Boston Business School Reception
Apr. 11, 2007
Robert A. Kennedy, President, University of Maine
• Thanks to Ed Keefe,
Class of 1986, for hosting the event and for his ongoing interest in his
alma mater.
• Thanks to all of you for joining us tonight at this very nice club,
after what I'm sure was a busy workday. John and I will talk for just a
few minutes, leaving plenty of time for mingling and networking.
• It is also nice to be in Boston, a place we visit regularly. Not only
is it one of America's great cities, it is a real hub – if you will
pardon the expression – of regional UMaine activity. In Boston itself,
we have over 1,000 alumni. That number expands exponentially when we
move into the surrounding communities.
• Of course, we have a lot of students from Massachusetts, eastern
Massachusetts in particular. After Maine, not surprisingly, we have more
students from this state than any other – almost 350. It's interesting –
we have at least one student from 189 different Massachusetts
communities.
• And, by the way, Massachusetts residents have long been primary
contributors to the success of our hockey team – which is prominently on
our minds these days. Billy Ryan from Milton, Bret Tyler from Maynard,
and Rob Bellamy from Westfield were all important players on this year's
great team, and all three will be senior leaders next year.
• UMaine alumni are leaders in many industry sectors in the Boston area,
including healthcare, law, biotechnology, finance and banking, IT,
retail and education.
• One prominent Boston-area alum is Dr. Bernard Lown, a UMaine graduate
and Nobel Laureate known as one of the world's leading cardiologists. He
won the Nobel Prize for his work as co-founder of International
Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War for his work founding
Physicians for Social Responsibility. I'm happy to report that Dr. Lown
will visit campus next month, and we are certainly looking forward to
having him speak to some of our students, and members of the community.
• Another connection comes through our Maine mentors program, through
which many of our students take advantage of generous opportunities
provided by Boston-area alums to work in the business community,
supplementing their educations with real-world experiences. We are
certainly grateful for those opportunities, which make a real difference
to our students.
• I thought you would be interested in a brief update on things that are
happening at UMaine, a place you will be proud to know is really
thriving.
• Our enrollment has been on a steady rise, now at 11,700 students, and
we have seen recent increases in the past few years in both enrollment
from southern Maine and from out-of-state. In fact, that latter category
has increased dramatically of late. The first year class that began
studies last fall had 55% more out-of-state students than the class just
two years earlier.
• UMaine is becoming more and more of a destination school for 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 are doing a lot to modify some of our structures, creating new
efficiencies and ways to develop academic synergy. It is important for
universities like UMaine to evolve, and to stay nimble enough to remain
relevant and find new ways to help serve our students and our state.
• 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. 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 Dhabi, 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.
• Another example that may be of interest involves the core academic
discipline of economics. We have merged our Economics Department and our
Resource Economic Department, forming a School of Economics. The faculty
are excited about this, and we believe it will provide new and rather
unique opportunities for our students studying in those important areas.
The school is co-located in our College of Business, Public Policy and
Health and our College of Natural Sciences, Forestry and Agriculture, a
new arrangement that will help the school thrive and create new kinds of
access for our students.
• 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.
• 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.
• In addition to those who play hockey, our students continue to do
impressive things. Here are 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, sophomore wildlife major from New York, has received a
Udall Scholarship for next year. That is an incredibly competitive
scholarship program for 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 those of
you who are UMaine grads provide to your alma mater. We are so pleased
to have a strong connection with each of you and we all want you to know
how much your support and interest are appreciated.
• As you know, we are engaged in our most ambitious fundraising endeavor
ever, Campaign Maine. It focuses on endowed chairs and professorships,
as well as endowed scholarships.
• I have enjoyed great visits with UMaine friends and alums in
California, Washington DC, South Carolina, New York and New Jersey.
Later this month I will travel to Atlanta. A lot of time on the road,
but it is for a good purpose – and it is truly energizing to hear the
stories of UMaine's proud alums and friends.
• I hope you will consider visiting us on campus. We encourage alumni to
speak in classes, or to student groups. Homecoming is always a big event
– held in October. We hope that some of you will encourage your sons,
daughters, nieces and nephews to consider UMaine. It really is a great
place to live and to study, due in large part to our great network of
alumni and friends.
• Before I finish, I have a special presentation for Ed. As part of our
"Go Blue" on-campus marketing campaign, we have an occasional series of
posters that we display prominently on campus. These posters feature
students, faculty, staff and alums with a comment about how UMaine has
affected them.
• We have made one featuring Ed, for display on campus early in the next
academic year. But we wanted him to have one of his own right now – sort
of a sneak preview. Ed. please accept this with our compliments and our
continuing thanks for your support. We are fortunate to have such a
successful and loyal alum to highlight.
• It is now my pleasure to introduce Dan Innis, Dean of UMaine's College
of Business, Public Policy and Health. Although Dan is leaving us later
this year for another university – I'll let him tell you which one, if
he dares – we owe him our thanks and gratitude for the outstanding work
he has done as UMaine's dean. The college and the university are much
better places for his service, and we are thankful for all he has done
during his time at UMaine.
Back to Speeches
