Allyson Hughes Handley, president of the University of Maine at Augusta, has announced that she is leaving her post in September to become the inaugural executive director of the Sanford Education Center at National University in San Diego. President Hughes Handley, who has led the University of Maine at Augusta for six and a half years, said she was leaving for the opportunity to have “a national impact on K-12 education” and to be closer to her children and grandchildren, all of whom live in California.
Dr. Hughes Handley served as vice president and dean at National University in the 1990s. Afterwards, she was president of Cogswell College in California and Midway College in Kentucky.
Dr. Hughes Handley is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario. She holds a master’s degree and an educational doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.