University of Maine and University of Maine at Machias Town Hall: Strategic Re-Envisioning — Dec. 13

University of Maine President Joan Ferrini-Mundy and Faculty Senate President Amanda Klemmer co-hosted a Strategic Re-Envisioning Town Hall on Dec. 13, 2024. Joining the President and Klemmer were EVPAA and 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

Yeah, go ahead. 

Excellent! 

Everyone hear me?

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the SRE Town Hall. I’m Amanda Klemmer, the Faculty Senate President, and I’m going to start us off with our Land Acknowledgment. 

We recognize that the University of Maine is located on Marsh Island, in the homeland of the Penobscot Nation and the University of Maine at Machias is sited in the homeland of the Passamaquoddy Nation. Both of our universities recognize that these homelands, issues of water and territorial rights and encroachment upon sacred sites are ongoing. Penobscot and Passamaquoddy homelands are connected to the other Wabanaki tribal nations, the Maliseet Mi’kmaq, through kinship, alliances and diplomacy. UMaine and its regional campus also recognize that the Penobscot, Pasamaquoddy, and other tribal Wabanaki tribal nations, are distinct sovereign legal and political entities with their own powers of self-governance and self-determination. 

So welcome everyone.

We’re going to have a bunch of the folks from the SRE team up here to give a short presentation. And then there’s going to be plenty of time at the end for feedback from the in-person group and the online group. So if you’ll notice on the slides, there’s a QR code, and if you attended our Town Hall a few months ago, it’s very similar. You can scan that QR code to submit anonymous feedback, which I will be monitoring if you’re on Zoom. You could also submit feedback and questions via the Zoom chat, and then we’ll be going back and forth with questions from the audience in person. 

So first up we have President Ferrini-Mundy. 

Morning, everybody. A little more liveliness. You were just fine when you came in. So that’s good. Listen. Thanks to everyone for coming. And I’m assuming we have a group online, too, about how many to check? So 200. Okay, so a lot of interest, a lot of interest today. And that’s fantastic. And I’m so pleased that we’re able to to come together and talk about an extraordinary amount of work and quality of work that’s gone on in the last eight months.

And so I’m going to start with that before I go anyplace else with a thank you to the names that you see on this slide, to Amanda Klemmer, to John Mullen, Kelly Sparks, Sabrina DeTurk and James Beaupré, and dozens of other people, the folks who have been serving as the provost fellows. If you could raise your hands if you’re in the room or on Zoom. I guess there’s a way to do that, too. Thank you. And let’s just applaud this group of people who have been doing, excuse me, incredible work over the last several months.

Just to also add a couple of other reminders. We set out a process in May of 2024. We are now in December. We have essentially done the process that we laid out, even though we admitted all along that there would need to be mid-course corrections, and that we would need to see how it went and adjust. We have gotten to the place where now, what you’re going to hear today will be the results. Some of the results, the high level results of the great work that has gone on, not only with the people we’ve just recognized, but with hundreds across the campus, as well as with tens of ideas that have been coming into this process through a variety of avenues. So this is our university, taking our future into its own hands by saying, we’re going to figure this out as we go ahead.

The goals for today are fairly straightforward. We’re going to review the work that’s been done at a high level. These are opportunities for strategic restructuring, for reinvestment and new investment that will strengthen our position as UMaine’s flagship learning-centered research university while addressing our budget challenges which are significant. This is not a budget meeting per se, but we’re not going to shy away from the fact that our budget challenges are structural gaps. 

All of those continue for us, and we’re making great progress. But there’s much more to be done. So welcome to this. This is what our focus is for today.

Just very quickly a reminder of the question that has been driving the work all the way from the beginning. What would the University of Maine look like if we were designing it today? What would we change? What would we focus on? How do we ensure a sustainable, inclusive, and dynamic future for this university? For a university that is this state’s land grant university needs to be emphasized regularly. A majority of our funding does come from the State of Maine, and so our our obligations to our State need to be foremost as well. But I remind you that we embarked on the process for a lot of reasons. I’ve written about those and spoken about those, and you can see that in other places the world around us is changing rapidly. We’re approaching our 160th anniversary as a university. We need to watch what the world is doing around us. And maybe most importantly, think about what the students of today and tomorrow want and need from this university and from universities like this one. Because that’s our focus, always is, what we are doing for the learners of today and tomorrow.

In a world where the technology changes have had some stepwise changes in recent years with AI and all of everything else. We discussed repeatedly, world changing around us, higher ed facing enormous challenges. And we can see those headlines every single day. But I’m so proud that we together as a community are doing this work, this hard work together.

I want to acknowledge the anxiety that this work is causing. I’m well aware, and I hear from folks, and I see people, and I know that this is unsettling because it’s changed. It could be big change for some of us it could be change that will be smaller for others. It’s all going to be. Now in what happens with all these ideas that have been generated and where we go next. So I want to thank people for tolerating this kind of difficult tension, and at the same time for really checking those anxieties largely at the door. In these discussions people have been able to set aside their own territorial inclinations, and I have had to work at that, and I know that others have, too, and we all find ourselves saying, well, no, we can’t do that. And then saying, no, it’s an idea it’s going to get its look. We’re going to try to think about what’s best and how we do that. So thank you all for  that.

But in eight months we’ve accomplished a lot. We already have a number of activities and discussions well underway, and I will point to the work of the Space Committee, the Budget Committee in particular, doing very good work as we start to prepare for Fiscal ’26. Clearly it would be ideal if we could kind of have all this work tidily wrapped up and then say, okay, now we’ll start our ’26 budget, or even continue the execution of our ’25 budget. The world is never like that. So as we go into ’26, and there will be town halls coming to look at the ’26 work we will need to do the best we can to keep the basic tenets and whatever we are moving on for SRE at the beginning in light, as we think about the ’26 budget. 

So as a part of this work, we’ve come to what we’re calling a working version of a charter, and that means there’s still plenty of room and space. It hasn’t been been officially locked into anything, but it draws on your conversations over the last many months, as well as some of our starting places. So a learner-centered research one university that is, that phrase by itself has been given much more definition through the work that you’ve been doing in the last several months, committed to sustaining the health of our planet, very broad and very clear about a set of goals, a set of areas that are critical for us, growing inclusive communities. 

We are Maine’s Land, Sea and Space Grant University. And we’re dedicated to defining tomorrow. So there’s a lot there. No short statement can get all the words we’d like to have in it. And so we need to continue to work with this, interpret it and grow it. I’ll just take you back a little bit to where we started different words, but words that are still reflected, and the meaning still reflected, including the guiding principles that we have there on the right, that have guided the discussions very, very consistently, I believe, across this work. 

One more reminder that budgets in ideal settings follow strategy. You have an idea of where you’re headed. You have an idea of what you prioritize, and to the extent possible. Budgets are built with those priorities in mind. So that’s always a principle that is good to strive for. And I think we’re in a great position to continue to move in that direction. With that, I will turn this over to the Provost. And remember, questions and comments can be coming in at any time. 

And that’s why maybe that number includes some people in the room. Is that right? Possibly, anyways, John? 

Good morning, everyone. Great that so many are here in the room and online. This this slide that you see behind me is you’ve all seen it before, and we’ve been talking, you know, in the beginning of the funnel, and how we’re moving down. Well, we have gone through since May, as you know, we started with our Phase 1 over the summer. We hired 13 provost fellows, and then, as work and feedback was coming throughout the summer from the whole campus community, we added a Theme 14 that really looked deeply at administrative roles as well, and they built off the Administrative Barriers Task Force Report.

That was so well done last year that came out, and Kelly will be talking about that shortly.

