Category: News

The Women and Gender Studies Program (WGS), in collaboration with Multicultural Student Affairs at USM will be holding their Annual Women’s History Month Dinner, which recognizes and honors the students, staff, faculty, and community members who have contributed to the program’s success.

USM President Selma Botman followed through on a promise that she made in a campus-wide email, and held her first informal lunch meeting with students last Tuesday in the Woodbury Campus Center.

At the lunch, Botman provided some insight to students in attendance regarding her plans for the future of USM.

According to Cecilia Ziko, the first time that the Lifeline Fitness Program saved her life was in 1983, one year after her first child was born.

“I needed to make a change,” she remembers. “I needed to make a life for myself.”

After reading an article about the popularity and success of Lifeline’s programs, Ziko decided to give the program a try.

In an update posted on her website, USM President Selma Botman announced that the University will shut down its Child Care Centers on August 14.

In Botman’s newsletter, “The 21st-century USM,” she calls the decision “excruciating” but necessary.

“We have provided a $400,000 annual subsidy to the child care program, a subsidy we regrettably can no longer afford,” Botman stated in the newsletter.

Students and faculty who bring their laptops to campus may want to be more cautious. Last week, three thefts were reported within a four-day period on the Portland campus- two of which were laptops.

These thefts are part of a trend over the last few weeks, during which USM Police have seen an increase in thefts of electronic items such as laptops and iPods.

Alex Wallace has been living at Bayside Village, Portland’s only independent student housing complex, since its inaugural semester last fall. And while he thinks the building has calmed down since those chaotic first few months, sometimes that’s not quite enough.

In recent years Southern Maine Community College’s enrollment has spiked to unprecedented levels. Showing an 8 percent increase in students, and a 13 percent swell in credit hours this Spring means that more students are taking more credits, and the growth doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

Pattenaude announces task force members

University of Maine System Chancellor Richard Pattenaude announced the members of a 12 person task force assigned to address the $42.8 million shortfall projected for the next 4 fiscal years.

The task force is part of Pattenaude’s plan to restructure the state university system, the outline of which he presented to the UMS board of trustees on January 11th.

An electrical fire in the boiler room of The Sullivan Fitness Complex forced over 100 people at the gym and the adjacent day care center to evacuate the building at 12 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. There were no injuries.

The fire was caused by a short circuit in the building’s backup electrical system.

According to Cecilia Ziko, the first time that the Lifeline Fitness Program saved her life was in 1983, one year after her first child was born.

“I needed to make a change,” she remembers. “I needed to make a life for myself.”

After reading an article about the popularity and success of Lifeline’s programs, Ziko decided to give the program a try.

A buzzing throng of local business figures, students, and other guests assembled at the Hannaford Lecture Hall at 7 am on January 14th to witness Muskie School professor Charles Colgan’s annual economic forecast.

A grim excitement filled the air prior to the lecture, as more than 400 guests milled around the urns of coffee, platters of danishes and sliced canteloupe.

Students and faculty who bring their laptops to campus may want to be more cautious. Last week, three thefts were reported within a four-day period on the Portland campus- two of which were laptops.

These thefts are part of a trend over the last few weeks, during which USM Police have seen an increase in thefts of electronic items such as laptops and iPods.

In an effort to create a financially sustainable university system in Maine, UMS Chancellor Richard Pattenaude last week announced a six-month process aimed at spurring “major transformative changes”.

In a meeting with trustees on Jan 11, Pattenaude predicted that without significant restructuring of the UMS system, Maine’s seven public universities would face a $42.

The new entrance to USM’s Glickman Library officially opened last Wednesday afternoon with a ribbon cutting ceremony. The new entrance that faces the campus is part of an ongoing revitalizing project financed through private donations and government earmarked funds, which the University hopes will make the campus more attractive to its students and faculty.

Walking through Luther Bonney this past semester it was hard to miss the group of campaigning students who called themselves the “Window Warriors.” This was the most recent campaign of the USM Green Team, whose past efforts in the fall of 2006 involved covering light switch covers with sticker bearing the phrase “Flip it Switch it Turn it Off.

President Botman has named USM’s next Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs – Dr. Kate Langdon Forhan of Northeastern Illinois University.

Forhan is currently the dean of NEIU’s College of Arts and Sciences, a post she has held since 2002. Her selection caps a hiring campaign that yielded 97 applicants from colleges around the country.

MTV’s “The Real World,” the show that give birth to reality television, took a step closer to representing the real world by adding a transgender to their cast for the first time. But while MTV was taking their time getting to the transgendered population, a pair of USM alumni were bringing transgender issues to the forefront of peoples’ consciousness.

When President Botman announced $2.7 million in budget cuts last month, perhaps the most sensitive point was the dismissal of 65 faculty and staff members. All done, she insisted, while adhering to a motto of “do no harm to the classroom.”

But just moments earlier, she also mentioned draining funds from what amounts to a central artery in any University’s academic profile: the libraries, which would immediately see a jolting loss of $300,000.

The USM Faculty Senate voted in favor of dropping the Entry Year Experience – or EYE – course requirement for incoming freshmen of the Fall ’09 semester. In their monthly meeting last Friday, the Senate voted 16-7 to postpone making an EYE course required for next year’s freshmen class.

This Wednesday is the day when all gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders, and straight allies are encouraged to participate in a strike against the passing of Proposition 8 and the losses that the gay movement worldwide are experiencing.

On this day, participating involves calling out of work as “gay”(or as a gay ally), and using the time off to volunteer.

In light of USM president Selma Botman’s November 24th announcement that an additional $2.7 million will be cut from an already anemic University budget, the Department of Facilities Management may have trouble funding critical repairs.

According to a Facilities Management breakdown of estimated deferred maintenance, USM’s backlog of maintenance and upgrade costs totals $60,587,000 for all three campuses.

Danica Koenig

Staff Writer

The Maine College of Art (MECA) attracts art students of all levels, from recent high school grads to professional artists. Founded in 1882, it is the oldest educational arts institution in Maine. Its gallery, the Institute of Contemporary Art, has been hailed as one of the finest art spaces in the Northeast for the exhibition of contemporary art.

While Maine College of Art on Congress St. is one of the regions leading art institutes, some students are lured to USM for diversity and structure.

Betty Rambur, Ph.D.

Dean, College of Nursing and Health Sciences

Professor, Health Policy and Nursing

University of Vermont, Burlington VT

Running on: Long resume of research projects, and plenty of experience on committees similar to the one evaluating her candidicy.

“Budget challenges are, regrettably, part of the DNA of public education,” said President Selma Botman, a day after touring USM with grim news about the school’s finances.

In recent emails and speeches, Botman has stressed the difficulty of cutting anything from USM’s already cash-strapped operating budget.