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 Sunday, November 4, 2007 ECO-EDUCATION EXPLORING THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN HUMANITY AND ITS WORLD. and please turn down the lights. By TAMAR LEWIN Education Reporter As the sun goes down over the College of the Atlantic, the cafeteria gets dimmer and dimmer. But only when it is nearly impossible to see the food does a student, finally, get up and turn on the lights - prompting a collective groan at this wanton use of energy. Another adjusts the lights, bringing them down a notch. At the College of the Atlantic, in Bar Harbor, Me., it's all about the environment. The 325 students share the same major, human ecology, and in the one required course, first-year students grapple with what that means.
Read more.  December 11, 2007 EARNING A DEGREE IN GREEN
College of the Atlantic defines "eco" in the truest sense of the word. By KIERA BUTLER Until recently, almost no one had heard of a tiny school called the College of the Atlantic. Located in Bar Harbor, a small town on Mt. Desert Island, which is about halfway up Maine's coast, the campus is far away from just about everything. But this past year, a flood of media attention washed away its cozy anonymity. It was the subject of a New York Times feature, received praise from Hillary Clinton and was listed by the environmental news website Grist as the greenest university. The school, with only 35 full-time faculty members and fewer than 300 students, has been held up as the national model for environmentally-committed institutions of higher education. It is hard to imagine a more perfect outdoor classroom than Acadia National Park, which is just steps away from the campus gates. The college owns an organic farm, where students learn about sustainable, local agriculture - while they harvest fresh vegetables for the dining hall. In May 2007, COA became completely carbon neutral, meaning that the college will, as COA's president David Hales put it, "stop the emission of greenhouse gases in an amount equal to or exceeding the emissions that we create." And the emissions they take into consideration are not just those from heating buildings or running computers; they also consider all travel to and from campus, including faculty commuting and parents' and prospective students' visits. By 2015, the college will meet 100 percent of its energy needs through renewable sources.
Read more: http://www.plentymag.com/features/2007/12/college_of_the_atlantic.php SUSTAINABILITY AT COA  July 27, 2008 The Campus: Green, Greener, Greenest By KATE ZERNIKE HIGHER education can't resist a ranking: best college, best cafeteria, biggest endowment, biggest party school. It says something about what's important on campus, then, that when the Princeton Review releases its annual guide to colleges this week, it will include a new metric: a "green rating," giving points for things like "environmentally preferable food," power from renewable sources and energy-efficient buildings. Green is good for the planet, but also for a college's public image. In a Princeton Review survey this year of 10,300 college applicants, 63 percent said that a college's commitment to the environment could affect their decision to go there. And where there are application decisions to be made, there are rankings. The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, with more than 660 members, is developing a rating for environmental friendliness; at least six other organizations rated campus greenness last year, according to the group. There are lists from Forbes, Grist and Sierra magazines, and an annual report card from the Sustainable Endowments Institute, a research organization that assesses the greenness of an institution's investment portfolio. And the Princeton Review will give its top marks to - ta-da! - Arizona State, Bates, Binghamton University, the College of the Atlantic, Harvard, Emory, Georgia Institute of Technology, Yale and the Universities of New Hampshire, Oregon and Washington. Campuses across the country are racing to be the greenest of them all. They are setting dates in the not too distant future for achieving carbon neutrality (the College of the Atlantic, an eco-college in Maine, already claims that distinction, as does Middlebury College's Snow Bowl ski area). They are hiring sustainability coordinators (the association's job board used to get one posting a month; now it often has five a week). And they are competing with one another in buying green power (in an Environmental Protection Agency contest among athletic conferences, the Ivies triumphed, with a combined 221.6 million kilowatt hours for the quarter ending in April). read more...  May 2, 2008 AMERICA'S GREENEST COLLEGES By BRIAN WINGFIELD Long a hotbed of environmental activism, America's campuses are blooming green. Schools are committing to reducing their carbon dioxide emissions, they're funneling endowment money into renewable-energy investment funds, and students--the engine behind much of this growth--are pushing for more. "This will be the largest issue that my generation ever faces, and I think more and more students are recognizing that," says Nick Devonshire, who is finishing his freshman year at Dartmouth College. A few years ago, Devonshire wrote a proposal convincing his high school to switch its mowers and tractors to biodiesel fuel. At Dartmouth, he's helped create a project that allows students to track their energy use in some dormitories. What's the greenest college in the land? Maine's College of the Atlantic, where students can major only in human ecology, could make a strong case. So could Harvard, with its