And so, and the Provost all worked throughout the summer, and, as everyone knows, really in prep for that big campus engagement. As everyone came back to start the fall semester around the beginning of November, we went into this Phase 3, where we’re really starting to distill all those different topics that have come through. And and if we go to the next slide. And so we’re really, this is really finishing Phase 3. And as we move into the next semester, etc, implementation and other aspects will start to come. These are some of the concepts that came through.

And, for instance, this first one, the President has talked throughout this process because a lot of feedback that we’ve had from the not only from the Task Force, but you know, from online comments, etc. There are a lot of SRE adjacent projects, if you will. And one of those was focus on the learner-centered R1, and we’ll get a little bit more specific to that in a little bit. But even that generated its own committee from the innovation, research, academic sides of the house coming together and looking at student success and research learning group was developed. And this really builds off. If you think about. We are. I say this all the time. We’re amazingly unique as an institution where any student in their 1st year can actually get into an authentic research experience. And that’s research with large right creative activities, you know, performing arts, etc. And right now, we have 40% of our incoming class, if we include this coming semester will be participating in a Research Learning Experience, and that continues to grow throughout. But that’s not all we do. I mean, we have capstone projects. We have internships that get really into research and development, etc. And so we’re really looking at, how can we make pathways for students across the 4 years, and then they can plug in at any time. 

So if they didn’t have a chance to do it in the first year or the second year. How can they do it? Moving on? And so out of this group, this task, this committee will be getting a final report, I think, in the next week or so. And part of that work that came through. This is the Vice President for Research, and I, Kody and I will be working. We’re working with the President, and we will be announcing an RFP that is expanding research and learning experiences across the undergraduate curriculum. And it’s taking all those things I just talked about and seeing how we can work together and really advance research learning experiences. 

Really, in the first two years, we’re going to expand those across the four, and we’ll have this RFP. That’ll go out to faculty and appropriate staff that you know. Also do teaching, and that will come. And like, I said shortly and hopefully, by the end of January we’ll have a deadline on those expansion of advancing research learning experiences.

You can see many more examples that came out, you can see, like the provost fellow. Well, not from Athletics. Actually, I mean, originally affiliate with Athletics. But it’s actually the Maine Business School, but the Maine Business School, DLL, others. So Dean Hannah Carter, Dean, executive dean, Jason Harkins, etc, are all working together on collaboratively expanding our summer camp proposal in in collaboration with athletics and others and Maine Bound, and others throughout University. This, you know, the post fell from meta major theme continues to convene this working group considered a climate change. Meta Major, that’s an example. 

I will say. You know, if you haven’t had a chance recently at all to look at the various themes that were, you know, the results of the 14 working groups I highly encourage you to. And so for the Meta Majors. That’s Theme 3. Wonderful, wonderful ideas. I think you should own this. The faculty owns the curriculum you should be diving into that, and you should be connecting with colleagues across the university to actually think about proposing potential Meta majors. There’s a lot of benchmarking data in there. There are a lot of things that could be unique to the University of Maine. So I really encourage all of you to really dive in and own that. 

And I think I’m gonna turn this over. Is that right? Yes, I’m gonna turn it over to you, Kelly. Next slide. Please give me this. 

So, as John mentioned, we had 14 working groups. We have 13 working groups that all launched at the same time, and we had a 14th working group based on the good feedback that came through the process for an administrative efficiencies to oversimplify what the title of that was working group. They’ve recently submitted their report. We will get that information published shortly on the SRE website, but they established really four big themes from the group. 

The group was led by Corey Watson. It was faculty and staff integrated into a team to make some recommendations. So to, I don’t want to oversimplify, we have a lot of things to get through today, so we will publish this, but some really good working concepts that came out of it.

The first was creating a university-wide knowledge management system for administrative and operational functions. The next was creating a robust internal communication function within the Division of Marketing and Communications. So really thinking about how we can maximize the resources. We have to tell our messages externally and internally, was a part of that was a part of that concept as well. Restructuring finance, accounting, purchasing travel. How can we think about some shared services, pools of resources? So that we’re maximizing the people that are doing this? We’re training people. We’re providing them the opportunities to learn. We’re providing access to the information. So how can we look at that across the institution, restructuring, admin-related into pools? 

So I think we all know that we have over the years have fewer administrative support roles across the institution, and they are dispersed across the university, maybe disproportionately, to where we feel some of the workload is happening. So how can we share and leverage those really important resources in potentially different ways? 

And the last is creating a Learner Success Hub. I think this really plays onto what John was talking about with the the learner-centered R1 research. So really, some support or some administrative concepts that may align with the work that he’s doing with the other. Again, we’ll publish this. We’ll get more information out there. I’m not going to go into a lot of the other details today if we can go to the next slide, please. 

So we are in a really big change process here. So this is more. This is kind of your footnote, before we get into the rest of the materials today. I just want to acknowledge that what we’re going to talk about today is going to make all of us a little bit uncomfortable. Not everyone in this room and everyone online is going to hear something today in these presentations that’s going to make us a little bit uncomfortable. It’s going to be changed, maybe to us personally, it could be perceived that way, or to an area that we’re working closely with. So as we go through here, you’re going to see concepts not approved, plans not agreed upon, not finalized. They’re concepts that have been generated again through that funnel. There’s still a decision making process that needs to happen. And you’ll see in some cases there’s two distinctly different concepts around the same area that could have very, very different outcomes. So as we as we receive this information, we want to be, our goal has always been to be very transparent, and bring all of those ideas forth to you. So as we go through it, I just want to acknowledge the unease that we’re going to feel as we go through the information today. 

It’s all potential reminding us. It’s all potential change. We can go to the next slide. So just a quick tying it back to, as the President said, strategy leads, budget follows strategy. So as we start to think through how we could implement some of these ideas. You all know that we have implemented a hiring pause. That’s also uncomfortable. There’s a lot of really important roles that are currently either being recruited for have recently been vacated, that we would like to fill the reason for the hiring pauses. It’s giving us a moment. It truly is a pause, but it gives us a moment, so I’ll just play off of what they said in Theme 14. Perhaps we should have a centralized admin. I’ll speak to finance, because that’s something I can talk to most comfortably. Perhaps we should have some shared support pools for for finance. We have about 15 roles currently posted that are in finance operational functions. Perhaps those are the most important 15 roles that we have in finance across the organization. But if we fill those roles and we decide we need to do some sort of consolidation or restructuring. That’s 15 more roles that we’re talking about changing with. So if we pause, we decide what that long term structure is. We can then build that long term structure without those 15 roles being being filled, and then decide what that long term structure looks like for the institution. What’s the staffing plan that each of our colleges, each of our centers, each of our administrative units need to have. So it really is a pause between now and March to continue the really important work, to build the implementation plan for some of these ideas. So that that’s just just a little, my little caveat. We will try and lift that pause in March, and that’s the time when we really will start doing preliminary budget approvals for FY 26. So that’s how we’re going to link strategy to the budget process for the next year. 

Alright, I am going to turn this over to James now.

Thank you. 

Morning, everybody. Want to quickly note that we’ve had a very busy month in the world of SRE, as we’ve been taking in all the information that have been generated coming out of the Phase 2 working groups. As we began evaluating that work, some of you may have heard there’s been additional sessions, additional work going on. A quick overview of what those have looked like on the 20th of November, brought together about 30 people, split everybody up in about groups of five, and started looking at four of these themes that were moving around our learning and our research aspects for student experiences around a learner-centered R1 institution. Those groups spend about three hours busting through a lot of information, reading a lot of background information for getting to that room and then seeing where these pieces of information, these pieces of data could move forward. There were data sets that were then further pulled together to help inform that team looking to quantify RI and then a contribution margin around the credit hours that are contributed by every department that is teaching in this space. 

