New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Future of Malloy’s Maine university position in question
The University of Maine’s Board of Trustees has deferred action on whether to extend the contract of Chancellor Dannel P. Malloy, the former Connecticut governor who has been the target of votes of no-confidence from professors at a time of decreasing enrollments, rising operating deficits and plans to eliminate or combine programs across the sevencampus system.
A decision on Malloy’s future with the university system that he administrates will occur in a special meeting of the board before his three-year contract expires June 30. A multi-year evaluation of Malloy’s tenure, from a Maine-based outside consultant, was presented during a closed-door session of the board on Sunday.
“There is no contract action today,” said Margaret Nagle, interim executive director of communications for the University of Maine and the University of Maine System, after Monday’s day-long board meeting, in which a new $617 million operating budget was adopted for 2023 that includes a one-time bailout of $8 million by Maine Gov. Janet T. Mills.
While faculty across the university system, which stretches from Portland to the Canadian border, have held votes critical of Malloy, Board Chairman Mark Gardner on Monday defended the former two-term Connecticut governor for trying to put in place what the board believes are ways to help keep the higher education system solvent.
By the end of their two-day meeting Monday afternoon, the 16-member board, meeting on the campus of the University of Southern Maine in Portland, had agreed to a $205,000 settlement with Michael R. Laliberte, a former New York State University at Delhi president who had been selected to become the next president of the University of Maine at Augusta.
Laliberta withdrew his candidacy amid reports of his being the subject of no-confidence votes that a University of Maine search committee, including four trustees, failed to disclose.
Gardner, in the final meeting before the expiration of his five-year term, said UMA interim President Joseph Szakas will continue in the role through June of 2023. “So that gives us a full year,” Gardner told the board Monday afternoon.
Gardiner said that it’s clear the board’s search committee, with the assistance of an executive-recruiting firm, should have done things better. “And we will in the future,” he said, as Malloy sitting next to him, nodded his head in agreement. “Everybody has learned from this, but we are in place to move forward and that’s what we have to look at.”
During the first hour of Monday’s meeting, faculty members, in a public session, blasted Malloy for both failing to properly vet Laliberte and for threatening academic programs in the 33,000-student system.
Elizabeth C. Powers, an associate professor of English, stressing a May 11 vote of no-confidence in Malloy, said that the university’s ethics codes were violated and its community feels violated. She called the recent elimination of Women’s Studies on the Augusta campus an “unjust annihilation” of the program.
“The votes of no-confidence sweeping across the campuses focus on what at first seem to be disparate incidents of a mishandled search that failed to follow basic rules; retrenchment attributed to dwindling enrollment; and extensive program mergers that have been instituted by decree,” said Michael Grillo, an art history professor. “But on closer inspection they reveal a pattern of mismanagement radiating out from the chancellor’s office, which is damaging the abilities of our universities to meet the responsibilities in teaching, research and community development.”
Paul Johnson, a professor at the University of Southern Maine’s
School of Social Work, said that Malloy has asked for trust but hasn’t listened to faculty suggestions or criticism. “This has got to stop,” Johnson said. “I say to Chancellor Malloy that that nothing lasts forever. Sir, it is time for you to resign. We need new leadership.”
Others criticized the system’s effort to pursue so-called uniform accreditation, which Gardiner defended as a way to keep smaller campuses accredited as enrollment decreases. “They wouldn’t be accredited today if we hadn’t started down this path,” he said.
After the public venting, Gardiner again admitted mistakes were made during the presidential search. But he defended Malloy’s decisions, noting that the decision to cut the humanities programs at the University of Maine campus in Farmington was made by top branch officials, not Malloy.