President’s Report 2016

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With its statewide mission, the University of Mainehas a responsibility to communities and citizens toaccomplish what matters to Maine.

Maine’s economic vitality and growth — from preparingthe state’s workforce to innovating to turn knowledge intosolutions — are inextricably linked to the state’s only publicresearch university. UMaine also has a leading role in the state’scultural identity and its civic integrity, providing opportunitiesfor lifelong learning that contribute to quality of life.

e best work of Maine’s flagship university occurs incollaboration with its public and private partners, all of whomshare our long-standing dedication to moving Maine forward.

I am an ardent believer in the power of education tomarkedly change and improve lives. at is the value of highereducation and a special duty of public institutions that havethe potential to affect citizens of all ages, across their lifespans.

In this President’s Report are highlights of those achievements— strengths that serve as springboards for the future.

President’s Report 2016

President Susan J. Hunter

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2016 President’s Report

UMaine has:

• Partnerships in innovation and economicdevelopment statewide, helping turnknowledge into solutions to benefit Maine.

• 107,000 alumni worldwide.

• Students from every county in Maine, 49U.S. states and territories, and 65 countries.

• An enrollment of 11,219.

• Nearly 100 undergraduate majors andacademic programs.

• 80 master’s degrees and 30 doctoral degrees.

• Maine’s only NCAA Division I athleticsprogram.

• Lowest in-state tuition rate of New Englandflagship universities.

• Student research spanning the breadth anddepth of undergraduate and graduate studies.

• Statewide presence with 16 UMaineCooperative Extension offices, five researchfield stations, a marine sciences researchfacility in Walpole and an incubation facilityin Franklin.

• One of the nation’s oldest honors programs.• 15 Signature and Emerging Areas of

Excellence.

• e most comprehensive academic offerings inthe state.

• World-class faculty committed to mentoringand actively engaging students in research andscholarship.

• Community engagement opportunities —from the Maine Hello tradition tovolunteerism, internships, travel-study coursesand study abroad — igniting passion instudents, and helping address issues locallyand globally.

• 2015 Community Engagement Classificationfrom the Carnegie Foundation.

• More than 200 student clubs andorganizations.

• e state’s largest library.

• 15 miles of running, biking and cross-countryskiing trails on campus.

Points of Pride

Maine’s public research university is student-centered, with a focus on undergraduate and graduateresearch throughout Maine and around the world. UMaine’s teaching, research, scholarship,innovation and public service are recognized for excellence statewide, regionally, nationally andinternationally.

Experience a distinctive array of student research, scholarship and creative achievement opportunities

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EnrollmentInnovative Campaign

• UMaine is one year into a major, ongoing campaign to increase new student enrollment —an effort that resulted in the first-ever university-wide waitlist and the largest incoming classin the institution’s history.

• Flagship Match, launched this past academic year, attracted 38 percent more out-of-statestudents for the fall 2016 semester.

• e Maine Matters Scholarship Program was created and launched to allow Maine studentsthe opportunity to receive some form of academic scholarship up to and including fulltuition and fees.

• A new study by Professor of Economics Todd Gabe shows that out-of-state undergraduatestudents annually generate about $160 million in economic activity in Maine. Surveys ofrecent UMaine graduates found that about 20 percent of students from out of state withbachelor’s degrees choose to stay in the state to live and work.

Serving Maine

e University of Maine is the state’s only public research university. As a land grant and sea grantuniversity, UMaine’s mission is to provide teaching, research and economic development, andengagement that serve the state.

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2016 President’s Report

Cost Savings — Retention and Graduation

• UMaine is focused on student success, which involves ensuring affordability, engagement,retention and graduation. One of the biggest UMaine student success initiatives, ink 30,launched in summer 2015. UMaine is committed to providing high-quality education at a costthat is within reach of families with college-bound students. It also is concerned about what itcosts students to earn a college degree. ink 30 encourages full-time undergraduates tocomplete 30 credits per year — and makes it easier for them to do that — so they can graduatein four years while saving money and reducing their debt. Students are encouraged to takeadvantage of Winter Session, Summer University and year-round online courses.