We had really good diversity, for across all units of the institution. Represented in that room, which was, I think, the term of the news is a lot of people exhibited bravery in that space, being able to set aside their hats of their homes and being able to put a UMaine hat on. To start looking at this information in new lights, we took that data and then moved it further. On the 3rd of December we had a 5 hour workshop. Actually it was between this room and a couple of breakout rooms across species where we had another 30 people come together, some of the same, some new folks bringing in for additional perspectives.  And we broke out into three teams and move the work that had been accomplished around, restructuring, eliminating, and reinvesting across a variety of opportunities that we had to see.

How do we further develop these concepts? How do we further develop these ideas, to put them in a place where you can begin considering again a great diversity from all units across campus into that space? And I want to acknowledge these are your colleagues that took part, and yes, there’s more than 30. There’s overlap, but there’s not full overlap, but these are the colleagues across the institution that showed up. That gave up 8 hours during a very busy time of the year, right before Thanksgiving. Always great time to get folks together a couple weeks before finals, getting folks together after Thanksgiving. But we came together, set our hats aside, and put on a human hat to start looking at the data and the outputs that we’ve had to this point in time to see what a re-envisioned institution could look like. 

And I want to note. The output of that work is what we’re going to be diving into next on the next few slides shared by Sabrina. We’re going to share concepts of restructuring, of investment, of growth, opportunities that were proposed on the workshop that happened the 3rd  And this is the fair warning that Kelly noted. These are ideas, these aren’t decisions, these are concepts. They’re areas for us to explore and understand what it means for us as an institution to re-envision ourselves in this light. There’s going to be QR code. It’s covered by the Zoom screen, which is not helpful.  But there’s a QR code. As you see, these opportunities for comments come up. There’s an idea, a concept that comes across. Please share with us your comments, your ideas, your contributions to make that idea better. The concerns and anxieties you have around that idea. That’s how we’re going to be able to build a pathway, to be able to evaluate and understand what these ideas could mean for the institution. And again, remember, they’re for consideration. Again, they’re not decisions  we’re learning. And we’re moving forward into this space. So with that I’ll hand off to Sabrina to walk us through those outputs. 

Okay, so good morning, everybody. I want to acknowledge again that what you’re seeing here is a consolidation of three sets of recommendations or ideas and concepts that came forward. And there are many slides here. So it’s not all on this first one, and I also take ownership for being the person who consolidated these. So to any folks who are in the groups, and may feel that  something wasn’t represented exactly right. Please feel free during the Q&A period, if you want to elaborate on or bring up points that were talked about in your particular group. So I wanted to start with some of the things that were brought forward in terms of potential opportunities for revenue growth within UMaine.

So a number of folks in groups talked about the need. Really, as we are now, R1  renegotiate; our indirect cost rate; to think about ensuring that it really is in line with our R1 status; looking at opportunities for public private partnerships. The idea that, you know we’re thinking about our space. And we’re trying to figure out what to do with perhaps consolidating space? Are there opportunities for leasing land, leasing buildings, things that might be revenue generating, but also might help with some of our need to to rethink our space use. 

There was a lot of conversation across different groups around, looking at athletics offerings. Not, I want to be be careful to say the conversation wasn’t, “Oh, what can we get rid of?” It was really about what can we continue to do to maximize the revenue potential of of those offerings, and really to think about things like in-state and out-of-state participants, those sorts of things.  This concept has come up in a number of places throughout the SRE process. The idea of instituting differentiated parking rates in some way, shape or form we recognize there’s some collective bargaining issues there that would have to be negotiated. But it has come up more than once. There’s also been a lot of conversation around a need for investment in ORA in order to then  hopefully see revenue growth from that investment. So that came up in terms of process improvement potentially staff technology. There’s a lot of ways that that might take place or move forward. 

You’ve heard data mentioned already, and you’re going to hear it a couple more times. One of the things that we all recognized, I think, as we went through the SRE process, Is that just trying to get data to be able to inform decision making is a little bit more complicated on this campus than it probably needs to be. And so that, brought forward from some of the groups the idea that we might actually be able to increase efficiencies, find new revenue opportunities if we had a better handle on a kind of centralized data set that we could actually all work with in relation to research, innovation, HR, academics, etc.  And then you again heard this earlier, when the Provost was mentioning the potential for maybe a climate change meta major. But just over and over again, throughout this process there has been such enthusiasm about the idea of creating more interdisciplinary options for our students at both undergraduate and graduate levels. And we really do see that as something that has  potential revenue opportunities. 

We also talked, as James mentioned about potential restructurings. And I want to echo Kelly. This is probably the part where we all start to squirm in our seats a little bit and feel a little bit more uncomfortable. Everything I’m putting out here is a concept, not a  done deal. So in terms of administrative restructuring. Some of the things that came up was the concept of looking at marketing and communication functions across the institution, and seeing whether a more centralized approach to at least some of those might yield efficiencies might make them more strategically oriented and frankly effective in terms of the way we’re handling our marketing and communication.  The idea of, and this may be in some ways links back to the public private partnerships, thinking about our externally usable facilities, and how those are managed, and whether it would make sense to have a single unit that is thinking about things like Wells or the CCA. Or other places where external groups have the option to to, you know, rent and be able to use those units. 

The concept of merging, housing operations and residential life. Again, a place where is there opportunity to both improve services for our students, and again, perhaps gain some efficiencies in looking at those two areas that obviously have tremendous synergy actually combined rather than in their current separated format. Again, the concept of moving the registrar under the VP for Enrollment Management.  Similar issues there around, you know, do we have two things that have a lot of need to work together that are currently not co-located. And same issue around sustainability. Should that be located under facilities as a way again, of really leveraging the synergies there.  Academic and research, restructuring ideas across all groups, there was some level of discussion around. Perhaps this is a longer term goal. But thinking about whether there should be a different organization around the Vice President for Research, Vice President for SPIRE, and as the second or, sorry, third bullet point suggests the Dean of the Graduate School so potential. Again, these are concepts of moving the Dean of the Graduate School separate from the VPR. To report to the provost the middle of those two.

The second bullet point is a little bit of thinking about could there be a way of sort of thinking about internal services, and that oversight being located under a VPR role and external services and oversight being located under the VP of SPIRE. So a lot of conversation around there. 

There was conversation around Arts programming, and whether the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences would be an appropriate home to try to again, better consolidate some of that. Some of that links to that previous concept about whether externally usable facilities should be managed slightly differently. And do we separate programming from use of facilities by outside groups, that kind of thing. 

These last two. Again, we know that there are collective bargaining issues here, but there was really a strong sense that it is time to take a look at faculty time, workloads, overloads, online delivery, adjustments, those sorts of things, and that it is, it is at least worth considering. Whether aligning to a single learning management system would again both serve our students better and perhaps provide some efficiencies there.  This one is  a single slide that is meant to cover a really huge concept that was brought up in so many different ways across this process, which is this idea that we could be stronger if we were able to de-silo the university in all kinds of ways. This has administrative impacts. This has impacts across academics, research and innovation. This is just really, again, concepts ideas. These are not out there. As you know, these, whatever it is, three bullets are the only ways that we could thematically organize or de-silo ourselves. But these are some of the possible  sort of organizational structures that that folks have thought about.

