On April 6, Meg Weston will take over the position of Vice President of University Advancement, USM President Selma Botman announced last week.
The VP of Advancement is one of four vice presidents operating under the president of USM. The position is responsible for finding donors to help with large-scale projects and endowments for scholarships and academic programs. The VP position also serves as CEO of the USM Foundation, the non-profit organization that manages contributions from the community.
The most recent efforts of the advancement office have resulted in the swath of new buildings along Bedford Street on the Portland campus, as well as the “new dorm” in Gorham.
But with diminished state support of higher education, mounting budgetary gaps, and a vague outlook for the future “identity” of USM, the role of the advancement office is likely to change in the future, as fundraising will be focused less on new building projects, and more on scholarship endowments and funding for academic programs.
“Our job is to paint a very compelling image of where this university wants to go and find those people that that vision really resonates with,” Weston said.
Where the university wants to go is still uncertain, as most upper administrators wait for the strategic planning process to provide a clear outline of the future of USM.
One thing seems clear however: given the lack of state support, the role of the Advancement office is likely to play a much larger role in providing funding for the university.
“Generally in a public university, it’s become more and more important as states have cut back on their funding or as a percentage of overall funding,” Weston said.
Interim VP of Advancement, Dick Sturgeon, agreed that more could be riding on this position in the future.
“The expectations may be a little bit higher in terms of seeking external support than they have been in the recent past,” he said last January.
Weston says that the new buildings in Portland – commonly referred to the the “University Commons” – were built with the intent of maintaining a competitive edge in attracting new students.
“In order to do that, private fundrasing has played a larger role in that whole process,” she said last January.
Weston, a graduate of USM and lifelong photographer, has been involved in the photo-finishing industry for most of her professional life. She was the Chief Operating Officer for Konica-Minolta East and CEO of Print-Life, an Israeli-based online photo business, which later went belly-up when the dot com bubble bust in the late 1990s.
She was also president of The Portland Newspapers, former publisher of the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram, and was the chair of the University of Maine board of trustees.
Weston currently teaches a digital imaging class at the Abromson Center, as part of the Center for Continuing Education (CCE). It was recently announced that the Enrichment section of CCE — which her class is part of — will be cut due to the university’s ongoing budget problems.
Weston also runs a website, www.volcanoes.com, which is a showcase of her photographs of the worlds volcanoes.
“It really sort of gives me a sense of the power of nature. Most kids do get enamored of volcanoes or dinosaurs or one of those things, so maybe I never got over it,” she said.
One of Weston’s missions when she takes over will be to strengthen ties with USM’s alumni, an area of fundraising that she feels has been underdeveloped in recent years. She also wants to work on the technology used to contact alumni, as well as the software infrastructure that USM currently uses as a database for donors.
“That will be a big technology changeover, similar to the Peoplesoft changeover,” she said in reference to the program that Mainestreet runs on.
“Between alumni relations and that, those will be my priorities.”
Weston will also have her hands full collecting endowments previously promised by donors.
“People make pledges [that] go out into the future. All of that needs to be finished up and that will take some time,” she said.
Despite the widely-reported global economic downturn, both Sturgeon and Weston believe that there is ample opportunity for fundraising for the university.
“We won’t be in a recession forever. When you’re down, everybody thinks we’re always going to be this way, and when we’re up, the problem with the bubble is that everybody thinks we’re always going to be growing,” Weston said.
Sturgeon says that the recession may actually help USM’s fundraising efforts.
“Ironically, it’s probably a pretty good time to be asking for support because we can exhibit such a strong need for support, maybe even more than we could before,” he said last January.
Weston agrees that the recession’s impact on the school may end up helping it in the long run.
“I do think that there’s a new energy at USM, and that we will emerge from this budget-cutting and these difficult times with a really clear path,” she said.
“I think it will be a much more important source of revenue. I hope that it will be a strategic position within the university.”