eight-year-old "Green Campus Initiative," with 25 full-time professionals and a $12 million fund, from which university departments can borrow to make "sustainable" investments that provide minimal harm to the environment. Then there's the University of Pennsylvania, which purchases more green power than any other U.S. college or university. www.forbes.com/home/2008/05/02/college-harvard-uvm-biz-energy-cx_bw_0502greenu.html  July 29, 2008 Not to be out-greened: Colleges grow more Earth-conscious to lure students By Tracy Jan Harvard pledged this month to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2016. The University of New Hampshire became the first school in the nation this year to use landfill methane gas as its prime energy source. And the College of the Atlantic in Maine plans to open green dormitories with composting toilets in August. Colleges across the country are rolling out a host of environmentally friendly initiatives, expanding beyond campus recycling and energy efficient buildings to hire sustainability officers to oversee all environmental programs. The push coincides with the rise of "green college" rankings and as the schools use their new policies and practices as a recruiting tool for students who came of age during the release of "An Inconvenient Truth," former vice president Al Gore's popular documentary about global warming. read more and read the Boston Globe's blog on this subject  Now, 'green' report cards for U.S. colleges New rating systems help students choose environmentally friendly colleges. By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo July 8, 2008 edition Students looking to narrow their college choices will soon have something new to consider alongside academics and campus life: A "Green Rating" makes its debut this summer in several of The Princeton Review's popular college guides. Six-hundred college profiles will include a score reflecting factors such as building and transportation policies, food sources, recycling, and availability of environmental courses. In response to students' growing appetite for all things environmentally friendly, several groups have begun tracking schools' commitment to going green. But such ratings might be productive only to the degree that they spur thoughtful initiatives, pushing schools to collaborate as much as compete, experts say. If it veers toward "keeping up with the Joneses," some observers caution, it might only increase college costs at a time when affordability is a major concern. "We're definitely seeing schools that look at sustainability as a strategic priority and a way of distinguishing themselves, and there are many schools that are striving to be ... the 'greenest' campus," says Julian Dautremont-Smith, associate director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) in Lexington, Ky., which has been piloting a rating system in which schools can participate. . . . . . . Six out of 10 college applicants and parents say the environmental factor would affect their decision to apply to or attend a school, according to a Princeton Review survey this year. The idea of ranking something as broad as environmentalism gives pause even to some considered leaders on this front. "It's easy to fall into that trap of 'mine is greener than yours,' but it is fundamentally inconsistent with the reasons why colleges should be becoming more sustainable.... We're all part of one system," says David Hales, president of College of the Atlantic, in Bar Harbor, Maine. A small campus focused on human ecology, it was the first to become carbon neutral. The environmental news website Grist ranked it top among 15 green colleges and universities last year. Mr. Hales applauds efforts to make transparent what colleges are doing environmentally, including their mistakes, so others can learn from them. But rather than compete, "the key is to do what you can in a way that makes sense for your own institution," he says. read more  May 23, 2008 HEAVEN SUSTAIN US: ENVIRONMENTALISTS HAVE TAKEN OVER THE DORMS By NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY On Monday the trustees of the University of Delaware voted to approve a new yearlong residence life program. Undergraduates will be asked, in a reprise of "show and tell," to bring in one of their "favorite material objects" and explain why it is important to them. They will be instructed to discuss intrusive questions like "How do you define love?" and "Who are you voting for" with their dorm-mates. Finally, this extracurricular curriculum will ask students to "pick a metaphor that illustrates their view of sustainability." If you have spent any time on a college campus recently, you will realize that "sustainability" is the academy's favorite new buzzword. There's the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE); a Sustainable Endowments Institute that publishes a College Sustainability Report Card; an Ivy Plus Sustainability Working Group, and another one for colleges in the Northeast. There are sustainability offices and officers at dozens of schools nationwide.. . . If a school's efforts don't quite measure up, administrations can buy carbon offsets to help. And since academics like to travel to conferences almost as much as Al Gore does, Mr. Bodner and his colleagues have recommended such offsets to balance out all the pollution professors create with airplane fuel. So far the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, is the only school to have achieved "carbon neutrality," buying $25,000 of these indulgences. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121150025195715831.html?mod=googlenews_wsj  March/April 2008 CLEANER, GREENER U.
