State of the University Address — March 6

University of Maine President Joan Ferrini-Mundy delivered the 2025 State of the University address on March 6 in Minsky Recital Hall.

The recording of this event is available online. 
The slides presented at this event are available online.

Full transcript of event

George Kinghorn: Good afternoon. We ask that everybody be seated now. Thank you.

I’m George Kinghorn, senior executive director of cultural engagement and director and curator of the Zillman Art Museum. I’d like to welcome you and present the University of Maine Land Acknowledgment.

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 with other Wabanaki tribal nations, the Passadumkeag, Maliseet, Mi’kmaq through kinship, alliances and diplomacy.

The university also recognizes that the Penobscot Nation and other Wabanaki tribal nations are distinct sovereign, legal and political entities with their own powers of self‑governance and self‑determination. Thank you.

Amanda Klemmer: Hello everyone. I’m Amanda Klemmer, faculty in the School of Biology and Ecology, and the Faculty Senate president. It’s now my honor to introduce our president, Dr. Joan Ferrini‑Mundy, the 21st president of the University of Maine and its regional campus, the University of Maine at Machias.

Since 2021, she has been Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation for the University of Maine system. Leading efforts to make the University of Maine’s research infrastructure accessible to and supportive of all universities and faculty in the system.

Dr. Ferrini‑Mundy became the 21st president of the University of Maine in July 2018, and since then, has introduced changes in efforts to enhance the university’s impact on the local and global community. During her six years as president, Dr. Ferrini‑Mundy has spearheaded university initiatives as dedicated advocate for academic excellence, student success, and workforce development.

Most recently, she has launched a strategic re‑envisioning initiative, an institution‑wide effort to ensure that UMaine remains a leader in teaching, research, and public engagement to meet the changing needs of the state and beyond.

This nine‑month initiative is establishing transformational change for Maine’s public land grant, R1‑DI flagship university. Under Ferrini‑Mundy’s leadership, UMaine’s research development and innovation pursuits continue to flourish.

In early 2022, UMaine has designated an R1 Carnegie Classification Research University. She is also co-PI on transformative and historic 320 million UMS grant from the Harold Alfond Foundation to improve student experiences and educational opportunities of the people of Maine and beyond.

Prior to joining the university, President Ferrini‑Mundy was the Chief Operating Officer at the National Science Foundation. Her career spans the fields of mathematics education, STEM education, and policy, teacher education, and research administration.

Ferrini‑Mundy continues her leadership in mathematics education as chair of the Conference Board of Mathematical Sciences and member of the Transforming Post Secondary Education and Mathematics Board. She has numerous awards and recognitions and currently chairs and participates in several groups at the national and state levels.

In October 2024, Ferrini‑Mundy was appointed to the National Science Board after previously serving on the President’s Committee on the National Medal of Science. She is the chair of the APLU Board of Directors. In Maine, she chairs the Maine Innovation Economy Advisory Board and serves on the boards of Maine Co. and Maine Public. Please join me in welcoming President Ferrini‑Mundy.

Joan Ferrini‑Mundy: Hi everybody. Friendliness is good. We need it right now. I am delighted to see you all. Thank you for being here. There are a few seats around here and there for folks in the back who might wish to have a seat. Thank you so much Amanda. Where’d Amanda go?

Thanks Amanda. Thanks to everybody here for taking time from your busy schedules to attend this year’s State of the University address. I’m delighted to see so many of you here on what I hope is a day that brings to us just a hint of spring. I was optimistic, it’s just really wet but it’s warmer. I wasn’t sure about the dandelions, but it’s OK.

Try to look to the days ahead, the promise of brighter days ahead. I especially want to welcome all of the students who are present today and who are watching. Students who represent 50 states, more than 500 international graduate students representing over 80 countries. A particular welcome to you.

I want to acknowledge our representatives on behalf of the Graduate Workers Union who are here with us today. I would like to ask some of the dedicated leaders of the university who shape this university every day to wave or stand.

First, I invite the members of the Cabinet who are here present today to make themselves known. You’re here, you’re scattered around. Thank you. This is a group of exceptional individuals.

Leaders who work tirelessly behind the scenes helping to make decisions, solve problems, spending quite a lot of time debating the options that we have, and trying their best to ensure that our university remains strong, forward thinking, and committed to putting our students first. Let’s give them a round of applause.

