Board of Trustees to vote on restructuring
The University of Maine System Board of Trustees is set to approve a proposal outlining the system’s financial future when they meet Monday morning.
The proposal draws from the “New Challenges, New Directions — The University of Maine System and the Future of Maine,” report, and is the end result of a 10-month study commissioned by system Chancellor Richard Pattenaude to outline a strategic vision for how to restructure the state’s seven-campus university system in financially sustainable manner in a time of ever-falling state revenues.
Since debuting the report last spring, Pattenaude and the BOT have been holding public forums around the state to give taxpayers a chance to weigh in on the plan, which suggests cost cutting, improved efficiencies, and new sources of revenue to combat the projected budget gap of $42.8 million by 2013.
Show planned for students’ civic projects
From 8:15 am to 12:15 pm this Friday, an event called Civic Matters will showcase how students and their professors apply what they are learning in the classroom to community projects.Civic matters will feature topics range from development of natural playgrounds, to the effects of milfoil on Sebago Lake’s water quality. The highlight of the event will be a service learning forum in the style of a “world cafe,” facilated by Maine Campus Compact’s director Liz McCabe Park and program director Maryli Tieman.
Civic Matters is organized by the Office of Community Service and Civic Engagement, and draws from all levels of the university, from Muskie graduate students to freshmen.
Muskie Professor Sam Merrill tailored his “Sustainable Communities” course to respond to a request from Portland to help implement the recommendations of the Sustainable Portland Task Force.
Merrill’s students each wrote a research paper on one of the recommendations, giving cost analyses and providing details about how to implement them. These class papers were compiled into a report submitted to the city that will guide the task force on which recommendations are reasonable to pursue.
Other projects looked at preventing delirium among Maine’s hospitalized elderly and how public transit in Portland could be improved.