ORONO, Maine — The University of Maine System plans to hire former gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler to lead the merger of graduate business programs at its Portland and Orono campuses with the University of Maine School of Law, according to multiple sources.
System leadership would not confirm the pending hire Wednesday. System spokesman Dan Demeritt said “the process is not complete,” no contract has been signed and the system plans to make an official announcement next week.
Once he is hired, Cutler is expected to lead the creation of a center that would combine the graduate business programs at the University of Maine in Orono and the University of Southern Maine with the University of Maine School of Law.
Cutler, 68, ran for governor in Maine as an independent candidate in 2010 and again in 2014, losing narrowly to Gov. Paul LePage in 2010 and placing third in 2014. The Bangor native worked for U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie and, later, President Jimmy Carter in the Office of Management and Budget before going on to start his own environmental law firm in the 1980s.
Chris Hall, CEO of the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce, said Wednesday he was “aware the University of Maine System and Eliot Cutler are in discussions” and working to plan an event in anticipation of an announcement.
Demeritt said the center would not be a school; therefore, the system would not need to seek new accreditation. Instead, the center would be charged with “coordinating and deploying resources across the system.” However, several faculty members have expressed concerns accreditation issues would be more complex than the system anticipates.
During the fall and summer of 2014, Parthenon Group, an outside consultant, worked with system administrators, faculty and leaders in the Maine business and legal communities to explore the potential of a “professional and graduate center” in Portland.
The group found, in part, that such a center could be a “transformative concept” for the system and that bringing the programs under one roof could catalyze business growth across the state.
Parthenon was paid up to $500,000 by the Harold Alfond Foundation on behalf of the university system to explore the possibility of consolidating the programs and offering an interdisciplinary program with the law school. The Alfond foundation also granted a total of $1.25 million the system to fund early “leadership and program development efforts” toward the center initiative, according to the system.
To get the job done, Parthenon said the system first would need a strong leader for the initiative, then to form a “cutting-edge interdisciplinary curriculum” and develop a new space to support the delivery of new programs that could result.
Parthenon claimed these changes could help the programs double their enrollments. The system fluctuates around 70 Master of Business Administration students per year. The law school has about 250 students enrolled this year. The new center would not issue degrees, the system has said. Degrees still would be conferred by UMaine, USM and the law school.
The new center could be among the first highly visible changes under UMS Chancellor James Page’s One University initiative. That plan, aimed at helping to make the system more fiscally sound, seeks to establish “mission-differentiated campuses” with each institution focusing on the programs that make it stand out.
The university system started exploring potential changes in the summer of 2014 through its Academic Portfolio Review and Integration Process, or APRIP.
“At the graduate level, our university system needs to compete with other systems across the country and across the world,” Hall said.
It could be easier to do that under one roof, guiding changes across the system from the economic hub of the state.
If UMS can attract the “best and brightest” graduate students to Maine and get them to stay here to start businesses afterward, it could spark a demographic change in the state with the oldest population in the nation, Hall argued.
“If we don’t compete better, we all could be facing negative impacts,” Hall said.
Faculty at the campuses, meanwhile, are wondering what their programs might look like once the looming changes stemming from the creation and reorganization through the center in Portland come to fruition.
Bob Rice, a professor at the University of Maine and the faculty senate representative to the UMS Board of Trustees, said Orono’s business faculty members are concerned about what might change in Orono. For example, would faculty rely more on telecommunication? Would there still be graduate business courses taught at the University of Maine? If so, who would teach them?
Members of faculty at each of the schools involved in the center were on the committee that worked with Parthenon Group to form the center concept, but this is the first major movement in months.
Bon Heiser, a USM business school professor, said at a 2014 meeting that he and his colleagues were supportive of a joint-degree program but had concerns about the transparency of the process. He said he believed faculty needed more input in the process.
As the One University push continues, it’s likely other programs will see their own changes to reduce administrative overhead and move the systemwide focus for some programs to specific campuses.
Early this year, the system announced the hiring of Danielle Conway, a business law professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, to lead Maine Law as dean. That appointment, with a $212,000 annual salary, becomes official on July 1.
Part of her charge is to lead the merger from the law school’s end.
Demeritt said many of the details of the new center have not been ironed out, and the new director will be integral in parsing through those issues.
“We’re on step five of a mile-long journey,” he said.
Follow Nick McCrea on Twitter at @nmccrea213.