Students are driving the campus climate movement, fighting Big Coal and putting legislators on notice By BRITA BELLl
. . . A similarly focused school, Maine's College of the Atlantic, has achieved near perfection in its student-led green pursuits, eliminating or offsetting all its greenhouse gas emissions, supporting on-campus watershed preservation and following the highest standards of green building in all new campus structures. Read more...  Tuesday, 11 March 2008 WIREC 2008 Ministerial Bulletin STAKEHOLDER SESSION:
THE ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS OF RENEWABLE ENERGY: David Hales, President, College of the Atlantic, chaired the afternoon stakeholder session, which focused on barriers and solutions to renewable energy scale up. Dieter Salomon, Lord Mayor, Freiburg, Germany, and ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability) Executive Committee Member, described the barriers to effective involvement of local governments, highlighting a lack of expertise and difficulties affecting centralized energy generation. March 1, 2008 MADE TO HELP Best of 2007
BEST COLLEGE EFFORT:College of the AtlanticThe College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine was the first college to pledge to become carbon neutral in 2006. The small college of just 300 students has just one major: human ecology, or the "study of our relationship with our environment." This tiny college started quite a trend, now more than 459 other US colleges and Universities have signed the American Presidents Climate Commitment committing their campus to go climate neutral. Universities are like small cities and are a glowing example as to what can be done across the country! Read more...  TRUE GREEN?: The magazine Plenty features a highly favorable (some might say fawning) article about the unconventional atmosphere and education offered at the College of the Atlantic, one of the greenest campuses in the country. One should note the interaction between the curriculum, student life, and the green facilities, as outlined in the article. When it comes to sustainability, the College of the Atlantic seems to be walking while others are merely talking. The college was featured in a recent Chronicle article about the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment. Click here for article  Thursday, February 21, 2008 COA, CHAMBER GIVE GREEN LIGHT TO BULB SWAP By BILL TROTTER BAR HARBOR - Local business and college officials are hoping that an agreement signed Wednesday will lead to more "green" lights in town. Some may complain about seasonal traffic congestion on Mount Desert Island, but Wednesday's agreement has nothing to do with cars, unless the traffic issue is viewed through the lens of pollution and carbon footprints. The pact deals with the environmental issue of electricity generation and usage. College of the Atlantic, a small school known for its environmental studies and policies, and the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce signed an agreement Wednesday by which COA will give Chamber businesses one compact fluorescent light bulb, or CFL, for every incandescent bulb that the business trades in, up to a maximum of 25. The idea is to decrease the amount of electricity used in Bar Harbor by encouraging local businesses to use the energy-saving bulbs in their fixtures. Read more . . .
 December 19, 2007 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC IS "NET-ZERO" By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS BAR HARBOR - College of the Atlantic has become the nation's first "net-zero" campus for carbon emissions, school officials said Wednesday. The college said it has offset its entire emissions output of 2,488 tons over the past 15 months by investing in a greenhouse gas reduction project in Oregon.