I’m also pleased to recommend…to recognize — it’s going to be long if I start stumbling this early on the words — i’m pleased to recognize our student government leaders who are here with us today. Undergraduate student government president, Keegan Tripp, and vice president, Memphis Peterson, are here somewhere.

Are there other student government leaders? Please raise your hands. I’d like to thank you for the great dedication you have to the interests of the student body here and to representing them. Also would like to recognize graduate student government president, Laura Curioli, and vice president, Nolan Merz. I think they’re here. Over here, OK.

Lots of folks here who are working along with all of you very, very hard to keep our university steering in the right direction. I would also like to welcome any members of the faculty Senate who are here, including President Amanda Klemmer. Others who might be here? Good to see you. Thank you for being here or for watching.

Thank you all for your leadership, for your advocacy, for your willingness to bring multiple perspectives to the table on very hard issues. Hard issues that we’ve not had experience before, certainly in my time here, in trying to discuss and for building such a great collaboration in particular across the different groups with all of us that are aimed at the success and future of the university.

In past years, Chancellor Dan Malloy, University of Maine System, Dan Malloy, has joined us. He’s unable to be with us here in person today, but as you know, he is an extremely strong supporter of this university. He has prepared a short video message, which I confess I have not watched. He told me what it said, and it was a poem that was a little weird.

I hope that’s not it. Let’s look at Chancellor Malloy’s message, please. Thank you.

Dan Malloy: Good afternoon. I’m Dan Malloy, the Chancellor of the University of Maine System. Under normal circumstances, I would be with you today. However, I’m in Washington, D.C., for a conference. A conference that’s talking about some of the very serious challenges that the academic world is facing in our nation at this time.

I know that Joan is about to speak to you and deliver what will be her usual good words about the success of this university and the dedication of the students, the faculty, the staff in making sure that those students are in fact successful in getting their degrees and going forth to make our nation and our world a better place.

For each of you who play a role in that, in this audience today, I want to thank you. Thank you for the work that you do day in and day out. Thank you for making this university a great university. Thank you for understanding the challenges that people are facing today and you are responding to.

These are important times. This is, as I’ve said, a great university getting better every single day. I want to say to Joan, my good friend, you are providing the kinds of leadership that this university has needed for a long period of time, and I am privileged to be able to work with you. Go get ’em, give a great speech, remind everyone of what we’re doing together. Have a great day.

Joan Ferrini‑Mundy: Thank you.

What he told me he was going to say was, roses are red, violets are blue, Joan is great, and so are you.

Thank you. I want to express my gratitude to the chancellor and his leadership team for their continued and enthusiastic support of this university. I can take them any problem, any challenge that we have, get sound advice, a good conversation, but in the end support for wherever we decide to go as a university. That’s a fantastic thing to have.

They recognize our unique role as a flagship, and they work hard, not just for us, but for all of the institutions in the University of Maine System.

As we gather here today, I want to begin by acknowledging the sense of uncertainty and stress that many in our UMaine and UMaine Machias communities are experiencing right now. We’re living in a time of global unrest, shifting political landscapes, economic anxieties, and consequential debates about individual rights.

I want to be absolutely clear about something. The University of Maine stands firm in its values. We remain unwavering in our commitment to freedom of speech and academic and personal freedoms, to opportunity, inclusion, and nondiscrimination in all that we do, and to respecting and supporting our community regardless of their background, identity or beliefs.

We hold true to the belief that individuals at this university should live their lives authentically, and pursue their education in an environment that fosters acceptance and respect. We believe that a university must prize inclusion and respect for all. We are not deviating or retreating from those values.

At the same time, we realize that navigating this moment requires thoughtfulness, dialogue, and action. That there are wide ranging views and reactions from our community. We’re actively working with university leaders, state officials, national higher education organizations, and others to ensure that our responses to the current federal climate are measured, strategic, aligned with our mission, very mindful of risks and the future, and compliant with law.

I’ll say to you, the questions that we face right now, and you all face them as well, and in most cases, they’re hard. There aren’t always clear answers to the questions of, should I change the title of my course? Should I pause my grant activity? Can we begin hiring for a project that isn’t quite funded, but that we hope will be funded? Is there a risk to our Pell funds if we do or don’t do something?