There was also some conversation about better integrating research centers within colleges which would be also another version of this kind of thematic, restructuring de-siloing. And I think this is one that really does need further conversation and and vetting, and so on.  This slide is the one that I feel like, maybe I should have asked our folks in Marcom to put an elephant on it, because it really is the elephant in the room slide right? I know we heard at Faculty Senate that there were, you know, folks who were convinced that we were going to come here today and say, these are the programs that we will be closing, you know. Effective X.  We’re not there. That is not what this presentation is about in any way, shape or form. But I think it would be disingenuous to say that there wasn’t conversation about the need to look at our programs, research academic across the board  and think about how effectively are they performing?  We have to think about what performing means for us. It is not just about enrollment. Necessarily, it’s about things like alignment with mission. It’s about things like, can we really still deliver a curriculum that was maybe designed many years ago, and doesn’t necessarily work in the way that we thought it should or wanted it to when it was initially created.  This is something that obviously has to be undertaken in close collaboration with the Deans, with research center directors.  And we really want to emphasize that again across the board, in all of these conversations the overwhelming desire is to avoid retrenchments and to see faculty, redeployed, if necessary. Again, perhaps in more thematically or organized units, that sort of thing, rather than having to eliminate positions.  We talked about the need to look at growth potential before proposing this came up, particularly in relation to graduate programs, but it would certainly apply to undergraduate as well. And then again, thinking about ROI on research centers and initiatives.  And this is one that really probably could start very soon, really asking each major to think about whether  there are redundancies, do a curriculum audit, you know. Are there things that could be done differently to achieve efficiencies and and use our limited resources more effectively?  Again this came up a bit when the provost was speaking as well. But this is another one that was just universal.

Every single group talked about the need to continue to improve on the good work that is already being done around student support and success. This idea of the one stop shop came up over and over again.  The idea of better supporting professional advising within the colleges is something that seems to have a lot of traction.  The two on the bottom are intentionally paired because they represent rather different visions of how this might happen. So obviously many of us were celebrating Robert Dana last night at his retirement celebration that offers perhaps an opportunity to rethink where that position goes. Whether it remains as a VP. You know, kind of a VP for student belonging is something that was suggested through one of the groups.  Or whether it might more appropriately function as a Dean of Students reporting to the Provost, which is another very common model for institutions of our type.  Again, ideas, not decisions. 

Lots of conversation around online programs. And a recognition, I think that this represents a really still  not fully tapped opportunity for UMaine, in terms of revenue growth and potential. And so there was a lot of conversation around what ways could we modify the administrative structure of our online programs to better capitalize on that potential for growth and to make the course delivery more efficient and seamless. And so on.

There was an interest in looking at cross-campus offerings. There was an interest  interest in revisiting a proposal that came out a year or two ago about potentially trying to to make UMaine Online the hub for UMS online offerings.  And then a number of other ideas that are currently under evaluation. Some of these we would would maybe tag a sort of SRE adjacent. I’m going to ask Kelly if you would like to speak to, or you want John to speak to some of these, because I think these are some that have come up in different cabinet level areas. 

Thank you, Sabrina.

And you heard a lot about the student success. One stop shop or student success hub. I do want to acknowledge last year that there was an amazing group that came together, a task force that came out of my office a Student Success Hub, very collaborative with student life, etc, and that this is building off of that work. That didn’t just go in the dumpster somewhere and start over. So it’s building off of that. And I just want to make sure that we acknowledge that these are again building off what Sabrina said.

These are ideas that have come forward and that are, you know, being further evaluated, like the PFAS Center of Excellence. You may or may not know. We’ve received quite a bit of funding, both competitively and through congressionally directed spending that’s come in to the university, and it’s across the university from research to extension to ELH to MCEC. And people are really coming together. And there’s all these, I wouldn’t say they’re disparate groups, but we have lots of different things going on. And now it’s like, and we’re getting nationally recognized for this work. And so now it’s like, well, maybe we need to be a little bit more cohesive in this and develop the center of excellence. And so that’s like one of the things that is going on  a lot of data was done throughout this whole process for many, many people.

And I want to recognize, you see, the market scan for academic programs. This is something that we always do, anyway. And anytime, by the way, we do a new propose a new program. We always use the light cast data right, which used to be called burning glass to see what is the potential need down the road, both at the State level, regional, nationally, whenever we do you know, propose a new program as an example.  The market scan academic analysis here. I want to acknowledge Amanda Klemmer, you know. In fact, president, she did a lot of wonderful works, and the record was also part of that. And it’s just very informative, deep a look at a traditional, I’d say, even goes beyond traditional ways of really looking at your overall academic programs, putting them in context, also with research programs, innovation  and bringing all that work together. And so I just want to acknowledge that that’s that’s the kind of work that has been done, and that will help inform as as we move forward on a lot of this work in the coming semester. 

But I also want to recognize that this is at this town hall. You know, this is finishing SRE, right. We’re finishing. We’ve gone through 1, 2, 3. We’ve kept to the calendar that we that we said so. The provost fellows, you know they were compensated, and the SRE leadership with Spring and James through December, and I know we’ve already thanked them, but I really can’t thank them enough.  The nights, the weekends that they really put into this was extraordinary. So we are beginning also the regular fiscal year 26 Budget Bill. Now, you know those that typically will have, you know, do their budget hearings? They will get information of how to develop their budgets. And and we’ll do budget hearings in late January, like we always do  because we we have to follow the Board of Trustees process in that. So that will be going on at the same time. We’ll also be doing SRE. And so some of the information that we have through SRE will help with fiscal year 26 budget. But there’s a lot of things here that, as we all know, are very long term, and so we’ll continue to work on that. And so so there’s, you know, the fiscal year 26 budget will be informed, but it certainly won’t, you know, that won’t wrap SRE up in the sense of having the long term projects that that will continue to be worked on. So while we’re ending SRE today, essentially, you know, as as we move forward, there will be this vetting, decision-making implementation plan and concepts that have come through SRE and will continue to come. I mean the, you know, the comment section is still open. We still look at that continually, and and as we move forward there will be continued communication. 

I’m sure many of you are are tired of hearing you know how anxiety’s grown. This whole process is, and I fully fully appreciate that. I do want to say, you know, through this, because I still hear people saying, “oh, there’s some secret plan.” There’s already a plan. It’s a fate of complete. It’s well, if it is, I have not seen that plan, and I’m sure the you know the president is the same. The thing is, we could have done what West Virginia did. We could have done what what New Hampshire did right, and you know, and and take take a look, see what they did.  But I would say, what we’re doing is much harder, right? It’s it’s much harder, because, you know, some people are feeling like, oh, this is what’s going to happen. We don’t know what’s going to happen right? We’re working together to develop. We can’t be the same university 10 years from now.  Higher Ed is completely changing, right? And we have to do this together. And so I’m not trying to talk down. And please, please don’t take it that way, I just think.

And but I also want to recognize that because we’re going through this really hard work together that you know. In some ways it’s hard right for for many people.  and but I truly believe at the end of the day we will be much stronger. I was talking to the former President of West Virginia University, a provost. Sorry, former provost she was. What?  What’s that? I thought you were announcing that the President she was on faculty at West Virginia for 31 years. I saw her like 3 weeks ago, and you know she she’s very committed to that university. That was her life.  And she’s really incredibly sad because the culture of the university has changed. Right? So I know we’re going through this hard work. But the culture of the University of Maine is strong and something that we all care about. And so I just want to share that, and I’ll turn the next. I’m not sure who I’m turning over to next.  Let’s see if we can.  There we go.  All right. Everyone.

We now have lots of time for discussion, and we’re going to be going back and forth between discussion in the room, some anonymous questions and comments that were submitted online and any that were submitted in the Zoom.

Joe, could you pull up the slide that had the QR code?  Oh, there might be one. The next slide, I think, also has the. There you go. There we go. People can, so we will start with any questions in the room.  It will. 

Hello! This is Justin. I’m the associate Dean from the College of Education and Development. I want to get back to Slide 17 where we’re talking about the de-siloing and looking at the 3 to 6 thematic areas. I’m just curious. What are the specific mechanisms for cost savings that would present themselves in that scenario?

