Presidential Town Hall Meeting — March 24, 2025

University of Maine President Joan Ferrini-Mundy and Faculty Senate President Amanda Klemmer co-hosted a Presidential Town Hall on March 24, 2025. University leadership joined the President and Klemmer to discuss university updates, including FY26 budget and the current fiscal context.

The presentation slides are available here.

Transcript:

Joan Ferrini‑Mundy: with SRE before we go into a fairly detailed budget discussion. This was a slide that I used in the budget presentation with the board because I wanted to be clear that the way to really develop budgets, of course, is to have a strategic vision that guides that work. It’s hard to do that in challenging budget times.

It seems that the University of Maine always has challenging budget times, but nonetheless, because we have SRE, because so many people have come together to try to give shape to our vision, we have been able to say with more certainty really that the strategic vision for the university must drive our budget planning, but there are some other factors.

We still need to reduce our long-standing structural gap and we are chipping away at that in good ways and in productive ways, but through the very hard work that everyone has been undertaking in the last year. We have a BOT plan and Kelly will speak to that.

The way you solve a budget problem is that really has only two pieces. You can reduce and become more efficient and you can bring in revenue. And what we are focusing on are defensible revenue generation ideas.

That is to say, not just pie in the sky ideas, which are easy to offer and very hard sometimes to execute, but through SRE, ideas that will actually enable us to generate revenue in a pretty concrete way.

We are working daily to anticipate the ongoing impact of changes at the federal level, and I’ll tell you more about that later. It is time to replenish our E&G reserves, and we are starting a plan for doing so.

I really wanted to end with this one. All of this is guided by retaining the core of what we are as a university, who we are, what we value, and what we do, and not letting that slip, but recognizing the way that we do that will need to change for all of the reasons that we’re talking about today, for what SRE is doing with us, for us, for the budget challenges and for the federal context.

We started with the question, almost a year ago now, “What would humane look like if we were designing it today?” We talked about things that are still relevant even today, although they’re different in terms of the content, but the higher education landscape is indeed changing, has been forever, really, but more recently with lots of different kinds of factors influencing that.

The workforce and the needs of the workforce and also what constitutes a college experience for students are changing. In fact, who the students are is a changing factor as well.

SRE is acknowledging that this kind of transformational change is what we must do. We launched that, again, almost about a year ago now. There’s a lot going on with that. We’ve talked about that in other settings.

There’s the web page that you can review, but I wanted to just remind you of some guiding principles that were part of SRE from the start and have remained central for us.

I’ll pick out a couple of these to mention, premier land grant and first‑rate R1 public research university where students are the focus. We’re getting to be able to say that really well, this learner‑focused R1, but where we need to go next is to enact that more broadly.

We have examples all across this university of extraordinary instruction going on in classrooms where inquiry and new creation and creative endeavors are at the core even the very beginning of undergraduate instruction, but we don’t have that in a widespread way, nor are we really able to support and celebrate it when we do have it in ways that we should going forward.

That becomes, I think, a major focus of SRE and much of what will come of it. It’s tied, of course, to the integration of teaching and research, especially, frankly, in a time where we need to diversify our research funding.

We need to be looking at agencies, perhaps, that we’ve not looked at before. We need to look at private funders and foundations and philanthropy and figure out a way that the kinds of things that we care about doing at this university can get supported going forward.

Then finally, I want to emphasize the need to remain a supportive, inclusive community that prioritizes the mental, physical, and emotional well‑being of our faculty, staff, and students. That’s the responsibility of all of us. I would say that what I have written there is absolutely the case.

I will also say that, that right now, particularly this time of year, as we come close to graduation and all that goes with that, keeping our students at the center, focusing on them is especially important right now and we need to be financially sustainable.

There are four SRE implementation groups that have been working over the last several weeks, and here are their titles and their focal areas and their leaders. They have just in the last week or so provided their final sets of recommendations.

Nothing is really final with SRE. It’s all iterative, but this last round has come in. We’ve been reviewing them and we’ll say a little bit more about some of that later.

Now we’ll go more specifically to the budget presentation. Again, this is what we would normally do this time of year. This has already been posted for the board’s FFT, the finance facilities and technology committee.

We will be, walking through pieces of what we did in that presentation. If you would like to see the entire presentation, feel free, of course, to take a look at it on the UMaine System website. With that, I will introduce, Kelly Sparks. You’ve got your own? OK.

Kelly Sparks: Good morning. Fix that up. Little tall person, woe is here. I’m going to move this forward.

First of all, understand how did we start by building our budget. We started with if we do all of the same things we are today, a pre‑SRE lens. If we continue on with our current enrollment trajectory, our consistent retention that we have, our state appropriations remain relatively flat.

Our expense base. All the people who are here today continue to be here in the same way. We’re continuing to hire at the same rate, and we looked and said, “OK, that’s our baseline.” Then we said, “What upside potential is there in the overall budget?”

We were very fortunate that with the great success of our deans, Scott Marzilli, the provost office, at large to see pretty incredible success around retention in collaboration with the student affairs team. We built a two percent increase. That was the weighted average of the last three years change in enrollment. We built that. We layered in some additional enrollment into it.

The incredible success of our financial aid and enrollment management team and helping us build out our enrollment strategy. We’re seeing greater successes, a turnaround story, if you will.

While we have some larger graduating classes, we have some larger classes coming in to offset that. That helped out with the enrollment the top‑line numbers.

We also have had incredible success in our residence halls. We’ve seen a hundred percent occupancy in the fall. Of course, that always dips a little bit as a part of the standard process. We’ve seen high occupancy rates, which also drives meal pan rates in our auxiliaries. Lots of success.

We’ve seen lots of success in the research side as well. We’ve seen increased research productivity grants contracts, congressionally directed spending, which result not only in that research productivity and the opportunities it provides for our faculty graduate students, students at large.

It also has the F&A, or the facilities and administration overhead that comes into our E&G budget. That has grown in the millions over the last couple of years.

Now I want to say our little caveat here is that while we’ve seen strong research, there is federal uncertainty. We still are planning to have strong research activity happening at the university, and we still have those in a budget.

We just need to watch that carefully, which is the why we have it highlighted here in in in yellow. We just need to be aware, watch, looking at the trends, understanding, and working very closely with Jake and Kody, and understanding how that might impact our budget going into next year.

However, we’ve also had a couple of other trends that are some headwinds, if you will. We are seeing declining out‑of‑state enrollments. We saw some peaks, and it’s coming down a little bit. Our students are taking fewer student credit hours per student. That’s all built into the budget.

We have rising compensation. We want to acknowledge and value our incredible faculty and staff, and we have bargained rates, so we are building those into the budgets. They are growing a little bit faster than our overall baseline, so we’ve just got to manage to that.

