The world isn’t divided by majors. Neither is College of the Atlantic.
Academics
Faculty Jodi Baker teaches classes in writing for the stage, as well as performance and movement.
Jason P. Smith
Students in the Geology of Mount Desert Island class practice using a compass and taking field notes at Seawall Beach in Acadia National Park.
Sarah Hall
Students presenting and discussing their entrepreneurship projects.
Jason P. Smith
Students participating in a home energy audit.
Jason P. Smith
Students work with instructor Gordon Longsworth on a GIS mapping project.
Jason P. Smith
In the printmaking studio.
Jason P. Smith
Faculty member Steve Ressel leads a class trip through Great Meadow in Acadia National Park.
Jason P. Smith
Learning Spanish through immersion.
Jason P. Smith
Student on a field trip for the course Ecology: Natural History.
Jason P. Smith
Student performance in The Science of Comedy class.
Jason P. Smith
Students assemble a weather station at COA Peggy Rockefeller Farm. Data from this station, as well as a station on the COA campus, are available in real time online and appear on the Weather Underground maps.
In the words of faculty member emeritus Rich Borden: “There is a tendency, especially in the academic world, to carve life into ever smaller pieces in order to make sense of it. All too often, the people who do this come to believe that is how the world really is. The aim of human ecology is to remind us that we are part of a complex and interactive living world. Its broad mandate calls us to cross the boundaries of traditional disciplines and seek fresh combinations of ideas. This demands a different approach to education—one which invites imagination and caring for the future. This is why COA was founded, and it is what we do best.”
What you should learn at COA
Awareness of one’s thinking processes and patterns of thinking and learning include the ability to motivate and direct one’s own learning—to understand the ways that learning is physical, social, emotional, and cerebral—which may require tolerance of uncertainty, persistence, openness to feedback, and reevaluating self-knowledge. This includes a commitment to and ability to manage time and complex projects. This also includes the ability to construct a coherent and personally meaningful narrative about one’s self-designed program of study.
In all endeavors the ability to imagine and construct novel approaches or perspectives, to be innovative and to invent. This includes the flexibility to use many different approaches in solving a problem, and to change direction and modify approach, the originality to produce unique and unusual responses, and the ability to expand and embellish one’s ideas and projects. This also includes taking intellectual and creative risks and practicing divergent thinking.
The ability to observe and question assumptions and claims about the relationships between and among living, social, and physical systems and processes. The ability to not only interpret and evaluate information from multiple sources but also to induce, deduce, judge, define, order, and prioritize in the interest of individual and collective growth. This includes the ability to recognize one’s self-knowledge and its limits, challenge preconceptions, and to work with imperfect information. This also includes the ability to apply writing as a critical thinking skill.
A deep understanding of oneself and respect for the complex identities of others, their histories, their cultures, and the ability to lead and collaborate within diverse groups, organizations, and communities. This includes the ability to work effectively within diverse cultural, civic, and political settings. This also includes the ability to assess self- and cultural knowledge and to engage constructively with complementarity, incommensurability, and dissent as opportunities for further personal and collective learning and in service to shared aims.
The ability to listen actively and express oneself effectively in spoken, written, and nonverbal domains, grounded in history, communities, and audience. This includes the ability to engage in dialogue, internally and with others, across multiple views. This also includes the ability to accommodate one’s own and/or others’ proficiencies beyond a first language.
The ability to confront complex situations and respond to them as systemic wholes with interconnected and interdependent parts. This includes the ability to project the social, economic, and environmental impacts of actions, which may be positive, neutral, and/or negative, known, unknown, or unknowable.
The ability to think, research, and communicate within and across disciplines while recognizing the strengths and limitations of disciplinary approaches. This includes the ability to apply interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge and skills to a range of contexts and activities.
Ecology and Natural History of the American West is an intensive, field-based expeditionary program which takes students from Oregon to New Mexico and everywhere in between, giving them a fully immersive experience in the habitats and landscapes of the Western United States.
College of the Atlantic graduate student and Allied Whale research associate Kate Pielmeier ’19 spends her summer conducting a survey of harbor porpoises in Frenchman Bay, just off COA’s waterfront campus.
College of the Atlantic is one of the most innovative liberal arts colleges in the country, and one of the best values, according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2019 Best Colleges.
Students in the class History of Agriculture: Apples record local agricultural history by documenting relict apple trees scattered around Hancock County.
COA’s proximity to Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor’s dark sky ordinance provide ample opportunity for getting up close and personal with the stars.
Ten students, along with faculty members Doreen Stabinsky and Ken Cline, studied in France for an immersion experience in language, food, water, and politics. The eight-week course included travel in Vichy, Marseilles, Brussels, and Paris.
