Dear University of Maine and University of Maine at Machias colleagues,
Welcome back.
The start of a new semester is always an exciting and energizing time at UMaine and UMaine Machias. When our students return every semester, my feelings of optimism about the future are renewed, and my sense of the responsibility we have to serve our students and our state is strengthened.
You should be proud of UMaine. Others are, and they are showing their confidence in us. Today, that is especially true.
This morning, U.S. Senator Susan Collins announced she has secured $45 million in Congressionally Directed Spending to support the construction of a new health and life sciences complex at UMaine. We are grateful for her belief in our university — and in all of us — and in the vital importance of UMaine to the state of Maine and well beyond. This historic federal appropriation, the largest-ever for UMaine, will catalyze life-changing student opportunities and research for generations to come.
This planned complex and the construction you are seeing across campus this semester are building our learner-centered R1 university and the future on which Maine depends.
Major projects we expect to be completed in 2026 include the Green Engineering and Materials (GEM) Factory of the Future, the Sustainable Aquaculture Workforce and Innovation Center, the Forest Biomaterials Innovation Center, and campus-wide electrical infrastructure reliability upgrades. More than 120 other projects are currently ongoing and we also plan to begin construction in the coming months on the multi-purpose Morse Arena — for which site work began over winter break — and our university child care center expansion (Black Bear Academy).
SRE and FY27 Budget Progress
Plans emerging from the Strategic Re-envisioning (SRE) initiative are also underway. We are committed to moving more UMaine academic offerings fully online and to expanding and elevating programs of distinction, including through the integration of artificial intelligence and new partnerships — across colleges, with research centers and institutes, and more broadly within UMaine (including our regional campus in Machias) and the University of Maine System.
Over the past few weeks, our shared SRE work has entered a highly action-oriented phase in which each college is expected to detail specific steps and realistic timelines for advancing key recommendations as well as their plans for engaging faculty, staff, and students, as the Maine College of Engineering and Computing has so effectively done through its new Student Advisory Board. I have also asked deans to move forward immediately with the elimination of programs without any enrollment or where there is already faculty consensus to close them.
Revenue gains through recruitment, retention, and optimizing our offerings, as well as expense reductions, are critical to addressing the structural budget deficit that we still project to be nearly $18 million in the coming fiscal year.
I want to thank the cabinet members, deans, directors, and unit leaders for the thoughtful FY27 preliminary budget proposals they recently submitted. My cabinet is now carefully reviewing the proposals to evaluate the impacts in preparation for presenting a balanced UMaine budget to the System in early March. We are looking for savings in all areas.
Board of Trustees at UMaine on Monday
Please expect us to communicate with you more regularly about construction, SRE, and budget progress. Consistent with that, next Monday, Jan. 26, UMaine will host the UMS Board of Trustees in Wells Conference Center. I will speak then in greater detail about how SRE, capital improvements, and our responsibilities as Maine’s R&D Department are guiding our budgeting, planning, and global impact. I invite you to attend the meeting that begins at 8:30 a.m. or view it here.
I am often asked how our university can be thriving by so many measures — student retention and success, academic innovation, record research productivity, historic fundraising — yet still face such serious fiscal and enrollment pressures.
UMaine, along with many institutions of higher education, is at an inflection point. Our actions in the coming year will determine the foreseeable future of this university and the state of Maine.
I feel we are obliged to fulfill our phenomenal potential as a national powerhouse of excellence, talent, and innovation because that is best for our students. Doing so requires risk, creative ideas, relentless focus, difficult decisions, new partnerships, and major investment — like the Congressionally Directed Spending announced today.
While staying grounded in what has always made this university strong and what will make us stronger — our shared commitment to students, to discovery, and to serving Maine — Black Bears can boldly rise to this remarkable moment and shape a future worthy of UMaine’s promise.
Thank you for the terrific work you are doing to advance this university and our Maine mission. I wish you a successful and rewarding semester.
Sincerely,Joan Ferrini-Mundy, President
University of Maine and University of Maine at Machias