We have the changing federal landscape, so that will have an impact potentially on our F&A. That may have a potential impact on capacity grants, MAFIS, MEIA, and cooperative extension. We’re probably pretty nimble and ready to respond to that if changes do happen at this point.

Then we have ongoing deferred maintenance. We need to figure out how we fund that to make sure that we’re adequately supporting our facilities operations as a part of our overall operating budget and starting to make some improvements where possible.

With that said, what are the numbers look like? We presented to the board of trustees in FY24. We said, “Give us three years, and we will provide you a balanced budget. We won’t ask for system reserves.

We will strategically use our unrestricted E&G Reserves in order to buy us a little bit of time to work our way through strategically and re envisioning to think strategically as an organization of what a balanced budget would look like. By FY27, the out year will present to you a balanced budget.”

What we also committed to is if you look at that strategic reserves across the bottom line, we committed that we would use no more than $14.5 million total over the course of three years.

Very, very proud to say that in collaboration with our cabinet, with our deans, with our research centers and institutes with our other administrative offices across campus, we are presenting a budget and we presented a budget to the finance facilities technology committee of the board of trustees last week.

A budget that is in line and underneath that are the picture of me with my finger pointing at it is 2.1 million use of strategic reserves. [laughs] Verify that number for me. I can see it here on my little piece of paper, so I validate that that’s what’s on the screen. Very excited about that budget.

Now does the tuition line identical to what we presented three years ago? No, because we’ve seen some successes that we didn’t anticipate, so we’ve grown that line. We also have seen some successes in hockey that show right up here in this line in the other revenue line with increased sales and service activity.

Lots of good things happening across campus. I’m going to flip and talk a little bit about how we got to all of this. Again, I said that we started with this baseline budget. That baseline budget was business as usual.

Then we made a number of changes, tuition and fees. We’re able to add $3 million to the top line with those changes. Additional state appropriation. We initially planned for a certain amount of state appropriations. We were able to increase.

Now again, that’s a little bit of a question right now. Any of you who are tracking the state budget, we are lots of good work happening at the system office in support of continuing to advocate for that. We’re holding true to that in our budget right now, but we’ll be watching closely what happens with the state’s budget.

F&A cost return. Right now, that number, just so you know, is equivalent to where we think we’re going to end FY24, that increase in next year’s budget. There is potential risk there. I want to acknowledge that. I don’t know how much that risk is because we don’t have any specific, we’ve already embedded anything that we know to be certain for next year. There’s lots of unknowns.

What we’re trying to do is put that range of unknowns together and track it and be ready to respond if it does happen, but we don’t want to overreact by inappropriately reducing our overall revenue budget.

Sales service. That’s a combination of things in athletics and other areas as well that we feel very confident will come to fruition next year. Again, defensible revenue increases.

On the other side, how are we looking at reducing our overall expenses? I know the hiring pause has been difficult on a lot of areas. Through that good work, it’s allowing us to go through the strategic reinvesting the implementation working group recommendation piece, but we have saved dollars in terms of ongoing attrition savings due to the hiring pause.

Reduction in campus‑shared services. This is the allocation that we received from the system office. What they did is they absorbed one hundred percent of their compensation increases as well as a hundred percent of the change in the benefits rate. There was a pretty significant change in the benefits rate.

They presented to us a flat budget this year, and that is a million‑dollar savings for us that we had anticipated that our budget would grow by that amount.

I want to just acknowledge that that has been hard work. They have essentially taken budget reductions at the system office, and they have transferred those budget reductions through to the University of Maine, University of Maine at Machias.

We also are looking at the UMEC project or the steam plant replacement project. This right now, it’s a delay in when we would start the debt service of that so we can do a little bit more due diligence to determine if we have the right funding source or if we could use a third‑party funding source as a potential for that project.

It’s really just a timing delay right now. It may change the numbers further. Hutchison Center closure, when we close that, we are still covering operating costs associated with that. I love snow plowing for an unoccupied facility, and making sure that the oil stays filled so we can keep the temperature on. Can’t wait to transition that one off of our books.

Then increased net transfer. That F&A cost return, we also transfer dollars out to units as a part of the F&A revenue sharing that we do. It’s just a net to that $2.4 million. We also would transfer additional dollars out to units if those dollars came to fruition.

Part of how we’re getting there are tuition and fee changes. We are going to increase our in‑state and out‑of‑state by three percent, as well as all of our graduate tuition with the exception of the MBA. The MBA went through some market changes last year in terms of the overall rate structure, so we’re going to go ahead and hold that flat.

In addition to that, we’ll also be increasing the graduate differential, but not the undergraduate differential for this coming year. Students through their shared governance process have voted to increase the student activity fee by $22 a semester.

They’re a 501(c)(3). For those of you aren’t aware, we will flow those dollars directly into their student activities budget, and they manage that through their processes.

Same thing for Machias. The only thing I’ll call out here is that their students have not made a recommended increase in their overall activities fees, so that will remain flat for the University of Maine at Machias.

Auxiliaries. Really excited to share a budget that not only is breakeven, but will also now start to contribute a little bit back to the auxiliary reserves so that we can maintain those facilities. Great work in terms of housing occupancy. This also includes 40 additional beds that we’ll be leasing off‑site at Orchard Trails in order to accommodate the increased demand.

Then it includes good work and in collaboration with Sodexo around really getting to a balanced budget with our dining enterprise.

For those of you who haven’t been up to Hilltop, some improvements into the physical space, I encourage you to take a look. Pretty fun to see the improvements that are happening across campus. Then later this spring, we’ll see the outdoor space outside of Wells come to fruition as well.

We talked at the very beginning about strategic use of reserve reserves. When I am talking about reserves in this case, there’s this little blue bar there. A couple of years ago, we started at $39 million, and it’s now down to $5.2 million.

There’s a number of things that we’re doing. We have a planned use or a budgeted use. If the board of trustees is to approve that here in May of $2.1 million of the $5.2 million.

We are doing a strategic review of everything that’s in that orange bar, the $57.5 million. Some of those things are untouchable. I’ll say funds functioning as endowments. That’s essentially the endowment, and we have a payover off of that.

It also includes projects that we have decided to fund over time. We are looking at some of those in that designated bucket. What might be usable instead of the $2.1 million of our unrestricted, how might we use some of those other funds as an offset that to retain as much in our unrestricted reserves?

Regardless of all of this, having healthy reserves is not only required by the system through APL or administrative practice letter. It’s also really important for the ratios that we have.

If we think about our composite ratio externally, that will drive our ability and the cost of capital for us to borrow to do some of those important projects like UMEC or other projects.

We really want to be mindful of these ratios or of our reserves because they drive the ratios and our ability to do the things on campus that we want to do to improve the both the physical footprint, and other things that we may want to do strategically.

I think I am passing it back to my colleague, Gabe, to talk a little bit about our enrollment picture.

