PORTLAND, Maine - Twenty-five faculty members at the University of Southern Maine are receiving lay-off notices this week. Some of them were joined by students on USM's Portland campus today to speak out against continued cuts, which they say devalue their education and may prompt some of them to transfer to other colleges.
Chanting: "Invest in USM. Invest in USM."
"Invest in USM:" That was the message from several dozen students and faculty members assembled outside Payson Smith Hall. USM is cutting faculty and eliminating courses as part of an effort to close a projected multi-million dollar budget gap this year.
Economics and Women's Studies Professor Susan Feiner says that's the wrong way to go. "This university is a pathetic shadow of what a university can be," she said. "There are faculty here who have been fired by voicemail."
Among them, Music Professor Paul Christiansen. "I've been at USM for nine years, I've been tenured for three years," he said. "I've been fired by voicemail, and I"m supposed to get a letter sometime today, I guess, by express mail. Pretty pathetic. So it's bad for me, but it's really worse for students. That's the real story here."
Christiansen says he's the only musicologist in the entire University of Maine System, and he's concerned about what that means for the 130-plus undergraduate students enrolled at the USM school of music.
"The students will not have a Ph.D-trained person in the history of their discipline, which is kind of shocking, actually," he said.
In all, 50 faculty members are being cut, or re-trenched, at USM. Half of them have agreed to accept early retirement. The rest, like Christiansen, are going unwillingly.
Economics Professor Rachel Bouvier also got the unwelcome voicemail message. "This is heartbreaking to me," Bouvier said. Heartbreaking not just for her, says Bouvier, but for her students, who she says are being denied the education that was promised them when they enrolled at USM. "We are not a diploma mill, we are educating our students."
"I'm currently enrolled in classes with Professor Roberts and Professor Bouvier, who both got re-trenched yesterday," says sophomore Will Aitcheson, who says he was so impressed with his teachers that he had decided to major in economics. Now that Bouvier, and her colleague, Bruce Roberts, are being laid off, after this year, he's having second thoughts.
"I don't know if that's even a possibility at USM any more, which, as far as I'm concerned, basically means if I want to pursue that degree, I'm going to have to go to another school," Aitcheson says.
Students affected by the cuts - either through program eliminations or faculty layoffs - are being promised so-called "teach out" opportunities enabling them to complete their degree. But many, including Professor Susan Feiner, are skeptical.
"There is no teach-out plan," she says. "The university has no idea how the students in these programs will graduate. They do not have the faculty to teach the classes required in the majors."
"We do have teach-out plans, and they are individual plans per each student," says USM spokesman Chris Quint. Quint says these plans are still being worked out, but could involve bringing in part-time faculty from outside to fill in for those who have been re-trenched.
As for the anger that's being directed towards the university over the cuts, "That's understandable," Quint says. "What I can say is that the University of Southern Maine is going through a transformation period, and this transformation period was brought on by declining enrollment and increased cost. And when you have those two things combined you're going to have a structural deficit, which is what we have - a $16 million structural deficit."
And this projected deficit, which some faculty believe has been exaggerated, means a further $10 million in cuts are on the way at USM next month: This time, it's expected to be university staff that bear the brunt.