Got it.  So can I say a general? I’m following a question. So thank you. A general comment is this, you know, these are groups that worked right up until earlier this week. The first versions of some of these ideas coming in have what we were calling fast math. You know, some very quick ideas about what kinds of savings there would be. But that wasn’t the charge we don’t know. So I think this question and many, many of the questions that I’m seeing coming through are exactly about. Well, wouldn’t we need to know more to even figure out whether we would want to do this? And I just acknowledge that the answer to that is, yes, these are not fully vetted is some of the language you’ve been seeing. They’re not fully developed.  These are ideas to get us started. And I think, Justin, I don’t know if this is a part of your intention. So if I’m putting words in your mouth. Just tell me I shouldn’t. But there’s a little bit of  a lot of ideas here.  I think the question overarching question has always got to be at some level? Does this move us toward our charter? And what kinds of budget implications would it have? And we have? We just didn’t charge everybody to have the full amount of time to do that. The questions are also giving me a lot of ideas. By the way, about how this next steps piece will be implemented. But I’ll turn back to Amanda and go to what’s next. 

Okay, I’m gonna go to one of the questions from the Zoom  as this hiring freeze goes into effect.  How have you considered employee retainment in your work? We are operating with increasingly less staff and being burdened?  That is the other question  being burdened with other duties as assigned through the reality of our situation and or the local abuse of HR policies. It is difficult for many of us to put what we want into this community and bind to the SRE. Given this environment. That’s the cool one, though.  Let’s let the promo start. But Nicole may be able to speak.  It’s a long let me trick it.  I was reading glasses as this hiring freeze goes into effect. How have you considered employee retainment in your work.  And this is always a consideration. It’s been a consideration, at least in the 4 1/2 year that I’ve been here. And I would, you know, if you look at a lot, you know., look at the faculty development stuff that that’s been done, you know I will say that we have really, really, really tried, under tight resource constraints, understanding that the market of what other universities may be able to pay their faculty and staff  you know, to be able to, you know. Hold on to our faculty and staff. The reality is you know how right now we have 8.9 million dollars in positions out there? And I think, Kelly, what are the number right now? 90. Some positions that are that are 94 positions that come in the last few weeks, you know, requests right? That’s we’ve had to put a pause on right now because of you know, you understand the budget situation.  So we’re doing everything we can behind the scenes and in front and in front as well to be able to retain faculty and staff as well, and part of that is, is looking creatively. And you saw some of this on the slides here. How we can, you know, look at, look at the resources that we have, and there may be, you know, and you can look at yourself. Look at where, where possible, areas that we can actually consolidate? Where are services that we can actually, you know, make more central in certain areas  and so beyond that. And you know it’s interesting.  If we look at some of the faculty retention elements that are done, take a look at empower over 30% of the faculty that have actually participated in power. If you look at the National Center for Faculty Development Diversity Faculty success program, we’re close to 40 faculty members now that have participated in that our North Star Collective has started. And so there’s a lot of work that’s been done in this space. And  you know. So we on, partner hires. We’ve done over 50 partner hires in the last 4 1/2 years, and just as an example. Last year UNC Chapel Hill, with funding from NSF. Did the 1st ever a partner? Scorecard for the 146 R1 Universities, University of Maine ranked number 2. All right, I mean, I’m proud of it. We are right. After University of Delaware has been incredibly strong in this space for about 15-20 years. So you know, we’re doing, we’re doing what we can in this resource, constrained environment to make sure that we retain all of our faculty and staff. So thanks. 

Okay, let’s go to a question in the room. Any other questions in the room.  Thank you. I think this may. Actually, this is Megan Walsh from UMM. I think this may actually be a question as a follow up to the previous question. And  the Provost.

Yes, I’m really excited about all the things that you just said. Great, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about, or someone could talk a little bit more about staff duties, because I know that affects a lot of people’s units, even though I am myself a faculty member. Thank you. 

Thank you for that question, Megan. So, staff duties, I’m going to say something that’s probably unpopular. But we have to stop thinking about, what can we not do? So when we think about not being able to replace every role that’s out there, as we think about restructuring, we have to think about different processes, process improvement. There were some really great recommendations that came this last year for academic administrative efficiencies.  We need to think about some of those things, and implementing tools and solutions to support underwriting it and underwriting the work in a different way. I know that’s hard to say, and individually, no one of us individually can make those changes. So we need to work across silos and across groups to talk about how we do work differently, how we share information differently, and that’s going to take.  That’s going to take some some months here and some some process improvement that we do together. We, if I mean, if we continue to try and do exactly the same work with fewer resources, it’s a burden on every every staff member across the organization. We can’t do it. We can’t ask our people to do more with less. That’s not going to get us to the future vision. So it means we need to do different work and do with different outcomes.  And so, you know I can, I can talk to the work that I’ve been doing with my team. Happy to to share some of those experiences. But it really is about change. 

Oh, yeah.

So my name is Laurie. I work for student life. I just personally want to say that I do, I am in full agreement that we need to revamp and reorganize and do some things differently here, and grow a few times. My concern is that I we haven’t talked a lot about students in this that just hasn’t been something, and I know that students are on the mind of everyone, and that there is care and concern. But in order for us to have belonging and engagement and retention, our students need to be happy.  And we have growing mental health concerns.  And our students. And I think about, for example, the res life and housing that makes a lot of sense to merge those. A lot of campuses do that. However, the biggest part of that merger that concerns me is that we need to go and check on our campus on our students every day. They’re sometimes not doing. Some of them are thriving and amazing and doing really well. But some are just not  so I know that the care and concern students is being, you know, thought of in this process, but in terms of the staff who go out in the middle of the night and go and check on those students that you know. I think that that just needs to kind of also be in the forefront of our minds.

I absolutely agree. And it’s beyond, I’m just going to expand upon that. It’s beyond the student life that are going. It’s also the our plumbing team. Who’s going in to make sure that the bathrooms are working in the middle of the night. It’s our electrical team that’s going out there and  getting the power back on, so that our residence halls have lights. So there, there are many, many staff and employees across the organization that are making sure that the campus is operating 24 hours day for our students, and I also want to acknowledge that it’s staff and faculty well-being as well. It’s if our, if we’re not in a good  place emotionally to support our students, we can’t be there in the way that they need us to be there. So I think it’s about well-being for all of our employees, which means we got to change and do less work. 

I saw another hand of the room go up the same time as Megan’s.  So we’ll do that. And then I have a theme of online questions, I think can be addressed.

So so I guess one of the things I hear we hear a lot is this concept of ROI? And the question I have is, What is  the return? I guess? What is the quantifiable thing we hear our I often think of money right? But I guess as a university I think we’re not only interested in money, and so the question is, is, what are the other things that are trying to be, I guess, somehow quantified. I guess if you’re going to use this terminology that are the returns they’re looking for as a university. 

Great question. And that was actually the theme of a bunch of the online questions that I’m seeing is talking more about the data, the return on investment in the monetary versus other values that we have as a university.  Yeah. So I just told her. I’m going to call on her because in the very 1st of the various group meetings that we held following the work of the summer, there was a big discussion about how to talk about, not necessarily, ROI, but I think that’s really what it was about in more qualitative ways, which was the 1st way that I was seeing out of this process a very, very important idea that we lose sight of.  Which is, there’s a whole lot more to ROI than are our books balancing? Or are we generating enough student credit hours? Even if we’re are we retaining enough students? Are we admitting enough students? All of those are a part of ROI. But there’s a huge qualitative, and possibly quite subjective component to ROI that has to do with  morale on campus that has to do with interest in coming up with new ideas, ability to conduct one’s research, and one’s teaching with all of the tools that are needed to do that. Well, those things are much harder to quantify. But I would like to turn to Amanda to ask her how there’s been a little bit of an effort to do that, but also to hear more directly from people working in the groups about how important it was to talk about this.

