BANGOR, Maine — The former president of Washington County Community College will take the reins as president of the University of Maine at Machias on an interim basis, the University of Maine System announced Friday morning.
Joyce Hedlund, a Fort Kent native, will step out of her year-and-a-half-old retirement on Jan. 5 to rejoin the University of Maine System.
“Joyce’s presidency represents, for me, an opportunity to get our engagement with rural Maine right as we move to this next phase,” UMS Chancellor James Page said Thursday during a phone interview.
It’s unclear how long Hedlund’s appointment will last. Page said it’s “open-ended” and will remain in place until the system has a better idea about what the future of the university will look like. Page gave the interim president an estimate of 6 to 18 months. Hedlund’s salary will be $137,000, according to her contract.
Hedlund, who took the president’s job at WCCC in 2010, has an education career that spans four decades. She got her start in higher education at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, where she served as admissions director. She went on to earn her doctorate in education at the University of Maine’s flagship campus in Orono. While there, she was a financial aid counselor, served as assistant director for scholarships and later as associate dean of students.
She moved on to the state’s community college system, where she worked for 25 years. She joined Eastern Maine Vocational Technical Institute, today’s Eastern Maine Community College, in 1987 as a student support services counselor and worked her way up through the ranks, becoming president in 1994.
“One of the obvious reasons for our engaging with Joyce at this time is her acute knowledge and understanding and commitment to rural Maine,” Page said.
Hedlund said her background in the community college system could help bridge gaps between the state’s university and community college programs, making transfers more efficient.
“What I see is the opportunity to provide a continuum of higher education so the students in Calais [at WCCC] can continue their educations at the University of Maine at Machias and do that in a seamless way,” Hedlund said.
Hedlund will lead the university through what’s expected to be a difficult series of challenges and transitions in a county that’s facing some of the most severe economic and demographic challenges in the state, Page added.
First, she’ll face a trying budget process, which will mean refocusing the university on the immediate needs of Washington County, the chancellor said. UMM’s financial woes aren’t as pronounced as those at its larger counterparts, but cuts and reductions still hurt and may be necessary to shore up the system’s fiscal status.
UMM, the campus with the smallest population at about 1,000 students, needed to cut 6.5 positions last fall, then find an additional $500,000 in savings in order to pass a balanced budget for this year. Those cuts are part of a $69 million budget shortfall, which the university system expects to resolve by 2019.
The dollar amount of cuts at UMM might be significantly smaller than at other institutions, but several staff members are performing three or four different jobs.
“Larger schools often have greater flexibility because they have more resources available,” Page said.
Second, Page said Hedlund would be responsible for building “absolutely critical” community connections to ensure the university responds to the education and training needs of Washington County.
Third, she’ll help to review the university’s offerings and complete a “strategic evaluation” to see what programs and services are helpful and needed in the region and what might be better served by universities elsewhere in the system.
Hedlund said those challenges are also “opportunities to strengthen the system and the university’s role in the communities.”
She stressed UMM’s importance to its community, culturally, economically and socially.
UMM President Cynthia Huggins will retire early next year after 10 years at the post, with plans to join an editing business and write a book manuscript that stalled in 2005 after she was hired to lead the university.
Hedlund has been an active member of the Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems board, as well as the Maine Humanities Council, among several other organizations.
Follow Nick McCrea on Twitter @nmccrea213.