• A key part of the ink 30 initiative was the reintroduction of Winter Session. Nearly 700students took advantage of the opportunity to complete one of the 21 fully online coursesavailable.

• e average student debt for typical UMaine graduates increases by 38 percent when they finishin five years instead of four. For those who graduate in six years, it’s 52 percent higher.

• An estimated 67 percent of UMaine students who completed 30 or more credit hours beforetheir second year of study graduated in four years. By contrast, only 4 percent of students whocompleted 20 or fewer credit hours in their first year went on to graduate in four years.

• Preliminary analysis indicates a significant jump in the number of first-year students whocompleted 30 credit hours in 2015–16, putting them on the right track to graduate in four years.

• UMaine’s ink 30 initiative has drawn national attention and was featured as a best practice bythe education consulting group EAB.

Classes offered year-round as part of Think 30

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Nearly 100 undergraduate majors and programs, as well as master’s and doctoral degree programs

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Financial Responsibility

• UMaine had a balanced FY16 and FY17 unrestricted (Educational & General, Auxiliary andDesignated) base budget.

• UMaine Facilities Management oversaw numerous capital improvement, maintenance andenergy projects campuswide. Energy procurement contracts saved approximately $1.7 millionand, since 2006, UMaine’s campus carbon footprint has decreased 28 percent.

• UMaine plays an essential role in advancing the University of Maine System’s vision, one goal ofwhich is to create a sustainable public university system that will serve the state well into thefuture. Every college in the University of Maine is participating in this UMS One Universityinitiative.

2016 President’s Report

• UMaine grants more master’s degrees anddoctoral degrees than any other institutionin the state.

• Seventy-five percent of recent UMainegraduates are employed full-time. Ofthose, 90 percent of Maine BusinessSchool students and 86 percent of Collegeof Engineering students are employed full-time.

• UMaine students in multiple disciplinescontinue to pass and score exceptionallywell on national certification and licensureexams. For example, 100 percent ofUMaine’s communication sciences anddisorders students earned passing scoreson the national Praxis Test in Speech-Language Pathology.

• College of Education and HumanDevelopment teacher certificationprograms graduate more elementary andsecondary teachers than all other suchprograms in Maine combined.

• e School of Nursing is ensuring accessto health care for rural Maine through itsMSN-Family Nurse Practitioner program.

• Communication Sciences and Disorders(CSD) is the only program preparingspeech-language pathologists in Maine,and within six months of graduation,100 percent of CSD graduates foundemployment in the field.

• UMaineOnline is growing enrollments inits online professional graduate programs,including a successful first year of theonline Master of Social Work and a softlaunch of a new online Master of BusinessAdministration in spring 2016.

• One hundred percent of College ofEducation and Human Developmentstudents passed the Praxis II examination,the primary exam used across UMaine’steacher certification programs. For morethan half of the students tested, readingscores exceeded the passing score by 20points.

Workforce Development

UMaine continues to succeed in preparing new graduates for the workforce.

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Internships and Hands-on Educational Opportunities

• Innovate for Maine Fellows, a program managed by UMaine’s Foster Center for StudentInnovation, selects the best and brightest college students with ties to Maine who are interestedin innovation.

• e Maine Business School’s new internship office has collaborations with nearly 90 employers.

• e College of Education and Human Development has statewide reach through its connectionswith nearly every preK–20 school and educational organizations in Maine. Examples include theMaine Autism Institute for Education and Research and Maine Department of EducationTeacher Education State Accreditation Review Teams. Each semester, UMaine student-teachersare in more than 500 classrooms throughout Maine.

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2016 President’s Report

Research and Economic Development

• e more than $1.8 million increase in UMaine’s MEIF budget due to the support of theGovernor and Legislature in FY16 supported and expanded research and development.