Read more . . .  November 13, 2007 HILLARY CLINTON PRAISES COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC'S NET-ZERO COMMITMENT BAR HARBOR, ME - College of the Atlantic's commitment to reduce energy use on campus and become the nation's first net-zero campus for carbon emissions came to the attention of Sen. Hillary Clinton Thursday. In a press release issued by the senator as part of her primary campaign, Clinton called upon colleges and K-12 schools to reduce emissions on campus and in communities.
"In 2006, the College of the Atlantic in Maine became the first to vow to become a zero-emissions school. Since then 270 more have taken the same pledge," said Sen. Clinton. Continues the release, "Hillary wants to harness the excitement, energy, and activism of young people by calling on them to lead the way for our larger communities." Read more . . . Tuesday, January 1, 2008 Op Ed What Bangor could be in 2015 By ANTHONY ANDERSON Editor's note: What follows is the writer's imagined take on what Penobscot River and Bay area residents will be reflecting on as 2015 dawns. As we make ready to welcome new year 2015 to the Bangor Historic River Port, it is both auspicious and appropriate to take a moment to look back and to reflect on our good fortune and how it came to pass. After 130 years of steady decline, just how did Bangor re-emerge as a prosperous leading economic power in the East? . . . The University of Maine campus began offering the nation's first advanced programs and degrees in new energy technologies. It became a popular study concentration with American and foreign students. As emerging leaders in new energy technologies, UMaine and College of the Atlantic now stand at the forefront in world studies and reputation. Read more... Recent articles about COA faculty and staff  Thursday, May 29, 2008 FOOD SUPPLY/OCEAN FEATURES DETERMINE WHERE WHALES CONGREGATE By STEPHEN RAPPAPORT BLUE HILL - A famous crook once said he liked to rob banks because that's where the money was. According to Sean Todd, large whales like to hang out in the Gulf of Maine because that's where the banks are, and the banks are where the food is. The director of Allied Whale at College of the Atlantic, Todd told an audience at the Marine Environmental Research Institute last Thursday that the Gulf of Maine provides a rich opportunity to observe large whales because it provides a rich source of the food the giant mammals favor. The reasons are complex, but have much to do with the convoluted shape of the gulf's sea floor and the flow of ocean currents through it. http://ellsworthmaine.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14766&Itemid=85  BANGOR, Maine - Adam Goode surprised a lot of people by winning the House District 15 Democratic primary on Tuesday. It wasn't simply that he defeated opponent Gerry Palmer, a well-known name in Bangor Democratic politics, that caused political observers to sit up and take notice. It was the wide margin of his victory that opened eyes. . . In the House District 32 race to represent the towns on Mount Desert Island, Elspeth "Elsie" Flemings, a 25-year-old College of the Atlantic graduate, defeated Gary Friedmann, 52, a prominent MDI businessman, by a 61-39 ratio. "What I heard in my campaigning was that people were excited not just about my youth but my potential," Flemings said Wednesday. "People are always looking for new voices." http://bangornews.com/news/t/city.aspx?a=165553
A Voice for Downeast Maine by CHERYL DAIGLE BAR HARBOR, MAINE-With his ever-present cap shading his eyes, Howdy Houghton inserts his spirited voice where and when he feels it needs to be heard. "Our food system is paramount to everything. Tell me one person that doesn't eat!" he exclaimed at a public scoping session for the Penobscot River Restoration Project. Standing beside environmental and salmon advocates, he stressed the importance of restoring river herring to the Gulf of Maine. Most nights, you can find Howdy closing up buildings at the College of the Atlantic as night watchman; during the day he works part-time keeping the facilities at Maine Sea Coast Mission in order. But he also remains true to his past as a commercial fisherman. While fishing for groundfish out of Bar Harbor in the 1970s and '80s, most of his catch was cut and sold locally, as were his handpicked mussels in the '90s. It's this experience and his desire to connect people and the sea that strengthen his efforts to be a voice for fishermen and sustainable communities in Downeast Maine. http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/2971/
