University of Maine System Chancellor Dannel Malloy will remain in his position for at least two more weeks, but his long-term job security is unknown.

Chancellor Dannel P. Malloy of the University of Maine System. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal file

The executive committee of the system’s board of trustees voted Wednesday to extend Malloy’s three-year contract, which was initially set to expire Thursday.

Board Chair Trish Reilly had announced at a meeting with the Maine Legislature’s Education and Cultural Affairs Committee this month that she and Malloy had agreed to extend the contract until the trustees’ next board meeting on July 11.

The board is expected to decide at that meeting whether to renew Malloy’s contract for a longer period. Malloy ‘s annual salary is $350,000 and he will make $10,000 during the short-term extension.

Malloy has faced severe criticism over the past few months from faculty, students and legislators including no confidence votes from faculty and calls to resign from students.

The outcry of frustration with Malloy and the way he has run the system since he took charge in 2019 followed a botched search for a new president to lead the system’s Augusta campus. Malloy and the chair of the Augusta presidential search committee, Sven Bartholomew, failed to disclose to the full search committee that candidate Michael Laliberte had received multiple votes of no confidence in his leadership at his prior institution.

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Laliberte was hired, but ultimately withdrew amid criticism of the search process. The fumble comes at a steep price for the system, which agreed to pay Laliberte up to $705,000 over the next three years.

Although the presidential search triggered the vocal opposition to Malloy, complaints from faculty and others are focused on a wider range of issues, from communication style to faculty retrenchments.

Faculty have said they are frustrated with what they say is a lack of transparency from Malloy and disregard for faculty input. They have also questioned the system’s consolidation of its seven universities under Malloy through unified accreditation, which transfers certain governance and oversight powers from the individual schools to the system. While the system has said unified accreditation will help cut management costs and make it easier to share resources and programs across schools, faculty worry that their universities will be stripped of their autonomy, and that programs and more faculty positions will be cut.

Faculty from three campuses – University of Southern Maine and Augusta and Farmington – have cast votes of no confidence in Malloy since information about Laliberte came to light in May. Faculty at the four other schools have expressed support for those votes.


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