Colleagues,
I'm writing this morning about the single greatest vote of confidence in the leadership, potential, and future success of our public university system in its history.
Over the next twelve years, the Harold Alfond Foundation will invest $240 million in faculty development, student scholarships and success, and new and revised programs, curriculum, and facilities that will have statewide impact and connect our universities to new opportunities in the Maine economy and business community like never before. And we'll be leveraging this transformative investment to secure an additional $170 million in matching funds over the next 10 years from private, state and federal sources, resulting in $410 million total investment in Maine's public university system over that time.
Let me pause to make two points.
First, we should take great pride in the scope and scale of these investments. The Harold Alfond Foundation's commitment to UMS is not only the largest gift commitment in that Foundation's history, it's the largest gift ever to a public institution of higher education in New England, and among the top ten largest gifts ever made in the United States to a public university or system. As Greg Powell, Chairman of the Harold Alfond Foundation, will say, they are betting big on our success, with the confidence that together we are poised to set new standards for how public higher education serves students and at the same time partners with employers in the pursuit of economic development and opportunity.
Second, the initiatives that these historic investments will support will need your help to be successful. What I describe briefly below is just the beginning. The work we need to do will require the best of our shared governance traditions to be fully realized and successful for our students and state. And, our faculty, academic support staff, and student affairs leaders, working within and across our universities and the System as a whole, will have the vital opportunity to shape these initiatives from the ground up.
Make no mistake about it - we will make these initiatives successful by working together.
So let me get right to it.
The Harold Alfond Foundation's $240 million investment will support the following initiatives:
Maine Graduate and Professional Center: $55M over 12 years (along with an additional $50M in matching funds over 10 years), further broken down as follows:
- scholarships and faculty and cross-curricular program development: $15M over 12 years (with an additional $20M match over 10 years)
- a new building in Portland at USM to house Maine Center programs and the potential for new linkages to graduate engineering and STEM: $40M over 12 years (with an additional $30M match over 10 years).
Statewide Engineering: $75M over 12 years (along with an additional $75M in matching funds over 10 years) will support the development and expansion of a collaborative statewide College of Engineering, Computing, and Information Science to be cooperatively led by UMaine, with additional undergraduate engineering programs from USM and UMaine graduate engineering programs in Portland linked to the Maine Graduate Center, expanded pathways from all System universities into engineering fields, new scholarships and faculty, and further renovations to modernize UMaine's engineering infrastructure alongside the new Ferland Engineering Education and Design Center now under construction in Orono.
Student Success and Retention: $20M over 12 years (along with an additional $25M in matching funds over 10 years) will support three programs, to be piloted at UMaine and expanded System-wide, that advance Student Success and Retention, as follows:
- Research Learning: $10M over 12 years (with an additional $15M match over 10 years) - the Research Learning program will provide meaningful research experiences for 1st and 2nd year undergraduates in both general education and other academic programs around the System
- Gateways to Success: $5M over 12 years (with an additional $5M match over 10 years) - the Gateways to Success program will provide learning assistants and curricular redesign to reduce the failure rates and improve retention in "gateway" STEM courses around the System
- Pathways to Careers: $5M over 12 years (with an additional $5M match over 10 years) - the Pathways to Careers program will improve coordination and expand access to credit-bearing internships and other experiential learning opportunities System-wide.
Division 1 and Intermural Athletics at UMaine: $90M over 10 years (with an additional $20M UMaine match over 7 years) to develop a significant portion of the University of Maine athletics facilities master plan, leading to significant gender equity improvements and opportunities for UMaine to become a preferred destination to host high school sports championships and community and academic events that enhance recruitment efforts by drawings tens of thousands of Maine students and families to campus.
To be sure, these new investments can't be diverted to solve budget problems we may face in the coming years at any of our universities. We remain responsible for balancing our operating budgets on our own, proving that we are wise stewards of the tuition and taxpayer dollars that will be entrusted to us over this time.
But to say these historic investments are good news is an understatement.
To say we're grateful isn't enough.
Having achieved unified accreditation this year, and having realized perhaps the safest fall reopening amidst the ongoing pandemic in the country thus far, we must now challenge ourselves to seize the new opportunities before us. In a System-wide effort we'll call UMS Transforms, we're ready to use these generous investments and the matching dollars they leverage to transform our academic collaborations and facilities, provide resources to faculty for development and innovation, support student success and provide scholarships, and work with state and global partners at a scope and scale never before realized, all to accelerate workforce and economic opportunities for Maine and beyond. All of this honors the Harold Alfond Foundation's 70-year legacy of service and generosity in Maine.
For me as Chancellor, let me close by saying thank you.
You chose a career with us in public higher education to transform lives. I couldn't be prouder to work with you as the faculty and staff of our universities who carry out our mission of teaching, research, and public service in Maine.
Now let's get to work together to transform Maine.
Sincerely,