WHEN THE PHONE RANG at College of the Atlantic's Allied Whale
research and rescue operation in late July, senior researcher Sean Todd
sprang into action. An endangered right whale had been found dead in
the Bay of Fundy. The young female had died a week earlier, and time
was of the essence for scientists to dissect the body and collect
samples for further study before the scorching heat hastened
decomposition. Todd, a COA professor who also heads Allied Whale,
mobilized his team of students and volunteers, packed up an emergency
response vehicle and drove two-and-one-half hours north from Bar
Harbor, Maine, to Campobello Island in New Brunswick, where the whale
had been brought ashore. There, they assisted Canadian authorities as
they attempted to discern the animal's cause of death. http://www.gulfofmaine.org/times/fall2006/qanda.html
The other side of the coin is that most of what we learn about leadership and management is on the job. Our lessons come from a variety of sources. Sometimes we receive guidance directly from a predecessor or caring mentor. Other times it comes from books, colleagues, or family members. Occasionally it is our mistakes and late-night meditations on them that teach us best. After 20 years as chief academic officer of a small college, I have just returned to full-time teaching. My decision generated some anxiety and doubts: Would teaching still be fun? Was I still good at it? Should I change institutions? I chose to stay where I am, and I feel that was the right choice. My academic life started in 1972 on a research professor's track at a large midwestern university. Then, in the mid-1970s, I discovered a newly founded, interdisciplinary college on the Maine coast -- College of the Atlantic. When I joined the faculty of this remarkable little place, I had no inclinations toward administration. But like many academic administrators, I was drawn into it unwittingly -- with little forethought and about the same measure of preparation. Now, 20-some years later, it is a treat to reflect on some of my own touchstones, acknowledge their sources, and share them with others. Read more: http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i44/44b00901.htm
March, 2005 Too bad nobody lives there. Great Duck Island's mesh
network (a research project co-sponsored by the Intel Research
Laboratory at Berkeley and the College of the Atlantic) is designed to
monitor the habitat of the elusive storm petrels that nest on the
island. Researchers believe data culled from the sensors will help them
better protect the endangered seabirds. Recent articles about COA students  May 21, 2008 LONGLEY FILM WILL DOCUMENT LIVES, STRUGGLES OF HOMELESS PROJECT SELECTED FOR DAVIS PROJECTS FOR PEACE AWARD Margaret Longley of San Juan Island, a sophomore at College of the Atlantic, will spend the summer creating a film on the disenfranchisement of the homeless. Her project, titled, "Homelessness and Voting in a Democracy," is funded by the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Projects for Peace Award. These awards came about in 2007, on Davis' 100th birthday, when she committed $1 million to fund 100 grassroots projects by college students to, she said, "bring new thinking to the prospects of peace in the world." Davis repeated her gift for 2008. Longley is a filmmaker who worked in the Iraqi war zone on the Academy Award-nominated film, Iraq in Fragments. http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/sanjuans/jsj/news/19107734.html
Retail giant Wal-Mart has proposed building superstores in several towns along the Route 1 corridor; the Super Wal-Marts would be so vast that they would dwarf other big box stores. Local government officials often welcome the additional tax revenue a Super Wal-Mart might bring, but grassroots planning groups fear the superstore's arrival could spell the end of downtown life. . . . Though a formal plan has not been submitted, a Massachusetts development firm is working on a proposal to build a 500,000-square-foot shopping center in what is now a wooded parcel across from Home Depot. The anchor store for this shopping center would be a 230,000-square-foot retail store large enough to have both Home Depot and the current Wal-Mart inside it. Community planning activists say that store can only be a Super Wal-Mart. "Nothing else in the country fits that footprint," says Daphne Loring, a senior at nearby College of the Atlantic. Loring has become the defacto spokesperson for a new citizen
planning group called Wise Planning for Ellsworth. The group formed
shortly after plans for the shopping center went public. . . .
