Muskie School, USM Uneasy As Partners
By BETH QUIMBY Staff Writer —
The Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service has grown rapidly since it was formed in 1990 at the University of Southern Maine.
The school, named for a Maine political icon, began with two people. It is now home to three graduate degree programs with an enrollment of 180 and the only doctoral program at USM. It operates three research institutes and seven research centers with a staff of 274. The school, which has offices in at least four locations, soon will move into shiny new quarters in a glass-fronted building now under construction on the Portland campus.
It is also pulling in $32 million in public and private research grants this year – up from $25 million five years ago – which represents more than 75 percent of total grant funding USM receives every year.
So when Interim USM President Joseph Wood proposed last month that the Muskie School might be broken up and redistributed among the other colleges and departments as part of a solution to the university’s budget woes, people at the school were surprised.
"I was open-jawed. It was inexplicable, " said Eliot Cutler, who is chairman of the Muskie School Board of Visitors, an advisory group that guides and supports the school.
Wood has since backed away from the proposal, but he still is looking for ways to reshape the Muskie School as he tries to plug deficits that have totaled nearly $8 million over the past three years under former President Richard Pattenaude, who is now chancellor of the University of Maine System.
Wood and other USM officials have said they are cutting spending by $2 million a year through 2010 to bring the budget back in balance.
The plan includes layoffs, a hiring freeze and a reorganization of colleges, departments and other university units such as the Muskie School, with an eye on reducing redundancies.
If that happens, Muskie School advocates say, they’ll take their millions in research funding and go elsewhere with an institution that many agree is one of the university’s crown jewels.
The Muskie School origins go back to Human Services Development Institute, a two-person operation established in 1972 that eventually merged with the university’s master’s degree program in public policy and management.
Professor Richard Barringer said the idea for something bigger was hatched in 1989 when he and a colleague, economist Charles Colgan, were invited to submit a proposal to create a national training institute for legislators and legislative staffs. Although they were among the finalists, they lost out.
"We were told we had the best presentation but were not selected because we didn’t have the big name," Barringer said.
The two flew back to Maine determined to find a name to give the university more clout. Because there was already a Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine in Orono, they turned to the other big name in Maine politics: Edmund S. Muskie.
Barringer said the former senator and Democratic presidential candidate was pleased to give his name to what at first became the Muskie Institute and was renamed the Muskie School when a doctoral program in public policy was added in 1997.
From the onset, the relationship between the Muskie School and the rest of USM has been an uneasy one, said Cutler, a former Muskie aide, Washington lawyer and Cape Elizabeth resident. The school’s Catherine E. Cutler Institute for Child and Family Policy is named for his mother.
"It is a relationship that at times has been difficult for the university and the school – understandable when you have 10,000 students with the overwhelming majority undergraduates," he said.
As the Muskie School continued to pull in millions of dollars for research, some began to wonder whether it was trying to do too much with too little, a concern confirmed by a review panel of national experts last year.
Charles Lyons, president of York County Community College and a panel member, said Wood’s idea of breaking up the school and integrating it into the rest of the university makes sense based on what he and fellow panel members found.
The panel concluded that the Muskie School was not well- integrated into the rest of the university and recommended streamlining and refining its focus, if the university could not afford to bolster its resources.
While the Muskie School has a national reputation, the school is far from a household name in Maine.
Undergraduates interviewed on campus last week said they were not very familiar with the Muskie School.
"I don’t know what the Muskie School does," said Christine Clark, a senior philosophy major from Brookline, Mass.
"Is that what is going into the new building going up?" said Ben Bergeron, 19, of Lewiston, a freshman business management student.
The panel found the scholarly quality of the school’s educational, research and outreach activities uneven. It questioned the viability of the doctoral program, which it found to be underfunded and academically weak.
Only one doctoral degree has been conferred in its 10 years of operation. The panel found the school’s leadership lacking.
Lyons said the panel also attributed much of the friction between the Muskie School and the university to a perception by both sides that each supports the other.
"People in USM thought they floated Muskie, and vice versa," he said.
The problem, he said, is that no one has ever done an audit to answer that question. Also, USM was unable to provide a copy of a budget that separated the Muskie’s costs and revenue from the rest of the university system budget.
Wood said he plans to do such an audit sometime in the next few months.
Lyons said that the university needs to determine once and for all whether the research funds that Muskie brings in cover all of its costs. Such an audit, "with absolutely transparent results, would do much to help USM, and within USM, the Muskie School itself, move forward," the panel noted in its report.
Lyons also questioned how well the school manages its finances, pointing to the high-priced space the school rents in the heart of downtown Portland at 400 Congress St.
"Is Muskie really getting a bang for its buck in quarters we do not commonly associate with not-for-profits?" he said.
Meanwhile the Muskie School visitors board has directed newly hired Muskie School Dean William Foster to explore the options for other relationships in academia.
Cutler said that could mean consolidating with other public policy research efforts at the other Maine university campuses. He said he could see the Muskie School affiliated with a consortium of other southern New England institutions, such as the University of New England and Saint Joseph’s College. It could mean staying put, with a redefined relationship with USM.
"The board of visitors has asserted some control and sense of ownership over the process," Cutler said.
Cutler said he has the unanimous support of the board’s 21 other members, who include former Sen. George Mitchell, state Sen. Peter Mills, former Muskie staffer Leon Billings, former Portland Mayor Anne Pringle and Laurie Lachance, a former state economist who heads the Maine Development Foundation.
Wood said he is not encouraging the board to consider affiliating with another institution, however; nor is it something the Muskie School can do, he said.
"It is not clear to me how a unit of the University of Southern Maine picks up and becomes an affiliate of some other institution," he said.
Some Muskie staff and graduate students say they want the university to leave the school alone.
"It seems to be very successful," said Cari Balbo of Portland, who has taken several graduate courses at Muskie with the goal of enrolling soon.
Lisa Morris, assistant professor at Muskie, acknowledging that the university’s financial situation is complicated, said dismantling Muskie goes too far, "but we could do some efficiencies."
Staff Writer Beth Quimby can be contacted at 791-6363 or at:
bquimby@pressherald.com
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