Gabe Paquette: Good morning, everyone. Hope everyone’s doing well. I’m going to speak to some of our admissions and enrollment‑related slides, but I do want to give credit where credit’s due. Vice President Coughlin, his team are in the audience. Definitely, I’m here reporting good news.

The main thing that I want to say is that our aging, which is the time between receipt of an application and an admissions decision, has increased pretty significantly over the years. Over the last couple of years. Now it’s down to 1.6 days over 3.6 days before, and we expect that that will decrease even more to hopefully zero, Kevin, is that right, by next year.

We also should say that our admissions our applications are up slightly, but not all that significantly over last year. I believe Megan is online?

Megan Walsh: I am online. Can you hear me?

Kelly: Yes.

Megan: Yes?

Gabe: Yes. Sorry.

Megan. That’s OK. Sorry. Our applications are also up at University of Maine at Machias, and we have quite a bit of overlap with UMaine. Thanks, Gabe.

Gabe: Thanks, Megan. I’m really delighted to share this next slide, which is good news. Some of you might be familiar with this already. Hopefully, you are, which is that our first to second year retention has increased quite dramatically.

For a long time, over a decade or just about a decade, we were steady about 75 percent from first to second year. This past year, we’ve now gone up to 83 percent.

The question is what are some of the drivers? I’d say there are at least two. The first is that the major reinvestments that have been or the major investments that have been made in through the Alfond gift, particularly research learning experiences, pathways to career, etc. have now started to show their benefits. That’s very exciting.

Another thing that has to be pointed to are the various process improvements that have been made. Many of these are led by my colleague, Associate Provost Scott Marzilli, including Black Bear early alerts.

This is where, in Scott’s words, we make the faculty into the eyes and ears on the ground, and we’re able to identify students who are having difficulty early on in a given semester, and then bring out all of our resources, all the wrap‑around services relate to student success, advisors, and others in order to ensure that those students have the best chance of succeeding.

I think we are now seeing the benefits quite significantly. Undergraduate student credit hours have, of course, over the last ten years declined quite significantly overall. There are a couple of different drivers that have resulted in this. The first is, of course, competition from other regional flagships.

The second, however, is the free community college program that also has had a significant impact. Fortunately, it appears that our credit hours at the undergraduate level are leveling out, and that’s a very exciting development. I believe Megan now I’m speaking into the mic. Megan, I think you’re also to share some ULM updates.

Megan: Thank you, Gabe. I just wanted to say that our credit hours are up this year. We are currently this semester up 23 percent in credit hours over spring 2024, and most of that is in our online undergraduate sections of introductory level courses. Thank you.

Gabe: Thanks, Megan. Got it right that time. Now I believe we’re going to go to graduate student credit hours. I believe Kody’s out there in cyberspace.

Kody Varahramyan: Yes. I’m here. Good morning, everyone. The next slide, if we can get to it.

Gabe: Oops. Sorry.

Kody: Thank you. This also shows the graduate credit hour over the past ten years. As you can see, the trend overall has been growth in the credit hours, and we can also say that in recent years things have become more or less constant.

However, having said that, if you look at the out‑of‑state portion of of the credit hour, that has been growing steadily and almost by about close to 50 percent over the past ten years. At the same time, we are doing the best we can with respect to the in state credit hours for with respect to growth. Thank you.

Gabe: Thank you, Kody. This slide shows that our credit hours are going to be flat going into next year. We are graduating a very large class which is exciting, which is good news. We expect that our incoming class will be slightly greater than this past year.

We do expect to continue to our gains related to retention, in particular, especially from first to second year. This is all, I think, good news, even though our credit hours will remain flat going into next year. I can now turn things over to Kody again. Thank you.

Kody: Thank you. With respect to being a learner center, our one university also, we have been already doing quite a bit of good work and advancement thanks to the entire university community and the research enterprise.

In fiscal year 24, with respect to R&D expenditures generated it was around $249.3 million. R&D expenditures consist of internal funds that were invested in research as well as external funds that were invested in research.

Out of $249.3 million., the external funds portion was $171.4 million. Which means that the internal funds invested by about $77 million.

If you divide the two numbers, then for every internal dollar that was spent in support of the research enterprise, essentially, $2.2 were generated and were brought in from the outside world to support our research with respect to supporting faculty, staff, students, laboratory enhancements, and all of that comes with it.

Overall, our university as the flagship university of the state of Maine has been doing 89 percent of all university research in the state of Maine, and about over 16 percent of our undergraduate students have been directly involved in research experiential learning.

This number does not include those students who go through RLEs and through the courses that they get exposed to the research experiential learning.

Also, of course, there has been very much focus on in R&D areas that are relevant in and how or impactful and meet the needs of the state of Maine. As part of that, we have also been diversifying and expanding our funding sources.

Finally, with respect to doctoral degree programs, we have 31 degree programs, and roughly on average, in recent years, over 70 doctoral students have been graduating. As part of that, also, some innovations have been taking place in doctoral education. Thank you.

Jake Ward: Hi. I’m Jake Ward, vice president for strategic partnerships and innovation at University of Maine. I want to dive in a little bit on our industry commercialization and economic improvement activities. I feel like I’m looking in the wrong direction, so sorry.

In particular, our industry and commercialization projects. I mean, anything I talk about here is really the work of the institution. Many of you are involved in those faculty, staff, centers, departments, colleges, etc.

Over the last few years, we’ve really tried to accelerate some of the work in commercialization and entrepreneurship innovation. Over the last five years, about 750 projects specifically in that space.

It’s really about translating the work, the results of our work, but also making our facilities and expertise available to companies and communities in Maine who are looking to solve problems extends from the smallest companies in Maine to some of the largest companies in the world.

We have such a broad activity in that space. A lot of that is stimulated by the Maine economic improvement fund. The Maine economic improvement fund is a state appropriation dedicated to doing applied research and development in the seven targeted sectors.

We get about $16 million a year from the state for that. It’s distributed across the institution and in so many different places. We’ve seen over the last few years a continued growth in the leverage of that. Using those funds to invest in faculty, staff, facilities, technicians, equipment.

The last year, FY24, we saw a $6.45 for every dollar invested in that space. Over the last few years we’ve been expanding that more into the, the workforce development, the R1 activities including a lot of more internships, undergrad and graduate level are being more and more incorporated into the use of those resources. Now I’m passing it back to whoever. Kelly.

Kelly: Feel like I should say, “Tag. You’re it.” A little bit about our housing. I definitely want to call out Dick Young and the team. They have done extraordinary work this last year as we found that we had exceeded, thanks to Kevin, our growth in enrollment. We had more students to house on campus than we thought.

There was a lot of gymnastics that happened coming into the summer months to try and accommodate those students, leasing space off‑site, triples, lounges creative solutions to accommodate students. This year, we’ve been able to get out ahead of that with an intentional leasing plan in advance.

