Portland Junior College
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Former names
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University of Maine at Portland Gorham State College University of Maine at Portland-Gorham |
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| Motto | Connecting You with Tomorrow |
| Type | Public |
| Established | 1878 |
| President | Glenn Cummings |
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Academic staff
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15:1 |
| Students | 7,855 |
| Undergraduates | 6,189 |
| Location |
Gorham, Lewiston, Portland, Maine, USA 43°39′45″N 70°16′34″W / 43.66250°N 70.27611°WCoordinates: 43°39′45″N 70°16′34″W / 43.66250°N 70.27611°W |
| Campus | Urban, Suburban |
| Nickname | Huskies |
| Affiliations | NCAA Division III |
| Mascot | Champ the Husky |
| Website | usm.maine.edu |
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The University of Southern Maine (USM) is a multi-campus public comprehensive university and part of the University of Maine System. USM's three primary campuses are located in Portland, Gorham and Lewiston in the U.S. state of Maine. Many courses and degree programs are also offered online. It was founded as two separate state universities, Gorham Normal School and University of Maine at Portland. The two universities were combined in 1970 to help streamline the public university system in Maine and eventually expanded by adding the Lewiston campus in 1988.
The Portland Campus is home to the Edmund Muskie School of Public Service, the Bio Sciences Research Institute, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and the Osher Map Library, and the USM School of Business. The Gorham campus, much more residential, is home to the School of Education and Human Development and the School of Music.MeMUNC is hosted here every year.
USM is among the "Best Northeastern Colleges," according to the Princeton Review's 2007 listings, and was also included in its 2007 edition of "America's Best Value Colleges." As of 2012, USM had 7,500 undergraduate students and 2,320 graduate and law school students, with an average class size of 25 and a student-faculty ratio of 15:1. Controversial decisions by the university administration to cut programs and fire up to 50 faculty led to student-led protests on the campus in 2014.
Evolving from Gorham Academy into an institution of higher education, USM originated in 1878 as Gorham Normal School, later called Gorham State Teachers College and then Gorham State College. In 1970 that institution merged with the University of Maine at Portland (previously Portland Junior College) and became the University of Maine at Portland-Gorham (UMPG). The name was changed to University of Southern Maine in 1978. The Lewiston-Auburn campus was founded in 1988.
At the beginning of 2014, administrators at USM announced that the university had found itself in dire financial straits and would be announcing program closures and faculty layoffs, including of long-term just cause faculty and tenured faculty.
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