February 8, 2007 Bar Harbor/San Francisco (PRWeb) February 8, 2007 -- Silicon Valley ecorestoration firm Planktos, Inc. is pleased to announce its co-sponsorship of the 3rd annual Maine Climate Summit Feb 9-11 with the Sierra Student Coalition. The event is being hosted by the SustainUS Maine Geocluster at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine. The Summit will focus on building the Maine youth and student climate movement and feature speakers and workshops on climate science and technologies to combat climate change as well as young people's decision-making and policy-shaping potential on campuses, in their communities, and at state, national, and international levels. This year's keynote speaker will be Alison Drayton, a senior United Nations Development Programme official with broad experience in the climate change arena. Drayton previously distinguished herself on the UN Commission on Sustainable Development and as a negotiator for the United Nations climate treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Convention to Combat Desertification. College of the Atlantic alumna, Julia Clark of Planktos, Inc. will
host a workshop on cutting edge science-intensive climate mitigation
technologies. The session will feature Rob Niven, an expert on carbon
capture and storage in concrete, and Clark's presentation on the
Planktos paradigm, which leverages the formidable CO2 sequestration
potential of restored marine and terrestrial ecosystems to generate
saleable carbon offsets and sustainably fund ongoing rehabilitation of
natural food chains, habitat, and biodiversity. Planktos is launching
large climate forest parks in Europe and plankton restoration projects
in the Pacific this spring. Its multi-beneficial green approach not
only promises broad environmental gains, full scale restoration of
ocean plankton life alone could annually remove 3~4 billion tons of
atmospheric CO2 or approximately half of all manmade emissions today. The timing couldn't be more appropriate, in light of the scientific community's recent warnings regarding global warming and the effect that mankind has on the phenomena. On Feb. 2, U.S. scientist Susan Solomon said, "There can be no question that the increase in greenhouse gases are dominated by human activities," in a report in Paris on the topic. "I think this climate conference will be quite exciting," said
William Broussard, a biology major and nature sound recorder who
studies at both the University of Maine and COA. "Various students,
researchers and community members will get a chance to weigh in and
take part in the most recent happenings and findings surrounding the
climate crisis."
The wait was worth it, he said. "I applied to College of the Atlantic knowing this was exactly what I wanted to do," the computer science student said. "I pushed hard to get that visa. I didn't want to give up until the door was completely closed." Despite the growing difficulty some foreign students have had obtaining visas, the tiny college has had a global impact recently because of its high percentage of foreign students. Of the 270 students enrolled for the upcoming school year,
61, or 22.5 percent, hail from foreign shores. This has earned the
school accolades from the U.S. News & World Report's 2006 Survey of
Best Colleges, where it ranked first among liberal arts colleges for
having the highest percentage of international students.
Among the six is Kathleen Tompkins, a sophomore from Berthoud with a background in science and international issues. "I am looking forward to speaking with diplomats from various countries about what they are doing since to Kyoto Protocol has gone into effect," she says. "I am hoping to gain a better understanding of the policy-making process and how it is that countries are able to come to an agreement on what they need to do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions." This is the first time the nations who ratified the Kyoto protocol have met since the agreements became binding in 2004. Representatives from the parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC, will be discussing the future of international commitments to confront climate change. The conference runs from Nov. 27 through Dec. 9, though the COA students, who will be attending as accredited observers, will be leaving Dec. 3. The six, all members of SustainUS, a youth environmental organization with a chapter at COA, believe they'll have better access to policymakers during the first week. The students, all deeply interested in the environment, are quite excited about the potential this conference presents for hands-on learning about global politics, for making lifelong connections within the environmental movement, and for making a difference. they expect to be talking to delegates and the media about the particular environmental interests of youth.