What this number doesn’t show is we have 3500 beds on campus. We will also be leasing 40 beds off‑site in order to accommodate our students. By the end of the year, we anticipate being at 90 percent occupancy, but that means we’ll start at a a hundred percent and work our way down. A lot of good work to support both undergraduate and graduate students with on campus housing.

A similar story of growth in Machias, and I’m going to turn over to my colleague, Megan, to talk a little bit about what’s happening down there.

Megan: Thank you, Kelly. We are seeing the numbers go in the right direction. Although, of course, we’d like to see Dorward Hall full. You see that sign there is green, but it is shortly to be blue. We are doing a number of upgrades to that building as well including bathrooms and lounge areas. I did also want to shout out to Dick Young for all of his help, and also to Sodexo.

I’m pleased to say I don’t know if this is the time, Kelly, but I’m quite pleased to say that UMaine Machias ranks in the top five for students at student and customer satisfaction of all Sodexo serving institutions in the Northeast.

Kelly: That is an incredible turnaround story that may not have been how students felt about Sodexo when we first launched down there. Great, great collaboration for Sodexo.

Over the last year, we’ve also been studying how we can consider making some improvements to our housing for students and really focusing on developmentally appropriate safe housing adding in some privacy into spaces, bathroom privacy, kitchens. How can we can start considering improvements to our facilities over time?

One of those is to start to increase our rates just a little bit so that we can start to build a reserve so that we can do some major improvements or major renovations. This is the first year that we’ll make that increase. We’re planning to increase our room rates by approximately 4.25 percent here in Orono in order to start that.

We’ll start to see some renovations happening in the following years as the outcome of that change. Similarly, we’ll be working to increase our rates in Machias. In Machias, we have been running at a deficit. This year, we’re really working to restructure those rates so that that program breaks even down there.

We understand and acknowledge that it’s a little bit higher of an increase and a potential burden on students, but necessary in order to make that program really come to breakeven. Do you want to add anything to that, Megan?

Megan: No. I don’t. Well, I guess I would say that we do have an exemption for students who live 35 miles from campus. Otherwise first year students are required to live on campus. Similar, but not exact to there. That’s it. Thank you.

Kelly: Thank you, Megan. Then as of board rates or what, we are charging for meal plans, this will bring our meal program with Sodexo to fully break even. Lots of exciting improvements, as I mentioned earlier, happening across campus to expand offerings for students as well as physical locations or places for students to gather outside of the traditional dining hall.

I’m going to turn it over here back to my colleague, Gabe.

Gabe: Hello again, everyone. This slide shows our discount rate. Our discount rate has remained steady over the last few years. We do discount more than other New England land grants, but we do that very strategically.

First, scholarships make it much more likely that students will actually come to the University of Maine. Also, we are trying to recognize our students’ outstanding academic accomplishments. Those are two of the chief reasons why we discount.

The other thing to say is that our undergraduate tuition rate remains really the lowest among New England land grants by some measure, about $4,000 less, whereas our out‑of‑state tuition is really just on par with the University of Rhode Island, but significantly lower than all the other New England land grants.

Then finally, this slide shows tuition relative to median household income. While we are more or less at the same level as the state of Massachusetts, of course, our median income is significantly lower. That deserves to be pointed out. Now, turn back to my colleagues related to the federal landscape. President Ferrini‑Mundy.

Joan: This is our last section, and then we can turn to conversation and questions. The federal landscape changing by the day. A couple of things to say first, extraordinary uncertainties right now relative to budget.

You’ve seen that worked in a little bit to the budget presentation, not fully because it’s actually very difficult to project. We’re doing a lot of work with scenario planning to try to get a sense of what this could mean for us. As I say, it changes daily.

Then the actual specifics of research funding and grants. Grants that we already have, grants that we have been sure we would get, and grants for which we are applying. That’s a very dynamic landscape right now. Many of the folks in the room, and I’m assuming on the call, are very engaged in that work. I’ll say a bit more about how we’re trying to address it right now.

Then, the federal actions and guidance may be, of course, overarching for all of this, and that may be some of the most difficult and challenging activity that we face at the moment. I was struck by the headlines in the “Bangor Daily News” in the Saturday paper, I guess. There were two, and I meant to bring it and rushed out without it.

One spoke about a grant that had actually been paused that had to do with STEM engagement of, I believe, young women, as a part of the work.

The other spoke about worries about scientists in the INBRE project, which is a statewide funding activity funded by NIH about what was happening. I was thinking how differently those two articles conveyed what was happening. They’re both fine articles. They were accurate.

The INBRE was all about a worry as I read it. Like, what if the F&A cap is created? What could that mean? The other was a grant that we are actually working right now with the funder to try to understand what the issues may be. One caution that I would give to everybody is it’s really easy to be extremely worried with every one of these headlines. I appreciate that.

I am and you are and and we we know that. At the same time, I’m trying to stay focused on what has actually happened to us? Like, what do we actually need to do to resolve this grant, to resolve the Sea Grant situation, to resolve the USDA threat on unfunding of what we had?

There’s a lot happening and it changes daily. I’ll tell you a little bit about what we are doing here in this rapidly changing environment. We can concentrate on what we can control. That is our own programs, our own research, the well‑being of our students. Those are the things to focus on, I think, in this moment.

Know that the responses are going to vary, frankly, almost daily depending on what happens. Here are some of the groups that we have working just to be sure that people are aware that this is all happening. If people have questions, we can figure out how to help plug you in.

There’s a grant review team. That group meets every day. Well, not weekends, maybe weekends. I don’t know. No, not yet. The grant review team meeting every day to take up specific questions coming in from our grantees, whatever their question might be.

“Should I stop work on this piece of the grant? Should I continue going ahead with this submission? What about the language? What’s your advice on what I might do relative to DEI language or climate language or any number of other topics? How does it look for whether this funding will continue?”

Then very specific queries that come in because an agency representative has written to the grantee. They’re a little bit different. There might be worries and concerns and what ifs. Then there is, “Oh my goodness. I just got this letter today. What do I do now?”

The grant review team looks at whatever has come in since the day before and tries to address that queue. Curious, just sorry to put people on the spot, about how many have we looked at so far now in the grant review team?

Jake: [indecipherable] .

Jake: 90‑95 coming in. What Jake just said was if you also look at HR‑related and purchasing‑related, because if there’s some threat that your grant may stop, the HR issues are very obvious. Whether or not to buy the new piece of equipment is another question. Whether to continue with the subcontract is another question. All of that has to be looked at pretty closely.

Then we have the Federal Actions Stakeholder Team, FAST. We are meeting three times a week. That’s a group of people from across the cabinet. The GRT is much more, that team is about grant specialists. That’s about people who deal with grants every day and understand those implications as well as talking to our government relations teams and so forth.

