UMF’s new president begins her tenure: ‘I can’t wait for the students to come back’

FARMINGTON – While pulling weeds from a garden bed on campus, the University of Maine at Farmington’s new president, Kate Foster, looked up and grinned.

“This is going to make a difference,” she said as she reached for another patch of overly-invasive crab grass. Foster, along with nearly two dozen more UMF staff members fanned out across the campus today armed with garden implements to weed, plant flowers and mulch as part of the annual Campus Clean-up Day. Held for several years, the event is coordinated by the UMF Wellness group, UMF Fitness Center, facilities management and UMF’s food service Aramark, which is tasked with providing a free barbecue lunch for all of the hungry gardeners.

Since arriving on June 29, Foster has been staying in Purington Hall, one of the residence halls on campus, as the president’s house gets its update to conform with the American with Disabilities Act. Once ready and she has settled into her new home, it is her intent to open the house up for public reception events.

In the meantime, Foster is staying in a dorm room as any UMF student does during the school year. Currently, she is sharing the residence hall with this summer’s crop of Upward Bound students and nearby, the students attending the Maine Jazz Camp who stay and play on campus.

“I’m thrilled to be there,” Foster said of dorm life. “It gives me some closeness to the students and their enthusiasm. I’m reminded every day of why I’m doing this.”

The UB students got together and welcomed the new president by hanging up a giant map of Maine that they had inscribed with important tips for how to live in Maine. Included were to always go to the Reny’s Department Store first, how-to’s for bug spray application and “to buy boots, the higher the better.” Another tip she wasn’t so sure about was that adult deers are, in fact, moose.

She laughed and said the map was “brilliant, actually” as a welcome gift for her. Since her arrival, she has received many welcoming gifts as the community introduces her to all Franklin County offers. She’s been on a daylong tour with Alison Hagerstrom, executive director of the Greater Franklin Development Corporation.

“It was fantastic,” Foster said, of her travels to Carrabassett Valley, Rangeley, Strong, Phillips, Jay and Livermore Falls. UMF’s Board of Visitors, local community members who serve in an advisory capacity and with fund raising activities for the university, have kept her busy. She’s attended the Kingfield POPS concert, along with other seasonal events such as the Fourth of July parade in Farmington and has been meeting with business, university and community leaders, both here and in Bangor, the University of Maine System’s home base.

As a geographer, “I’m a student of place,” she said, “of town and region.” Her research, for the time being anyway, is of the self-experience variety.

She has come to live in small-town Maine after 19 years in Buffalo, N.Y. and more recently a one-year stint in Washington, D.C. as a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution where she researched the governance of cross-state regions.

While at the University at Buffalo, she served as director of the UB Regional Institute, a research and policy center. She also served a dual role as director of research at UB and associate professor in urban and regional planning at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Of her Maine experience so far, “There is an extraordinary sense of community, a love of place. People love the place they live in here,” Foster said. “There’s a loyalty and affection for this place.”

She noted that Farmington doesn’t come across as a small town. “It plays like a bigger town,” she said, with its cultural events, County Seat and has a busy downtown. Tonight, for example, she said she can go to a free Jazz concert, courtesy of the Maine Jazz Camp faculty, at the Emery Community Arts Center. Or she may attend a reading at the Longfellow Writers Camp held at UMF or attend a screening event at the Maine International Film Festival in Waterville.

“It’s not the stereotype that there’s nothing to do in a small town. There’s always something happening here,” she said, adding that she’s grateful that she’s getting her introduction to the community now before the students arrive come September.

“I can’t wait for the students to come back,” she said before going back to weeding the bed.