The University of Southern Maine has both an image problem and a supervision problem that will take time and specific measures to fix. More than anything, the University of Maine System board of trustees needs to strengthen its oversight of the hiring process of university leaders and ensure that they can be held accountable for their performance. Creating a new position for a president who was the focus of a no-confidence vote, and allowing her to maintain her $203,000 yearly salary, reads like a misuse of public funding.
In truth, the trustees abided by the terms of her contract when they voted Monday to move former USM President Selma Botman to a new position recruiting international students. Their options were to either terminate her contract or reassign her to a different position, but either way they were bound to pay her for the remaining year of her term. In that way, then, their decision was a practical one: Keep paying Botman to work. There were no grounds to fire her for just cause, which would have required criminal activity or examples of moral turpitude.
But the question is not whether trustees voted appropriately on Monday. It’s whether Botman’s contract was designed to give them the flexibility to act in the best interests of the state. New USM president Theo Kalikow, who was called in to replace Botman, hit the point exactly on Tuesday. Kalikow recently retired from being the president of the University of Maine at Farmington and said when she first began work there “we really started looking at, ‘How can accountability be implemented in higher education so that faculty will embrace it and students will benefit from it?’”
We’d add: How can administration be held accountable as well? Against what standards can they be measured? And what are the repercussions for administrators who don’t meet those standards?
Botman requested the move, to be special assistant to the chancellor on global education, in late June, about two months after faculty held a referendum on their confidence in her. Though the vote in favor of no-confidence was an overwhelming 194-88, it did not meet requirements to be the “will of the faculty.”
The contentious vote in May was driven by some senior faculty who circulated a petition calling for it. They accused Botman of being vindictive toward faculty who questioned her initiatives and said her plan to consolidate departments with fewer than 12 full-time faculty left people overworked and without additional, promised classroom spending money. Realistically, USM and the entire system has faced budget cuts, fiscal uncertainty and declining student enrollment.
It’s now important for the university to repair the public’s trust. Chancellor James Page and trustees can do the following:
• Approve employment contracts that allow appropriate responses to campus conditions.
• Continue to be open to questions from the university employees, the public and the media.
• Continue to explain how the system’s current review of administrative responsibilities will create efficiencies that save money. Page estimates that reorganization, which may include a workforce reduction, will save $8 million during the first annualized year, $16 million in the second and $24 million in the third.
University system leaders claim the planned efficiencies will cover the costs of Botman’s new job. And they say her new duties fall in line with the university system’s goals to draw more international students to help fill an anticipated loss of graduating Maine high school seniors. International students currently make up just 2 percent of the system’s year-round population — at 664 of about 40,000 students.
But that’s beside the point. The public is paying for a system — not to mention Botman’s last year of work — that has failed them. Right now trust has faltered. Botman must be honest with the public. The trustees must be honest with themselves and focus on designing an oversight system that allows them to reward or penalize a president based on a fundamental role of universities in the first place: grading performance. If you don’t meet requirements, you shouldn’t be able to slide through the final year.
One of the major problems with the UME System is that most of the Trustees over the years are contentedly uninformed about matters that the Trustees of, say, Bates, Bowdoin, and Colby know even before they join those respective boards. Too many System appointees are political appointees with no real commitment to public higher ed and, in some cases, with a rigid ideological agenda such as contempt for ordinary employees–not just faculty but also classified and professional employees and custodians–that reveals itself in negotiations for decent salaries and in seeking improved facilities apart from athletics. Trustees happily spend millions on often unneeded consultants because it’s so much easier to do that than to look into crucial matters themselves. Perhaps the old days of lavish entertainment, of Cape Elizabeth retreats, and of private chartered planes to the northernmost campuses are gone–who knows? But it is a hopeless situation if the powers that be don’t care enough to fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities to the taxpayers and to Maine overall. The line that USM Pres. Botman was “selfless” in leaving her post for a make-work job already done by others in the System is only the latest in decades of tragic-comedy developments.
Hmm, just wondering if Pres. Kalikow will be collecting two salaries: her retirement salary from UMF and her new salary as president of USM?
She’d be a fool not to! Then take her new salary and reinvest.
Employees of the Maine State Prison do it all the time. They retire and then come back in “Hard to fill management Positions”
Who helps the taxpayer ? Is there anyone without greed on their mind ?
nope
I wonder if Botman speaks any foreign languages? I mean is she really qualified for this new job? I mean it seems she has some problems with people if they are not agreeing with her.
I feel a little despair for all the Mom’s and Dad’s that have written checks to send their children to higher education at the U of M. It has always been mostly the thing to do, but is it? Is the cost of having so many young people saddled with student loans, I mean, they take out loans, the money goes to the U of M for education to them, and for many it is a struggle, and now this. If Botman is not competent as a President, why is she competent and this position?? Will she be supervised and evaluated?? Will she be at an office and supervised or given the wink and let her work out of her home for the time period.
How can she look at students in the eye?? Gawd she must be a dilly!
Here’s her resume as of the time she applied for the USM job: http://www.maine.edu/pdf/SelmaBotman.pdf
Her specialty is Middle East politics and she appears to have had two research stints in Egypt, so I’d guess at minimum she knows at least Arabic. She also got her Master’s at Oxford, so she’s studied abroad also.
Never mind the salary – her travel expenses will surely dwarf that. International Recruitment sounds like paid vacation abroad to me.
For all we know Ms. Botman may have merely tried to institute reforms demanded by the Trustees. Tenured professors can be testy defenders of their academic territories and interests, especially at times of budgetary strain, and few university presidents would accept an appointment without the protection of a fixed-term contract. The criticism of the Board of Trustees may be appropriate, given the many questions about the System’s functioning but it seems unfair to make Botman’s selection or performance the illustrative example of any dysfunction on the basis of nothing more than faculty displeasure. We shall see how the faculty responds when system-wide reforms become the topic of debate.
It is obvious her skills were not up to the task, or, she would not be in the pickle she is in.
Appointment’s made without due diligence. Many are made in lieu of political favors. The hiring process is way out of control and needs to be reeled in. Can’t the tax payers of Maine count on anyone to assist with this ? Just totally unbelievable.
Every layer of bureacracy eliminates efficiency; costs more overall. Eliminate the “System”, each campus can then determine their own costs, administrative needs and method within which to interact with the other campuses. We do not need a University of Maine System to provide a superior education to the students in attendance.
but that will add to unemployment…
You can’t teach, contract, nor litigate self respect…….
My impression of the Board after testifying before them was that they were there for the prestige…rarely asking cogent questions, never expressing a view contrary to the Chancellor’s office and enjoying the free lunch immensely.
…one disappointing afternoon spent in Baldacci’s old headquarters, one issue, but I was def. not impressed with the ability of the Board to do anything but gobble down thick sandwiches and scurry home after social chit chat.
Dr. Botman should have been assigned to teach some courses. She has a strong academic background and, given the importance of the Middle East, her specialty, surely she could have offered even a course or two with limited enrollment, lest she be burdened with too much grading! But another typical administrator who, professing the importance of teaching by others, disavows doing so when he/she might have done something useful instead of traveling abroad allegedly to recruit foreign students while no doubt enjoying interesting locales at taxpayer expense. Disgraceful but hardly surprising.