FAST is a sample of folks from across the cabinet and other leadership roles. What we do is look at whatever has come up in the two days before the last meeting. What are the new issues? What’s in the news? What have we noticed? Very important to that group are our system general counsel attorneys.

They sit in those meetings and they help us talk about what we may need to do. If we took this action, what might the consequences be? If we fail to take action, what could we consider? A lot of risk assessment at, I think, a more general level there.

Kody is convening an alternative funding team, and that will continue to be an expanded conversation, not only among the small set of researchers that he has assembled already to start to look at where there might be additional resources, but that will grow into a bigger discussion in the coming weeks for the entire university.

There are a couple of different contingency planning efforts. Kelly and team are working regularly on their scenarios, on risk assessments, on trying to refine exactly what this situation could mean for us fiscally.

That one is very fiscally focused, and Kevin is helping us to shape a plan for a wider, longer term, wider range. What would happen if our university had to be reshaped in this way or that way or another way? Both of those getting going.

Michelle Rogers chairs an ad hoc communications team that is simply looking at all the different frameworks for communication that we need to be worrying about and paying attention to. I would say that this meeting is one example of our next wave of trying to be as communicative as we can be in this very changing world.

The chancellor holds an executive orders check‑in twice a week with different groups of people where we talk system wide about the implications. As you may guess, the news about the US Department of Education is prompting discussion that goes way beyond the research funding or the very specific DEI discussions or the immigration discussions that we are all engaged in or the tariff discussions.

It goes all the way to student financial aid and what could that mean and what might the implications be. Other programs funded by the US Department of Ed that are not research programs, but trio and others that might be student support. That’s getting discussed at the chancellor’s level.

Then several of us are very active and in leadership roles and organizations like NECHE, which is our accreditor, APLU, the Association of Public, and Land Grant Universities, and other organizations at the professional society level where I know that deans and faculty members have leadership roles.

There’s a lot of calibrating going on, at least from where I sit with peers across the nation. Like, what are you doing about this? How are you reacting to that? What do you think about this? Can you share that? That’s going on rather constantly because there isn’t a well‑defined pathway through this and major universities are being affected as well.

That’s a useful thing I’m finding. The version of it that I described here on campus is useful because it puts together people who care about this university, who care about our students, faculty, and staff to really come up with what is a sensible way to balance everything that has to get balanced as we try to move ahead.

The congressional delegation, particularly Senator Collins, has just been amazing. They are there. There are conversations with their staff. I’m in regular conversation with the four members of the delegation and their teams. They are, of course, watching all of this really closely, as well as our governor and her administration.

There’s a lot of new communicating going on and new messaging really for the University of Maine. “Here’s what we care about. Here’s what we must protect. Here is what we also feel is critical for the state of Maine,” and so forth. It’s pretty comprehensive.

If there are people who are interested in knowing more about some of that, I’m always happy to answer your questions. I’d offer special thanks to a few people: Chancellor Malloy, Paul Chan, who serves now as special counsel to the chancellor, Eamonn Purrington, who is acting general counsel, Lisa Landry, who is associate general counsel.

We really are, and this isn’t meant to be anything other than acknowledgment. We are really on daily speed dial with these folks because of things that come across our desks where maybe a decision by UMaine could impact the whole system or a decision by the system could impact UMaine and so forth.

Samantha Warren, who is the University of Maine System Director of Government and Community Relations, is our lead for the system on communication. Jake Ward, whom you’ve met, VP for Spire, is the lead coordinator for FAST and for all of the incoming everything, trying to keep an eye on all of that and keep track of it.

Michelle Rogers has been amazing on all fronts, particularly in keeping things moving forward. The members of FAST. A special shout out to Chris Boynton, who is Director of the Office of Research Administration and the University of Maine’s authorized institutional representative, meaning he signs things.

He’s especially attentive to everything that is going on and knows, now reading what terms and conditions are included in grants and whether those are changing. Very, very technical and important work for us.

There’s a lot happening. It is not easy. We will do our best to keep people informed of decisions as we make them. I will announce a few specifics today. As I was looking at my list, I was thinking some of these are budget‑related. Some of them are coming out of the current financial uncertainty at the federal level, and some are SRE.

That’s a pretty good mix. We said the talk was about all three areas. They come together really for us. A few points that we’ll get into writing some of this that’s unfamiliar as soon as we can. We are continuing the strategic hiring pause that was initiated last December, but we’re expanding the critical hiring review process.

How many of you know about that process? I’m seeing deans and PIs and people raising their hands. Yes, we have a pause, but we also have a mechanism for people to put forward what’s considered a critical hire. That’s why you’re seeing some positions are still being posted.

There is an argument to be made for the criticality of the hire, a timing matter, budget‑related issues. The critical hiring review process will now expand to include all hiring on external funds. With quick turnarounds, we’re trying to do those in the same day.

For now, we need to take a very careful step back to look at risk across our portfolio, and this is the most straightforward way to do it. The lead for that is our Vice President for Human Resources, Nicole Lawrence. We will be pausing new financial offers to incoming graduate students, while we at the same time continue to accept students.

This one, we’ve not announced the details of this. However, this pause has already happened in some colleges. We will use the pause period, which we hope will be fairly short. This is very similar to what other universities are doing, so there’s nothing particularly radical about this.

We’ll use that pause period to get as close an analysis as we can of risk areas and then come back with next steps after a fairly short period of time. We’ll give more details about that. It’s a big team working on that, but the leads are Provost Volin and VPR DGS, Kody Varahramyan.

The third thing I wanted to mention, and this is coming out of SRE, and we’ve been talking about this for a long time, is that we’ll launch very shortly, an academic portfolio review process. This is a recommendation that’s come from multiple groups in SRE.

This will assess possibilities for program closure, mergers, consolidations, redesign, meta majors, new directions and this will be led by Associate Provost Gabe Paquette. We are looking at a couple of, I guess the language we’ve been using is semi‑centralized or semi‑decentralized reorganizations.

The first of these that we’ll dive into in a deeper way will be within marketing and communications functions university‑wide to be led by John Diamond, who is our Chief Marketing and Communications Officer. He’s been working for several weeks now with Marcom leaders across the campus and more to come on that.

Then several of the recommendations coming from the SRE groups include new organizations for various kinds of units, a center to be combined within a couple of colleges, for example, or two centers to merge in some sense and so forth.

I’d like to establish a task force, a new task force, to look at all of those recommendations that have come in the last couple of weeks and to pick the ones that we should start on now, keeping things in mind that are crucial to us. What’s our working charter about a healthy planet, about being fiscally sustainable, serving the state of Maine, being inclusive, building inclusive communities?

We’ll look at every one of those potential reorgs from those perspectives, but we will also get started on deciding how quickly and how we actually would move into them.

