University of Maine System Colleagues –
I’m reaching out to you again. I told you from my first days as Chancellor that I would communicate with you often and that transparency would be a hallmark of our work for Maine’s public universities.
First, to transparency.
My regular interaction with our Board of Trustees includes a weekly update I send to Trustees every Sunday morning via email to recount significant University of Maine System matters over the week past. I recently told the Trustees that I would like the entire University of Maine System community to know what I’m reporting to our Board on a regular basis, and starting today I am posting my Board messages from my first two months to the Chancellor’s Office webpage. Every month I’ll add the previous month’s messages. At times, my responsibilities require that I report confidential or legal matters to our Board, and that material may be removed from what is posted. I expect to keep confidential communications to a minimum, though, so you can see my messages in the same form I send them to the Board.
You can find my messages to the Board here.
Second, I’m back on the road again. Our Board asked me to visit each campus to hear your thoughts and questions about my Unified Accreditation recommendation. To ensure that everyone has the chance to weigh in, I’ve pledged to visit every campus at least three times this semester and next. I already visited Fort Kent and Presque Isle earlier this week, and I met with the University of Maine’s Board of Visitors yesterday as well. I hope you’ll watch for campus announcements for when I’ll be on your campus so my team and I can hear from you and answer your questions.
I’m more convinced than ever that our Guiding Principles are the right place to start our conversations, so I hope you’ll read them and share your thoughts and questions when I visit. And I want to remind you that I posted nearly five years of records and correspondence between University of Maine officials and NECHE, our accreditor, so you can understand the work and effort that’s already taken place over a number of years on the possibility of adopting a unified accreditation for our universities. You can visit our Unified Accreditation website here.
Finally, either now or after you’ve participated in one of our campus visits, I hope you’ll share your thoughts and questions through an online survey tool we’ve created to document the input we receive from you and your colleagues. Please check out the survey here (Update: Survey now closed).
I’m looking forward to working with you on unified accreditation, and I hope to see you and hear from you on my journeys around Maine this fall.
Regards,
Dan Malloy, Chancellor