions and choices and have guidelines that can help us strategically prioritize moving toward whatever those images are or strengthening the ones that we already have, which is, of course, a piece of this.

So there are just a few groundings that I’d like to be sure to remind everyone of. And again, we have a lot of information about this available in lots of places. Our situation currently is is worth staying very aware of as we do, the strategic re-envisioning work. The drivers that we have for revenue are largely tuition and fees.

And you see some data here about them. It’s 46.5% of our total revenues. And we are, we are an institution that needs to balance our budget. And so this is where we have one place that that we can pay attention to. Another source of revenue is indirect cost recovery, which is up since fiscal 21, thanks to the great work of our researchers and faculty and staff and students who are engaged in seeking external funding and the great support from the office of the Vice President for research. At the same time, research costs money to do. And so those incoming E&G dollars in indirect cost recovery need to be helping to do all of the things that make it possible for us to run research labs, to keep the electricity on, to continue repairs and so forth so.

And the other big revenue driver is, of course, our state appropriation.

Enrollment, and retention really is taking a turn, we think cautiously for the better, absolutely with retention, no question, congratulations to academic affairs and to everybody, including students. For now what is it today, John? 83.7% retention 1st year to second year. And what was it last year at the end? It was 76.6. Yeah, so just I think that’s probably a round of applause for everybody, all of us

So many rooms.

And it’s the work of people here in the room, on the video and across the campus to make sure that our students, that we meet our students where they are as they come to us and help them to be successful. So that’s been extraordinary, and that makes a difference in really the vision of who we are.

A  place where students can succeed and can find their pathways to what they hope and aspire to do student credit hours have been relatively flat. We will have more solid results. Post census. But we’re looking. We’re looking positive, I guess. Certainly the head count, numbers are good, the dorms are overflowing, numbers are good. It’s all about how many students take, how many courses, and whether they’re in state or out of state. There’s a lot to consider with that, but we’re looking at all of it, and being affordable is a value for us. And so I think, as we imagine, what our vision or visions include, that might be a part of it.

We also should point out that people work hard here, and compensation costs, of course, also continue to increase. Our deferred maintenance is extraordinary here, and I do want to congratulate facilities management and and the operations that have supported that work. A tremendous amount got done this summer to improve the campus, to bring on the staff, and experts who can help us continue to improve the campus and great thanks there, but with 61% of our buildings having had no major renovations in more than 50 years. That’s quite significant. And the deferred maintenance costs exceed a billion. Kelly could probably give us a bigger number than that, you know. So technology is changing around us. The world is changing the needs of education by our learners are changing. The potential audiences of learners continue to change. It’s a moment that we’re taking, and we’re taking it in a fairly compressed way, and we’ll talk much more about the details. But the basic question driving SRE is, what would the university may look like if we were designing it today.

And that’s kind of an alarming question sometimes for people, because, of course, we are not designing it today. It exists. It has deep roots, deep foundations. Excuse me deep accomplishments, and yet at the same time, this is our moment. To take a look for tomorrow and think about where we want to be, where we want to go. And I’m just delighted at the expansive involvement across our campus in people who are trying to do that work, who are trying to come together from very, very different perspectives, with very different levels of knowledge and depth. On some of these fiscal matters in particular, and roll up their sleeves and say, Who do we want to be as a university? What are we going to be as a university.

So this really is a visioning exercise. It will flow into budget work for the fiscal year 2026, which begins really beginning at the system level now, and it will begin here. But one thing I would like to emphasis, I’m so heartened by the great involvement and great response to this SRE that I don’t think we imagine this as somehow being concluded. When phase 2 or phase 3 ends. This will need to be ongoing. We’ll have staging really of the ideas that are coming through, and of the expression of the vision that we’re trying to create over the next many months. This 1st budget step will, of course, be important, and we’d like to be able to do that with some clear guidelines and guard rails criteria for how we think about things coming out of the discussion so far, but at the same time I’m excited by these discussions, and we need to continue them. I believe so with that. I believe it’s my now ask to turn this over to vice President for finance administration, Kelly Sparks.

We’re a little unclear on choreography. but I’m going the wrong direction.

So, as the President mentioned, the strategic re-envisioning process will inform our multi-year financial plan. So we want to make sure that we get through the phase one and phase 2 of this process. So we have that context to put in place. We are in year 2. As the President mentioned upfront. I’m going to show you the numbers in just a moment for context of where we’re at. So next year, this year, and next year we will continue to strategically use our reserves so that we can make good strategic decisions through the envisioning process. And then in year 3 we will start to rebalance our overall budget.

So I’m going to just jump to the numbers so that you all know these are the same numbers you saw last April. If you were with us at the Town Hall. There they’re the same numbers we’ve communicated to the board of trustees, and, thanks to the incredible work of the enrollment team the incredible work of retention. We are coming in right in on budget for FY25 and for those of you who’ve been around for a couple of years. That’s not what we said last year, and that’s not what we said year before. So we planned for it. We achieved the goals that we have our revenues, our financial aid. Everything is looking nice and tidy on the top line. So now our job for the rest of the year is to manage. Keep those students here for the spring and to manage our expenses so that we achieve our budget for year end.

We will use reserves so that number that 4.8 million for FY25.

That’s a negative number. That means we’re taking from reserves. Okay, so we’ve been very intentional in saying, we don’t want to pull back too much. We don’t want to make decisions that aren’t strategic until we are informed by the University that we want to be, and then next year we’ll continue to do that will continue to use another 2.1 million dollars in reserves in FY26.

But how we get to that. 276 million 279 million dollars and expenses will be informed by this process. So there’s no specific plan yet.

There’s no secret plan yet. There’s no specific strategies that will be implemented. So the work that the provost fellows are going to talk about today will inform what will happen in Phase 3. As we start to work with our deans, our directors, our other Cabinet members on specific strategies, that we can implement in years 1, 2, 3. So I really think of this as a multi-year financial plan, so multiple years will be will have evolution over time.

So that’s I’m gonna add, I’m gonna leave it there and I can come back to questions. As we move forward. I am now turning this over to oh, I did want to just say one last that we do have a Budget committee. We will bring the presidential budget Advisory Committee. We. I think we’re meeting in 2 weeks. For the 1st time this year this group will come into, and it will be the group that will be in the details of the number as we get into the process. This is the group from last year. We do need to make sure that we edit the students for participation. Next year we had some graduate. We have some returning, but note your representation for your various bodies. These are your advocates in the budget in the budget process over the next year.

