Office of the President

Sanford Kiwanis/Rotary
Apr. 11, 2007
Robert A. Kennedy, President, University of Maine

• It's a pleasure to be here with you today, and to serve as the opening act before today's main event – the baseball game against Brown this afternoon. We are very proud of our sports teams, all of them – even though the hockey team gets most of the headlines – and I am personally delighted that we are able to bring a baseball game to Sanford every year.

• We have a terrific young coach in Steve Trimper, who is looking to guide his team to a third league championship in his third year with us.

• By the way, we recently had another team finish second in an international competition. From our College of Engineering, a group of students competed in the annual Clean Snowmobile Challenge in Michigan. Not only did the team finish second overall, they won first in the Most Economical category and the Quietest Snowmobile category. A great achievement, and a great learning experience for all of those students.

• You can be very proud of the Sanford residents who are currently students at UMaine. In the fall, we had 72 Sanford High School graduates enrolled at UMaine, by the way. Let me mention just a couple of them:

- Heather Glidden is a junior chemical engineering major, with a minor in Innovation Engineering. She is a classic example of the kind of innovation-minded student we are working to help achieve some lofty career goals. She aspires to be a process engineering working on consumer products. In fact, Heather is going to work in a summer process engineering internship at BASF in Texas.
Last year, she did an internship at Johnson and Johnson, in their new product development area.

- Heather is a member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars and she is a band member, the treasurer of the UMaine Kappa Kappa Psi chapter, the national band fraternity.

- Even better, Heather owes part of her success to both these organizations. She received a Sanford Rotary scholarship to attend UMaine, and she was president of the Sanford High School Key Club, sponsored by Kiwanis. Heather is an academic leader, and a community leader, and she is doing great things at UMaine.

- Laura Latinski is another outstanding Sanford student, a graduating senior in English and part of our Honors College program. By law, I can't tell you Laura's GPA, but trust me, it's sky high. She is writing an honors thesis on Technological Dystopias in Science Fiction, working with Prof. Burt Hatlen – who happens to be one of the UMaine English professors who mentored Stephen King in the late 1960s.

- Journalism major Michael Dabrieo and biochemistry major Ali St. Jeanos are also high achievers in the Honors College.

- Doug Matthews was described by one faculty member as a "superstar" in the Dept. of Food Science and Human Nutrition. Doug is another excellent student, and he serves as the vice president of our Nutrition Club.

- And there's Vireak Gilpatrick, who started as a high school student working in UMaine's Upward Bound Math/Science program, earning 24 AP credits before he enrolled as a student. He is a business major, having worked hard and taken advantage of the opportunities presented to him, both as a high school student and as a student at UMaine.

• We also have business development connections to your community.

- UMaine's Target Technology Incubator is a partner with Composites Technology Center in Sanford, working to provide technical and business assistance to emerging composites firms. The third partner in this project is in Greenville, creating a statewide operation with its hub at UMaine in Orono.

- And a great UMaine-affiliated business, Applied Thermal Sciences, works with our scientists and engineers working in composites materials and mechanical engineering. Karl Hoose, ATS' president, is a UMaine alum and a highly valued member of our College of Engineering Advisory Board.

• While those students and that business connections serve as general examples of how UMaine relates specifically to Sanford, they also demonstrate UMaine's statewide reach.

• Even though we are located in Orono – which is in the southern half of the state, by the way – UMaine is truly a statewide university. We are defined as such, as the flagship university in the University of Maine System. That gives us specific responsibilities for statewide outreach, along with teaching and research.

• In that capacity, UMaine serves nearly 12,000 students, with the broadest range of undergraduate and graduate programs available anywhere in Maine. And, while that is our core mission, we also work to drive economic development and extend expertise statewide to assist the business community. In fact, each year, UMaine is involved with more than 100 formal arrangements with businesses around Maine.

• We know that UMaine's statewide role brings with it responsibilities, and we are working hard to live up to them. We have initiated several programs in just the past few years that extend our expertise and our resources, by partnering with other great Maine education and research institutions, most of which happen to be in this part of our state. I call this a "new model" for the land-grant university.

• A great example is UMaine's Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Twelve outstanding Ph.D. students are enrolled in that program, working on research projects that aim to improve human health. Very high-level stuff, with tremendous scientific implications.

• As an aside, nine of those 12 are native Mainers, and most of them returned to Maine from other states because of this program. Sort of a reverse brain-drain.

• We created this school, which we call GSBS, by developing partnerships with six other institutions, including Maine Medical Center Research Institute, the University of Southern Maine and the University of New England. Jackson Lab and MDI Biological Laboratory are part of this group, as is the Maine Institute for Human Genetics and Health – another collaborative arrangement we developed, with Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems.

• The point is that we are working to maximize the state's resources and find ways to take advantage of our existing infrastructure. A GSBS student researcher at Jackson Lab might, for instance, need access to a piece of equipment that we have at UMaine. These collaborations create that access, and they create ways to share ideas and look at new ways to address research issues.

• And the educational opportunities for the students are broadened and improved by involving experts from various institutions, with different kinds of expertise.

• There are more examples – including a joint pharmacy program we're creating with the University of New England.

• And, as you may have heard recently in the news, we have a new arrangement that will create opportunities for community college faculty members – particularly those at Southern Maine community College and York County Community College – earn doctorates from UMaine.

• Community college leaders like Jim Ortiz and Charlie Lyons told us that this is a critical need for them, and we are pleased to have worked with them to develop a solution.

• I am also pleased that we enjoy such a strong working relationship with the University of Southern Maine – a terrific institution. We have distinct and complementary missions, and working together we are particularly strong, and able to serve our students and our state effectively.

