Before the University of Maine at Augusta’s creation 60 years ago, there was no institution of higher education in the Augusta area. And no such thing as remote learning, although UMA would end up playing a huge role spearheading the development of online learning that is so prevalent in today’s world.

There was nowhere to go, said attorney Roger Katz, a member of the University of Maine System board of trustees, for a single mother hoping to build a better life for herself and her children, here.

Nowhere to go for a veteran returning from the war in Vietnam to civilian life who wanted to take advantage of the GI bill, to better their life here.

Nowhere to go for a Cony kid, who couldn’t even afford the minimal tuition at the University of Maine, to further their education here.

Thanks in large part to community advocates who saw the need for higher education in Augusta — Katz’s father Bennett Katz among them — that changed in 1965, when UMA opened, starting out with classes in borrowed classroom space at Cony High School and in an old fire station.

“Things have certainly changed, but the mission has stayed the same, to serve kids who might not have otherwise gone on to college,” Roger Katz said from the center of the UMA campus Friday where an anniversary celebration was held. He stood on land that he said was a cow pasture before a bond package was authorized to build UMA on the site.

“To give that opportunity to that single mom who is willing to juggle family, and a job, and education. To provide an opportunity to that veteran who is returning again to civilian life. And increasingly to the 45-year-old who may have taken some classes years ago and just never really had the impetus to go back.”

Randy Liberty, commissioner of the state Department of Corrections and a member of the UMA Board of Visitors, said UMA had a transformative impact on his life and that of his family. The university continues to help transform the lives of prisoners of Maine’s correctional system who take part in and graduate from UMA programs while behind bars.

Liberty’s father earned his GED while behind bars in state prison in Thomaston. He served in Korea at 21 before returning to Maine and taking part-time jobs as a police officer and corrections officer. He used funding help from the GI bill to get an associate’s degree in criminal justice and a bachelor’s degree in public administration at UMA.

“It has transformed my family significantly,” Liberty told a couple hundred people who attended the celebration. “Now, the expectation is not if you go to college, it’s when you go to college. My wife graduated from UMA, and my son did, and it’s made all the difference in our lives. And strengthened communities, and industries and professions throughout the state of Maine.”

Liberty, a former sheriff in Kennebec County and former warden of the Maine State Prison, said that for prisoners who receive at least an associate’s degree from UMA at the Maine State Prison, the likelihood of them returning to prison is .05%, compared to a recidivism rate of 65% nationally.

In 1989, UMA was a pioneer — before the internet as we know it today existed — in online learning with its then-revolutionary ITV system. With the system, professors could teach courses that would be broadcast to remote learning sites. Compared to today’s online interactions, the system was clunky, but the university was a leader in developing the technology.

University of Maine System Chancellor Dannell Malloy said UMA essentially developed the system that now allows widespread online learning.

Friday, he thanked faculty and students past and present for building the institution and said it is a miracle what they’ve accomplished.

“We are preparing people for lifelong learning, for making a difference, for supporting their community, for supporting their family, for educating all of us on an ongoing basis,” Malloy said.

“This really is an institution that has done that since its inception, and obviously more recent growth is very impressive into different fields that perhaps no one would have thought we would be teaching or having programs on 60 years ago.”

Two examples of that type of relatively new programming flew over the UMA green as the anniversary ceremony began — two airplanes used in the univiersity’s aviation program flew over the site, drawing applause from attendees on the ground below.