I know that you’re grappling with those questions and I just want to say so are the leaders of the institution. We’re doing our best with this. It’s a very dynamic situation changing not just by the day, but by the hour. I gave my husband my cell phone to hold and he said when should I show it to you? I said and it could be anything.

Right now I just am so grateful that we are a community, that we are not necessarily a community that sees everything the same way, but we respect each other, and we come together, and we have these hard discussions.

I value these ongoing conversations and analyses in which so many of you are engaged. As we work together collaboratively in the tradition of — as our friend Robert Dana used to say — being a kind, caring, and compassionate community. That we are coming to decisions as best we can together.

I’ll have more to say about the recent federal directives and their impact on UMaine later in my remarks. For now, I want to share my thoughts on our past, our present, and our future. This year marks 160 years since the founding of the University of Maine. Our story began in 1865 when the Maine State Legislature established this institution as part of a larger national movement to democratize higher education.

At the heart of that movement was the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, which President Abraham Lincoln signed into law. The idea was revolutionary for its time. The idea was that higher education should not just be for the elite, it should be for everyone.

These new land grant universities, including the University of Maine, were built with a mission that had three parts. To serve the public good, to expand access to education, and to connect academic knowledge with real-world applications.

Historian Louis Bernard Schmitt once described the Land Grant College Act as, “One of the most profound acts of democratization in American education.” It was about lifting communities, strengthening industries, and at the time a focus on agriculture, of course, and creating new opportunities for people who never had access to higher education before.

This university, Maine’s land grant university, was born with that purpose in mind, to serve the people of Maine and beyond by providing opportunity, education, and economic mobility to those who sought it. Now, 160 years later, our mission remains consistent with the early view.

The differences are that our approach to fulfilling that mission is much different, because the stakes are much higher, our stakeholders are much greater and varied in their numbers, needs, and interests, and so it remains a constant reminder that we need to pay attention to the original mission.

Over the holidays, my husband Rick and I had the opportunity to see “A Christmas Carol” at the Penobscot Theatre. Anybody else see it in the room? It was a wonderful performance made even more special by the fact that a child of one of our faculty members played the role of Tiny Tim and did so with incredible talent and heart.

As many of you know, “A Christmas Carol” is a story about transformation, about looking back at the past, understanding the present, and imagining a better future. It’s a story about the power of change, about recognizing where we’ve been and making choices that shape what is yet to come. Now I don’t want to overstretch this analogy.

There’s nobody here that I think is really playing the part of Ebenezer Scrooge in this speech. I do think that the framing of past, present and future is particularly relevant to this moment in UMaine’s history. Revisiting the past gives us perspective and helps us realize that this university has met significant challenges over its 160 years.

We’ve worked through them. Our predecessors have worked through them. Examining and assessing the present in the moment provides a reminder, always, that what we do now shapes what’s yet to come. Each year as I prepare for this address, I do spend some time reflecting on the university’s history.

I go back to various foundational documents or images, to the words of the leaders who built the institution from the ground up. This year I revisited President M. C. Fernald’s 1916 History of the University of Maine, which describes the early years of the institution and the vision behind its creation.

The goal was to bridge theory and practice, to create a learning environment where students could develop both intellectual skills and hands-on expertise. As I told folks at an athletics department event recently, there wasn’t so much certainty about the role of athletics in those days.

It was feared that perhaps athletics might draw away from actual academic focus, and that’s been disproven by our teams and athletes here. In any case, as President Fernald wrote in 1916, UMaine’s mission was to “Create a closer correlation between the brain and the hand, between theory and practice, expanding education to serve the practical enterprises and affairs of life.”

Today, one such example of exactly that mission is our Research Learning Experiences programs, better known on campus as the RLEs. Since its pilot year in 2021, there are now 152 RLE course sections being offered for nearly 2,000 students across the UMaine system. I want to be clear that piloting began here at the University of Maine and UMaine Machias.

These courses feature some very intriguing titles, especially to someone like me, who wishes I could have taken advantage of opportunities like these when I was an undergraduate at that place, that university that we don’t really talk about here too much, but at UNH.

