ORONO — Joan Ferrini-Mundy sees the connection between her past work developing new ways of teaching science and math and her new job as president of the University of Maine. At the university system’s flagship campus, she has been tasked with developing new ways of meeting Maine’s growing workforce needs, particularly in engineering and computer science.
“Today’s world is calling on people to be able to work across some of the traditional boundaries,” Ferrini-Mundy said. Tomorrow’s workers will need a mix of skills, such as expertise with data analytics, even for work traditionally grounded in the social sciences, she said. As president of a campus serving more than 10,000 students, Ferrini-Mundy said she’s thinking about how UMaine can help the state meet those workforce needs “while at the same time preserving the important disciplinary depth that we need in order to grow research.” Read more.