Then finally, and I’m a little leery to introduce this because I haven’t fully worked it all out. This is accurate. I’m going to look at Dean Haddad to check me. I’ve had a first conversation with most of the deans collectively to discuss what we would do to…

Being R1 is clear. We know what that means. It’s very clear criteria. It signifies a certain level of excellence in research and so forth. There isn’t really a comparable teaching or learning designator.

We can make the case for ourselves at this university that we are an extraordinary university for teaching and learning, that we have innovation, that we support and will perhaps find ways to grow our support for that heart of our mission in modern ways.

I’ve approached with the deans the idea, watching Emily and Diane, the idea that we put together a prospectus for how we would make that a major focal piece of our work going forward. That’s beginning. I think we will soon have more to say about what that even looks like.

This is an extraordinary university for its instructional portfolio. We have innovation going on. We have strong focus on student learning. We’ve already heard today about student success and retention in general kinds of ways.

Within particular subject matter areas and disciplinary foci and interdisciplinary areas, we can boast about strengths here, and we need to be able to categorize that more fully and describe it more intentionally and then grow it. That will be coming as well.

Just to conclude, a reminder: we are still Maine’s R1 D1 Land, Sea, and Space Grant Flagship University. We are a community that, as Robert Dana used to say, is kind, caring, and compassionate. We have to continue, I believe, to figure out how to do that.

We will have differences. People will remain worried and concerned, and we collectively need to do our best to help folks address those worries and concerns and to keep moving forward.

I am so appreciative that this community is here and all the people online as well being a part of figuring out how we ensure that Maine has another 160 good years going forward at a time that is admittedly very challenging, very difficult, but I see some optimism too.

Thank you for that, and I’m sure we now have some questions. We’ll turn to Amanda to help us with that. I’ll turn to Amanda to help us with questions. This time, I’m not monitoring the questions in real‑time, so it’s probably better.

Amanda: Thank you, everyone. Can we put the slide back up that had the QR link for the questions? It’s at the very beginning. [laughs]

There we go. We’ve already been receiving some questions online, and we’ll try to go back and forth between questions in the room and questions online. I do have a bunch online, but if anyone has any questions in the room, we could start there. There’s also a microphone up there.

I’ll start with one online. The first question is, how can we support our students while they’re expressing their own fears about the job market, student loans, and other things?

Joan: This is a question that I think actually warrants a little bit of a discussion, because people in this room will have ideas. The question says, how can we support them while they are expressing their own fears about the job market, about student loans, and other things? I think those have slightly different questions, really, behind them.

Questions and fears about the job market. I am interested in responses from the audience about what you are doing to help your students explore their possibilities and prospects. What we are seeing, if anyone has any data, about the changes in the job market in Maine.

Again, as much as we can be factual with people, I think it’s helpful. I don’t have that information handy. I don’t know if anyone here does. Yes, and please introduce yourself. We’re going to give you a mic, Crisanne.

Crisanne Blackie: Hi. I’m Crisanne Blackie. I’m the Director of the Career Center here on campus. We service our students here on at Orono as well as Machias and I would encourage any students who are concerned about their next steps to please come visit us.

We are in the Union on the third floor. We’re happy to meet with students in person or online. We have many events that are upcoming to help them. In fact, tomorrow is the Class of ’25 Day in the Union that we will be there. We also have alumni helping us to prepare students for interviews. We continue on.

Our website has lots of events, and we are happy to meet with any student who has concerns and help them develop their job search or graduate school plans.

Joan: I would add and then go to Kevin. I would add our alums and donors are extraordinarily interested in how they can help us right now. When we think just about alums, and I saw Jason Harkins before someplace, does a fantastic job with the Maine Business School of helping seniors learn to network and bringing them to events where there are large groups of alums and so forth.

Certainly, we have that as a tool and I think good ideas for how to bridge the connections really between our alumni base and our current graduating students who are job hunting is something we can do more broadly. There are many other good examples of that in the university.

The Pulp and Paper Foundation is extraordinary in helping its participants network together and seek positions, and there may be other good examples. How do we do more of that if that’s of help to students? Kevin was going to comment too.

Kevin: Oh, yes. You hit some of it, the way that we want to provide students with information concerning the diversity and archetypes of support. I also wanted to focus on our co‑curricular participation, especially with student workers.

When we get a student worker, we want them to understand not only they are one of the frontline service people gaining experience that other people spend years post‑graduation developing that experience.

They are also gaining experiences from some of the largest technical platforms people encounter just in profession. Oracle, PeopleSoft Oracle with two CRMs, and they get to see the ambiguity of a tough deployment of CRMs and of things like perceptive content or document imaging and even optical character recognition.

We want students to understand how they put that into a resume or portfolio, and then we want to make sure that we’re continuously evolving so that not only do we harness better technology that our student workers can experience that is lucrative.

Joan: I’ll just add and then go to Kevin. I would add that some of the recommendations coming in from the SRE implementation groups include a stepping up of the numbers of credentials and certificates and special, essentially, stackable credentials that our students may have access to.

That, I believe, is some place where we can actually do something quite concrete. We could take what Kevin just said and turn that into a three‑credit something, perhaps, and look for ways to help our students be able to put a well‑defined credential onto their resume. Of course, there are many national models for how to do this.

There’s quite a lot of interest coming out of the SRE in increasing what we offer in those categories.

Amanda: Angela, did you have something to say regarding that question?

Angela Fileccia: Hi, everyone. I’m Angela Fileccia, the Director of the Counseling Center. That was a really fantastic question. I like that we started with that question in terms of what we can do to support our students. I also appreciate President Ferrini‑Mundy led with a focus on facts.

There’s a lot of information going out. The best model for helping students and, frankly, all of us when we’re dealing with crises is around facts. Focus on facts and then action. What can we do to help our students?

As much as we can focus on facts, helping our students, that’s going to go a long way for their emotional, mental, physical well‑being. Also, anytime I can plug the Counseling Center, please send students who are in distress or even just worried. Send them our way. We have no wait list. We have openings. We have crisis appointments.

Amanda: Thank you, Angela. Any questions from the room?

Oren Teal: Throughout this presentation, you were talking about how it’s sorry…I’m really far away from this. Throughout the presentation, you were talking about how…

Amanda: Sorry. Would you mind introducing yourself?

Oren: Do I have to?

Amanda: Sure.

Oren: I’m an undergraduate student here. My name is Oren Teal. You were talking about how it’s important to maintain support of all of our students, faculty, and staff, especially with everything that’s been going on with the federal government and with funding for UMaine.

However, recently the USDA released a statement saying that you guys are complying with the federal mandate to exclude trans kids from sports here. What are your actual plans to protect people here at UMaine, like all of our students, faculty and staff with the increasing attacks on marginalized groups? Like, where do you draw the line in compliance with those demands?

Joan: There’s a bit more background that might be of interest to you and we’ll make sure that you can find that online. One site I would refer everyone to is the University of Maine system. What is it called? Federal Actions Site, Federal Updates. It’s updating pretty much daily.