I would 100% have signed up for “Explore the Mysteries of Prime Numbers,” which is to be offered in the fall by Assistant Professor of Mathematics & Statistics Gilbert Moss. I want to thank Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost John Volin for his steadfast commitment to student success, and for the numerous initiatives he has launched to support those efforts.

I also want to express my gratitude to the dozens of administrators, faculty, and staff who’ve worked tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure our students’ success. That’s what we are about, and we need to keep that in mind. It is the success of our students, and the students are indeed succeeding.

For five years leading up to 2023, our fall‑to‑fall retention rate, which is the percentage of first‑year students who returned for their second year, averaged 77%. Think about what that number represents. Those students who didn’t return had invested their time, their effort, their hopes, and yet, for many reasons, their college journey ended too soon. We knew that we had to do better.

As Associate Vice Provost Scott Marzilli put it, “We needed to tap into faculty’s eyes and ears in the classroom to proactively recognize when students were struggling and to step in before it was too late. We took action. We established student success teams, groups of faculty and staff who worked closely with students to provide guidance and encouragement.

We implemented early alert systems identifying students in need of extra support. We became student advocates, making sure that those who needed help had someone in their corner, and it worked. In fall ’23 and Spring ’24, our faculty and staff supported 742 first‑year students with direct involvement from 81 faculty and staff members.

As a result, we increased our retention rate from 77% to 83.4 %.” That deserves applause. That’s great work.

That increase represents real students, many of them who stayed persisted and continued their education instead of needing to walk away. The credit for that success belongs to the students who took advantage of the resources to the faculty who reached out and to the advisors and staff who guided them.

This effort wasn’t just about advising or RLEs, it was about addressing the whole student experience. We made meaningful investments in mental health and wellness support, expanding support through the counseling center.

We strengthened Student Life programming aimed at creating a more connected and engaged campus community. We enhanced the Residence Life curriculum, helping students to feel a sense of belonging both in and out of the classroom. We increased first‑year engagement with the Career Center, helping students see their future beyond UMaine from day one.

All of those efforts together are changing the trajectory of student success at UMaine, although there is always more we can do. Most meaningful measure of student success is, well, student success. At UMaine, we conduct something called the First Destination Survey, which gathers information from recent graduates within six months of their graduation to assess their career progress.

Our results show that our Black Bear graduates are well‑prepared and ready to take on the world. Among the 2023–24 graduates for whom we have data, 94% are either employed, pursuing further education, or volunteering.

Of those employed, 70% are working in fields such as engineering, health care, and education. 24 % are continuing their education mostly in areas related to their majors. Additionally, and this is really important to the state of Maine, 80% of Maine graduates have remained in the state for employment. Twenty-seven percent of out‑of‑state graduates have chosen to start their careers here in Maine. As a state‑funded institution, these are important statistics for us to have.

More than 80% of respondents reported feeling well‑prepared in such areas as critical thinking, problem solving, and adaptability. By fostering student success, we not only prepare our graduates for professional achievement here, or for professional achievement, but also for fulfilling lives and careers long after they leave UMaine.

I had the good fortune to be with several different student groups in the past weeks. Members of student government at a hockey game. The Mitchell Scholars at the annual President’s Reception. The leaders of multicultural student groups and student employees of the three support centers in Student Life as we discuss the reimagining of ODI, graduate students from different groups, the students at the Scholar‑Athlete Recognition Awards Ceremony, and the Senior Skulls, and more.

A lot of these discussions are emotional and difficult, but in all cases, I heard directly from the students one thing about their experience in UMaine that was common.

That was consistent messaging that said the following — “We appreciate the mentorship, the guidance, the support, the advice, and the sense of community that we have here. Don’t mess it up. It is special and unique,” and we keep hearing that.

I want to be sure that those of you who are faculty and staff and community members understand that our students appreciate what gets done in this community for them. Opportunities to engage with one another on critical topics are vital to a sense of community.

I want to recognize Dean of Libraries Daisy Singh for the wonderful salon series that she has brought to the campus. It’s worth watching those videos to see what those great conversations are like. Just as in “A Christmas Carol,” and I’m not sure this is working that well, but anyway, where Scrooge is given a glimpse into what could be, we too must look to the future.

Not with fear, but with boldness and determination, and with a sense of a community bringing us the strength and judgment that we’re going to need for that future. We must and have been asking ourselves an essential question. What would the University of Maine look like if we were designing it today?

