Greetings!
With so many new students started on their academic journeys at our campuses and locations across Maine and even online, and with new faculty beginning appointments and new staff starting jobs at our universities, I think I’ll have to stop saying I’m the new one here!
Fall is a great time to be at or connected with our public universities, and I wanted to add my voice to those welcoming you back for the traditional start of our academic year.
While I look forward to continuing to learn about our traditions, I’m also excited to continue working with your university presidents and campus communities on the higher education innovations that will propel our universities forward, bringing more learners to start, stay, and graduate with life-changing degrees and credentials, sending them out as engaged citizens in Maine’s communities and workforce.
We want our University of Maine System universities to be the bellwether for academic innovation not only in Maine, but in New England and even nationally. To that point, I’d like to call your attention to a report and recommendation I’ll be making to the University of Maine System Board of Trustees on September 16, 2019 at its meeting at the University of Maine at Fort Kent. The Chancellor’s office is posting my report with the Board’s public agenda materials this afternoon — more on that below.
I’ve mentioned this issue to you before in a message following the July Board meeting and again in correspondence later in the month (PDF).
At the July 2019 Board meeting, when I was just two weeks on the job as Chancellor, University of Maine System Board Chair Jim Erwin asked me to review Board priorities and our current model of having separately accredited universities within University of Maine System and present recommendations to the Board as to whether a different accreditation model might foster more collaboration between our universities, catalyze more academic innovations, and allow us to make more market-relevant academic programs more accessible to our learners wherever they are.
I took the charge seriously, and I made two decisions right away — our work on this issue would be fully transparent to you, and whatever work we do on accreditation going forward will follow a set of Guiding Principles that have now been developed with our university presidents.
The Guiding Principles, which you can see here, will be our guideposts through a process that I’m recommending to unify all University of Maine System university accreditations within the University of Maine System. The Principles are meant to provide assurance of what will be preserved with unified accreditation, including that our faculty will continue to have shared governance responsibility for our curriculum and academic policy, that we’ll follow our collective bargaining agreements with our represented employees and negotiate any necessary changes in good faith, and that our universities will remain where they are, with their presidents and campus leadership, as well as athletic, extracurricular, and other distinctive programs intact.
For transparency, we’ve created a new web page where you can find my full report and formal records showing the University of Maine System’s long consideration of how to organize its accreditation to best serve the State of Maine’s higher education needs. I hope you’ll take a few moments before next weekend’s Board of Trustees meeting to review the Unified Accreditation web page.
We all have our work to do, and I’m excited to carry on with it. Our students are digging in. Our faculty and staff are guiding and supporting their learning. Our researchers are discovering new knowledge that will advance our economy and enrich our community and civic life.
I can think of no better place to be in the fall than at our public universities in Maine.
Regards,
Dan Malloy
Chancellor