President Selma Botman last Wednesday invited three faculty senators to serve on the restructuring committee, reversing her previous avowal that no faculty would be involved in drafting the plan to reorganize the university.
“This is an exciting, encouraging development,” said Senate Chair Jerry Lasala in a letter to faculty. “President Botman has heard what we had to say at Friday’s meeting and is responding positively. This is where the Faculty Senate can have major influence on the ultimate restructuring plan and one venue where we can exercise our governance responsibility.”
The announcement came after an emergency Senate meeting on Jan. 22, where Botman and senators clashed over faculty inclusion in USM’s restructuring process. Botman maintained that allowing faculty to help draft a plan potentially calling for cuts to academic departments and colleges could put them at odds with their union and violate others’ privacy. She repeatedly told faculty at the meeting they would only serve as advisers and would not help write the restructuring plan. “We want you to help us grapple with the momentous choices that have to be made. I take your advisory choices very seriously,” she said at the time.
But last week, Botman said she was swayed by the senators’ passion.
“I was deeply impressed with the Senators’ deep commitment to playing a more substantive role in the process and willingness to assume the heavy responsibility of participating in efforts to design a new academic structure for USM,” said Botman in the invitation sent to the Senate.
Chief Operating Officer Jim Shaffer, who will head the committee, said the administration altered the process to include faculty.
“The system officers, particularly Tracy Bigney [chief HR and organizational development officer] thought it was a bad idea to have union people participating in administrative retrenchment,” he said. “We split the process into two parallel efforts: the restructuring on one end and the budget balancing on the other.”
Faculty will weigh in on academic restructuring, but they will have no executive say in the decisions, he said.
The restructuring committee will take into account community voices from convocations in January and February and draft a plan that will likely call for closing academic programs, laying off employees and potentially folding entire colleges within the university.
When the committee finalizes the plan after March 22, it will be the first concrete blueprint for how USM will deal with recurring budget deficits. The school has been hit hard in recent years by falling state appropriations and flat or declining enrollments, and administrators anticipate a deficit of $3 million in the next year. To save money, the school is looking to pare back the amount of majors it offers. During finals week last semester, Provost Kate Forhan identified German Studies as the first major likely to be cut in the coming year, citing a lack of active students and the graduation of only one student in the past three years.
The Faculty Senate Executive Committee will choose three professors to serve on the committee, each from a different college within the university, by this Tuesday. Lasala said there were around ten senators interested as of last Friday.
“I think it was an excellent decision, and one that I support,” said Provost Kate Forhan last Friday of Botman’s decision. Forhan stood by Botman at the last Senate meeting, asserting it would be imprudent for faculty to make decisions regarding other faculty.
But while faculty will get a place at the table, Student Body President Maggie Guzman is displeased that students will not be appointed to the committee.
“I want to be on it,” she said last Friday. “I don’t think it’s necessary for several students to be on it.”
In what he called a “compromise,” Shaffer said student leaders will get to weigh in on drafts of the plan, but will not serve on the committee, partially due to the transient nature of the student body.
“The students come and go. The faculty are making a lifelong commitment,” he said.
“We have plenty of opportunity for students to be involved, but not in that particular phase,” he added. “By law and contract, the faculty does have a role of faculty governance. The faculty has a different relationship with the university.”
Shaffer will chair the team but Forhan will be responsible for final decisions made about changes to academic programs. Other members on the committee include Vice President for Human Resources Judy Ryan, Executive Director of Public Affairs Bob Caswell, and Special Assistant to the President Timothy Stevens.
Botman said in the invitation that committee members will be bound by confidentiality during the process. The committee will also have to follow the framework of the Strategic Plan, a document outlining eight goals for USM over the next five years, as well as the New Challenges, New Directions document that spells out the University of Maine System’s plan for offsetting an anticipated four-year structural deficit of $42.8 million.
Botman also said that The School of Law “falls outside the scope of this reorganization,” and while academic programs at the Lewiston-Auburn Campus are open to cuts and curtailments, the overall structure will remain intact.