And with that I’m turning it back over to. I’m trying to get to the Provost. Sorry I don’t have my script.

Good morning, everyone. I think everyone has seen this Venn diagram. President introduced it last year. These are 3 major foci of the university that really came out of the 2025 Inhumane Commission that had 9 major recommendations. If you will, you can still see that up on the website. And but very important, this is actually guiding a lot of the work that we’re all involved in so integrating research and teaching for tomorrow’s innovators growing and thriving, inclusive community of learners. And then this really specific one, but certainly part of our core DNA here at the University of Maine university health of our planet and confronting climate change very contemporary as well and interesting work that we’ve been doing a very long time. You know. We’re not jumping on the bandwagon. This is this is work that we’ve been doing for more than half a century.

And we do have the strategic re envisioning, guiding principles, if you will, which are, you know, guiding principles help us make decisions right that are aligned with our mission.

With our values, you know, with our overall vision. And so, as you can see. And the President mentioned this earlier, you know, we are the Land Grant University. We’re a research intensive university. These are part of our guiding principles to again integrate teaching and research. That’s if you look at the committees, the 13 working groups right now. And there’s adjacent projects that will be coming, you know, off of this work you’ll see a lot of integration, of teaching and research throughout. We have to be financially sustainable. Right? That’s a key. So we often get that question is budget exercise. No, it’s not just a budget exercise, but certainly the financial sustainability. Long term. Well, short term and long term is critical.

This is this is 4^th. The 4th point is important. We’re saying, this is one of our guiding principles. Yes, we are a residential community. We see ourselves being a residential community in the coming, you know, decades at the same time, if you remember the strategic Enrollment management recruitment retention, action plan that many in this room and online have been a part of. And it’s been really.  You know, worked at for the last couple of years. It’s focused on all learners, right? You see, very strong things like this that have come out lack their advantage focusing on all learners and robust online offerings as well. So we’re really trying to. Actually, I would say, double down on the Land Grant Mission to make sure that we get education to everyone in the State.

We’re foster supporting inclusive community course. And you saw last year, with the with Amanda glimmer. That was, you know, the faculty Senate, President Robert Dana, and myself kicked off that wonderful task force that that worked on student faculty and staff. Mental health and well-being task force that work that didn’t end up on a shelf. A lot of work has been moving forward in that space because it is definitely one of our guiding principles and hats off to Angela Felicia, who’s really been one of the great leaders on that.

And finally, as we talked about before. You know that we are a community that’s committed to transaction research, prioritizing and education and prioritizing responsible stewardship of our natural resources, part of our part of our heritage here at the University of Maine.

This is on the website. If you haven’t been to the President’s site on strategic envisioning. I really, there’s a lot of wonderful information there that you can really dive in. And we’ve kind of said this all along. This is, you know, May 9th to June 1st is that phase, one period that led to right. Now we’re in phase 2 and phase 2 is the 1.st One is reflection and revisioning. The second phase really is focused in on prioritization and assessment. This is going on through September here, and that funnel is all these ideas coming together, but like a tornado, and something’s gonna pop back up. But eventually the idea is that we come together as a community with the best thinking that we can to be, and that phase 3 as we’ll be entering here, will be a refining and executing phase. You just heard the President say, we will be kicking, you know. It’s going to start in October, and some may take, you know, longer a few months, perhaps, but this is the work, the hard work that we’re all committed to doing.

And I believe I turn this over to Sabrina. Thank you.

So hi, everybody and those online as well. I want to really take a minute to acknowledge the hard work that’s been going on by this group of folks here. Fellows, and what we’re referring to as team leads. So when we ended up with 13 of these themes that emerged from the really good ideas that came out of the retreat last spring, the Town Hall from cabinet and deans and directors, and so on. We had identified that there would be the 10 faculty and staff fellows, and then needed to bring in 3 extra folks who very kindly stepped in and are leading some of the groups on things like generative AI and student success and athletics that got added a little bit later. So I think actually, if I can, a round of applause for these folks and their hard work.

And then many of you, I’m sure, have seen these on the website or in other communications, but these are the themes that we’ve been really diving into. And I want to be really clear that that does not in any way mean that these are the only things that we think are important in this process, but they are ones. And I said this yesterday in a Senate meeting I do feel very strongly. These are ones that came through so loud and clear from the feedback that we were getting in those early stages. So I do think that we can all feel confident that there is a lot of really good information and potential ideas for change that can be brought out here.

I’m gonna ask James to come up and talk through a little bit, particularly with one specific way that you all can get involved in providing information. I just want to emphasize that this engagement is so critical to the process. And I think it’s extraordinary how many people we’ve already had that have stepped up to become involved in the SRE. And we’re not done.

Yeah. So we have opportunities throughout this month, and probably heading into October to be talking with other groups through the Senate, through student government, through the Umm Faculty Assembly, etc., and we are also still looking for your very specific ideas, suggestions, things that you think are worth further consideration. So, James, you want to talk a little bit about the online tool here.

Thank you, Sabrina. So, as the Provost noted, we would need to engage the thinking of the entire community on campus. We’ve been working on doing that through the activities that you see listed here. But one way that we can continue to do that and help is still needed. As the process is still ongoing to develop the assessment opportunities to understand the priorities and the ideas that exist in a community, we gotta collect information. So rather than going out and having a meeting with every single one of our faculty, staff and students are on campus, we devised an idea collection prototype tool.

So the SRE idea prototype tool is the QR code that you have here. It’s the only different QR code through the entire presentation. So snap it with your phone now. But if you don’t catch it right now, it’s also available on the Sre Project website as well as every communication. The President has been sending out to leverage the opportunity for our community to say, Hey, I have a great idea. We all have knowledge, experience, and passion for this institution. We want you to be able to communicate where those opportunities exist to re envision the University from your perspective.

So if you were to click that your QR code and go into there. You’ve seen ability to enter your idea or your ideas. Please feel free to send as many as you’d like. But it’s very simple criteria. Of what’s the name of this thing? What does it do? Who is it going to impact? What are the concerns that you have. What are the opportunities with it to to take that information and bring it back into our working groups, to be able to evaluate and understand what it means to re envision the university around, not just the thoughts that the 13 fellows have and 180 people in the working groups have them. But the entire community has, as we continue to engage in this process.