What you’re referring to has to do with the inquiry that was conducted by the USDA through their Office of Civil Rights around Title IX compliance in NCAA sports, which we follow the NCAA regulations on that matter, and our Athletic Director can tell us more about what those are.

That’s then reported out in the piece that you mentioned where USDA essentially reports that we are compliant with NCAA. Now, the question you ask about support for students, that’s different. This is about following NCAA rules to remain a NCAA institution.

Our support for students, in my view, and I’m looking for Andrea. There she is, and I may ask her to chime in as well. We haven’t wavered on that.

The groups that we have may be having some, we’ve had one name change and we’re aware of that, but the services that we offer, the opportunities that we offer, the time and support that comes from Student Life has not changed, and if anything perhaps has increased. I think it’s important for our faculty and staff to hear that as well. Andrea, would you like to add?

Andrea: Yes. I would say we definitely in Student Life have stepped up to some of the offerings that we’re having. Particularly, I’ll give a shout out if anybody is here to our Residents Life team who are there in the trenches every day with our 3,400 students that live on campus and supporting them.

We did have a name change. You’re all very aware of that. My door is open for discussion of anything, any opinions, any questions you have about that.

There will be some added services to those three lounges that you are probably familiar with, including some mentoring, professional mentoring that will be happening, some academic supports that will happen in those areas to really highlight the work that those lounges have been doing, will continue to do, and provide support for a much broader student population.

Oren: Can I have a follow‑up?

Man 1: [indecipherable]

Man 1: in charge of questions. I would say yes.

Oren: Is that all right? Is it all right if I follow up? OK. Alongside that, I was wondering there’s been a lot of talk about grants being canceled due to language and vocabulary and stuff like that, especially with things about climate or, honestly, just science in general.

How are you planning on dealing with that in the future, and are you going to be supporting undergraduate research in climate?

Joan: You have excellent questions. I’m going to start, and I’m going to turn to Jake to help me with that.

[laughter]

Joan: It’s always good when you get to phone a friend here. Anyway, excellent question. Again, multiple pieces to the question. I lost you. Oh, there you are. OK. Having undergraduates involved in research, in inquiry, in creative endeavors, that is a part of the University of Maine.

It has been for quite a long time, and we’ve stepped that up not just this past couple of years with our RLE’s, but in general over the years with CUGR, with the student symposium, with work that goes on in every college to engage students in the work of inquiry. It’s what distinguishes us.

From what I understand in all my conversations with deans, with faculty, with research center directors, no backing away from that. How we do that, with what names? That’s a little less clear.

There would be some areas where I think we can just zero in where we know it will be clear that that work will continue. We’re watching not only the executive orders and the guidance coming from the federal government, but I’m getting quite interested now in the federal fiscal year ’26 budget.

That’s going to be really key on the research front because when we see what the president’s request looks like, we will be able to tell which agencies and therefore which emphases are going to be most important.

That happens with every change in federal administration. It may be more dramatic with some than with others, but sometimes it’s a full shift where things that were popular in one administration are no longer popular or funded in a new one, and I expect we will see a lot of examples like that with this one.

We’ve got researchers already well ahead of the game and watching and looking and talking to their colleagues. Relative to climate, I think that one is really quite complicated. I’m going to look to Jake. I think there will be ways there have to be ways to continue work that has been critical and is important here at the University of Maine.

It may need to speak about its kinds of outcomes and with new language. A little soon to tell. We’ll hear what Jake thinks. Then, of course, with DEI, that has been a very major focus with the federal government.

You’re seeing, you read the press every single day, you see what they are asking of Columbia, you see what their complaints are with the University of Pennsylvania, you see all kinds of examples.

At this point, we are staying very focused on doing the very best work that we can, caring about what we care about, and using different language when we think we have to. Jake, do you have anything to add?

Jake: Yeah. I’d just say that, from my perspective, and I want to share again that we have a grant review team which has members form ORA, Office of Research Administration, Office of Research Development, Spire team, federal relations as well as legal.

I think everybody who actually gets funding understands you write the proposal to get the funding. You respond to the RFP. Many of the existing grants we have, people responded to the RFPs over the last several years. That definitely had language requirements or deliverable requirements that were objectives of the previous administration.

This transition is, to some extent, new administration, new ideas of things that are important. That doesn’t necessarily mean stop doing the work. A lot of it has to do with making sure it aligns with those priorities if you want that federal funding.

What I think we’re going to start seeing is the next generation of RFPs coming out that are not going to ask for that same kind of language. They’re going to ask for different things. Too much reliance on buzzwords and press is really where it starts to get gray relevant to the science you’re proposing and you being very specific.

If you’re talking about the increases in temperature that increase the viability of tick population, then you just say that. You don’t say it’s because of something else. The more and more you can be very specific about your science, that’s what we’re seeing in the feedback we’re getting.

When a grant is paused, they offered a chance to rewrite some of it. It’s not saying change the scope of work per se. It’s not saying that. It is trying to get to what are you specifically doing, and how is that valuable to what the state, the country, nation needs. I think that’s the best way we can approach it from the mechanics of grant funding.

The overall philosophy of the background of science that connects all these pieces really gets much deeper and beyond what a program manager in an institute or an agency is giving guidance on how to select.

Joan: You know what? That’s a great comment, Jake. I would just add to that as has happened again in previous administrations, there will be new areas of science that are heavily emphasized that are important.

If we’re going to be successful in getting grants, which we have been a lot in the last decade, we will need to also engage in that new science, new engineering, in those new emphases. Particularly for earlier career faculty keeping an eye on all of that. Those signals are already coming. I mean, we’re already hearing what the major areas may be.

We will need, for example, to help folks consider slight shifts in their own research programs and plans to enlarge or expand or move in a slightly different direction and what professional development and support can we offer to folks as they need to do that.

At least that would be relevant in areas that require external funding. Much of our research does require it. If you want to get it, it’s true. You need to write to those RFPs.

Amanda: There are a couple groups of questions online that I think talk to some of the new announcements that were made today. There are some around graduate students, and there’s a theme around how we’re supporting our current students, including efficient communication to them.

Then also a question about the funding graduate student pause for new students and if there’s going to be an exception process and how that’s going to work.

Joan: Thank you and appreciate hearing the questions, of course. Communications with our current graduate students in general, communications in general. I am understanding the importance of stepping up what we do there.

We’re using today as a first attempt at not just doing a straight budget presentation, which we could have also filled a lot of time with, but trying to open up a conversation with folks and to explain some of the issues that are current.

One thing that I have been doing and encouraging members of the cabinet and the deans and others to do is to actually meet with groups of people, with groups who bring specific kinds of topics and issues, and that has been fruitful, both to find out how we can improve our communication and how we can hear people’s issues and concerns.