So not probably the clean answer you would like, because this is not all going to be quantifiable.  But I’m certainly persuaded that we better have a way to think about how it works.  I’m sorry I wouldn’t expect it to be quantifiable. I think it’s a very challenging thing to do is to actually sit there and think about it as a university, and how you affect people, how you affect society, and how you affect essentially the future.  I will also just want to underscore. Lori’s comment at the center are our students. And so how we affect them and their futures is pretty central to Amanda. Anything you want to add. 

Yeah, I will just add. So I was in charge of Theme 2, which was the Academic Portfolio Review metrics. And I see a lot of people from that theme in this room.  And so I’ve been a part of the data for a long time, and from the beginning our group always discussed, not only using numbers, but using our core values as a university. But, like you said, it is really hard to quantify. So the way we’ve moved forward so far with the data, and Sydney Record helped me with this over the last month is for both.  I would say, our teaching spaces. So colleges, units, programs, etc. And then also our research and innovation spaces. We have been looking at a whole bunch of metrics altogether, holistically, to really see which units are.  you know which units are  being successful in some of the metrics are in our less successful in other metrics, consistently, and a word that a lot of the group members have been using is directional data. So we’re not trying to call out a particular program saying, you have low enrollment. You’re on the chopping block. It’s more. Let’s look at all these programs holistically, using the data we have and then have that discussion about our ideals and what it means in terms of moving forward with those programs.  So that is the steps that we’ve taken so far. And I think that’s why you don’t see any programs listed on the slides today, even though I think everyone is ready for that. What I’ve heard from being faculty Senate President is, everyone just wants to see the data and wants to know if their program is towards the bottom of that list.  And hopefully, we’ll be able to get that data out soon to those who need it to help make decisions. But really, it’s now using that data to inform how we make those decisions as a campus, including the faculty and department chairs. 

I forgot that I’m moderated. While I look through the online questions, is there another question from the room?  This is a packed room. There are people on the floor.  I know you’re all interested.  Okay.  So a few. I saw a few comments. In the chat, both on the QR code form. And then also in the Zoom about how maintaining R1 status and focusing on Ph.D. production is being thought of in as a part of this SRE and how it’s gonna affect our campus. 

So, in my view, this concept of a learner-focused R1 which has come up through these discussions is maybe one of the most important ideas we’ve got to flesh out and give meaning to. It’s easy to say it right. It sounds good.  but we do not have anywhere close to the depth of conversation yet done here, that it would take to actually make that a reality. I think we have huge progress through the work with RLEs and other related kinds of research experience programs for undergraduates. I’ve been having conversations with the Deans. I’ve been having conversations with the research and center directors, the university level groups.  I do think there’s commitment to the general concept of using the fact that we are a strong research university and the fact that we are a strong teaching university, and we’re the only university in the State that has both of those characteristics in place at the same time that has to be built into mechanisms really, that are for the advantage of our students, because we’re the only place that can offer that? Have we figured out how to do that? Do we have the right number of research centers? Are people’s teaching loads too high? Do we have so many programs that the teaching loads have gotten to a point where we’re not able to to conduct the research and scholarly work across the whole university, that people would like to be doing or coming here to do our facilities. There is a very long list of problems around  research and around teaching, including what would it look like to put them together? So for me if I had to say today what I think is maybe going to need the most work and the most immediate work it would be that idea giving shape to that idea, coming up with ideas to help advance it without continuing to make.

I’m seeing the comments people concerned about heavy workloads, I agree. But if there’s a way to integrate for some people, and this won’t be for everybody.  Integrate one’s research with one’s teaching, and we have a number of faculty on this campus who do that extraordinarily well. If there’s a way to do more of that the hope would be that we can be more effective and more productive in both areas.  I don’t have more to say on it. I’m seeing the questions, too, about well, what about the centers? There hasn’t been much talk about the centers. There’s quite a lot of talk about the centers I know in some of the more extensive notes, and that has to be on the table as a discussion item, too. So I think what I’m asking for is if people are interested in trying to give more shape to this concept of a learner-focused R1. It will be very helpful if you can let us know, because there will need to be just more concrete work on what that takes.  So I have seen a few comments online  about how we have mentioned that we were going to be talking about specifics in this presentation to a few groups, and that they don’t feel like the specifics that they wanted or considered or communicated to the campus.  So I don’t know if anyone wants to comment on that. 

Sure, folks, we’ve been on an incredibly fast train to get to here. And John was, John was pretty direct. Right? He said, SRE is done.  I haven’t thought about that quite that way, but thank you for a concept. You know it is the re-envisioning which, by the way, at least for many of us, is part of our part job all the time looking toward, how are we doing? Where are we going? But this campus-wide, inclusive effort, I think what I would say is this. This particular part of the work  is largely in a place where we’re going to pause with that work and move to a different version. And maybe it’s SRE implementation. Or maybe it’s  SRE continued, evaluation and enactment. To be completely honest with you.  There isn’t a real plan for what that looks like. We’re just seeing, I’m just seeing this material this week in the last couple of days, and needed to get a feel for how deep and how broad and all of the questions. Many of the questions coming in are exactly the next questions like, Well, wait a minute. Would this really save money? Wait a minute. Is this going to be workable? Given everybody’s heavy workload already? How would we even go about doing that? So I’m eager to sift through these questions with my colleagues in the Cabinet, and others who are interested in helping putting in place some kind of an implementation  structure  which will have a coordinator which will have representatives who might be interested in helping to think. And it’s going to involve a lot of different pieces, right? We’ve got standing committees on this campus that can take up some of this work. We don’t need to make a new group to take a look at the many space related suggestions coming in. So some of this will just go right back out to committees that we already have to ask them very specific questions. What could you do in 26.  What do you really think is a long term? What kinds of savings would this give us? Or how is this going to be a real gem in advancing what we claim to be our charter. Those questions will all have to get written down, invented, shipped off to the groups that are ready to take them up. New groups will need to be made if somehow we don’t have in place the correct group to do it. And that’s about as far as I am with this envisioning, I am hearing enough concern about communication. That and the people. Michelle will be nervous with this. I think a quick weekly update from me is something we’re going to have to try  right? And it may not have a lot every week. But I will try to commit to that. So that you’re aware of what’s happening. You know. Cabinet discussed this one this week, or to the extent possible, I think, to keep people aware of where we’re going. I will say that in Senate yesterday we had questions about this sort of academic program, review and consideration. That’s an ongoing process, anyway, that the Provost office leads.  And interest in having the data that we have which is going to be a great directional starting point. I would imagine that there would be conversations among deans and department chairs and heads of schools to start to talk about that, because it’s just coming up from every direction. The trick, I think with that is, how do we do that? And at the same time have an eye on the meta majors and new ideas and new programs that might cut across. And frankly, what we may want to collectively decide. We need to stop doing to make room for something new. But that’s work that is faculty work. So we’ll have to figure out a way to build that into ongoing process, I guess. Issue no, yes, in the room. Sorry.  But  understanding that the directional data will be flowing probably to the Deans, and the directional data will find its way to the department chairs and directors and heads of units.  I

guess I mentioned this at Senate yesterday meeting. I’m still interested in what the consistent process  for that review of looking at that data. So it’s not each unit doing their own independent review of it. But is there a process that will guide us? And I’m not talking about the restructuring process that we know as part of the sentence. I’m talking about the process that leads to that.  And I just I look forward to seeing. Or if there’s a committee kind of developing those guidelines, I think that’s really important. And can I take that question a step further? I think that we need to ensure that there is that process so that it is happening equitably across all units across the university, because, you know, there is the instinct of some people to be guarded and be like, okay. Well, even though my data may not look good, I’m not going to make any changes. And so it needs to be equitable and make sure everyone is actually really going through that process  would be part of that process. So it’s a great question. And the President touched on it. And you did as well. The data that has been gathered is directional data, right? It’s not something that you’re going to put in a peer reviewed manuscript, and you know, etc. People are going to look at the data, and they’re going to quibble at this quibble about that.  Absolutely. It’s directional data, right? And it gives an idea and part of the process of how we, you know, move forward with that is exactly meeting with the Senate, Zack, yesterday, you know, continuing to have these conversations, and you know that will become flushed out more, as you know, in the coming weeks, you know. Maybe some people might not be here for the next few weeks, perhaps after finals. But but you know, in the next month or 2, you know, that process will become more clarified  as we work together. You know there’s again, there’s not a like, this is what we’re doing.  You know, there’s a lot of data there, and many people in this room have looked at it, and many people have worked and analyzed it. And but that’s going to continue to be refined. 