If anything looks sideways, you have any trouble understanding what the form is, send us an email, feel free to email Sabrina and say, couldn’t figure out the form. But here’s what I want you to think about. We can work that into the process and leverage the tools from there.

So with that, I’d like to hand off to the 1st of our fellows who has a chance to walk through the theme. There’s 13 of these themes. There’s only so many hours in the day. We have only so many events for the Town Hall. Here we identified 4. That kind of spread the gamut of what the themes are where the work is today. So with that, I’d like to hand off to Andy Pinkham to walk into the 1st theme around space allocation.

Thank you, James.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for having me. I’m happy to share with you the work that we have been conducting for the Space Allocation Project, and, as you can see on the board here, these are the working group members that I have been working with. And what is the charge for the space allocation that has been presented to me? Optimize space allocation with awareness to our carbon footprint reduce operational costs and enhance student experience, learning outcomes and research productivity while meeting our organizational needs.

And what I’m happy to share with is through the summer. Through the past few weeks I have been able to engage with our working groups from our working groups. I’ve had some wonderful feedback, thoughtful feedback from our staff and our faculty, and who we can identify for one-on-one meetings, and what data that we have available to us with regards to analyzing our space, and how the University of Maine, as well as University of Machias, are utilizing those spaces.

The topic of space is very broad and very encompassing whether it’s classrooms that we’re looking at the facilities, fields for farmlands and so forth. Office space.

And so we had a new charge brought for us when we tried to focus down to perform an opportunity assessment for both of the campuses and understand the gaps that are potentially.

Facing this system we would like to look at, what could we tear down if we need to reduce? But then also, what can we rebuild? If space is an a need as we grow, and I’m working with them. As far as I will be working with my working groups to rank these ideas and assess the positive, and the negatives to ensure that we capture all of the positives and negatives towards that from my working groups. I they thoughtfully identified, like I said, various departments, and this isn’t all inclusive. I’m sure there will be other areas of opportunities that I can have included within this.

But I have looked at the space and capital management where we’re looking at the buildings that we have on campus and their ratings, and how we can best utilize the buildings that are in better shape. I’ve also looked at events in hospitality when we face space and events on campus and energy and the utilization management, and what are the buildings costing us to remain online? So those buildings that are in need of demolish or gut renovations. How much is it the cost of keeping them online. And how much is the savings if we do take them offline?

And then looking at the design and the architect space management? And are we maximizing those buildings that are in better shape in the spaces and the opportunities that are available.

I’ve also worked with the registrar’s office, and in order to identify that we need to know. How. How are we utilizing those spaces, and how are they being scheduled? Are we in? Are we optimizing them?

Good news?

That’s where we’re asked for this particular theme on this SRE project, and I will go ahead and turn over.

Laura was. I think she’s

Thank you.

Good morning. I’m happy to have the opportunity to talk about the work that this working group has put into the topic of optimizing our humane online offerings.

Our charge broaden our audience by optimizing structure and offerings.

But before we started into that charge, our working group wanted to focus in on understanding who are our online learners. So we started looking at the data that we have. And it’s we have thriving online programs degree programs with learners who are completing everything online. But more and more. We also have residential campus based learners who are using online courses to round out their schedule. Those needs for those residential learners need to be accounted for in any structure or offerings that we have, as well as those fully online degree seeking students. So we talked about the equity issues involved in our optimization, on our re envisioning of the University of Maine and all of our online programs getting to our charge.

We also were able to dig in and look at how other universities across the country are approaching this issue. And there’s such a variety of structures and formats and spin offs and different kinds of structures there that we determined that what we wanted to focus on as a group was quality, 1^st maintaining our identity meeting accreditation needs, of course, but also back to those guiding principles, meeting our learner needs. So in our investigation of different types of structures, we had Richard Roberts come in from humane online and give us a presentation on some of the data that he’s collected on how learners want to access and what learners are looking for as far as online programs and online degrees, we learned a lot. Some of it is as simple as learners wanting a really quick turnaround from the time they decide that maybe they want to explore a degree program to be able to start that program.

That’s a structure issue that we have started talking about.

We are also looking at different course timing what’s appropriate for different courses, and how we can offer potential shorter courses. Maybe if they’re appropriate and they still maintain that quality of instruction and quality for the learner. And, as Tanya said, we’re looking at pros and cons of these different administrative and faculty structures that we’re teasing out from this investigation the 3rd part of our charge well, the 3rd the 3rd bullet it’s the second part of our charge is also to investigate. Where are those opportunities? Where are those market growth places where we can be that leader? And we’re diving into that now as a team. But we’ve been given a lot of great information on market growth job growth area and also what students are interested in. So while we’re not making recommendations, we’ll be able to tease out and pull out some of our areas where we could potentially offer online programs that meet the needs of learners across Maine, but also beyond the beyond the boundaries of the State.

So next, Dr. Ellen Weinauer is going to come up and talk about the work of the working group where she is a member of. Thank you so much.

I am not Jessica Riccardier. I’m a member of the working group. The group focused on developing a learner focused. R1. Jessica can’t be with us today. So I’m representing the work of that group, both really from the perspective of a working group member. And what I’m going to try to do just in a few minutes. Here is provide a window into some of our group’s conversation about what it might mean to become or be an R1 institution that focuses on undergraduate learners.

So importantly, this idea challenges, I think, a truism, a truism that’s been around for a long time, and that we have not really fully challenged. I think in higher education that an institution is either research focused or teaching focused. So the idea is to challenge that bifurcation. A learner focused r. 1 university would intentionally leverage UMaine’s research profile to enhance in particular the undergraduate experience explicitly incorporating undergraduates into the University’s Research and Land Grant Mission and providing them with enhanced opportunities to engage in critical thinking and problem solving in applied context. Would our group believes, garner many benefits to students, to our student success and retention efforts. We know this, the literature tells us this to faculty and to the university at large.

So for our group, the question has been less. Should we try to become a learner? Focused? R1 and more, we’ve been asking, What does it mean to be a learner focused? R1 What does this look like? And how do we become such an institution?

The what does it mean? Question has generated a great deal of conversation from the group, from terminology to conceptual models.