That’s what it looked like before. If we were designing the place from the ground up today, what would it look like? Of course, our thinking on that question changes by the day because of context around us and changes in the world around us.

It’s an ongoing exercise and I think we’ll be in it for a while. The question at the heart of our strategic re-envisioning initiative, the SRE initiative, is meant to catalyze bold, forward-looking thinking and ideas to ensure that UMaine remains a leader in education, research, and public service for decades and decades to come.

The SRE process began nearly a year ago when I challenged our university community to think big, to think differently, and to imagine a UMaine that is not bound by past structures, but shaped by future opportunities. A UMaine that would be financially sustainable at the same time.

The groups that have been working on this have come up with a working charter that we’re still using as a working charter. I want you to take a look at it because I do think it represents a lot of what we’re trying to be.

UMaine is a learner-centered R1 university, committed to sustaining the health of our planet, and growing inclusive communities, where Maine’s land, sea, and space grant university dedicated to defining tomorrow. That’s there as a source of discussion and conversation.

In the past 10 months we’ve engaged in one of the biggest and most inclusive planning efforts in UMaine’s history, and that continues into the current months and going forward. More than 180 faculty, staff and students have contributed ideas.

We have formed 14 working groups, each tasked with exploring a critical area of university structure, academic programming, research priorities, and operations. We’ve held open forums, town hall meetings, and strategic discussions to ensure that this process is not just administrative, but that it is collaborative and community driven.

The goal of SRE is not just to improve what already exists, it exists. It is to fundamentally rethink how we deliver education. How we support students, all students, how we conduct research and what our areas of strength can be, how we derive the greatest value from the university’s diverse brainpower, talents, and resources, and how we serve the state of Maine and beyond.

The process is already delivering real results. With the first wave of implementation underway, under the guidance of the SRE implementation groups. Each of these groups has been meeting over the past month or so, and in addition to longer term strategic activities, they are progressing well.

One of the most significant outcomes of SRE is a focus on breaking down silos between academic programs and research centers and institutes. The academic portfolio review and research portfolio review groups are identifying opportunities for more efficient and effective collaboration between colleges and research centers and institutes.

Including, for instance, discussions among the Maine College of Engineering and Computing, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Frontier Institute for Research in Sensor Technologies about new ways of considering collaboration.

The Materials, Manufacturing and Workforce Accelerator Group has proposed the development of graduate and undergraduate certificates in such high demand areas as smart manufacturing to capitalize on industry demand, attract working professionals looking to upskill, increase enrollment and tuition revenue, and create strong partnerships with businesses and government agencies.

These efforts would align with an interest in growing UMaine’s certificate and microcredential offerings, identified by the Academic Portfolio Group. By aligning academic programs with real world workforce need, we can ensure that UMaine remains a leader in preparing graduates for high‑impact careers. SRE is also driving the consideration of important structural changes in how the university operates.

The Administrative Business Services Working Group is developing ideas about a hub‑and‑spoke model for finance and accounting functions which would be intended to improve efficiencies, reduce redundancies, and free up resources for strategic investments in student services, faculty support, and other priorities.

One project that stems from SRE is the Marketing and Communication division’s cross‑campus effort to create a more strategic, collaborative, and integrated approach to advancing the university’s communications and marketing needs and initiatives.

The plan fits the SRE goals of adding value and focus to university‑wide efforts while, at the same time, making them more cost‑effective and will be looking at next steps for all of these initiatives.

There’s more to come on the SRE initiative in future town halls and campus communications this semester. I’d like to offer special thanks to Sabrina DeTurk of the Honors College for continuing to lead this critically important effort. Is Sabrina here or watching perhaps? Thank you, Sabrina.

Now let me move on to a related topic, which is the condition and future of our UMaine and UMaine Machias campuses. Creating a welcoming and supportive community, one that fosters learners’ success, innovation, inclusion, sense of belonging, and strong partnerships requires careful stewardship of our campus infrastructure.

Today we face a significant challenge. We have nearly — more than, I think — $1 billion in deferred maintenance here, with more than 60% of our academic and research buildings and 79% of our residential buildings being more than 50 years old. These are significant challenges to this university.