Relative to the pause in offers that I mentioned today, the details and the execution of that will be forthcoming we hope today. We are an R1 institution. The work that we do at the doctoral level is crucial. The work that our graduate workers do to support that, of course, also crucial. We understand all of that.

What we’re doing with this pause is assessing the risk in a general way and then applying it to where we might be headed in the future. More to come and always happy to speak with students as we learn more and can understand what this looks like.

Again, I appoint you to other major universities who are not only pausing offers, they are pausing admissions. We don’t want to need to go to that step yet, but we need to understand where we are. We need to have a sense for grant‑related funding for students, how that might look in the next five years. That’s like trying to predict the future.

Jake spoke to it a little bit in what he just said when it has to do with what will these RFPs look like? Will we be successful in getting grants from them? There’s a pretty big scenario here, but obviously trying to handle this with sensitivity and appreciation of all of the anxiety that this brings with it.

Continue to ask the questions and continue to comment as our communications come out. If you feel they’re not sufficient, then you need to let us know. Thanks.

Amanda: Any questions in the room? There is a question about the timeline for the upcoming academic portfolio review and plans for sharing information during that process. I think I saw something about how open that process is going to be in terms of sharing the information with all of campus.

Gabe: Thanks, everyone. I guess that the first thing to say is that there has been a lot of work in this area already. The first three phases of SRE were an effort to try to, first, collect information and, second, to analyze it.

I don’t know the exact number of people who were involved in SRE at this point, but many hundreds have been involved in talking about academic programs and other aspects of campus life.

The process that the president announced is going to build on the SRE work that’s already underway. With regard to timeline, there are a number of different factors. One is the availability of essentially of the data we have and the ability to analyze it properly and to make recommendations that are sensible.

Of course, all of this takes place in the context of shared governance. We are governed by APLs. There are several different union contracts, including AFUM contract. There are norms of working together with faculty through defined mechanisms.

It’s difficult to say that to give a precise date when will this work be completed or when will it even be launched beyond the SRE process and the implementation groups that the president referred to. I assure you that all that work will take place not only in concert with the deans, but with the various organs of faculty governance, especially the senate. Thanks very much.

Amanda: I think I’m not overstepping with saying that you’ll hear more information about that as it develops. Any questions in the room while I read these online questions? It’s very quiet.

[pause]

Amanda: There’s a question again about graduate students. It says, “Graduate student admissions are plummeting this year in disciplines where most students are grant supported. I’m also concerned about how the impacts of the federal actions on admissions could further be compounded by potential wage increases associated with the graduate student collective bargaining.

I’m wondering whether or how the university is planning to address the impacts that is likely to have on our teaching capacity such a since TAs have such a vital role to our instruction.” It’s a very complicated question. [laughs]

Joan: It’s a great question. It’s not a question that we have an answer to, really. I don’t have the data about by discipline. That will be helpful to see soon. The data about what the enrollment pressure looks like by discipline. I suspect what the person asking the question said is accurate, that that may be down a bit depending on areas of scholarly interests.

That’s the first step is to understand that, to look at it, to look at all of our resources, to try to think about the ways in which research continues, the ways in which teaching continues, the ways in which our students are adequately supported.

There are many, many factors here, and then if you think about different scenarios, they will play out differently by scenario. If the first scenario is really just what has already happened to us, what can we know for sure, what are the what is known about what our funding will look like next year based on things that have already happened this year, that’s one set of numbers, essentially.

If we look a little bit further out to what looks pretty likely, and that’s where it becomes extremely subjective. We’re looking at other universities, then it gets more serious. Then, of course, absolute worst‑case scenarios, including major shifts and F&A caps and so forth, that’s yet a whole different matter.

We’re trying to stay disciplined to looking at those nearer scenarios and doing all that we can to preserve what we have. It’s very uncertain right now, and that’s my honest answer. Having the data about enrollment pressure would be actually helpful to this. We’ll make sure we have that. Thank you.

Amanda: There are a few questions online about Sodexo. [laughs]

They have to do with the fact that things like catering prices have increase dramatically and that means that a lot of units are now spending their dollars at outside the organizations instead of Sodexo, and wouldn’t it be better if Sodexo changed their prices so then we spend the money there opposed to going to and spending our money outside?

Kelly: I think the first thing to remember with Sodexo is that the cost of Sodexo is not just the cost of a box of food. It’s also the cost of the really high‑quality staff and the catering team that are bringing to set that up to decorate the room to deliver it and have it ready for an event to happen on campus.

We’re often doing, we’ve done pretty consistent price comparisons for all of our whether it’s pizza delivery off‑campus, other activities off‑campus. If you compare the food to the food, that’s one thing.

If you’re comparing the food against the food plus the service that you’re asking for with catering, the price is very is different. We are paying the folks to set them up to do it.

If you’re doing it in your unit, you’re paying your own staff the time equivalent for that. It may not feel like an incremental expense, but that’s activity that they could be doing elsewhere on‑site. We’ve done price comparisons. They are very competitive with the local market.

If you have specific questions around specific events or activities our Sodexo team, Ted Stone, along with Dick Young are always happy to dive in and say what is it exactly that you’re trying to do and to come up with a plan for your specific unit to unpack that to make it affordable in house? I caution us to not compare food against food plus service.

Amanda: There’s one last very specific question that I think a lot of people are wondering about, and then maybe we could go to anything you want to say to close. It is about undergraduate student workers and whether they’re affected by either the hiring pauses and reviews or the graduate student exceptions.

Joan: Another good question that affects a lot of people. Undergraduates are employed in a wide variety of capacities here at the university, and so I don’t think there’s a one‑size‑fits‑all answer to this.

For those who are employed on research grants, then the answer is yes. Of course, in all of this analysis, we need to look at whether grants are likely to be canceled. We also need to look at which grants and check them off are likely to continue because there are a lot of those.

We are also getting new grants, by the way, coming in and as the federal agencies have the staffing, we’re even seeing those start to have money flowing. I think that is a bit unknown, but that’s one portion of our undergraduate student worker situation.

Then beyond that, that’s going to vary pretty widely. Of course, undergraduate workers are a key part of this university as well, and those are key experiences. What Kevin described earlier are also educational experiences.

Certainly, we are committed to trying to keep our focus there and keep that as broadened and supported as we are able to. Again, quite an uncertain time.

With that, I would like to say thank you for being here. I really appreciate everybody’s attention. I don’t know if the online crew stayed with us the whole time, but it doesn’t matter. [laughs] Some of them did, I’m sure.

Know that I’m very interested in hearing from you directly with your ideas, with your solutions, with your ongoing concerns, with things that you would like more fully explained, and we’ll do our best.

I do appreciate this community, as I said at the earlier moment, and what you do, and I know that our students do, and that’s really what’s at the center. Thank you all for being here. Have a good day, and don’t forget to keep an eye on the weather. Thank you.