• UMaine is consistently ranked among the top 125 public universities for research in the NationalScience Foundation’s Higher Education Research and Development Survey, and the university’sCarnegie Classification remains in the High Research Activity category.

• During FY15 and FY16, extramural awards totaled nearly $50 million each year. ese grantsfund research that benefits Maine — from Gulf of Maine ocean monitoring to rural middleschool curriculum development.

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• e National Science Foundation awarded UMaine a major EPSCoR award to establish asustainable ecological aquaculture network for Maine. is statewide partnership, calledSEANET, involves 10 other institutions, including the University of Maine at Machias andUniversity of Southern Maine, to support Maine’s aquaculture economic sector.

• Economic development initiatives are a focus of UMaine’s 15 research centers and institutes.at includes research that leads to technology transfer, prototyping and spin-off companies.

• UMaine researchers produced economic impact estimates of the forest products industry andcontinued assessing the impacts of wildlife policy on forest management. Other economic impactstudies focused on aquaculture, dairy farms, Colorado potato beetles, wild blueberries and localfood.

• UMaine Extension engages in private food safety consulting and process authority food productreviews for new and existing companies statewide, and trained over 10,000 people in Maine inthe past year. Its food process authority lab reviewed over 500 products, leading to added incomeand jobs in Maine and New Hampshire.

• Fogler Library, the state’s largest library, offered consultation for small business owners. It assistedwith 54 patent and trademark consultations.

• e Center for Cooperative Aquaculture Research in Franklin, Maine has four companies usingincubator facilities, with over 15 employees.

• Faculty in the College of Natural Sciences, Forestry, and Agriculture serve as cooperatingscientists for the Maine Cooperative Forestry Research Unit, which represents commercial forestlandowners holding approximately 8.5 million acres of forestland in Maine.

• School of Social Work students providedapproximately 56,600 hours of service tomore than 80 health and human serviceagencies in Maine and beyond.

• Climate Change Institute researchers arecollaborating with the Maine CDC todevelop regional-scale climate models forstudying climate change impacts onairborne disease.

• University of Maine Humanities Centerprograms included Maine NationalHistory Day; Bangor Humanities Day; andthe fourth annual statewide HumanitiesSummit, focused on veterans and thehumanities.

• Volunteers with UMaine Extensioncontributed more than 5,000 hours in2015 to grow a record-breaking donation

of over 318,000 pounds of high-qualityproduce (value of $537,000) to mitigatehunger, improve nutrition and health, andhelp recipients develop lifelong positivenutritional habits statewide.

• e Honors College connects its studentsto businesses, public service organizationsand other social change agents.

• For 24 years, the College of Education andHuman Development has been home tothe University Training Center for ReadingRecovery — an early intervention literacyprogram for first grade students. Inaddition, Maine Partnerships inComprehensive Literacy providesprofessional development and training toteachers. ese programs are now in morethan 60 school systems statewide.

Service and Outreach

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• UMaine continues to be ranked among thenation’s top universities by U.S. News andWorld Report, and Princeton Review. elatter also cites UMaine as one of the nation’stop green colleges.

• A benchmark of quality in graduate programsis the number of nationally competitivefellowships awarded to students. isacademic year, the UMaine graduate studentbody includes five NSF graduate researchfellows, two Switzer Environmental Fellows,and six Fulbright and USAID Prestasi Fellows.

• Nicholas Fried of Millerstown, Pennsylvania isthe 2016 UMaine valedictorian and ConnorSmart of Lincoln, Maine is the salutatorian.Fried majored in animal and veterinarysciences, with a minor in chemistry, and ispursuing an M.D./Ph.D. at Louisiana StateUniversity. Smart double majored in accountingand finance, and was the OutstandingGraduating Student in the Maine BusinessSchool. He was the 2012 valedictorian ofMattanawcook Academy. Smart is pursuing acareer as a certified public accountant inPortland.

