HOULTON, Maine — Officials with the RSU 29/SAD 70 Adult Education welcomed a new director Friday, July 1, 2016 as Joe Fagnant took over the program.
Fagnant succeeds Otis Smith, who retired from the position of director of adult and community education on June 30.
“I appreciate the warm welcome and all the time that Otis, Assistant Director Bernadette Farrar, and Administrative Assistant Melody Gonya have given me in my first days of meetings with them,” Fagnant said. “There was already a great team in place with hard working individuals and I look forward to joining them in the efforts to bring an outstanding adult and community education system to our region.”
Fagnant has been in education for 23 years, teaching various award-winning musical ensembles at Houlton High School from 1993-2013, and then at Sandwich High School on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Upon returning to Maine, he has been the Jobs for Maine’s Graduates (JMG) teacher at Hodgdon High School for the past two years (2014-16).
Besides teaching JMG, he is the Gear Up coordinator for MSAD 70 and has been involved in district committees looking at new initiatives. While employed at RSU 29 he worked on various leadership teams and was the music department chairperson. He also served as president of various organization including the Houlton Community Arts Center Council, RSU 29 Educators Association, and Northern Maine Music Educators Association. He has a bachelor’s degree in music education from the University of Maine, and a master’s degree in arts and letters from Southern Oregon University. He is completing the first leg of his certificate in administration program from the University of Maine Farmington this summer.
Fagnant will be housed in the Houlton Higher Education Center and will also be working for Northern Maine Community College. It will be a new challenge in education, and also the first step away from the classroom into administration.
“I think it is a very exciting opportunity to move into more community-based education,” Fagnant said. “It’s also an opportunity to work on both RSU 29 and SAD 70, reaching out to those in both communities. It’s an excellent opportunity to work with Northern Maine Community College.”
The decision to leave the JMG program was not an easy one for Fagnant.
“The JMG program is an excellent, statewide family organization,” he said. “They work hard for all students, and a lot of positive things are happening at Hodgdon. So it was hard to leave a job that is certainly growing.”
The call to work in an administrative capacity is something that intrigued Fagnant.
“It is hard to leave the classroom, but this is something I have been looking at for a long time,” he said. “It’s a chance to be an educational leader in a different capacity.”
Awards and recognition for Fagnant include 2008 Maine Teacher of the Year regional finalist, 2012 Paul Harris Fellow from Rotary International, and the 2016 UNUM/Portland Sea Dogs Starting Nine Teacher Hall of Fame.
He lives in Houlton with his wife Heather who teaches social studies and English at Houlton High School. He has two daughters; Alison, 5, and Hannah, soon to be 2. They all enjoy spending time at East Grand Lake and visiting family in Rhode Island.
