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Dear University of Maine System colleagues,
This spring, the University of Maine System (UMS) announced we would provide our faculty, staff, and students with essential infrastructure for teaching and learning, research, and operations in the form of ChatGPT Edu from OpenAI. As we shared at the time, UMS believes there is value in investing in this secure, System-wide enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) tool because we want all employees and students to have equal access and support to explore using AI safely and responsibly — though taking advantage of this new resource is entirely voluntary.
Since we finalized our contract with OpenAI, our UMS IT team has been hard at work testing the tool and its integration into our existing systems, in preparation for seamless access to be made available to all faculty, staff, and students via their existing UMS single sign-on starting in the upcoming Fall 2026 semester.
We wanted to let you know that later this month, you will receive a communication from UMS IT with detailed information on what you can expect when this new tool is made available to you. This includes instructions for migrating existing content from a free or paid ChatGPT account associated with your @maine.edu email address to your new FERPA-compliant UMS ChatGPT Edu enterprise account. You will also be provided links to asynchronous training resources from OpenAI that are specific to higher education and research, should you choose to learn more about how this tool can benefit your work.
Starting this fall, UMS-led training and professional development sessions will be offered for free to employees through the Maine Center, including role-specific tracks across academic and operational functions. We will share that training schedule when it is finalized via email and also on ai.maine.edu — a one-stop resource for UMS AI resources including policies, governance, teaching and research guidance and best practices, answers to frequently asked questions, updates, and more. We are also developing student-specific educational resources.
In the meantime, a few things worth knowing about ChatGPT Edu:
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Your prompts and files are never used to train OpenAI's models.
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The tool is FERPA-compliant, unlike the free or consumer versions of ChatGPT, and is built specifically for universities and schools with enterprise-grade security, with usage governed by our System’s Acceptable Use policy.
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You can continue to use other AI tools as your academic, research, or workflow needs require, consistent with relevant policies, approval processes, and resource availability. Review our complete list of UMS-approved AI tools.
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It’s paid for. The System will fund the first year of our new two-year contract with OpenAI entirely from unbudgeted revenue generated through investment income, with no new student fee or university cost share. Funding for the second year of the contract will be considered as part of our inclusive, transparent FY28 budget development process.
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Most importantly, use of ChatGPT Edu is always your choice, and if and how you bring it into your classroom, lab, or office to advance teaching and learning, discovery, student success, and public service is entirely up to you.
I want to thank those faculty and staff in our university community who are currently testing ChatGPT Edu and providing valuable feedback to inform integration. We look forward to providing access to you later this month, and to hearing from you about how we can best support your success and utilization of this exciting and evolving new tool that has tremendous potential to transform teaching and learning, research, and our operations at Maine’s Public Universities.
Sincerely,
Ryan W. Low
Vice Chancellor for Finance & Strategic AI Integration
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