As an English Ph.D. I’m particularly keen on this 1st point. For example, we have discussed the very definition of research, and expressed the importance of being fully inclusive and comprehensive in that definition. In short, we must recognize that research takes many forms from traditional lab and field research to humanity, scholarship, creative activity, community engagement, and so much more we’ve discussed whether, being a learner focused R1 means ensuring that all undergraduates engage in research, broadly defined in all courses, in some select courses or programs, in a developmental progression or in some other way.

And we’ve discussed what it means to center undergraduate learning in light of the new metrics for maintaining our one designation metrics that clearly prioritize Ph.D. production as we contemplate these and other questions. We have been looking at areas on campus where this work is already happening. For example, this is not an exhaustive list, RLEs and pathways to careers, the Honors college including honors, in brief, the center for undergraduate research, the UMaine Sea phase program. Among others.

What can we learn from these programs and their approach to undergraduate research learning. And how can we both deepen this work and extend it to other areas?

Finally, as the slide indicates a major topic of conversation has been around capacity and return on investment.

At whatever scale. This approach to undergraduate learning is costly.

We do believe that there are significant potential recruitment and retention benefits. And we’re working on gathering data from the RLEs and other areas about that.

But we also know that institutional and especially faculty capacity already stretched, would be stretched further. Under this initiative we are, by all accounts, a sort of an open university, readying students, all students for this kind of learning is challenging matters like workload and tenure and promotion standards would have to be recalibrated. Innovative ideas will require new investments or identifying new sources of funding.

So as we move into the next phase of the SRE, these are the kinds of issues that the working group will be focusing on.

And I think I’m now going to turn it over to Matthew Curtis.

Who’s the provost fellow for the working group focused on athletics.

Good morning, everybody. As Ellen alluded to, my name is Matt Curtis. I’m leading the SRE committee that is focused on the themes evolving around athletics. Behind me you can see the committee members that we’ve been working with and also our theme. And just to share that theme states as the only division one college athletic program in the State. We will optimize our investment facilities and strategic approach in ways that positively impact student success, equity, access and opportunity as well as the institution’s brand.

Just like all the other themes. That is a lot to come back. So, looking at Bullet Point one, how do we lift the University of Maine up and build off the recent success of UMaine athletics. You know we recognize that we have a great opportunity in front of us, with the recent success mentioned. And of course, the new facilities that are already online. We’re coming online shortly, thanks to the generous support of the Harold Alpha Foundation.

Our group has met several times and early on face the challenge of determining if this is a budget exercise, or if this is a higher level, strategic analysis. And like you’ve kind of heard it, it’s both not wanting to dismiss any ideas or proposals that could possibly impact our university. We began categorizing things and ideas into shorter term buckets and longer term approaches.

Meaning that these ideas in the shorter term buckets could be implemented more quickly, perhaps even FY26 would be placed in that shorter term bucket, as I mentioned, and ideas that are bigger in scope, and that take more time to implement, are placed in that longer term bucket category. The Provost alluded to. We have adjacent ideas that are stemming from these conversations. We’ve been able to generate a list of these items meaning ideas that could be implemented much quicker and don’t necessarily need to go through the formal SRE process. They could be approaches categories, ideas that an individual on campus or the appropriate department could take on and simply move forward and push forward and not have to necessarily stick to that sre process.

So now that we’ve received feedback from campus leadership, we’re taking a deeper dive into the research from some of these proposals to clearly understand what we’re talking about, and just be that directional force that gives campus leadership information that they need.

I know that’s pretty big. We’re very excited to see where these conversations going. We’re just trying to get into that data and research piece down. And like, I said, very excited to see that what the next step consists of. So now I think I’m ending up this spring. Thank you.

Back to me again. I do really want to thank the four folks who just came up to give kind of a window into what they’re doing. So when we were conceiving, you know, sort of the agenda for the Town Hall. I mean, we thought it was really important that you should all get sort of a glimpse into what these working groups are all about

One of the challenges there is that they are very much still in the midst of everything. So again, really appreciative that I contacted all these folks at the end of last week and said, I know you’re still in the middle of a work in progress. But can you somehow condense that into a single slide and present it to a large group of people next week, and they all stepped up, and I think, did that effectively.

And again, I want to emphasize that this is very fluid, and, as Kelly said earlier, like, there is no sort of plan in the background that these things are driving to. And I think you got a sense here as well, of the very different approaches that the groups are taking. And that’s intentional. We didn’t go into this thinking, like everyone, has to have exactly the same blueprint for how they are doing this work. And so there’s a lot of flexibility there.

I want to just briefly talk about kind of bringing to an end phase 2 which, as I alluded to earlier, is sort of scheduled to end at the end of September, although we realize that these phases are a little bit fluid in terms of timing, and then I’ll just talk a little bit about moving into Phase 3. And then we have plenty of time for Q&A, which is certainly where we wanted to focus a lot of attention.

So, as I mentioned earlier. Over the next few weeks we will be continuing to solicit feedback. Both kind of concrete ideas that you all think should be put into the mix to be considered, and then more generally feedback around these questions of what are positive and negative impacts of choices that we might make as an institution, and also what are criteria that folks feel would be important for decision makers to take into account, as they might be evaluating a very concrete idea or change or possibility. So that’s a lot of what we’ll be looking at. The working groups are certainly a part of that. And I really want to reiterate that I know that not just the 4 folks you heard from today, but all 13 people would be happy to hear from anybody with specific thoughts, specific feedback specific issues or criteria that you feel need to be considered. Just reach out. Everybody is on the website. You can find them. You can figure out which theme you’re interested in and send things directly to them. James and I, of course, are also happy to take that feedback.

By September 30th we’re hoping that most of the groups will be in a position where they’re delivering some kind of a summary document. Again, we are very aware that that might look different, depending on the theme, but something that is going to give us some of that sense of positive and negative impacts, and a kind of set of criteria for continuing to evaluate ideas around those themes that is being delivered, of course, to the President, members of Cabinet, etc. And as we move into Phase 3.

And Kelly alluded to this earlier. I mean, there, we’re really kind of making a transition to say, all right, out of all of this that came forward. What are some things that we really want to do? A deeper dive on, that we think we could have either more immediate or within sort of the next 2 to 3 years financial budgetary implications that we want to take more of a look at. This is where we’ll also be, I think, transitioning and bringing in folks like the Deans and directors, members of Cabinet who have specific areas of responsibility that begin to dovetail with these themes to say, ok, what does this really look like? If we were to drive down this path, so to speak. And so I think in October you’ll be hearing more about kind of you know what’s coming up to the top. As you know, things that we’re going to consider further, perhaps other opportunities to solicit more detailed feedback around certain ideas. But really, you know, kind of trying to refine a bit there.

