TD Banknorth
Apr. 9, 2007
Robert A. Kennedy, President, University of Maine
• Thank you, Ted, for that
nice introduction. I appreciate your ongoing interest in UMaine. And,
thank you to Karen and to Hannah Whalen and Dorain Foster, among others,
from UMaine, for working to develop UMaine's connections with this great
financial institution and for arranging tonight's event.
• It is impressive to note the number of UMaine alums who are in
important roles at TD Banknorth. It is not, however, surprising. It
seems that everywhere I go I encounter people with UMaine degrees who
have important leadership roles in businesses and communities. That
speaks well for your alma mater, and it encourages us as we work every
day to prepare the next generation of UMaine graduates who will become
leaders in their own right.
• With specific regard to TD Banknorth, I know that many of this
company's employees are highly supportive UMaine alums, who believe that
part of TD Banknorth's success is attributable to the UMaine education
received by company leaders like you. I agree, and I personally
appreciate your ongoing support.
• It is also nice to be in Portland, a place we visit regularly, and a
place that is truly connected to UMaine in many ways.
• We have had very strong southern Maine enrollment in recent years,
with over 1,500 currently enrolled students from Cumberland and York
Counties. These are outstanding students, and the number from this area
is increasing each year. By the way, we have also seen very large
increases in out-of-state enrollment particularly in the past two years,
as UMaine becomes more and more of a destination school of good
students.
• I believe that is because word is out: UMaine is a great place to live
and to study, and it has a combination of quality and value that is
difficult to match.
• We also have numerous business and educational connections with this
part of the state. Our Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, made up
of seven partner institutions around Maine, includes locally the
University of Southern Maine, Maine Medical Center Research Institute,
and the University of New England.
• We have numerous formal and informal partnerships with USM, and you
have probably heard that we are working on developing a joint pharmacy
program with UNE.
• I am also excited about a new initiative, through which we will extend
our doctoral degree in higher education to community colleges, with a
focus on Southern Maine Community College and York County Community
College. This will help those institutions achieve an important goal –
getting more of their faculty to achieve a doctoral degree. We are
delighted that we have the program in place to serve that need, and to
help those community college faculty members develop professionally and
personally.
• Of interest to this group, I'm sure, is the fact that UMaine has a
large number of business connections to the southern part of our state.
People are often surprised – and pleased – to learn that UMaine extends
its expertise and resources to assist businesses statewide through more
than 100 formal agreements each year – along with more informal
arrangements that are equally important.
• I was pleased when Karen told me that Ted and TD Banknorth have
particular interest in UMaine's international activities. We have a lot
going on in that regard.
• Karen's Office of International Programs is an outstanding operation,
managing those activities that involve bringing international students
to UMaine and helping them succeed, and assisting those UMaine students
who wish to add an international experience to their education. Karen is
also our point person in UMaine's ongoing relationship with American
University in Bulgaria, a bold experiment which involved UMaine from the
beginning, and which has served to break down educational barriers in
that part of the world.
• We have also recently established a School of Policy and International
Affairs, uniting as part of one organizational structure our many
faculty who work in policy and international disciplines. Prof. John
Mahon is our founding director, and he and others are identifying those
faculty who will be part of the program and developing the structures
that will certainly lead to great research and teaching success, and to
new signature academic programs.
• Part of the School of Policy and International Affairs, or SPIA, is
our 10-year-old William S. Cohen Center for International Policy and
Commerce, established when Bill Cohen donated the papers from his
Congressional career to UMaine's Fogler Library. The Cohen Center is
beginning to realize its great potential, and is really helping to get
UMaine noticed on the national and international level.
• Just over a month ago, the Cohen Center co-hosted with National
Defense University in Washington, D.C., a high-level international
conference on nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. It was a great
conference, and you can all share in our pride that UMaine was part of
it. We are making plans to host in Orono a 2008 conference on this same
subject.
• And, in two weeks, we will be in Abu Dabi, UAE, where SPIA and the
Cohen Center will participate in a leadership role in another
international conference, this one featuring leaders from several Middle
Eastern countries and other concerns, discussing globalization in the
21st century. And discussions are ongoing with universities in the
Middle East to create cooperative academic programming.
• I thought you would be interested in just a few highlights from the
spring semester in Orono. While the hockey team has the highest profile,
it also serves to remind us of the excellence that surrounds us.
• For example, Paul Mayewski, director of our Climate Change Institute.
