Education at College of the Atlantic actively acknowledges and draws on the traditional liberal arts curricula. However, COA builds on this tradition through human ecology that explicitly integrates the arts, sciences, and humanities with lived experience, and gives students considerable latitude in designing their own academic program. The result is a socially and environmentally conscious alternative form of education. Ultimately, the goal of an education in human ecology is not to reproduce existing knowledge, but to generate new knowledge, ideas, and approaches that will help solve the environmental and social problems facing the world.