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College of the Atlantic begins its 37th year of classes on Sept. 10 with a splash. Not long after the close of the 1 p.m. convocation, a good percentage of the college community will jump into frigid Frenchman Bay and begin swimming to the nearest island-and back-for the college's annual Bar Island swim.
 The 2008-2009 school year opening ceremonies feature COA President David Hales and Greg Stone, a 1982 COA alumnus and the New England Aquarium's Vice President for Global Marine Programs. Stone, who received the National Geographic Adventure Magazine's "Adventurer of the Year" award, was instrumental in creating the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, the word's third largest marine wildlife sanctuary. Says Stone, who holds a PhD in marine science from the University of the South Pacific, "COA gave me what I consider a graduate school atmosphere as an undergraduate, working closely with faculty," especially former COA President Steven Katona. His work can be seen in the September issue of Smithsonian Magazine, and at the back of the COA Magazine: coa.edu/assets/coa_magazine/COAMagazine_winter07.pdf
This year, for the first time in the college's history, there will be housing on campus for about half of the
 student body, thanks to the recently opened Kathryn W. Davis Student Residence Village. Within a few weeks, the college's second major building project, Deering Common Campus Center will open, ushering in a new campus era, with cappuccino and a community lounge. Heated by wood pellets, these new buildings continue COA's legacy of sustainability, the only college in the United States to be net-zero for carbon emissions.
Of the 318 undergraduates now at COA, 14 percent, or 46 students, hail from 32 nations besides the United States; seventeen percent come from Maine and 15 percent from the Mid-Atlantic States.
Included in this year's first-year class are students who have assisted Kenyan women and children afflicted with HIV, volunteered at a wildlife rehabilitation center, worked with a fish hatchery to help restore Atlantic salmon, served as a youth interpreter at a West Coast aquarium, converted a high school drainage ditch to a native plant meadow, educated others about skates and rays, taught ecology to children in rural Mexico, launched a high school environmental club and designed activities at a community center for aboriginal children on Melville Island, Australia. Additionally, COA welcomes artists, craftspeople, dancers, musicians, actors, photographers, poets, National Honor Society members, pygmy goat farmers, writers, mountain bikers, sushi chefs, organic farmers, journalists, student council presidents, Model UN delegates, wilderness survivalists, athletes and naturalists.
Thirty-six years ago this month, 32 students arrived for COA's first term. Then, as now, COA offered one undergraduate degree, in human ecology, integrating knowledge from all academic disciplines and personal experience to investigate and improve the relationships between humans and our social and natural communities. The college was founded on the premise that education should go beyond understanding the world as it is, to enabling students to actively participate in shaping its future. Its distinctive interdisciplinary approach develops the kinds of creative thinkers and doers who are able to lead all sectors of society to promote sustainable ecosystems while meeting compelling and growing human needs.
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