President Glenn Cummings is weighing strategies to boost the college’s enrollment and improve finances.

To shore up its enrollment, the University of Southern Maine is looking at launching an independent high school that could attract international students in a feeder program for the university.

Glenn Cummings, who became university president on July 1, said Monday a high school within the university could become a reality as early as next year, but is likely two years away. The university would become one of only a few colleges in the country with a high school.

An independent high school is one of several initiatives Cummings is eyeing to rebuild university enrollment, which once exceeded 11,000 on its three campuses, located in Gorham, Portland and Lewiston-Auburn. But in recent years the number had dwindled below 9,000 and the university experienced financial struggles.

The enrollment at the start of school Monday was 8,800 full- and part-time students, a number that is more than anticipated, Cummings said.

“This year allows us to avoid layoffs,” he said.

Cummings lives in Portland – he’s declined to live in the president’s house on the school’s Gorham campus – but has long ties to Gorham, where he once taught high school.

“Gorham is a very special place to me,” Cummings said.

Cummings said his grandmother graduated from a university forerunner, Maine State Normal School in Gorham, in 1927. He has her framed diploma, which was signed by Walter Russell, in his office in Masterton Hall on the university’s Portland campus.

One of Cummings’ former Gorham High School students is Michael Phinney, now chairman of the Gorham Town Council.

“I think he understands Gorham, understands USM,” Phinney said Tuesday.

It is unclear on which campus a university high school would be located. The Gorham campus could be well situated for adding a high school. It has two, eight-story dorms now shuttered but available for rehab. The 125-acre Gorham campus and the town’s rural setting would be attractive for overseas students seeking to complete their high school education.

The university’s goal would be to retain its high school grads to continue their education.

Cummings said that the university has about 100 international students.

“That’s a huge area of potential growth,” Cummings said.

He wants to develop a seamless transition for students transferring to the university from community colleges, and plans a “robust” relationship with every high school in the state.

Gorham High School students now can take some college-level courses at the university, and Cummings hopes to expand collaboration with other neighboring school districts like Westbrook, Windham and Bonny Eagle.

Jacob Stoddard of Buxton, vice chairman of Maine School Administrative District 6 board of directors, said Tuesday he’d favor an opportunity for Bonny Eagle students to receive experience at the university level while still in high school.

“I’m going to be for it,” Stoddard said.

In another effort to enhance university enrollment, Cummings cited pushing “deeper and stronger” in New England to attract students. Taking steps to bolster enrollment, the university hired a new enrollment director. Nancy Griffin, a USM graduate, returned to Maine from a similar enrollment post at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing. Griffin started her new duties the same day as Cummings.

To make residential life more attractive for students, the university borrowed $1.5 million from the University of Maine System to install WiFi.

“We have not had WiFi in every room,” Cummings said.

With the aging Dickey-Woods Hall, commonly known as the twin dorm towers, empty, the Gorham dorms are filled to capacity and even wound up short of three or four beds when students moved in last weekend.

“We’re over-occupied for the fall,” Griffin said Monday about dorm space.

The vacant Dickey and Wood halls, which once housed 368 students, are 45 years old but could be rehabbed. Cummings estimated that renovating the two shuttered dorms could potentially cost $2 million, and he called that figure “a tough nut to crack right now.”

The university once had figures for razing the two dorms.

“We’re not going to tear them down any time soon,” Cummings said.

For the university’s theater and music programs, Cummings recognizes the need for facility improvements. He also envisions the potential to use Merrill Auditorium in Portland for university productions.

Cummings’ goal, he said, is to “get enrollment back to 10,000 students in five years.”

Besides bolstering enrollment, the university is exploring cost-savings measures. A future move could use Metro, the public transportation system in Greater Portland, to replace a contracted bus service that shuttles students between the Portland and Gorham campuses.

Metro serves Westbrook, and Cummings is talking with Edward Suslovic, board president of Metro, about the possibility of running buses to Gorham. A university deal with Metro would have the potential to provide public transportation for Gorham residents.

“It would be wonderful for Gorham,” Cummings said.

He also hopes to improve university road signage in Gorham to help visitors find its campus.

The university’s art gallery is also located on the Gorham campus and the university has drawn some public criticism of its restoration of the building that is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Earle Shettleworth, director of Maine Historic Preservation Commission, has indicated it plans to review the project to determine whether the art gallery would retain its historical status.

“We’re going to make sure the art gallery is not done until it matches Earle’s standards,” Cummings said.

Cummings brings political experience aplenty to his job. He served eight years in the Maine Legislature and is a former speaker of the Maine House of Representatives.

For two years, he was the deputy secretary in the Department of Education for President Obama’s administration. He said he focused on adult education and college access.

Cummings taught history and economics at Gorham High School from 1984-1997.

University of Southern Maine President Glenn Cummings takes time out to talk about the school’s future on Monday, the first day of classes.Staff photo by Robert Lowell