Starting this fall, a succession of promising Maine students will benefit from a new scholarship program named for the founding president of both the College of the Atlantic and the Maine Community Foundation.

Friends of Ed Kaelber gathered Thursday afternoon at the college’s Gates Center to pay their respects to Mr. Kaelber and hear details of the Edward G. Kaelber Scholarship for Maine Students of Outstanding Promise.

Each year, one incoming freshman student at the College of the Atlantic “who has demonstrated a high degree of achievement in academic and community work” will be selected for support up to $7,500. “Graduated support” is planned for each scholarship winner through his or her four years of study.

A partnership of the college and the foundation is endowing the new scholarship to “provide opportunities for Maine students who possess the potential for the kind of bold commitment and leadership Ed Kaelber personifies and who will use their skills and talents to bring about change in their communities in equally significant ways.”

The Community Foundation will hold and manage the scholarship fund. The initial goal is $1 million, and additional gifts and grants are expected.

Mr. Kaelber, was born in Germantown, Pa., and grew up on Long Island. He graduated from Harvard and attended Harvard Business School.

He first visited Maine in the early 1950s, when he was running a lumber business in New York. He came to Maine to buy lumber and liked what he saw. Many years later, after serving as associate dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, he was intrigued by plans to create a new college in Bar Harbor. He helped develop the College of the Atlantic and its core course of “human ecology” and became its first president.

He was an avid sailor, cruising the Maine coast on his original Friendship sloop, the “Amos Swan” and helped Ralph Stanley, the Southwest Harbor builder of wooden boats, organize his boatyard company.

At the age of 83, what does he do to occupy himself these days? He says, “Nothing but playing, reading, gossiping, arguing and entertaining” with his wife, Ann Sewall, at their home in Bar Harbor.

But he is always ready to take on short-term projects, and the college and the foundation both continue to make use of his wisdom and skills.