I believe that is it, unless any of my colleagues have other points that we want to make? Or shall we just move to? QA. Is that okay? So, Amanda, what makes the most sense? Do you want to come up and share.

So we’ve got the QR code so people could still use that we also have a mic in the room. But maybe if some things have come online, we could start there and then. Okay, I’ll trade with you.

I think this this 1st question kind of leads directly to the process from here on out that Sabrina was just mentioning. But it was, Will the University executive leadership and the SRE team be directly involved in implementing the changes decided upon? Or will they simply task these changes to the departments and then check in periodically, I envision a wonderful plan, but struggle with trusting implementation and growth that will come to fruition across the board.

Well, I’ll start with this one looking at it here, too. Question about will sort of what happens when we have these ideas. And as Sabrina just really clearly explained what the groups are delivering at the end of the month will be. Think of them more like criteria, perhaps guidelines considerations to keep in mind, as some of these ideas are then really taken to the next level. You know it’s partly going to. What happens next will partly depend on what comes in at the end of September.

And, as you’ve heard, there are many different leadership groups that will have to be involved in this. The Cabinet represents the major departments of the University, and so they will be key. I do want to pick up on another question. Sorry that the University of Maine at Machias, of course, is a central part of all of this work, and is represented on the Cabinet by Dean Megan Walsh. So the ideas will come to Cabinet. They will come to the Dean’s group. They will come to the Research and institute university level directors. They will then, of course, be continued in discussion through those groups with those groups, and then priorities will make their way into departments and units at a variety of levels. So it’s our usual distributed decision making. But it will start with an analysis of what’s coming in.

And I’m going to add one thing that I think I’d like to introduce into the process, and apologies to all for a bit of a surprise here. But these ideas are outstanding, and some of them to be budget related are revenue generating ideas that will take some investment that might take some time, and some are savings or efficiency ideas, and we’ve used language about consolidation and about restructuring and so forth. I think those ideas are coming as well.

But part of what we need. To be sure, we have in hand in a clear way that has consensus behind. It is what I’ve been calling this set of visions. So if we could just go back to the slide, the Provost showed the slide. It’s a slide of guiding principles, or something sorry.

10 or 1110 or 11.

Think it might be interesting to propose an additional group or process to take a look at this list of 6 ideas and work together to see if they serve, serve as a basis for and span the entire set of visions. We might like to propose at this time. And then work on crafting language that moves them from being guidelines to actually being statements of what we will be. So imagine in 5 years. Somebody looks at this University, they say, oh, that’s the universe, that is me, premier Land Grant, Space Grant, Sea Grant, and so forth. I think there’s a bit of a distance between what is here not a lot, but some re-crafting, so that they come across as more powerful vision statements. So this is a starting set that we can work from. I think these have been oops.

These have been out and around now for some time. Those could be the possible. A piece of the starting set, and they intersect with the next slide. But would there be interest? And I’ll just ask in the room sort of rough show of hands. If we put together a group charged with, let’s see if we can get some articulation, at least an intermediate version of what we claim our visions of ourselves to be just with. You know you’re not volunteering now you’re just giving me a reading. You might be. You’re just giving me a reading of whether you think that’s a fruitful piece of this work as we go forward.

Just kind of a show of hands.

Okay, there’s enough for a group. Good. I’m just kidding. I think, team we maybe want to try to do that. So that that’s happening in parallel. And all of this has to remain fluid. None of this suddenly gets stamped as complete. So, anyway, thank you.

Great, thank you, Joe, and I will just say that this came up in my SRE working group. And we have started working on our own visions regarding the 3 circles, and I know there are some from the Budget Advisory Committee as well. So maybe this could all intersect. I’m just going to reach to a question that was put into the

Online chat from the zoom. Because I’ve heard this from a bunch of faculty as well as faculty. Senate President, it says, can you please assure faculty that any new initiatives and changes will take into considerations the impact on faculty workload mental health and include close collaboration with AFM. As the contract is renegotiated.

So as each of the provost fellows talked about. They’re looking at the positive and negative impacts of any decisions. I think that is really key to answering that question. So we’re really asking the working groups to help us understand how both faculty and staff will respond to potential ideas as they might be implemented so that can be used as a decision making criteria. And those would absolutely be impacted on faculty well-being impact on staff well-being impact on workloads. So I think that’s really important for us to consider in the process. And it’s built into the way that the working groups are designed in terms of the ATM and the bargaining contract. Of course, any decision-making process will need to follow our faculty Senate, our bylaws, how we make decisions as well as what’s embedded in all of our bargaining unit contracts.

Of which we have of multiple. So yes, that is, that will be built into the process. We don’t have a specific plan for those yet, because no recommendations at this point are being vetted for decision making. But we are aware that as we move forward into specific ideas in phase 3. That we’ll need to be very, very mindful and considerate, and consider those impacts.

Should we pause and see if there’s any questions in the room.

I’ll do my best. So I I guess my question is the timeline of phase 3 October till February, and I believe that I recall from previous conversations, Kelly, that’s usually time we start submitting the budget for the next cycle. So off the phase. 3 implementation. Or will you be keeping that in mind. Will you be looking at things that could really assist with helping develop that and plan the budget looking for again, as you said revenue growth, but also other efficiencies.

I think that’s my question.

I’m gonna actually borrow a term from Matt Curtis as he described it. So I think the answer is yes. So that we have a budget that we have to submit. That’s a very, that’s a very discrete activity with a very specific timeline, and the 1st submission of that is in February. But this is bigger than one year cycle. It’s a multiyear cycle. So yes, we do want to have some concrete ideas for both revenue generation. Short term ideas. That can be built into FY26.

But, more importantly, I think we want to build it into the multiyear. Look so as we look out. FY26-27. Over the next 5 years. How do we layer in these ideas over time. There may be 15 really great ideas, but I’m going to go back to the previous question. We only have so many people. We only have so much energy, so much capacity, so much time to be able to implement new ideas. So we need to layer them on over a period of time, or there may be opportunities for reduction consolidation. And we also want to be mindful of the impact that that has. So it’s also unwinding processes, unwinding ways that we do things unwinding work that’s happening so that we can do it differently. That also takes time. So yes, there is a very concrete FY25.  Some of these will be built at our FY26. Some of these will be built into it. But we’ll also layer it on over time.