"It was really scary," he said Tuesday evening at the opening of his sound exhibit at COA's Dorr Museum of Natural History. "I was so surprised by that sound. I recognized it as a beaver, but I couldn't see it. That was a thrill." Lewis recorded that incident, and many others, as part of his senior project, "Sounds of Mount Desert Island." Beginning this summer, she'll paint seabirds, insects, rocks, lichens and more on islands around the globe as a recipient of a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. This fellowship, given to 50 college seniors each year from selected institutions across the United States, offers the graduates $22,000 to travel outside the states on a pursuit of their own design. Drummond's project, a venture called, "Inquiring Eyes: Natural History Artists and Island Exploration," will take her to London, Argentina, Chile, Tahiti, Australia, New Zealand and Sri Lanka to follow the work of the great naturalist illustrators who accompanied early exploratory voyages. Drummond
is from Woodland, Colo. Her senior project is an exhibit in the
college's George B. Dorr Museum of Natural History called, "Parallel
Worlds: Four Seabirds of Great Duck Island." The exhibit combines
blow-ups of her own drawings with her research of four Great Duck
Island seabirds. Glynn
and Hoffmaister joined 11 other delegates from around the country to
attend U.N. meetings, learn about the decision-making process and join
with international youth in pressuring their governments for strong
solutions to water pollution and human sanitation. When the parents of Tawanda Chabikwa gave him his name, they may not have dreamed how far he would carry it. In the Shona tribal language of Zimbabwe where he was born, "Tawanda" means "we are now many." It celebrates the strength and continuity of large families in a country where infant mortality looms and where the AIDS epidemic has orphaned nearly a million children. Tawanda
is 20 years old. He paints. He's a graphic designer. He dances. He has
a marketing plan. He also has a vision. A sophomore at College of the
Atlantic in Bar Harbor, the "many" in his name points not only to
talents he is cultivating and professional skills he is honing, but
also to ways he wants to reach and serve the stranded children of his
country. OLDER SUSTAINABILITY ARTICLES  Tuesday, October 10, 2006 MAINE COLLEGE MAKES GREEN PLEDGE By JULIET EILPERIN Staff Writer The tiny College of the Atlantic in Maine has vowed to offset all of its greenhouse gas emissions, making it the first college in the nation to seek to fully mitigate its impact on global warming. The newly installed president, David F. Hales, said in his inauguration Sunday that the college will either cut the amount of fossil fuels burned in connection with campus activities or invest in emissions-cutting projects elsewhere to compensate. The school, which is in Bar Harbor and has about 300 undergraduates, will also offset emissions generated by student travel to and from campus. Full article here
December 6, 2006 Are you living "carbon neutral" - or better yet, "carbon negative"? Have you gone on a "carbon diet"? Are you shrinking your "carbon footprint" on the earth or aiming for a "net zero" lifestyle?
