About 30 people attended a meeting Tuesday in Portland at which top University of Maine System officials were briefed on a plan to end two academic programs at the University of Southern Maine.

“We need to make some tough choices about what we can do with the resources available to us,” USM President David Flanagan told the academic and student affairs committee of the system’s board of trustees. He has proposed cutting the undergraduate French major and the master’s program in applied medical sciences (AMS).

Any program elimination must be approved by the full board.

Those program cuts, along with the elimination of 50 faculty positions in various departments, are expected to shave $6 million off the university’s budget gap of $16 million for the next fiscal year, Flanagan said. The remaining $10 million would come from staff and administrative cuts, and an academic reorganization that will cut costs and add revenue, he said. Those plans will be announced before the end of the year.

Last year, USM closed a $14 million gap in its $134 million budget for the fiscal year that began July 1. These cuts are aimed at closing the projected budget gap for the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2015.

Flanagan said officials didn’t want to cut any programs.

“There’s no low-hanging fruit to cut off, but we still have to make choices,” Flanagan said.

The programs were chosen because they lose money and have few student majors, he said.

The committee will hold another meeting on Oct. 22 to vote on its recommendation to the full board of trustees, who will vote on the eliminations at its Oct. 24 meeting.

Members of the public will only be able to speak to trustees for up to three minutes each during a public comment period at the start of that meeting.

On Tuesday, Flanagan and committee members talked to the audience, including students, professors and local business owners, for about 30 minutes after the meeting.

Joe Chandler, president of Maine Biotechnology Services, said he and other biotech company owners rely heavily on the applied medical sciences students and graduates for research and potential employees.

The program offers courses in immunology, molecular biology, genetics, toxicology and epidemiology to prepare students for doctoral work and careers in biotechnology, biomedical research and public health.

“It’s going to be a hard loss for us,” said Chandler, who said he started his company 24 years ago out of a collaboration with USM.

Noting the university’s goal of working with the community, he said, “You couldn’t get more industry-involved than with the AMS program. It’s a strong link between USM and industry.”

When another speaker noted that the program received grant money, Flanagan said it wasn’t enough.

“We don’t have enough to pay for this program. Get it?” he said. “That money has to come from somewhere. People have got to get their arms around the idea that we’re running a deficit.”

This fall, the French program, with one professor, had seven majors, two minors and 62 students taking classes, a campus spokesman said. The AMS program, with five faculty, had 16 majors and 54 graduate and undergraduate students taking courses.