And I and I think just for each idea, we’ll need to build a very concrete implementation plan with ownership accountabilities and the ability to track and measure are we getting the successes out of it that we anticipate from it? Because we may have a great idea, and we think it’s great part way through the implementation. We may not realize we’re not getting that benefit, and we should stop. We should fail fast and let it go away.

Yes.

Thank you, Kelly?

There is a question on here about particular academic programs already kind of being in part of one of their own re envisioning processes do from 5 year reviews, etc. And so the question is, should they pause that and wait until the results of the SRE come out, or should they organ.

So that’s a great question.

The usual plan that you do for acting programming should continue. You know, we work on. We’re working on one proposal right now. That’s been 3 years in the making. Right? And some, you know, go more quickly than that. Certainly, if you are thinking, you know, interdisciplinary in a way, on some of your activating programs. That’s great. You should continue working toward those. And you know, these processes are done in parallel.

And so we definitely don’t want to slow down the innovation of academic programming. Thanks.

Alright. Is there any more in the room?

Yeah.

Yeah. I was just wondering if, we could speak to the role of graduate education in the SRE, specifically sort of noting that there wasn’t a specific theme associated with graduate education per se.

Okay? Well, so on one hand, actually, to some of the thematic areas of SRE, you know, the graduate education essentially comes in, you know.

But, on the other hand. You know, there will also be some conversation going on

university wide at different levels, different stakeholders, in other words, asking questions like, you know, what is the future of graduate education, you know, and just in general, I mean the way things are happening in this world in the nation, and then map that into what’s going on at the University of Maine, and how we can essentially develop a good strategic plan to kind of meet those kind of goals and objectives, you know. But under that big umbrella I would also say, you know, there are sort of sub areas of real interest, you know, for example, looking at but you know, I mean, we have master level programs. We have doctor level programs. All of them are important like at the master level of you know, from a strategic point of view the provisional degree programs. You know, you know, are very important, at least 2 key reasons for them. One 1st and foremost those are the kind of programs that the State of Maine has a lot of needs for and even beyond the state of main, you know. So that’s an important part of our mission to me.

But at the same time, oh, by the way, those are the programs that generally driven, you know, they’re not like research oriented master’s programs that actually, we have to generally provide assistanceships and things of that nature, you know.

But of course, then, at the doctoral level, you know, I don’t have to convince you at this point as an all one university, you know. I mean, it’s extremely important that we further grow our doctoral programs.

Not only in terms of number of students coming in and graduating every year. But also look at opportunities, you know, I mean going back to saying the future of graduate education. What kind of programs you need to have at the doctoral level, looking at the existing ones? If some of them needs to be sort of you know, a little bit changed, or a new track added to an existing one or not, but also at the same time looking at maybe development of some new programs, particularly in some interdisciplinary areas where you can really then address some brand challenges are happening in this world. So anyway, that that’s in a nutshell. I don’t know if I answer your question, but more or less, that’s where we are. Thank you.

I can also add in my group, which is Group 2. We have been coming up with our own values, as we see, for teaching, learning, and engaging with the community, and one of those that was brought up in our group is making sure that we maintain a distinct graduate education here at the University of Maine, and it doesn’t just get shunted into a part of the undergraduate education in terms of, you know, co-counting 411 classes for graduate degrees and things like that. So there are other groups that are thinking about it as well.

Okay, there’s a question online about the SRE value 5 and supporting an inclusive community. But the fact that there is not a specific SRE group focused on a supportive and inclusive community. I don’t know who would like to address that

I will address that to you. Sure

little super fees that would help.

No?

Oh, it’s you! You see it in 2 places. You see it here. You see it here again.

And now we see our themes, and I think what we are coming to here is

there’s been a question about Machias. There’s just now been a question about graduate education. There has been a question about where do we explicitly see our focus on inclusion to me. What that is suggesting is that we need to be sure to pull to the forefront some cross cutting themes that every group is charged to be sure to attend to and in my view, anything in the Dei inclusion, social justice category has to be everybody’s business. And so one approach will be to say, let’s take that through the groups and through the themes. But Sabrina can comment in more detail because she’s tracking more closely. I think that’s helpful. So I mean absolutely. There is an understanding. I think, that everything that was on this list, you know.

Flows through all of them. But I would also say, maybe more specifically. And I’m not going to get into the weeds on some of the documentation that we’ve been given to groups to work with. But we have a number of documents that we’ve given to working groups to help them with building out these kind of criteria and rubrics and evaluative strategies, and on all of those. There are sections that speak to inclusivity impact on students impact on community things like that. So I do think that every one of these themes that the working group is attending to that, as you know, sort of a subsection, if you will, of the things that they’re looking at in figuring out those positive and negative impacts, figuring out where we would have to, you know, be attentive to in developing an idea further. So I can we do better. Yes, we can always do better. Are we doing something in each theme? Yes, I honestly think we are doing that as well. So, but we are also very open to more specific suggestions. If there are places where folks would like to see real attention to that issue and feel like it’s not being clearly reflected in a public way. Let us know, and we’ll pass that along to working groups and get them to really think in that direction any questions in the room.

I think it’s, I think. Oh, sorry.

Sabrina. I think I think you just addressed it. As you were talking about use the word rubric. And so I think, as these ideas come forward from each of the subgroups that are working on the SRE, that at least these guiding principles are attached to a rubric for evaluating those ideas as they come forward, and other guiding principles that we have at the university that may not necessarily be included on this list, but are really important to us.

That’s my observation. Yeah.

Any other questions there.

Yeah, which one online.

The question is: how is athletics going to reduce their deficit, which is quite a significant portion of human structural one, while maintaining equity for men’s and women’s activities? Are they able to increase revenues to cover the costs of operations?

So I’m going to start with. First of all, there was an assumption there that they have a significant deficit. I think that’s something that we haven’t looked at entirely, and we also have to think about all funds. So athletics is more than E&G. They’re also bringing in significant donor related funds for capital improvement on campus that are enhancing the overall campus. So I think we need to talk about what is. What is the definition? We also have to think about that all of our student athletes are student athletes, and that there is an E&G contribution that is necessary and important to support those students as we support all of our students.

