Former university President Dan Mote speaks in favor of a merger with the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

While most Baltimore representatives continue to oppose merging the University of Maryland, Baltimore with this university, many high-ranking officials at this university maintained their support for unifying the two institutions at an on-campus forum Friday.

For nearly four hours, dozens of attendees gathered in Stamp Student Union to listen to officials and student representatives publicly express their opinions for the last time before the Board of Regents — a 17-member governing body that oversees the University System of Maryland — takes over the study, which will be submitted to the state legislature by Dec. 15. While most of the 25 speakers agreed there should be increased collaboration between the two institutions, many officials at this university said formal, tangible steps are needed to ensure this alliance runs smoothly.

Among the speakers were former university President Dan Mote, several college deans, Cornell University and University of Iowa representatives who oversaw increased collaboration or mergers at their respective institutions and some of Baltimore’s top university and city officials.

Although some UMB and Baltimore city officials expressed concern over the complex, labor-intensive nature of a potential merger, Mote said under his tenure as president, he saw many lost opportunities as a result of minimal collaboration between the two universities.

“Without a merger, what we can see in the historical record of no major collaborations and a significant loss of opportunities is what we can get in the future,” he said at the forum. “The only difference … of course, is that the increasingly greater lost opportunities will come because of increasingly large-scale, multidisciplinary initiatives that the state will, in fact, not be in a position to compete for. This is a major opportunity to prepare the university to compete effectively in the future.”

Similar to their reactions at the UMB Oct. 21 forum, Baltimore officials continued to oppose merging the institutions.

President of the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore Kirby Fowler said the board should find ways to foster collaboration without actually merging the two institutions under one name.

“Downtown needs to have a local leadership. Decisions today need to be made quickly, and when it comes to decisions made about a campus they need to be made locally,” he said at the forum. “There is so much we can gain from more collaboration. The notion of a full-out merger should be off the table. There are always winners and losers in a merger.”

Although many Baltimore officials have said they fear losing autonomy in running the institution and funding in city projects, state Senate President Mike Miller — who proposed the idea of merging the institutions in January — recommended a system in which each university retains its own president.

While university President Wallace Loh has declined to publicly state his stance on the merger, he said in an interview that Miller’s suggestion offers a compromise between the two institutions and helps allay UMB officials fears that this university’s administration will overpower the institution.

“What’s so clever about Mike Miller’s approach is he allows the combination, but you still have two presidents, which is what Baltimore has always been afraid of,” Loh said. “The argument is that all of these new powerhouse universities that they’re building, they all involve very close interactions between the sciences on the one hand and the health sciences. That is the future.”

William T. Wood, a member of the UMB Foundation Board, said merging the campuses will not be cost-effective and will ruin relationships with loyal alumni.

“This could have enormous implications on localities and cherished relationships with supportive alumni. Feeling diminished by one mammoth university by other colleges in the state is not an intended consequence, but will surely happen,” Wood said. “Collaborations work and bigger is not always better, nor is it necessarily more effective nor more efficient. Forced mandates of this magnitude usually don’t work, especially in higher education.”

However, Jayanth Banavar, dean of this university’s computer, mathematical and natural sciences college, said though he has only been at this university for several months, he has already seen his college greatly benefit from a merger. The former life sciences college and computer, math and physical sciences college — which he called a microcosm of the current study — were unified last October.

“These two worlds are separated from each other, and in order to make real progress, what is needed is we need to straddle this divide, we need to get across this break we have and make a difference for all of humanities,” Banavar said. “We would see a meaningful partnership between our two campuses that will lead to significant progress in academic, industrial and economic development. … It will create a powerhouse public university, which will actually be a strong economic foundation for our state.”

Now that the last of the four scheduled forums has ended, the board will take over the study of the potential impacts of merging the two institutions. The board will ultimately decide whether it is in support of unifying the two universities — and in what capacity — and will submit its recommendations to the state legislature by Dec. 15.

abutaleb@umdbk.com