PORTLAND, Maine - The University of Southern Maine has released a keenly-awaited report on how it plans to transform into a so-called Metropolitan University over the next five years. It's all part of a controversial plan to re-organize USM by cutting costs and boosting enrollment.
The report talks about a growing number of Metropolitan Universities across the nation, but what exactly is a Metropolitan University? It's a question I put to Barbara Holland - an academic and consultant who's done a lot of research into organizational change at higher education institutions.
"Metropolitan University is an identity that some universities take because they are not just in a city, they feel that they are 'of the city,' " she says.
Holland visited USM's Portland campus Thursday to promote the new report, called "Forging a New Identity." She says there are now hundreds of Metropolitan Universities across the U.S. and overseas. They're like any other university, she says, in that they do "teaching, learning, research."
But the key difference is this: "They often do it in collaboration with the community around them, so that we are actually expanding opportunities for student experiential learning, expanding opportunities for faculty to be involved in collaborative research with the communities that may benefit the community but also benefit the discipline in the universities," Holland says.
One example cited in the report involves a program at Wisconsin-Milwaukee Metropolitan University where students cooperated with a community group to look at the relationship between HIV-AIDS and substance abuse.
Professor Richard Barringer is chair of USM's Metropolitan University Steering Group, which issued the report. He says USM is already part way towards reaching the goal - at least at one of its three campuses.
"I would say that Lewiston-Auburn practices what we're talking about - it's deeply engaged with its community," Barringer says. "And both Gorham and Portland campuses are here because the local community wanted them to exist in order to serve the needs of the region. So this really is a matter of going back to its roots."
He says Metropolitan Universities tend to attract a different kind of academic: less of what he calls the "ivory tower academic," and more the type of faculty who really want to be engaged with the community. And it's a model, he says, which is proven to boost enrollment, citing a number of examples of universities where this has happened.
The Steering Group's report is not without its critics however. In an emailed statement, Economics and Sociology Professor Susan Feiner expresses concern that the report's authors were all appointed by the University president. "Major curricular changes," she says, "should be the purview of the faculty not the president."
The re-organization going on at USM has also sparked several protests on campus from students and teachers alike who are upset with the cuts being introduced: Fifty faculty positions are going, as are five academic programs. The USM administration says the cuts are necessary to head off a projected $16 million budget shortfall.
Richard Barringer says whether you agree with them or not, the cuts are a painful pill to swallow for many, including him. He's a professor at USM's Muskie School of Public Service, which is losing faculty members and graduate programs as part of the university's re-organization.
In as much as the future of the Muskie School is now up in the air, it is personally painful. Yeah," Barringer says.