Photo / Courtesy Maine Maritime Academy
Craig Johnson
March 20, 2025
Maine Maritime Academy selects president with background in private industry
The new president of Maine Maritime Academy has been serving in the post temporarily since last June.
Craig Johnson, who has been the academy's COO since August 2022, was named by the board of trustees as the academy’s 16th president following a national search that launched last fall. The appointment is effective immediately.
Johnson, a 1991 alumnus, succeeds Jerry Paul, who resigned last summer, citing extenuating family circumstances.
His appointment comes at a critical time in the maritime industry. The U.S. is experiencing its largest shortage of licensed mariners since World War II, according to a separate news release.
The maritime industry “is on the precipice of incredible growth,” said Johnson, who described the academy as creating a roadmap to ensure its strength and sustainability in the industry.
Johnson is orchestrating and overseeing the largest capital improvement projects in the school’s history, with the expansion and renovation of its waterfront and updates to Curtis Hall, the state’s largest campus residential structure.
This fall the academy is scheduled to receive the $300 million training vessel State of Maine, a national security multi-mission vessel commissioned and owned by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s marine division. The vessel is the third of its kind to be issued to a state maritime academy.
Background in private industry
Johnson has three decades of private industry experience with companies such Seacor Holdings, a maritime assets company headquartered in Florida, and XL North, a specialty chemical company in Massachusetts. He was a founding partner in Flagship Management, an international maritime search and consulting firm in Florida.
As COO and interim president at the Maine Maritime Academy, he initiated workforce development initiatives with Bath Iron Works and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
Presidential search
Maine Maritime Academy's search for a president netted 90 applicants from around the world.
The search, announced by the board last July and launched in full in September, was aided by search firm RPA Inc. and a search committee that included trustees, faculty, staff, alumni and students.
Johnson was “a standout candidate due to his deep maritime industry knowledge, his strategic planning work, reputation within the industry and feedback among those who know and work with him daily,” Wayne Norton, the board’s chair, wrote in a letter to alumni. “He has spent more than three decades dedicated to building maritime industry relationships and understands that the industry is at a pivotal moment."
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