We’re working hard to address these conditions using E&G funds and project‑specific donor funds but to do so as prudently as possible. On many parts of our campuses, we are making transformative investments to ensure a modern, thriving campus for generations to come.

With the very generous $170 million grant from the Harold Alfond Foundation and other donors to athletics, we are renovating the Alfond Arena and expanding the Shawn Walsh Center.

The Harold Alfond Foundation and other donors are also supporting facility improvements that include the New Balance track and field and soccer complex and Morse Arena, which is UMaine’s new basketball and athletics facility.

Like to give some multiple shoutouts to all of our student‑athletes and teams because I know we have a lot of you here and would like to take note of some important recent accomplishments for them that we all can celebrate.

Last month, Myla Schneider was named the America East Women’s Soccer Scholar‑Athlete of the Year. Myla is a biology major with a neuroscience minor and pre‑med concentration. Her GPA is a remarkable 3.975. I don’t know if Myla is here. In any case, congratulations to her.

Thank you. It’s a big deal.

Black Bear student-athletes continued their streak of achieving a cumulative GPA above 3.0, once again. Congratulations. Amy Vachon recently became the winningest women’s basketball coach in UMaine history, with 168 wins. Her team plays NJIT, New Jersey Institute of Technology, tonight in an American East playoff game here at home in The Pit, which is now Skip Chappelle Court.

Men’s basketball coach Chris Markwood and his team finished the regular season in third place and will be hosting a conference playoff game for the first time for men’s basketball in 30 years. Men’s hockey is having another incredible season, ranked in the top five in the nation. They will host a Hockey East quarterfinal on March 15th.

Given the notable accomplishments here, let’s have another round of applause to support our Black Bear student‑athletes.

Getting back to campus facilities, other projects in the works are the renovations of Boardman Hall and Witter Farm here on the Orono Campus and the Reynolds Center at our UMaine Machias campus. I am especially intrigued by the robotic milking facility that’s coming in in Witter, which I’m sure President M.C. Fernald could not have imagined.

We are currently in one of the largest periods of new construction for this university in our history, building the facilities and infrastructure that will shape a bright future for students and researchers to come. In 2024, we celebrated the opening of Hotel Ursa, which includes the beautifully restored Coburn Hall and Holmes Hall.

A story on this, briefly. I’m running into alums who are either staying there or visiting or watching that new hotel. I’ve had at least three people that are quite distinguished alums say to me, “I might have accidentally snuck into Coburn Hall one time when it was actually closed. I wasn’t supposed to be in there. We had a party.”

Had no idea that anything like that could have happened here. They are just gorgeous now. A few months ago, we broke ground on the Green Engineering and Materials Building, a 50,000‑square‑foot facility that will house the factory of the future, a hub for cutting‑edge digital manufacturing, materials science and advanced learning spaces.

The GEM Building, as it’s being called, will exemplify our commitment to being a learner‑centered R1 university. It will offer immersive, adaptive learning experiences for students at UMaine and across the UMaine system. This is all about preparing for both the present and the future.

We could not be moving in this direction without the continued financial support of the University of Maine system and the UMaine Foundation’s many generous donors. The Harold Alfond Foundation, Maine’s Governor, the state legislature and taxpayers, our congressional delegation, and other federal policymakers and most certainly the financial generosity of hundreds of faculty members, staff, and campus leaders.

While we are improving the physical plant, we’re also building new academic opportunities for the future. This year, we’ve launched three brand‑new degree programs, a B.S. in criminal justice, a B.S. in computer science and business, and an online engineering doctorate in engineering technology.

These programs join our eight graduate certificate programs and 41 master’s programs. We’ve already welcomed 18 doctoral students. We’ve also added new concentrations in our animal and veterinary sciences program. We now offer a pre‑veterinary bioscience medical microbiology concentration. In special education, we’ve introduced a new Ph.D. concentration.

Our online offerings have grown too. We now have new graduate certificates in advanced library and media specialist, athletic administration, and teacher leadership, as well as additional certificates in classroom‑based, comprehensive literacy practices, comprehensive literacy coaching, and materials sciences and engineering.

On top of that, we’ve approved several exciting new minors, including game and design development, sports communications, sports technology and tourism, and hospitality and outdoor recreation.

