UMF cuts loose archaeology research center

FARMINGTON – After 25 years on campus, the Archaeology Research Center at the University of Maine at Farmington is moving out.

The state’s continuing budget crunch was cited as the reason the university could no longer provide financial support for the center, an official with the university said.

The Archaeology Research Center, located at 139 Quebec St., will need to find another home in the coming year, preferably in the Farmington area, said director Ellen Cowie. UMF had provided financial support for the center’s housing, storage, utilities and paid the director’s salary. Cowie, also an assistant professor, had taught archeology courses at the university but will no longer do so.

The program in which UMF students have interned or been employed by the center over the years, either through the Work Study Program or as regular seasonal workers, is expected to continue, Cowie said.

As an archaeological consulting firm that employs between six and nine staff members depending on the season, much of the center’s revenue is provided through contracts for a variety of organizations and entities in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. The center provides archaeological surveys where road work, utility and housing developments are planned. Federal and state laws require environmental impact surveys include archaeology studies where development is proposed in potentially sensitive areas in which historic preservation may be required.

The center was founded in 1984 by Dr. Jim Petersen when the need for archaeology consulting was realized by the state after federal hydroelectric licensing started requiring survey studies completed on all the projects. Petersen worked as a consultant to the hydroelectric projects and was hired as a professor to teach at UMF.

“The program was very busy with all the hydroelectric projects going on at the time,” Cowie said. She came to the center at UMF as an archaeology graduate to work as “a digger” in the early 1990s. After earning her doctorate, Cowie eventually returned to the center and was appointed director after Petersen left to join the University of Vermont’s archeology research center.

UMF intends to phase out its financial partnership with the center by early 2009. Cowie remains hopeful the center can bring in enough revenue to sustain its operation without the university’s help. The center will remain on campus to finish up the current contractual work in the first half of 2009 before moving out.

“I’m pretty optimistic,” Cowie said of the break with UMF. “We’ve been in operation for 25 years and the work has been consistent.” She did, however, note that there is some uncertainty because the center’s contracts depend on construction development, but if the economy continues its current downward course, the center’s work may suffer.

As has UMF. The state’s tough economic times is the reason UMF had to sever, among other things, its financial partnership with the archaeology center, said Bill Geller, UMF’s vice president for administration.

A month ago, Gov. John E. Baldacci ordered the state’s agencies to find cuts totaling $80 million in the current budget’s fiscal year. For the seven campuses of the University of Maine System including UMF, $8.4 million needed to be cut from the overall budget. UMF’s burden of the cut comes in at nearly $750,000. The latest cuts have come on the heels of last spring’s announcement that a total of $19 million in cuts would need to made across the UMaine System campuses.

Throughout this fall, a budgetary advisory committee of faculty, students and staff at UMF have been working on trying to find where more cuts can be made.

“We’re asking what can we do without,” Geller said. And, more cuts are anticipated in the state’s next fiscal budget. Just how deep those cuts will be nobody knows yet. The university has been told to expect anything from a 1 percent increase to a 10 percent across-the-board cut, he said.

“None of the figures are firm at this point,” Geller said. “We’re keeping our ears peeled to what’s happening in Augusta and we’re working on where more cuts can be made.”

There are no future plans for the former house the center will be vacating, Geller said. “We’re planning on moth-balling it for now.”

Cowie said “the university has been very supportive in the transition,” in allowing them to complete their current contracts before leaving. She is actively looking in the Farmington area for office space that comes with a yard for the equipment and piles of dirt that come with the job. “We’re messy people,”  Cowie said. 

For the center’s employees, many of whom have worked for years at the same location, the move off campus isn’t going to be easy.

“Generally, for the staff, it’s a big deal,” Cowie said. “We’ve been here a long time.”