FARMINGTON – Tuesday isn’t just the first day of class at the University of Maine at Farmington for the school’s incoming freshman class.

It’s also the first day for 22 new faculty members.

Along with the college’s usual array of new hires due to faculty turnover and an exchange program with teachers in Russia and China, a new credit system led UMF officials to create 10 additional positions this year.

UMF switches over to a four-credit system this fall, which means that instead of taking five classes per semester, students are expected to take four, Provost Allen Berger said Thursday.

“It’s a curriculum designed to focus more on depth rather than breadth,” Berger said, “to raise academic expectations, engage students in deeper learning, and give them more opportunities for undergraduate research.”

The University of Maine system helped the college pay for the additional faculty members, Berger said.

“They are an incredibly impressive bunch,” he said, of the new faculty. He added many of them came to UMF from higher-paying jobs. It was the atmosphere at the school, and the blend of a residential liberal arts education and public school.

That mix brought assistant professor of early childhood education Beth Hatcher to UMF all the way from Texas.

“I was really looking for a high-quality early childhood program with small class sizes,” she said. “And I was just so impressed with the commitment to the students’ learning and the relationship between the professors and the students.”