• I was a big proponent of Rich Pattenaude's candidacy for the chancellor's job, and I am enjoying working with him as he transitions to that new role. We have had a good personal and professional relationship since I arrived in Maine in 2000, and I believe that Rich is the ideal leader to help our System move forward and continue to be an indispensable statewide resource.

• We treasure all of our connections to southern Maine, including those that come from our great alumni base. We have some 14,000 alumni in just Cumberland and York Counties, 9,500 of them in Cumberland County. And we have a terrific alumni organization here, which works hard to help UMaine and our students, while keeping those strong connections forged by many during their years in Orono.

• Also, some 1,500 of our students are from these two counties, and that number has been growing year-by-year. These are some of our best students and terrific leaders in our community. We work hard to recruit students in this part of Maine, with an admissions staff member living and working here. And, we focus a good deal of our marketing – television advertising, radio advertising and other means – on the Portland market. We recognize that this is not only the population center of our state, but it is an area with some outstanding public school systems and much of the economic and cultural momentum that helps develop those outstanding students who are so important to us at UMaine.

• When those students arrive at UMaine, they join our state's largest academic community. UMaine offers a broad range of academic programs, all based in a traditional liberal arts education. We have a beautiful campus, which dates to the university's founding in 1865. With Division I sports and a wide array of activities, UMaine truly offers a comprehensive university experience for its students, both undergraduate and graduate.

• And, the fall of 2007 will be a great time to enter UMaine as a student. We will open our brand-new, spectacular 89,000-square-foot recreational center. This new facility help to transform the student experience, as did renovating and expanding our student union a few years ago. It will also add to the wellness of our overall community, and enhance our connections to the local community

• The fall will also bring the completed renovation of two dining facilities, both of which had aged significantly and needed an upgrade.

• And, students will have access to our new Student Innovation Center, a unique facility that will provide a place for student entrepreneurs – people like Heather Glidden -- to study and to work. Entrepreneurs truly drive our economy, and this facility will help our students become the next generation of leaders who will guide our state to a more prosperous future.

• I hasten to add that all of this work has been done without taxpayer or tuition money – instead using money borrowed against future dining revenues, user fees, and – in the case of the innovation center – bond money.

• UMaine is also starting next fall with some new programming aimed at assuring that our first-year students get off to a good start. We're calling it the First-Year Residence Experience; we're going to put all first-year students in the same campus neighborhood, six residence halls that are close to each other. We're also creating some specific programming, in areas like study habits and social adjustment, and ways to develop useful and effective support mechanisms for those students. Data show that students who get off to a good start do better, get better grades, and have a better chance of graduating. That's good for UMaine and, most important, it's good for those students and our state.

• Those students will become part of an intellectual community that is thriving. I've had the opportunity in my career to work at some of the nation's best public universities and I can say without reservation that UMaine has the best faculty of any of them.

• One great example is Paul Mayewski, director of our Climate Change Institute. One of the world's foremost climate change experts, Paul was featured 10 days ago on 60 Minutes in a story about the Southern Hemisphere, where temperatures are warming faster than anywhere else on Earth. We are certainly proud of Paul, and people all over Maine can join us in that sense of pride.

• Prof. Habib Dagher, director of UMaine's Advanced Engineered Wood Composites Center, is leading the way in developing some of the most important research related to homeland security. One example is ballistic tent panel kits, made from wood composites. Installed in tents in combat situations, these kits protect inhabitants from mortar blasts and other dangers. Habib and his colleagues are also developing smart shipping containers, which also involve sensor technology. These containers can be sealed and protected, making it easy to determine at any point if they have been tampered with. Habib has an idea every day, and he is a great teacher. His students have the opportunity to work, hands-on, on real engineering projects. They graduate ready to take on serious jobs, and to do well.

• The opportunity to participate in real research as an undergraduate student is a hallmark of the UMaine education. Whether it's traveling to Antarctica with Paul Mayewski to drill ice cores or working with Habib Dagher to build next-generation wood products, those opportunities are key to taking advantage of the great opportunity that comes with being part of the UMaine student community.

• In addition to supplementing the educational process for our students, UMaine research is leading the way in statewide economic development.

• Since the state started investing in university research in the mid-1990s, the results have been remarkable. Year after year, UMaine researchers bring five dollars into Maine for every dollar the state invests. That 5:1 return is making a difference in our state, leading to the development of new knowledge and new business opportunities.

• In real numbers, that means about $50 million per year in research grants brought in by UMaine faculty. We believe that an increased investment will lead to a much bigger yield. That is why we are working with legislators and our advocates to gain modest increases in research funding, through bonds and Maine Economic Improvement Fund investments.

• The legislature has recently approved an R&D bond proposal, which will be on the November ballot. UMaine has the largest research critical mass in Maine, and I am sure that we will compete very well for funds from that pool, if the voters approve it. I hope you will support that initiative, because I believe – and we have a strong case to support this – that it is an investment that pays off in many ways. University research, in states all over the country, is leading the way to real economic development, and UMaine is poised to drive that kind of activity right here in Maine.

• Funding is a critical issue for UMaine, and for all of Maine's public institutions. For our part in Orono, we have worked very hard to increase efficiencies in all parts of our operation. One example is energy savings, where we have been recognized by the state for our initiatives. We eliminated 50 positions last year, and we have undertaken numerous reorganizations and realignments, all intended to make sure we are carefully using every dollar the state and our students give us. We recognize the importance of carefully stewarding these scarce resources.

• We are also in the midst of a $150 million private fundraising campaign, the largest in our university's history. In short, we are doing our part – and we are working hard to encourage greater state investment in its public, land-grand flagship university. We think we have proven ourselves to be worth that investment, and we have shown that we will generate a real, substantial return.

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