An Invitation

As I shared with the campus in my October Community Conversation, the UMaine family has embarked upon a planning process this academic year that will be characterized as inclusive, substantive, and innovative to produce a bold yet pragmatic plan for our future.

We’re calling this the Blue Sky Project, and with good reason. A blue sky symbolizes clarity, opportunity and hope. Blue sky ideas are necessary when the difficult problems that we are facing require “thinking outside of the box.”  Blue is the color of Maine and the University of Maine. It is also the color of success, which we will achieve, together, through creative thought and action.

Dr. Linda Silka and the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center will be facilitating this planning process with the Strategic Planning Leadership Team and the President’s Cabinet.   We will be diligent about seeking your input through the convening of a number of focus or cluster groups to clearly identify the current strengths of and challenges facing UMaine (who we are today), the right vision and opportunities for UMaine (where do we want to be in 5-7 years) and how do we achieve our vision (a financially sustainable strategy).

I invite you to fully participate in this process through one or several of the venues being provided by the planning process.  We sincerely desire to achieve a consensus-based vision and plan to unveil in April 2012.  I hope you will join us in this effort.

With best regards,
Paul W. Ferguson
President

A Conversation with President Ferguson

A Strong 21st Century
Land Grant and Sea Grant University and
the Flagship Campus in the System

“The University of Maine is about to embark upon a critically important planning process of defining vision and action that will provide much needed direction for the next decade. The process will be characterized by inclusivity, dialogue, and strategic problem solving coupled with fiscal realities and challenges. Although grounded in a pragmatic approach, it is my hope that our vision will be bold.”

President Ferguson – 2011

Not last decade, but next

Consider all of the changes just in the last decade.

• New technologies
• New ways of learning
• New forms of dissemination
• New ways disciplines are working together and establishing new practices
• Problems and challenges not even envisioned ten years ago such as in the economy

In the face of these many changes, we need to do what we do best in universities.  We are knowledge organizations, we are problem solvers, we like taking on difficult challenges, and developing inventive solutions. That is what this process is about: harnessing our creative problem solving capacity.

• What are examples of ways we have dealt creatively with challenges in the past?
• What are emerging challenges and what creative solutions do we envision?
• How will we know if we have addressed the challenge?