I hope you saw him a few days ago on 60 Minutes. What a credit to Paul,
and to UMaine, that his expertise is so highly regarded that one of the
world's leading news programs will turn to him for comment on important
issues.
• CBS correspondent Scott Pelley spent 10 days with Paul and his
colleagues in February, during a research expedition to Antarctica. The
report was about King George Island, which is experiencing some of the
greatest warming anywhere in the world, and Paul provided the
climate-related expertise.
• Research in UMaine's Advanced Engineered Wood Composites Center
continues to draw attention from important places. As you perhaps know,
we shipped a ballistic panel kit to an Army unit in Iraq, where it will
be used to line a tent, protecting soldiers from mortar blasts and other
dangers.
• Sen. Collins and Congressman Michaud were on campus to help us
celebrate the accomplishment, and it received front-page coverage in the
Portland Press Herald and Bangor Daily News.
• And, at the end of March, the undersecretary of Homeland Security used
AEWC's Composites Container research program as an example of a homeland
security research program that's working well. His audience, by the way,
was Congress' Homeland Security Subcommittee, certainly a group that he
wanted to impress – and he used UMaine research as his example.
• We have good news to report generally with regard to UMaine's growing
research enterprise. As you may know, research expenditures are a common
measure of a university's research operation. UMaine's increased 24
percent over one year, reaching an FY06 total of $93,153,000.
Recognizing that research funding is going down nationally, this kind of
growth and success on the part of our faculty is even more impressive.
This brings us very close to our initial goal of $100 million and
signaling impressive growth in this important area.
• We've been working hard in communicating with the legislature. I
testified before the Appropriations Committee twice this month, and
several of us have been working hard on advocating for our needs. We
even had two outstanding senior students – Ben Briggs and Erin Kinney –
testify about the need for upgraded lab facilities. Since Ben is going
to med school and Erin is going to vet school, and both are Maine
natives, they certainly captured the lawmakers' attention!
• We are being received well, but the legislature is facing some serious
complications. Our needs are significant, though, and we are doing all
we can to make that case. Our top priority is base funding, but we also
have R&D and infrastructure needs that are critical. Our message is that
UMaine is the best investment our state can make.
• In addition to those who play hockey, our students continue to do
impressive things, and I thought I would finish my prepared remarks with
a few examples:
- Dozens of our students gave up their Spring Break vacations to
participate in volunteer activities all around the U.S. and in other
countries. We are part of Alternative Spring Break, a national
organization that places student groups in important service locations
in the U.S. Additionally, other groups formed in different ways to take
on challenges in rural parts of countries like Mexico, Honduras,
Nicaragua and Ecuador. In Ecuador, for example, students worked in
medical facilities to help extremely poor people get dental and medical
care. What a great learning experience for our students, and what a
credit to them that they are willing to take on such challenges.
- Susan Saucier of Millinocket, a senior chemical engineering major, has
been named Student of the Year by the Paper Industry Management
Association.
- Ben Wasserman, a sophomore wildlife major from New York, has received
a Udall Scholarship for next year. That is an incredibly competitive
scholarhip program for a student in environmental studies, and Ben
becomes just the second UMaine student ever to receive one.
- Junior Chelsi Snow and sophomore Ben Burpee have received prestigious
Goldwater Scholarships, and David Welch has earned honorable mention in
that competition.
- Baseball player Matt McGraw and swimmer Tal Shpaizer were recently
named winners of our athletics department's Dean Smith Awards, given
annually to the top male and top female student-athlete.
- And, one that really pleases me, relates to a team of engineering
students that just returned from Michigan, where they took second place
overall in the Clean Snowmobile Challenge – a competition involving
universities form all across the northern U.S. and Canada. Teams work to
create environmentally friendly snowmobiles, and they do some remarkable
things. In addition to the second-place finish, our team took first
place in the Most Economical Snowmobile category and the Quietest
Snowmobile category.
• Those students work with a tremendous professor named Mick Peterson,
and they get the kind of experiential, hands-on learning that will
really make a difference in their ability to do well after they graduate
from UMaine and go on to work or further education.
• They're having great experiences, as I hope you did. And I hope that
they will someday return to provide the kind of support that you provide
to your alma mater. We are so pleased to have a strong connection with
each of you and with TD Banknorth, and we all want you to know how much
your support and interest are appreciated.
Back to Speeches
