The head of campus for the University of Maine at Machias will leave the school in mid-August, just a year after he assumed the position.
Andrew Egan became the Machias school’s vice president of academic affairs Aug. 13, 2018, and was the first person hired from outside the UMaine system to be the top official on campus since the school became a regional campus of the state’s flagship University of Maine in July 2017.
In a statement posted by UMaine on the Machias school’s website, UMaine officials said Egan planned to step down Aug. 15.
Daniel Qualls, associate professor of education at UMM, will serve as interim vice president for academic affairs and head of campus, officials said. Like his predecessors following the absorption of the Machias school into University of Maine, Qualls will report to the president of University of Maine, based in Orono, which is a post currently held by Joan Ferrini-Mundy.
UMM became a regional campus of UMaine following a multiyear drop in enrollment. Its enrollment, 675 students as of last fall, had fallen 16.7 percent over the past five years.
Egan, former chancellor for Penn State Greater Allegheny in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, came to Machias following a yearlong Peace Corps assignment in Liberia teaching forestry. He took over the head of campus title last summer from Kay Kimball, who was executive dean and chief of academic operations at UMM.
Earlier in his career, Egan was an associate professor of forest resources and program coordinator in forest engineering at UMaine.
“We appreciate Andy’s leadership in the second year of the UMaine-UMM partnership and wish him well,” Ferrini-Mundy said in a statement. “I look forward to collaborating with Dr. Qualls, the UMM Board of Visitors and the UMM community to sustain and grow the University of Maine at Machias as an educational, cultural and economic resource for the Down East region.”
This story appears through a media sharing agreement with Bangor Daily News.