I just want for everybody to pause. We don’t get to do a list like that unless our faculty, our department chairs, our heads of schools, our deans, our senate are all doing enormously important work to put this together for us, for our students.

These degrees and concentrations and minors are meant to produce relevant learning opportunities as we continue to be a university that’s focused on fostering learner success. I think we should do a round of applause to all who were involved in building these.

You heard the announcement, but I’m proud to announce that both the American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching have reaffirmed UMaine’s status as an R1 university just again this spring. We’re not just an R1 university, we are a learner‑centered R1 where our students have opportunities to be engaged every day in research and scholarship.

Congratulations to all on maintaining this status which turns out to be very important for many reasons. The work we’re doing now…Yeah, we should applaud that.

The work we’re doing now through strategic re‑envisioning, major infrastructure investments, new academic and workforce development programs, rethinking of general education, which I didn’t mention but which is another major project of our senate, is about ensuring that the University of Maine not only endures but thrives through the end of this century and beyond.

That’s our commitment and our responsibility. That’s why we must continue forward together, shaping the University of Maine for tomorrow. Now, so that you get a short break from me, we have another quick video to show.

Daniel Tanaka: I would say Maine is cold but warm. Cold for the temperature, but nice, warm people.

Jamie Fogg: I think that Maine’s special for that. I feel like, really, anyone can find their place here.

We hope to see you around. 

Joan Ferrini-Mundy: Isn’t that great? Let’s applaud that.

It’s part of a series. I urge you to check it out. Congratulations to Marketing & Communications for their extraordinarily good work. They are amazing. Now, having shared our updates and being where we are, I will now return to the topic with which I open these remarks. The unprecedented events of the past seven weeks occurring primarily in Washington DC but affecting all of us.

Since January 20th, there have been significant shifts in federal policies impacting higher education funding, research grants and federal contracts, as well as directives affecting both domestic and international students and faculty.

As I said earlier, we are trying to navigate the situation with carefulness and practicality as best we can here at the University of Maine. We are working with those in the best position to help address our concerns and help us consider the situation. Maine’s elected representatives at the federal and state level, the National Higher Education Organization…

…everyone is working together daily to take a look at what’s happening around us and to help us make wise decisions. Internally, we’ve established several working groups to assess, analyze, and respond to the volume and rapid release of executive orders, policy, directives, and communications from the federal administration.

The working groups include the Federal Action Stakeholder Team. We struggled with that, but it turns out to be FAST. FAST is one of the groups we have formed, which meets three times a week to review new federal actions, assess their impact and debate and coordinate our responses and actions.

The second team is called the Grants Review Team. It meets daily to analyze communications from federal funding agencies and assess potential implications for the specific research grants and principal investigators on our campus.

There’s also a special ad hoc communications team, which has been formed to plan and manage clear and timely updates for the university community and our external constituencies. We’re working to be sure that we step up the communication appropriately.

Additionally, cabinet members are meeting regularly with their respective teams to evaluate and shape the university’s responses.

This includes reviewing and updating our websites to reflect changing federal guidelines as appropriate, assessing risks associated with terminated or adjusted federal awards and the executive orders that are around them, and analyzing the potential long‑term implications and potential risks for our university as these policies shift.

This is difficult work. There are no clear answers. People are coming to solutions of different types and, at the best that we can, we’re trying to be sure that everybody’s perspectives are heard.

Beyond UMaine, leaders across the campus, many of whom are in this audience are very actively engaged with their specific disciplinary professional societies to also stay informed and to work together. Faculty and administrators are connecting with counterparts at peer institutions across the country, ensuring that we learn from and align with the best and generally widespread practices.

Those of you who read Inside Higher Education or the Chronicle of Higher Education, which are just packed not only with a lot of factual information, but with commentary from multiple perspectives, what you will find, I believe, is that where UMaine is in our responses lines up pretty well with where generally, other universities like us are.

I think that’s important to know. This is a moment where we are needing to calibrate constantly, needing to hear from people, and needing to then, in uncertainty, make good decisions or decisions that we hope are good. I’ve met recently with the public land grant university presidents in the northeast to compare strategies.

Our congressional delegation and the governor’s office have been invaluable partners as we advocate for UMaine and Maine’s best interests at the federal level. I’m particularly grateful to Senator Collins and her staff for persuading the US Department of Commerce and NOAA to work toward a mutually agreeable plan that would restore the Main Sea Grant funding, if all goes well.

