PORTLAND, Maine — The head of Maine’s university system is meeting with faculty and staff at the University of Southern Maine to listen to their concerns.
Chancellor James Page will be at the university Thursday and Friday, a week after a no-confidence vote in university President Selma Botman fell short.
Faculty voted 194-80 in favor of the no-confidence motion, but it fell short of the two-thirds majority of the 377 faculty members needed to pass. Organizers say faculty are unhappy with Botman’s leadership and the direction of the university, which has campuses in Portland, Gorham and Lewiston.
Page is holding an open forum Thursday with faculty and staff to listen to their concerns. He will also meet with Botman one-on-one and with other constituencies and students during his two-day visit.
The U Maine System is seriously broken. If Chancellor Page really wishes to make the changes needed, he will have to take a real look at how this system got to where it is: corruption, nepotism, and cronyism lead to unqualified people in positions of power, wasteful procedures and protocols, unnecessary competition between campuses that should instead be complementing each others’ offerings, and programs that might sound good on paper (or in an ad), but that really don’t deliver. Right now, we’re not even considering sending our child to any system school. The citizens of Maine deserve better.
Legitimate points, but the finger should be pointed primarily at the System and not at the seven campuses. The System has grown ever larger and has persistently taken funds away from the campuses, with consequent loss of many faculty and staff. The Trustees–by now mostly Baldacci appointees, including the current Chair and Vice Chair–isolate themselves from the campuses, as do the top administrators. They are contemptuous of the ordinary employees, including the faculty, and impose fantasies of various kinds while spending millions on outside consultants who might instead be replaced by System “experts.” The System has millions of dollars that might be used for new hires and for modest payraises for current employees, but the System refuses to spend almost anything on serious improvements. The only hope is that new Chancellor Page, a genuine academic as well as successful businessman, can somehow turn things around. But it’s a very difficult challenge for this highly respected leader who, unlike his top fellow System administrators, has actually been a professor, and a darn good one. Pray for his success. But please consider sending your child to one of the seven campuses, especially Fort Kent.
Good move to listen to the concerns from all. The system got into this mess by not being thoughtfully managed by the trustees or recent prior gov.s. Kind of to be expected that Baldacci would dump his cronies there, but the anger ought to be directed at folks like Patenaude, et al. The ones with the clean up job have it the toughest because they bring the bad news on changes required. Part of the problem is all the satellite campuses and their outreach. It is a poor system that cannot afford to be all to all Maine’s residents. I live in a coastal town and the local state rep came calling for votes talking about how he was going to push for a satellite campus here. When asked how he intended to pay, he drew a blank and left immediately. This is the entitlement mentality we are dealing with. Further, they might consider terminating the tenure programs, which leads to paralysis of the faculty, as well as getting rid of all their public relations folks, which is a total joke.