So the question so there’s a lot to unpack in that. I also want to call out that they exceeded their budget by over a million dollars this last year. So the new athletic director has brought many, many revenue, enhancing opportunities to the institution through external partnerships as well as through ticket sales and frankly winning teams, and specifically, hockey has not

Hurt the bottom line for athletics in any way. So I think part of the charge of the Athletics group is to continue. How do they play off of that momentum. How do they leverage that? How do we also consider that outside contribution in improving our facilities, reducing our deferred maintenance, enhancing our energy and other infrastructure on campus through some of the projects.

Are doing as well as other pathways, connections, infrastructure, landscape, beautification of our campus that is helping us to attract and retain students, faculty and staff here. So I think there’s a lot of ways to look at athletics that are beyond just what may be the cost benefit of those specific programs, and they are diving into some of that. What it means to have

Athletic programs at the University of Maine as a part of this address, the equity for men’s and women’s sports, equity for men’s and women’s sports. Absolutely. I’m going to talk about hockey to start with what is incredibly exciting to see about the the Harold Alfond donation and the Current Master Plan for athletics is it’s all about equity of our physical facilities.

As well as coaching salaries and a number of coaches that we have in our areas. So men’s and women’s hockey will have a not just equitable, but equal one for one facilities in terms of office spaces in terms of practice, spaces in terms of locker rooms.

They have also increased the staffing. You’ll see that many of the facilities that have been brought on like 1st have been about women’s sports. They’ve been about field hockey. They’ve been about women’s soccer, which is currently underway and softball. So a lot of emphasis is being put on there, and additional staffing. Additional coaching staff are Jude Kelly, our athletic director, has been bringing on coaching staff to supplement and make sure that there’s equity and balance in those teams.

Well there is a question on here about how classified employees are being incorporated into this work and conversation. So far, there’s multiple bargain bargaining units. We’ve looked to see that we have representation from each on the Budget Advisory Committee on the Space Advisory Committee, as well as seeking out to bring staff in on the working groups. If looking at the list. If there are recommendations of additional or adding people every week to these working groups. It’s not a static list. It’s an ongoing process.

We’re also building an engagement plan for the months of October and November to bring out more information to campus, so would welcome ideas for additional engagement. If if there’s an individual I can’t see the names, because I can’t see that with my glasses. Who but if you yourself would like to be included in the process if you would like to recommend specific representation for.

Or more than one of the groups. Please let us know we would be thrilled to further engage our all members of all of our bargaining units in the in the process.

Yeah, please.

Okay.

I also want to add, because the issue of capacity and workload, and so on, has come up a few times, and we are all stretched. We truly get that.

I know we’ve made a lot of invitations that might sound like what we’re saying is like, Oh, can you give us another? You know, 10 HA month of your time to join a working group.

1st of all, that’s probably not the commitment you’re looking at. But also, I really, truly want to say that any of us involved in this process, and I really do think I mean any, probably even including the President, would welcome like a 15 min conversation, a half an hour, a cup of coffee, whatever like, if all you want to do is to be able to say I have something I want to get out in front of this group. I don’t want to join a working group. I don’t want to fill in a form I don’t want. I can’t do one more thing like just reach out to one of us, one of the provost fellows whatever, and get some time with us, and we are happy to just take feedback that way as well not to discount the other option, but I get it. But sometimes that seems like a lot great. Thank you, to Kelly and Serena. Alright. So I’m going to actually, is there any other in the room? I’m sorry. I’m focusing online. That’s where my intention was. Okay.

Okay. As a teacher, you’re supposed to pause for an awkward like minute.

I was trying to do that. Okay, so this question says, our one is focused on doctoral programs. But at the same time. So we’re trying to shift funding from masters to doctoral programs. And they’d like to hear more because the master’s degrees can be direct pipelines for doctoral programs. And I’ll actually add something to that. Often. Are a part of programs that are working directly with State and Federal agencies.

Don’t start your cheek.

Okay? Sure. So everything is true that you mentioned but so essentially, you know, we are still supporting master degree programs. Students who are in research-oriented master programs, you know, and at the same time, you know, we are trying to leverage internal funds, you know, which are limited, you know, with external funds.

And at the same time there are all these essentially needs that we have, you know. I mean, if you want to remain our one, we also have to grow. I mean, where we are. With respect to the classification, expectations, and numbers we need to have. We have to grow or not grow sooner numbers, you know. So then, how one of 9 is like a balancing act, you know.

Support as many as possible, master students with assistantship, support, and all of that internally, at the same time meet the needs and objectives at a doctoral level support.

Also. Wherever we have opportunities, we. We work with our colleagues across campus and remind them that, by the way, for example, there’s the office of research development with staff members there, please go there. We have expertise to help you out as a faculty member and help your students out graduate students out to kind of pursue all sorts of great opportunities nationwide, not just like NSF Fellowships, which, of course, they’re great fellowships and increasing number of our students are pursuing that, but also fellowships from some other Federal agencies, as well as also believe it or not. There are hundreds and hundreds of private foundations, you know, where, as part of their mission and goals and objectives. You know, they want to fund students and also sometimes fund students in specific areas. So anyway, we are trying to do the best we can to kind of meet all of those risks.

I think that was a great answer, Cody. I’m just going to add one other thing, which is, as we pursue both corporate sector partnership, other kinds of engagement, a number of our actual current corporate partners and business partners, and the State have a very big vested interest in UMaine’s production of doctoral students, because that’s where they come from to work in those companies, in those State agencies from Maine largely coming from us. So we are also stepping up our efforts to make those partnerships more robust and more mutually beneficial, because there are some funds that we can be accessing to be sure that we’re supporting doctoral students who may not go into academia, but who may actually go into other applied kinds of fields. So all of that is happening, and we probably can start to give more regular updates in addition, as the only research university in the University of Maine System. We’ve been making the case over the past several weeks for some of the distinctions that happen for a research university, and some of the additional kinds of expenses. And within that, of course, comes the production of doctoral students. So great question. And we’re really looking at it from multiple dimensions.

We have a question in the back. Can you wait till we get the microphone? Sorry.

Thank you for the wonderful process and inclusive process, and so much engagement throughout campus going back to a doctoral piece and the registered piece. One of the biggest complaints I hear from rescuers is we don’t pay enough. And they can’t live on the on salaries that that they live in. And the health insurance plan is a. It also produced quite a bit of movements.

