The university was founded as the Madawaska Training School in 1878. Nowadays, UMFK pursues a three-part mission: 
- To study and preserve Maine's beautiful forests and wilderness
- To focus on the needs of rural communities in America
- To celebrate and explore this region's unique Franco/Acadian heritage

Distance Education
At the UMFK, Distance education helps students realize main educational purposes. In fact, students may take a few online courses to improve the job skills, or combine on campus courses with a variety of distance education options that better fit into their schedule, to earn a specific degree in the university. 
Distance education at UMFK collaborates with the University College and the University of Maine System Network. These universities provide various services and course delivery infrastructure support, including UMFK distance education courses.

Different courses can be taken anywhere in the world over the Internet, in the comfort of a student's home, while other courses can be taken via interactive television , in conjunction with telephone conferencing, or through compressed video at conveniently located centers throughout the state of Maine. 

Student Affairs Department
The Student Affairs Department at UMFK, through the provision of services and multi-faceted programming serves to provide a diverse living and learning community for all students at university.

1)Diversity Programming, Student Activities, International Performer Series, Student Senate, and student organizations often collaborate to sponsor campus-wide and community events that focus participants on the diversity of our country and of our world.
2) Residential Life staff at UMFK enhances the heterogeneous atmosphere of the two campus residence halls by paying close attention to diversity in room assignments, staff hiring, and the co-educational placement of students.
3) The Student Activities program at UMFK takes into account the fact that our student body is representative of different backgrounds and has varied ideas and interests.
4)The varied backgrounds of the Residential Life staff foster an interesting blend of dorm activities and events.
5) Residential Life staff responds quickly and efficiently to incidents of bias and hate and use these incidents as learning tools to enhance the education of its residence.