"Being a big institution may have advantages, but moving quickly to address major social and environmental challenges isn't always one of them," said David Malakoff, who graduated from the college in 1986 and is science correspondent for National Public Radio. "So, we may not have a football team and a marching band, but we'll be the first carbon neutral campus on the planet." Read the entire article at: http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/print/news/2006/10/11/green
This month, U.S. News & World Report releases its annual rankings of colleges. First published in 1983, the guide has become its own mini-event: College presidents, education reporters, alumni, parents, and high school juniors alike all scramble to get their hands on the rankings. Its release is followed by weeks of gloating from the top-ranked schools and grumbling from those schools that dropped a slot (or 14) from the previous year. Inspired by the popularity, other guides - from Princeton Review to Peterson's to Kaplan - have rushed to compete. College rankings are now so influential that universities and higher-education journals hold regular chin-stroking sessions about whether the numbers-game has too much influence over the way schools behave. New York University's Vice President John Beckman sniffed to the Harvard Crimson this spring that the rankings ...are a device to sell magazines that feed on an American fixation with lists, which is precisely what institutions say when they're trying to duck accountability. There's a good reason for the American fixation with rankings - if done correctly, they can help tell us what's working and what's not. Of course universities ought to be judged. The key is judging the right things.http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0509.collegeguide.html
I'm not much one for reunions at my alma mater. But I did have a 25th reunion last month at one of my journalistic alma maters, so to speak, College of the Atlantic, the small, environmentally oriented, alternative liberal arts college located off the coast of Maine. It was one of the colleges I covered during my first tour of duty as a freelance education writer during the late 1970s and early 1980s. . . . My subsequent dispatch about "Earth College," as I good naturedly dubbed the place, reflected my affection for the spunky laboratory school. "To be sure, the college needs a gymnasium and a student center," I reported. "But the College of the Atlantic is alive and well. That in itself is something to celebrate." Privately, I wasn't so optimistic. The future for alternative or experimental colleges, I well knew, was increasingly grim, having recently reported the demise of one of COA's experimental siblings, Eisenhower College, whose lofty minded World Studies program and holistic educational philosophy was not unlike COA's. Hence my delight and surprise, upon recently visiting the college on the Web, to encounter an institution that, at least on the evidence of its kaleidoscopic site, was thriving. But Web sites can be deceiving. It was time to check out College of the Atlantic again. And so, last month, just as I had a quarter of a century before, I set off for the college's rustic, coastal Maine campus, next to Acadia National Park. Once again I found myself auditing classes, hanging out with COA students and faculty in the main dining room, listening to the swooning sea gulls, just as I did long ago. My green reunion. Best reunion I ever had. Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/07/13/sander BAR HARBOR - For Salahaldin Hussein of Palestine, getting accepted to the College of the Atlantic was the easy part. He had graduated from a college preparatory high school for international students in Wales and was ready to come to Maine when he hit a roadblock. "I had visa troubles," the senior, 21, said Tuesday. "It took me seven months to get in [the United States]." The wait was worth it, he said. "I applied to College of the Atlantic knowing this was exactly what I wanted to do," the computer science student said. "I pushed hard to get that visa. I didn't want to give up until the door was completely closed." Despite the growing difficulty some foreign students have had obtaining visas, the tiny college has had a global impact recently because of its high percentage of foreign students. Of the 270 students enrolled for the upcoming school year, 61, or 22.5 percent, hail from foreign shores. This has earned the school accolades from the U.S. News & World Report's 2006 Survey of Best Colleges, where it ranked first among liberal arts colleges for having the highest percentage of international students. Read More: www.bangornews.com/news/templates/?a=118916
Graduation festivities this week at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, has been billed as the nation's first known "zero-waste" graduation ceremony. The school has placed recycling bins in strategic locations to collect paper and plastic bottles. It will compost food wastes to use in its gardens and in community plots. Utensils, bowls, and cups will be made from starch-based materials. Pathways will be designated by woven kiwi vine, and buses will ferry visitors to events. From Maine's College of the Atlantic zero-waste graduation to Indiana's Ball State University biodiesel-powered shuttle fleet, college campuses are trying to outdo each other as they build energy-efficient dormitories and cut carbon dioxide emissions, the Washington Post reported Sunday. The more than 4,000 U.S. colleges and universities -- driven by everything from the rising cost of heating and power rates to student activism to create sustainable campuses -- can have a significant impact on the environment. Yale University has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by 13 percent from 1990 levels. However its 2.3 million tons of carbon dioxide emitted each year is more than that of 32 countries. "It's almost like an episode of 'Can You Top This?'" said Princeton University dining services director Stuart Orefice, whose cafeterias serve organic cereal and ship students' unused food to local pig farms. "It's a good-natured competition, if you will." 
George Smith of Mount Vernon is the executive director of the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine. He can be reached at george[at]samcef.org.
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