PORTLAND, Maine — A proposal to cut two programs at the University of Southern Maine — undergraduate French and graduate applied medical sciences — moved one step closer to reality on Wednesday.
Members of the board of trustees’ academic and students affairs committee voted to approve the program cuts at a meeting on USM’s Portland campus. The full board of trustees will vote whether to finalize the eliminations on Friday.
UMS President David Flanagan called the cuts “necessary but painful” at the meeting on Wednesday.
He said the university must reduce costs and “sharpen the value of what we offer” in order to avoid completely closing down.
“For public higher education as a whole, the message is to get better or get ready to go out of business,” he said. “We choose to get better.”
Flanagan said that if the program eliminations are approved on Friday, French will continued to be offered as a class, just not a major, and that the students now studying French and applied medical sciences will be able to finish their degrees.
The program eliminations are just one part of a plan presented by Flanagan earlier this month to cut $6 million from the university’s budget. He proposed reductions in 25 academic programs, which would result in the elimination of 50 faculty positions. An additional $10 million will be eliminated from the $134 million budget through cuts in administration and capital expenditures later this year, bringing the total to $16 million if Flanagan’s plan is approved.
Faculty members within the university system were offered a retirement package and USM administrators were hoping many of those who hold the positions targeted for elimination would take the incentive.
Only 24 of those faculty members did, however, leaving the administration to potentially lay off 26 faculty members.
Chris Quint, USM’s director of public affairs, said on Tuesday that no final determinations have been made regarding the retrenchments, but that they would be made by the end of October.
Quint said that 12 other faculty members have agreed to retire, but they do not come from the programs that the administration has identified for reductions and do not count toward the 50 positions proposed for elimination.
USM students and professors have fought back against the proposed cuts, initiating a letter-writing campaign to save French.
The faculty who have agreed to take the retirement package come from the following departments:
— English: 4
— Education: 3
— Public Policy & Management (Muskie): 1
— Community Planning & Development (Muskie): 3
— American & New England Studies: 1
— History: 1
— Communication and Media Studies: 1
— Psychology: 1
— Sociology: 2
— School of Music: 1
— Philosophy: 1
— Geosciences: 1
— Modern & Classical Languages & Literatures: 1
— Technology: 1
— Applied Medical Sciences: 1
— Social & Behavioral Sciences (at LAC): 1