Folks, we’re trying really hard to make decisions thoughtfully and deliberately. To hear people and to hear the range of positions that they hold on our decisions, to try to understand the potential consequences of our decisions and do things that are measured, strategic, and well communicated.

We’ll continue hosting meetings with stakeholder groups across the campus. Several have already taken place. For example, early on we met with some of our most heavily funded researchers. I remain always open to requests for additional discussions. I broached this idea earlier today, where’d Michelle go, oh she’s back there helping.

We have the group FAST that is meeting three times a week. I was thinking maybe we do something like have a place in the union where every, sometime, Friday from 1:00 to 2:00, there is a member or two of FAST just there, having coffee, available to chat as needed.

I’m not sure if we can pull that off, but open to ideas like that because sometimes this information is moving very quickly, and sometimes it’s being communicated in more particular areas. I really appreciate all that everyone is doing to help us navigate at this moment.

We encourage everybody to stay informed through the UMaine System Federal Transition Updates website. This is really quite good. It shows pretty much everything that’s happening every day. There’s a link to our UMaine site as well.

I want to thank two individuals from the System office, in case they’re watching, whose expertise and dedication continue to guide us daily, multiple times daily, through these complex and uncertain times. Amon Purinton from the Office of General Counsel, and Samantha Warren, the Systems Director of Government and Community Relations.

Even if they’re not here, which I don’t think they are, we should give them a round of applause. They are amazing.

An additional special thank you to Jake Ward, our Vice President of SPIRE, for his extraordinary leadership, proactive coordination, and real time problem solving during this period. His ability to synthesize information, anticipate challenges, and develop strategic responses has really been invaluable. I think I’d like to be sure we thank Jake as well.

Now a few brief words about tomorrow, or at least the near term tomorrow, like not actually tomorrow. Main Impact Week is coming up April 7th through 11th. I urge you to check out the new Gratitude Project that has been announced as part of that.

I don’t know how many of you have seen it, but it’s a lovely idea coming from the Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School’s offices to signal our gratitude to one another. I can announce today that our undergraduate commencement speaker will be the recently retired Vice President for Student Life and Inclusive Excellence and Dean of Students, Robert Q. Dana. That’s good news.

We will present the Presidential Teaching Excellence Awards to Melissa Maginnis, Associate Professor of Microbiology at the University of Maine, and to Gayle Krause, Professor of Marine Ecology at the UMaine Machias campus. Applause for that.

We will present the Presidential Public Engagement Achievement Award to Ryder Scott, who is statewide director for 4‑H, also at that same ceremony. That’s good.

Is Ryder here? There he is. Now, you may be thinking, “Well, there are other awards, and why aren’t those announced?” Well, committees are still working. Stay tuned. There’s no problem here. I just knew we had these already, so we could announce them. More to come.

Our extraordinarily distinguished and very humble researcher, Dr. George Denton, will receive an honorary degree at commencement. More to come around commencement. I’d like to give special thanks to Michelle Rogers, to John Diamond, and all of the MarCom team, and to everybody else who helped with this talk.

There was a lot of time spent trying to decide what to say, and what not to say, and how to get there. I just really want to appreciate that publicly for all of you, and so let’s give a thanks to everybody who’s been a part of putting this together.

In closing, I’ll just say this. I’ve covered a lot today. I’ve offered some reflections on our 160‑year history and reaffirmed our core values and mission. I’ve explored the ways that we are innovating, expanding, and modernizing.

I’ve tried to acknowledge our challenges but also to keep an eye on the opportunities before us. All through it, one truth remains clear, the state of the University of Maine in 2025 is strong.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for your patience, your engagement, your commitment to ensuring that we remain strong, adaptive, resilient, and kind, caring, and compassionate in the present and well‑prepared for the future. We never end these well, so I’m just going to say that’s the end. Thank you for being here, I’m happy to find time to chat.

I’ll tell you my email. It’s joan.ferrinimundy@maine.edu because we won’t be doing a Q&A session here, but we will be finding opportunities to talk even further with people as you are interested. Send questions, send comments, and at the same time, continue to do the great work that you do and to care about one another. Thank you.