So I know. The President talked about going out raising some more money from foundations and industry and others, and that would be some of some of the ideas cross cutting ideas. If he wishes, how do we make it more feasible for students to come to humane and be able to live on the, on the graduate students, so salaries and so forth to attract more students.

If I’m guessing his bargaining is still happening that there’s not a lot that can be said about that at this particular moment.

I’ve heard this question a lot, so I’m glad someone brought it up. What role will the Ums system play in the implementation of our SRE initiatives? For example, when we propose new or existing online programs? Will we have to consider what other UMS schools are offering. That might limit what we can do.

Or, John.

So right now, we’re the only university in the system doing anything like this effort I’m speaking to the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees on it on Sunday, and one of the points I intend to make. There is. We are a research university. We’re the r 1. We’re the lance and space grant university. And so when you take as a total our needs and our directions, and so forth. We are distinctive in that way. And so, you know, it’s a very detailed question about how the Caoc works and how approvals and programs work and so forth. But

I’ve been laying as much groundwork along with my colleagues with system leaders that this effort is critical to the health of the University of Maine, and I’m making that case. And so I think, as we. If we run into other kinds of roadblocks or problems. Then we will take those as they come. But I I think we’re doing what we need to do now to make it clear that the health of this university is central to this whole system.

John’s much more in tune with the particulars of how these approvals work, but anything to add.

So there was, there was a follow up online about, you know, the possibility of other campuses right to veto new online programs and developments. So there’s not an outright veto. So there is an Apl process. Many of you in this room and online have involved in trying to get new academic programs approved through whether it’s online or whether it’s an in person, a major.

And you know the easiest ones are like certificates. They go to the caos, and that’s pretty much it but beyond that they do go. You know, if the Ceos recommend, and we come together as provost across the 7. Well, 6 universities, and we agree before it has to go back to the governance counsel to have that looked at as an example.

And right now, FTC doesn’t even meet in the summer. And so that kind of slows down a process. You know, we can’t move forward on certain programs and it. And but all this is always constantly being worked on. Just St. John is working on that to try to see if we can’t streamline those type of things. But every time a major comes up and gets on the CEO agenda week before the meeting.

I look at that immediately, and then I go to the Deans. You know at our university that that proposal from the university is most closely aligned, and say, Can you tell me, is there is there any issues here, you know, etc.? And then, if there’s really big issues, I try to call that provost and say before that meeting? Say, Hey, can we?

Can we actually think about how we would be able to move this together? There hasn’t been an academic program since I’ve been here for over 4 years. Now, going to my 5th year that we have to be collaborative across the system, you know. Certainly we have specific areas that others don’t have. Those are more straightforward. Other programs. You know, we have a board of trustees as looking very closely at this, and we have to show that we have reached out and we’re collaborative, and that we’re not going to be both ways, that that, you know, we’re not being negatively impacted, and vice versa. And you know, how can we look for synergies where, where possible?

And and so I think it’s about right now about a fair process it can be. It certainly doesn’t leave us any of the 7 universities to be nimble, and we all know this. I was talking to the Provost at Albany, who, you, many of you know, killed him, and you know they have over 70 in the Suny system, and they can’t. They actually have to negotiate across all 70. So I actually felt a lot better. But that does give you, you know it. It can be a little clunky, but at the same time. That is the process, and it’s meant to be as fair as possible.

I will just add to that, though, like as provost fellows and working groups. We were all told to not put limitations on our ideas based on what’s happening already in the system. Obviously those negotiations and conversations would have to happen afterwards. But I think, even as you’re thinking of ideas as our community members submit them, it doesn’t matter what’s happening with the rest of the system because we can’t dream big if we’re confounded by what’s already existing.

Okay, there were just a couple of smaller process based questions that I don’t want to ignore. So one of them was, is there a process or repository for any surveys going out? I’m assuming that means the tools that are posted on the SRE website, etc., and then will the slides from today be posted on the website as well?

Yes, to both. Well, there hasn’t really been any like there haven’t been surveys or anything to date, I’m sure if we did do something like that. Yes, we put it on the website. So if you can repeat that if there’s a repository, I think it’s if we, if we submit ideas via like the tool, are they going to be recorded so. Yes, right now that is not public, but we could certainly have a conversation about whether or it should be. Yes, so there is a repository. However, it is not public at the moment. And then what was the second process, please?

So there, I want to be really clear about transparency, and how transparent we can be. So we also, we don’t want to inhibit people’s creativity and limiting ideas. So we don’t want to publish anything that might identify an individual who wants to give an idea. So that that’s something that’s really important. Another part of it is, some of these ideas may impact people.

And they may not go anywhere, so we also don’t want to create unnecessary fear or concern. So someone may we want to. And but it may turn into something else that has less of an impact on people. So we’re not going to publish a list of every single idea in the way that it comes through because they may get thrown out. They may be evaluated and turned into something else.

We will be transparent about the criteria that we’re using. That’s why we’re really asking the groups to focus on that to help us inform the way we’re transparent about decisions. Once we get to that phase, we will engage the community in the process.

But we’re not going to put a specific list out there because it it could be very harmful in a way, institutionally, that that that may not be helpful for the outcomes of the strategic re-envisioning process. I don’t know, President, if you want to add anything to that.

Are there any last questions in the room?

That and I think Sabrina or James said it, but that QR. Code and the link that leads you with the Google Poll is going to remain open. And so if you want to continue to submit questions and ideas, please do so.

So just in conclusion, thank you to all of you here in the room online, those who will be submitting questions going forward. I want to emphasize something that Sabrina said. We’re trying to make a process that’s accessible. Actually, according to all of your different needs and time frames and capabilities and in terms of capacity. So this point about it’s a 15 min phone call. It’s a quick cup of coffee. I really would like to emphasize that people are listening. This is the time to make your ideas heard, and if you have an idea that you think is especially charged or controversial, maybe that’s the best way to do it.

Is it a conversation with somebody to talk through how it might fit. So with that, I would like to thank everyone. We will do these quite regularly. We’ll keep the website updated. I’ll keep messages coming. We’ll have office hours. And as this process moves into the next phases, we’ll need to talk again about what we’re learning and where we’re headed. So thank you all for coming and have a great day.