Good afternoon. This is Adam Nagar from the sole force resources and also the ecology environmental sciences program.  I have a question a little bit about. There’s a hiring pause. There’s some other things, or you know, we’re obviously saying, try not to do more with less or whatever, but from a sort of short term strategy, it sounds like we’re still in a wait and see perspective. So as we as administrators in our own units and programs are trying to think about how to keep the lights on. Have staff morale still, you know, as high as it possibly can be.  What should we be thinking in terms of short term strategy. I’ve worked a lot with colleagues across the college on trying to come up with  sort of resourceful ways to, you know, fit slots that now maybe are on pause or come up with different ways, that we could have teaching across units. And all these things that we’re trying to get really creative. But it sounds like we’re in a kind of a still waiting hold.  The economist had me. It says there’s opportunity costs. And all this effort that we’re putting into thinking about stuff that might be creative. But maybe in 4 months might not fall within whatever emerges. So I’m just curious on insight on what we should be thinking about strategically short term, as we’re really just trying to focus on keeping things moving. Thank you.  Sorry. 

So the Provost may want to say more, Adam. But thank you. The list you gave is the 1st list. It’s the right list. I think that’s happening in many, many places, maybe not every place. So that’s the place to begin, I think, to recognize that  that department department chairs, chairs of schools, and so forth, are going to need to be collectively talking, not only within their college, but across colleges, increasingly and to some extent, and with centers as well, and some of that already happens.  I think it might be important to really take up this question of looking at your programs. And that’s not a fix it for tomorrow question, but I could anticipate that. There’s enough interest and momentum in that, that we’re going to see some need to do that and think about what possible savings there may be the other thing. And I’m hesitant to say this when I’m reading all these comments and being mindful of what I’m saying. But  in our own office 1-1 thing that I need us to do, and probably everybody does, is to just look at what we’re doing right now, right now, today, with the staff that we’ve got or the staff that we  used to have, and we don’t now have and say, what can we actually stop? Are there things we can stop doing? I’m not talking about  at this moment, because our schedule is set for courses for the next. But are there things that are just really nice to do that we just can’t do right now? And that’s painful and difficult and hard for so many of us to imagine. I think we want to be mindful of not choosing to stop things that directly benefit and are important for students. But there are some other things we do. And we might have to just collectively agree that that’s  part of what we’re doing.  And that started from the College of Education and Human development.  What you just said? Maybe think about like, what constraints are we bumping up against in this SRE process and in our budget process that is connected to how the system is managed.  And you know, like what? I guess it’s a two great questions like, what what are those constraints and like, how do like? How might we need those constraints a little bit better? And then how might we better advocate for ourselves? In in the in this system. Ecology? I think that’s a great question Esther and there are. There are  friends of that through much of the material that I’ve been looking at in the last few weeks. I think we need to, and some of it, by the way, I think, is in the administrative barriers report as well. I think we need to do exactly what you said. We’ve got to name what that is, and be very concrete about how, whatever that it is, is affecting us  always with an eye on students. I think that piece is most critical. But then, and I’m perfectly positioned to actually and do believe it or not, actually advocate for things that need to be different for the University of Maine, just because of who we are, what we are.  I think we need help in actually putting forward the proposals, the solutions, as everybody knows, it doesn’t work well to go to your higher ups and say, here’s here’s a problem. It goes really better when you say I’ve got a solution. It might not be great. But here’s a proposal.  So I’m very ready and interested in that. And I’ve said that to Cabinet, and we can make that a wider conversation as possible to identify the areas where we just need. We need help. We also can go back. And this is never entirely satisfying to people. But there have been changes that have been made because we’ve done exactly that. And so we can do more of it. And you know it’s it’s a reality. We are in a system, and we all knew that. But there’s a lot that’s possible  giving this back to Amanda.

So I actually might call Kelly up here.  And I’m sure this is a question. A lot of people in the room. And I’m summarizing again a bunch of questions. We have literally hundreds of comments that are coming online. So I’m trying to summarize some of them into broader themes, so we can address them in front of the room, and I think one of the themes that I’m seeing is.  how are some of the restructurings that we’ve seen today on these slides actually going to affect the budget and save us money.  So I’m going to take that sort of an FY 26, and sort of over the next, the next 3 to 5 years. So I think any the bigger decisions, the big strategic reimagining of the university is likely not going to show up in FY 26. So I just want us to to take a step back and acknowledge that if we decide that I don’t know, I can’t think of a good example.  because there were so many. But we decide that VP of Spire and VP of Research should be consolidated with some sort of restructuring of internal and external support.  It’s not going to happen overnight. That’d be something we would work towards, potentially. It’s working towards changes in the underlying support work that they do, and then moving towards that. That might be something that happens in FY 27 FY 28. So we need to think multiple years in terms of kind of our structure or the structural financial situation. Now, there are ones that I think can happen in FY, so the space, the space recommendations around, can we take buildings offline, use less energy, use less maintenance? Absolutely. There’s more of that. We can build into the FY 26 budget. So we’re looking at some targeting. We’re doing some analysis that  facilities team has done some great work around specific buildings around specific costs for those buildings. And how can we take those out of the overall budget going into FY 26. To free up dollars to be allocated to more important activities.  I think I’ll go back to the hiring pause. I think that is going to enable us to consider some of the staff restructuring potentially, that will enable us to consider some changes in the facilities, auxiliaries, other areas that are already underway. So I think the answer is, some of it will come in FY 26.  Some of it will come in FY 27. As plans begin to be further developed in the implementation and conceptualization stage. And some of these ideas aren’t ever going to make it to a budget because they may get ruled out because we decide they don’t make sense for some of those. There isn’t a financial ROI, or there isn’t a qualitative improvement for the institution that takes us back to our mission.  So the answer is, the budget is a slightly parallel process, and we have a number of ideas that are going to take us to. I want to go back to what we agreed with the Board of Trustees 2 years ago now is that it was a 3 year plan to get us to a balanced budget. So this year we do not plan to balance the budget. We plan to use strategic reserves in the amount of about 4.8 million in FY 25.  Next year, we continue. We will continue to use some of our reserves, and we’re not planning towards balance either. So we’re planning to use 2.1 million in FY 26 of our reserves with a plan to be balanced in FY 27. So we’ve laid this out. The financial plan to support the enabling work to happen for that strategic vision to be put in place before we build it all into the financials.  So I’m happy to answer more specific. If there’s a specific question that you had around that.

