Julius Edwards is excited to lead Eastern Maine Community College because he thinks the state’s programs have an edge over others.
“Eastern Maine Community College was appealing to me because I wasn’t walking into a place I had to redo,” he said.
Edwards, who has 15 years of experience working in higher education, started as EMCC president on April 1, entering the role at a time of expansion for Maine’s community colleges after the state made its free tuition program permanent.
Edwards moved to Maine for the job from Indianapolis, where he worked at Ivy Tech Community College in various leadership positions, including vice president, vice chancellor of academic affairs, dean of the School of Business and Supply Chain Management, director of the transfer center and assistant director of the financial aid office.
He’s gravitated toward work in community colleges because of the wide range of people they serve and their power to help students achieve social mobility.
“I have adored the diversity of community college students,” he said, noting that he’s worked with students from 17 to 78 years old.
Edwards said he feels like EMCC’s staff “live and breathe” student success because of the strong community fostered by the school’s small size and the close degree of connectivity in Maine.
Ivy Tech, his previous institution, is much larger, with 168,000 students across 19 campuses, compared with EMCC’s 2,700 in Bangor and an off-campus center in Millinocket.
EMCC’s emphasis on trade programs also drew him to the school, Edwards said. He has experience overseeing workforce academic programs like agriculture, advanced automation and robotics, supply chain management, culinary arts and commercial driving.
He plans to prioritize workforce development at EMCC and wants to ensure that students find work after graduation.
“The staff and faculty do a great job of already connecting [students] with industries,” he said, and he wants to lean into that career preparation.
Part of that work will include maintaining strong relationships with employers and monitoring the impact of technological advancement on the job market. Edwards noted that students are aware of artificial intelligence and “its impact on every job out there. I want to ensure that we are preparing them to apply for a job that would be there two years from now, five years from now after graduating.”
Jobs and wage data will be key in helping determine which programs to focus on, Edwards said, so he can ensure “whatever programs that we highlight centers on what [the] emerging needs are going to look like.”
He noted diesel automotive, health care and certified nursing assistant training and commercial drivers license training as areas of growing need, and added that human services programs are also needed in Maine to address mental health care gaps.
Maine’s free community college program, which started in 2022 for students who graduated high school during the COVID-19 pandemic, is “one of the tools in our arsenal” to strengthen EMCC by recruiting and maintaining new students, Edwards said.
“Considering that it’s not available in all 50 states, it puts Maine ahead,” he said.
Maine is one of several states, including Massachusetts, that have moved to cover community college tuition in the wake of the pandemic, which coincided with steep declines in enrollment nationwide.
Gov. Janet Mills signed next year’s supplemental budget, which made the free community college program permanent, earlier this month at EMCC. More than 23,000 Maine high school graduates have taken advantage of the program so far, according to Mills’ office.
Edwards visited Bangor for the first time when he interviewed for the job and said he’s excited to get involved with the local community and try some new outdoor hobbies.
He has a doctorate in higher education leadership from Indiana State University, a master’s in business administration from Indiana Wesleyan University and a bachelor’s degree in accounting and finance from Indiana University and Purdue University at Indianapolis.
Former college president Elizabeth Russell died last year shortly after retirement, and Janet Sortor, the community college system’s chief academic affairs officer, filled the role in the interim.
Edwards said he’s excited to maintain EMCC’s strong reputation and contribute to the state more broadly.
“My goal is to provide the best environment for them and for our faculty and our staff and our community and to ensure that Eastern Maine stays a centerpiece of that economic growth that we have here,” he said.
