FARMINGTON – Of all the things University of Maine System Chancellor Joseph Westphal discussed with the University of Maine at Farmington students on Tuesday, the only complaint he heard was that the college dining hall stops serving too early.
Given the many jibes made about cafeteria food in the media, Westphal said UMF students are very happy with the food, just not the quantity. “We need to feed ’em better!” the chancellor said.
On the other hand, students praised the UMF faculty.
Westphal related the numerous conversations he had with UMF students lauding their professors during a Tuesday afternoon meeting with college faculty and staff, mostly spent discussing the University of Maine System’s new strategic plan.
System officials began work on the plan in May 2004, Westphal said. “We didn’t have any vision for the future” to illustrate what the universities would look like 10 years down the line, he said. Without that, it became increasingly difficult to secure funding for the schools and to continue the never-ending process of development and modernization necessary for the universities’ success.
So, “to assure the continued strength of the University of Maine System and its components, the system has undertaken a Strategic Planning Process to examine (our) mission and future vision,” according to the strategic plan.
Since 2004, the system put together a number of implementation planning committees. Four hundred people are currently serving on them, according to a packet handed out by Westphal.
Much of what Westphal discussed with UMF faculty and staff Tuesday centered on the system’s need for cash. The University of Maine System is facing a $15 million budget deficit, he said, and needs more support from the state.
Westphal explained that the schools are already depending on tuition almost as much as they do state aid, as opposed to the 1980s, when more than 70 percent of the system’s budget was funded by public money.
If the group of seven schools doesn’t manage to garner more state support soon, he said, referring to a graph he had brought with him, the system risks becoming ever more privatized. And if that happens, he said, the University of Maine risks losing sight of its mandate to provide education for Maine residents. The system risks becoming “just another Bowdoin, where only 13 percent” of students come from Maine, he said.
Westphal said he needs UMF faculty and staff to help him garner more support by presenting a more “unified message” about what the college needs. “This is a crisis,” he said. “We need all the help we can get.”
UMF President Theo Kalikow said she was very happy Westphal had visited her college. UMF has already started implementing one concrete aspect of the strategic plan, she said. In order to become a better, more intense liberal arts college, each class will soon be worth four, instead of three, credits. That shift will encourage students to take four courses at a time instead of five, but the classes will be more in-depth, Kalikow said.
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