A former University of Maine forestry faculty member and higher education administrator is the new campus leader of University of Maine at Machias, which is in its first year as a regional campus of the flagship University of Maine in Orono.

Andrew Egan will start his role as the Machias vice president of academic affairs/head of campus on Aug. 13, after finishing up a one-year Peace Corps assignment teaching at a forestry college in Liberia, campus officials said. He will be paid $140,000 a year.

Before that, Egan served as chancellor and chief academic officer of Penn State University–Greater Allegheny Campus. He has also served as a dean and tenured professor at Paul Smith’s College in New York and at Brandon University in Manitoba, Canada and as a tenured professor at Universite Laval in Quebec.

He also led a watershed restoration institute as executive director of the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute at New Mexico Highlands University, and was a senior Fulbright scholar in Nepal.

The UMaine System trustees voted last year to make Machias a regional campus, amid declining enrollment and budget shortfalls.

The Down East campus, about 100 miles east of Orono, enrolled 701 students last fall, a 21 percent drop from five years earlier. The campus has 108 employees, including one administrator and 30 full-time faculty members.

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