• More than half of UMaine student-athleteswere honored this year for academic success.A record 218 were named UMaine Scholar-Athletes for achieving or maintaining a 3.0GPA in calendar year 2015, and 79 newstudents were named Rising Stars for achieving3.0 in their first semester.

• UMaine was selected as one of 37 institutionsnationwide to host emerging publicmanagement leaders from Sub-Saharan Africafor an academic and leadership institutethrough the Mandela Washington Fellowship.is high-profile project is sponsored by theU.S. Department of State and represents theflagship program of President Obama’s YoungAfrican Leaders Initiative.

• In partnership with the other campuses in theUniversity of Maine System, UMaine facultyhave played lead roles in exploring ways toincrease accessibility to, and enhance thequality of, UMS academic programs throughcollaboration. An example launching this fall isUMaine’s Master of Education in InstructionTechnology program, which will be deliveredby UMaine, University of Southern Maine andUniversity of Maine at Farmington.

2016 President’s Report

Culture of Excellence

e University of Maine focuses on excellence in fulfilling its mission, and in its national andinternational contributions.

Conducts research in every county in Maine, on all continents and in the oceans of the world

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• Bodwell Center for Volunteerism and Servicebrokered some 30,000 hours of communityservice, provided mentors to local schools andsupported numerous charitable agencies.rough its initiative “From a Day of Serviceto a Lifetime of Engagement,” the centerinvolved 1,800 first-year students in aprogram of service beyond self.

• Veterans Education and Transition Servicesassisted and supported student veterans andtheir families with transition from soldier toscholar with certification, Veterans Week andthe Student Veterans Association. UMaine isrecognized as a Veteran Friendly University bythe Military Friendly Schools Guide.

• Graduate Student Government and theCenter for Undergraduate Research held thefirst combined graduate and undergraduate

student research symposium at the CrossInsurance Center in Bangor, attended bymore than 1,000 individuals, including stateand city government leaders, and Maine-based employers. e combined symposiumproved highly successful.

• e Office of Multicultural Student Life wasreorganized to reflect UMaine’s increasinglydiverse campus. e office contributes tocreating a campus climate that supports manyidentities, and encourages all students’retention and success.

• Residence Life houses nearly 4,000 studentsin Living Learning Communities, andproduces hundreds of academic and socialprograms annually to support studentlearning and personal development.

Student Engagement

UMaine is a student-centered university and student success is at the core of its mission. Studentsare supported throughout their tenure at UMaine so that they graduate in a timely fashion and areprepared to succeed.

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2016 President’s Report

Looking Ahead

e University of Maine is in the fifth year ofits strategic plan, which has been a road mapfor successfully meeting benchmarks in servingMaine, achieving a culture of excellence, andensuring student engagement and success.

In continuing to chart our course for thefuture, we will be ever-mindful of theresponsibility to be responsive to Maine’s needstoday and in the future.

e University of Maine will always beworking for the state of Maine.

Public higher education has a particularlycritical role to play in attracting and educatingfirst-generation students who will be theworkforce and engaged citizens of the future.

e University of Maine has a responsibilityto increase the state’s educational attainment inorder to meet Maine’s needs. UMaine alsomust build upon its partnerships withbusinesses and communities statewide, anduphold its significant national andinternational contributions that are crucial toits reputation as a research university.

And in the evolution of public highereducation in Maine, we also have a leadershiprole to play, acting in a way that best serves thepeople of Maine. at is a long-standingcommitment — and a promise — that theUniversity of Maine makes to students, faculty,staff and the people of Maine.

e University of Maine does not discriminate on the grounds of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, including transgenderstatus and gender expression, national origin, citizenship status, age, disability, genetic information or veteran status in employment,education, and all other programs and activities. e following person has been designated to handle inquiries regardingnondiscrimination policies: Director, Office of Equal Opportunity, 101 North Stevens Hall, 581.1226, eoinfo@umit.maine.edu.

Office of the President • 5703 Alumni Hall • Orono, ME 04469-5703 • umaine.edu