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.