53rd commencement becomes an invitation to step outside familiar paths
It was a chilly, overcast day, but spirits were high at College of the Atlantic June 6 as hundreds of friends, family, and alumni gathered with the campus community to celebrate the Class of 2026.
"This is a ceremony of listening deeper than we're used to. This is a ceremony of getting lost. The road isn't there any longer. But we have to make new kinds of roads by walking” — Bayo Akomolafe.
Amid the fanfare of cheering supporters, the distinctive bagpiping of the Anah Highlanders, and flags from the many home nations of COA students waving from the rooftop of a large tent on the North Lawn, 80 students received a Bachelor of Arts in Human Ecology from COA President Sylvia Torti and Board Chair Cynthia Baker. Honorary Master of Philosophy in Human Ecology degrees were presented to trans-public intellectual Bayo Akomolafe and highly regarded ecological science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson.
The day included many inspiring speeches, including Akomolafe’s keynote address. Retiring W.H. Drury Professor of Ecology/Natural History John Anderson provided a faculty welcome, as did retiring Rachel Carson Chair in Human Ecology Suzanne Morse. Torti shared remarks, followed by a student welcome by Iain Dzionk ’26. Seniors Ella Raines ’26, Emmy Wahlström ’26, and Paloma Jofre Videla ’26 then provided touching student perspectives. Morse and teaching staff member Linda Fuller served as ceremonial grand marshals.
Videla was joined by Neha Panda ’26, Issa Pizzimenti ’26, and Leander Laga Abram ’26 to introduce Akomolafe, who used humor, storytelling, and reflections from conversations with the student speakers to challenge the traditional ideas of commencement.
The world graduates are entering is shaped by overlapping crises so profound, Akomolafe said, that the familiar language of solutions, innovation, and forward progress no longer holds. He suggested that the long‑standing idea of commencement as a clean step onto a clear path has been disrupted beyond recognition. Instead of urging graduates to move forward, he invited them to imagine going underground, into forms of response and relationship so new they cannot yet be conceived—a kind of spinning, generative uncertainty that asks for courage rather than clarity.
“And so this is not a commencement. This is a ceremony of descending. This is a ceremony of listening deeper than we're used to. This is a ceremony of getting lost. The road isn't there any longer. But we have to make new kinds of roads by walking,” Akomolafe said.
President Sylvia Torti, presiding over her final commencement at COA, centered her remarks on relationships, honoring those who shaped the graduates’ journeys and recognizing the Wabanaki people whose homelands hold the college and its community. She celebrated the global fabric of COA and spoke about how human ecology prepares students to meet a complicated world with openness, agency, and care.
Torti invited the Class of 2026 to see commencement as an estuary-like moment where endings and beginnings meet, where multiple truths can coexist, and where clarity doesn’t need to be forced. She encouraged graduates to carry forward COA’s practices of listening, accountability, and thoughtful engagement, trusting that new possibilities emerge when different ways of being meet.
“Estuaries are places where different waters meet without erasing one another,” Torti said. “Life thrives precisely because there is exchange, tension, and movement.”
Following Akomolafe’s address, the ceremony continued in the spirit of reflection, gratitude, and celebration that has long defined COA’s commencement. Graduates crossed the stage one by one to receive their degrees, greeted by cheers from classmates, families, faculty, staff, and friends who have supported their journeys. Each announced the next and handed them a traditional Persian buttercup flower. As the tent filled with applause and the recessional moved out toward the Newlin Gardens, the Class of 2026 stepped into the next chapter of their lives carrying the college’s enduring commitment to human ecology, community, and imaginative possibility.
College of the Atlantic is dedicated to the study and practice of human ecology—the interdisciplinary exploration of the relationships between humans and their social, natural, and built environments. Students integrate the arts, sciences, and humanities through a self‑designed major grounded in experiential and place‑based learning. Intentionally small, with about 350 students and 35 faculty, COA fosters close collaboration, individualized study, and deep engagement with local and global communities. Founded in 1969 on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the college has been named the #1 Green College by The Princeton Review every year since 2016, reflecting its long‑standing commitment to environmental leadership, creativity, and meaningful change.