PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — On Tuesday, Oct. 19, University of Maine system Chancellor Dannel Malloy, made a visit to the University of Maine at Presque Isle campus.
This visit was part of Malloy’s annual fall tour, which is a series of visits made to all campuses during the fall semester. On Monday, Malloy toured the University of Maine at Fort Kent campus.
Since taking the position, Chancellor Malloy has made it his mission to make regular trips to all seven schools in the University of Maine system. The overall goal of these visits is to better improve communication, talk about future projects for the system, and to generally check up on the state of the Universities.
During Tuesday’s visit, Malloy met with University of Maine at Presque Isle President Raymond Rice, where they discussed plans for the upcoming year, and what’s to come after.
“One of his goals since coming on board has been to have a really open, frank communication system with each of the individual campuses,” said President Rice. “This gives us an opportunity to have discussion over unified accreditation, which, being the first system in the country in which all of the institutions as an aggregate, receive accreditation from our regional accreditors. This gives us an opportunity to leverage our resources in ways which in the past, campuses had to do individually”
Moving forward, Malloy wants to focus on the University of Maine systems unified accreditation. Unified accreditation is a system that allows for a collection of Universities to become accredited. This means that the system as a whole, produces a high level of education standards, set by accreditation agencies, who set those standards.
Currently, the University of Maine system is the only unified accredited system of universities in the country, Malloy stated.
“I want to maximize the benefits of unified accreditation, and what that will allow us to do for the benefit of Maine, its people, and I want to make sure that no small University will deny someone a degree because the course they needed to graduate was not offered that semester, because we know that course is offered elsewhere,” said Malloy.
The Chancellor also spoke on the University of Maine system’s response to COVID-19, and how that response will impact the future of the system.
“I’m sure not everything was done adequately, I am sure we didn’t do it perfectly, but we did better than the vast majority of universities and systems in the country,” said Malloy. The University of Maine system went fully remote in March of 2020, where students attended classes virtually through Zoom, or similar online models. “Students have found that they like taking some classes online, and others in person. I think the day where a student will take all their semester courses in person, is behind us.”
For the future of the University of Maine system, there will be a higher focus on promoting multiple modalities of teaching courses, so that they can be optimized and reach the greatest number of students as possible. “I want to see each of our Universities as they currently exist, to get stronger, to be successful and to meet the geographic educational needs of our state,” said Malloy.