But I think that leaves out. Kelly was about how things like interdisciplinary majors and Meta Majors would actually save the university money.  There’s 30 different ways that that could be conceptualized. Right? So I will. Yesterday, with Faculty Senate Executive Committee, I used an example that from my past life. So in a previous institution there was a reconceptualization of the art programs and it was taking a look. There was a BFA in Fine Arts. There was a BA in Arts, and I think it was in painting and drawing. And then there was a graphic design program. The faculty came together, and through a curriculum review said, Gosh, our enrollment’s not super strong. Across these 3 areas they elected to move out of the BA in arts to move out of the graphic design and to move into keeping the BFA in Fine Arts and doing an arts, media and technology total enrollment in the 3 programs when they started was 8.  It had declined significantly over time. The 1st year after implementation they had 24 students enrolled in the arts media technology in the BFA program. So it was a very intentionally looking at what student interest was.  And it was looking at what faculty, what core competencies, what teaching, what facilities they had on the campus and doing that. So that was one where it really was actually around enrollment growth. So it was a growth opportunity, and they did it around the retirement of one faculty and changing the discipline from a painting faculty member into rehiring a faculty member, but who had more of a digital arts background.  So that that’s 1 example.  I’ve also seen it. Where you teach out a program. We decide, you know what we’re going to teach out that program at the time of a series of retirements. So you, laying out that plan in collaboration with faculty through a faculty retirement incentive. So there’s multiple ways. I don’t think there’s any one answer. I think the 1st question is, what’s the right academic portfolio as the Provost the Deans and Academic leaders look at. And  then we talk about how might we get towards an implementation plan that supports the right academic portfolio vision? It can’t start with we’re looking to achieve this dollar amount, and we’re going to force force it to that. It’s what’s the portfolio we want to offer to drive, to meet our student demand to meet the needs for employment in the State of Maine, to prepare our students to go on to graduate school. Whatever  future opportunity is. But it needs to start with that portfolio question and not with what’s what’s the financial answer?  Thank you, Kelly.

Any questions in the room  I was counting in my head.  So another theme that’s come up in a few questions. Online is including other groups other than faculty in these decisions and implementation. And so there were quite a few comments about students and student groups which we also had one in the room. And then there were also comments about Staff and the staff unions being involved. So I don’t know if someone wants to address this.  I also want to go back just a little bit to that last question.  And this is a time to be thinking about. You know the siloing right? We need to be thinking about, Kelly addressed the academic side. But we have to be looking at the research, innovation, academics all coming together instead of looking at just our unit.  I encourage everyone to look beyond your unit. And so, Adam, I don’t know where you are if you’re somewhere, there’s Adam. Yeah, I mean, that’s exactly right. But things that you talked about are spot on of how you have to address that. There’s universities. When I was the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the early nineties, they went on a hiring freeze for a number of years.  They didn’t stop being an amazing university, right? And so. But they’re doing a little bit what you kind of referred to Adam. Really kind of thinking outside the box, I’ve had someone say to me, I can’t think outside the box. Well, this is the time, you know, to think about it beyond, you know, the silos. So I really encourage you to do that. What was the last question? Now that  that you just asked it was about students and staff, and how they will be involved in the process from here for yeah, I think we were admittedly a little slow on getting the students involved. Students are involved now, and they have been involved. Staff have been with faculty the whole time, you know, since these themes began working.  and this has open process as possible, because not only do you have the 14 themes, and then the two big groups that you just saw lately, you know, in phase 3. But there’s all these adjacent groups, and so faculty and Staff will, you know, have been very much engaged throughout this process  just on on themes themselves. There was over 175 and staff that were, you know, you know, directly involved in those and many many more sense.  We will continue that kind of work. It’s not going to go into this little cloister and figure this out. No, we’ll continue to try to get as involved as possible. And for the most part, when that list of names that you saw up there that included students that James put up earlier, only one person didn’t accept that invitation, and that was a student who had classes  and couldn’t make it so. All I can say is, we are going to continue to commit to this being an open process and trying to involve, and it’ll grow. Now, I mean the Board of Visitors have been brought in. Certainly the board of trustees know what’s going on, and other external stakeholders. Advisory groups have been discussed throughout this process at college level and larger levels.  etc. And so that that is something that will continue to be part of the whole process.

Can I just add one thing, yeah, please.  So I want to acknowledge Amanda’s comment around the bargaining units as well. I want to give just a quick example, so I’ll use campus beautification. That was one of the themes that came out. There were some really great concepts. So yesterday we had the opportunity to meet with the Teensters and have a very early started off on one topic, but ended off on the beautification concept  and part of it may be changing some of our position descriptions so that we can do different types of work as it relates to grounds and the labor associated with that to be more effective in the allocation of that. And that’s starting to change some of the position descriptions in collaboration with the teamsters. So we talked about a number of different new positions that might be specific to allow us for  a facilities restructuring to do different types of work around electrical high voltage. We talked about grounds, Cdl drivers and  and laborers for summer related landscaping work. So I think that’s a really good example of the type of work. Absolutely. Our bargaining units are essential. Our employees and all of our labor unions are essential to the operations of the university. So as we start to get through and start to think through some of the specific examples, we need to work in collaboration with our labor relations, teams, human resources.  and our bargaining teams to help us. You’re a part of the solution in coming up with how we improve or implement these. So a lot more will be coming in the in the coming months related to that. 

Coming back to the room, we have approximately 2 min left.  Okay?  So I just got a few questions towards the very end. And I think it’s a great way to wrap up this town hall.  So. And I really like this one question. So I’m gonna read it specifically. But then the others are kind of around the same theme says, the SRE is over. But this presentation makes it clear. The need for diverse and creative ideas is still urgent. How can we continue to provide these bottom up ideas?  And then there were a few other comments about how we remain. Keep this open process going forward is the SRE over? Is it ongoing? So basically, what are the next steps. And how can we continue to provide those good ideas?  So first, I want to say, I’m appreciative of the questions, particularly that last set, because I take it as a signal of continued interest  in some level of engagement, and so we will keep that open. I think what I’d like to do, based on this event, which has been extraordinarily helpful in not only generating questions, but demonstrating clearly where there are concerns, and with a number of suggestions, so all of that will get evaluated and looked at by me personally as well as anybody else who wants to help. I think what we need to have is some sort of maybe.  really, I am making this up on the spot. So if you have a better plan, tell me what it is. I don’t like to be in the position of making things up on the spot, but maybe a sort of SRE implementation or next steps council small group it feels to me like one piece will be keeping the idea generation part going.  But maybe expanding that a little to say, Okay, here’s your idea. Generation place. You can go do that and keep bringing ideas, because there are probably a dozen ideas today that I think we need to pay serious attention to that aren’t exactly on the table yet. So we have to go back and look at those. Keep the ideas coming. But maybe that gets expanded out, and I’m looking to  James a little bit and others to be a website on progress. Okay, so here are some ideas that we’re actually really grappling with right now, to the extent we can talk about that in that kind of a public forum.  What do you think? Here are some more questions that we have. Do you have more questions some way to keep people engaged if they wish to be, and we have to balance how much of that is done by a group, and how much of that is open to the world. And I’m eager for your input on that question, which is.  how can we? Your ideas about how we can keep it open. But I’m inclined to say we need a group, and I think it needs to be small with something like a strategic re-envisioning coordinator, together with a couple of representatives from each of the many, many areas that are critical to this students, staff  faculty administrators, some external supporters and constituents. Possibly system people I don’t know to be figured out, but I think a group like that will need to meet right around the beginning of the semester  to say, Okay, here’s where we are. Here’s what’s been processed between today and then. And here’s how we would advise going forward. So if we are able to name a group like that fairly soon. Perhaps, if you have interest in being considered to be in such a group, it feels to me like. That’s the next level of group. And that might be a group that largely is  working mainly in their meetings. I don’t know that there’s going to be a lot of in between work for that group, because I do envision us being able to say in a budget committee, this goes to use Senate. This idea goes to you. It’s more like an orchestration of that. That’s the best I’ve got folks for right now, open to your ideas, open to more suggestion. But I would like to conclude by thanking you, as always, appreciate everybody’s directness  and everybody’s good ideas, and this is a work in progress, so it will continue. Thank you very much.