GORHAM — Better-than-expected fall enrollment figures at the University of Southern Maine mean there won’t be layoffs at the campus this year, new USM President Glenn Cummings told a gathering of faculty and staff Thursday.

The university has been wracked with layoffs and protests in recent years during a series of budget deficits. Last year, officials eliminated five academic programs and 51 faculty positions because of budget cuts, and remain in arbitration with the union over the layoffs.

USM President Glenn Cummings speaks with faculty and students at the annual welcome breakfast Thursday on the Gorham campus. Cummings stressed that he wants to rebuild trust with students and faculty after several years of turmoil. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

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“I’ll be honest, the first day I was a little bit nervous,” said Cummings, who took office two months ago. But “USM is like an ugly 1970s carpet you lift it up and there’s this beautiful hardwood floor underneath. I’m not kidding you. We have every possible asset to succeed.”

When Cummings took office, he said fall enrollment numbers were down 13 percent, which translated to a $2.5 million shortfall on top of the $4.8 million deficit already in the $128 million budget for the year beginning July 1.

But Thursday, Cummings said the enrollment gap has been closed to about 7 percent down from the same time last year. That has erased the $2.5 million shortfall, said Chief Financial Officer Buster Neel, who has said previously that the $4.8 million deficit will be covered with reserves and budget adjustments, not cuts to academic programs.

At the annual welcome breakfast at the Gorham campus, Cummings acknowledged the “painful” staff and faculty cuts last year.

“We have to be real about the pain we’ve experienced. We lost 119 people in one year,” Cummings said. “Not a single one lost their job for incompetence. In fact, we lost some of the best people we had. If we don’t acknowledge it, we can’t move on.”

Cummings, the former speaker of the Maine House, emphasized that he was working to rebuild trust with students and faculty, and asked the faculty and staff to work toward increasing enrollment and solving problems in their departments.

“Our best asset is you,” he told the crowd of more than 500 faculty and staff gathered in the Field House. “We have amazing faculty and dedicated staff. We just have to put it together.”

MAKING CRITICISM CONSTRUCTIVE

As he finished his speech, the crowd gave him a standing ovation.

“Glenn struck a very positive note,” said USM economics professor Susan Feiner, co-president of the faculty union. “He was encouraging without being Pollyanna-ish.”

Cummings laid out several specific goals for USM, including increasing freshman-to-sophomore retention rates to at least 70 percent, compared with the current 60 percent, and increasing alumni giving from the current 2 percent to an industry standard of about 10 percent.

He also set two specific five-year goals: creating a $50 million scholarship fund for students, and increasing overall campus enrollment from the current 8,900 students to more than 10,000.

He asked the faculty and staff to take an active role, “with freedom and autonomy” in reaching those goals.

“We are changing the way we do work around here,” Cummings said. “We don’t need to micromanage you. I believe all of you have the answers on how to improve enrollment in your department or improve morale.”

In plain language, Cummings urged the crowd to be discreet in criticisms of the university and each other during “a very sensitive time,” a reference to the volatile protests that accompanied layoffs last year. Division on campus can affect students’ impressions of the university, he said.

“Don’t think students are not looking at that. They care, they want to hear that you support each other,” Cummings said. “We have a culture of professionalism that we’ve never needed more desperately. I ask you for grace, to hold back on your worst instincts.”

Cummings said he welcomed criticism and difficult conversations in private, but not aired “on Facebook,” and he urged faculty and staff to actively participate in the effort to improve the university.

“We won’t get there doing what we’ve done the last few years,” he said. “We have to have those tough conversations.”

TURNING SHIP AROUND TOGETHER

Faculty Senate President Tom Parchman said he was looking forward to working with Cummings “to be part of that course correction” and bring the faculty back to engage “with civility” on the issues facing USM.

Cummings peppered his talk with self-deprecating asides, from joking about how his decision to bike from Portland to Gorham led to the “disturbing visual” of a middle-aged man in spandex, to assurances that he plans to stay forever at USM, in part because his wife “will unambiguously divorce me if I go back into politics.”

He closed on a more somber note, pledging that “we are going to try to get it right.”

“Everyone wants to be part of a winning team,” he said. “You are already that winning team. I’m just honored to be telling the community, telling the world, how great you are.”

Since taking office, he has backed up his candor with personal sacrifices. In a recent interview with the Press Herald, Cummings said he discovered over the summer that he didn’t have any funds to pay for lunches at a series of getting-to-know-you meetings he was holding with faculty, staff and students. He decided to decline using a university-issued cellphone and used the $5,000 to pay for the meetings, he said.

The budget crunch has been felt across the state’s seven-campus university system. The system’s $518 million budget for the year that began last month uses $7 million in emergency funds despite cutting 206 positions systemwide. The $529 million budget for the prior year, which ended June 30, required using $11.4 million in emergency funds and cutting 157 positions.

The chairman of the USM Board of Visitors said the campus must increase enrollment and “we will grow our way out” of the recent financial challenges.

“This is an all-hands-on-deck undertaking,” Tony Payne said. “We need to be firing on all cylinders and with great urgency.”

Senior chemistry major Andrew Kiezulas said after Cummings’ speech that he was glad to hear him talk about a student-focused mission.

“It was inspiring,” Kiezulas said. “It’s not ‘you do it for us’ or ‘we do it to you’ – it’s ‘we do it together.’ Hearing that kind of talk always gets me fired up.”

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