We know that COA is a mission-driven institution. This mission flourishes in the hearts and minds of every member of the COA community. We care. We inquire. We persist. While each issue of COA reflects the pursuits, activities, and ethos of the COA community, in the Fall 2017 issue, “The Questions We Ask,” faculty, alumni, and students weigh in on the questions that drive them. 

Latest from the COA Magazine

  • NEWS
    This three-course expeditionary program gives COA students an opportunity to experience first-hand the incredible topograp...
    Exploring The Great West
    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.
  • NEWS
    Dru Colbert, 2017, found object assemblage, digital print. As a part of her current studio work, faculty member Dru Colber...
    The Questions We Ask

    COA’s mission is to inquire, to delve, to care, to create. These are not just words on paper. They flourish within the hearts and minds of every member of the COA community. We asked several members of the COA faculty what questions they asked. Here are their responses.

  • NEWS
    Mike Bills walks along the Searsport, Maine shore, not far from his home.
    Something Good Will Come of This
    THE QUESTION: Who are Maine’s opiate addicts?
    THE RESPONSE: Something Good Will Come of This, a documentary film
  • NEWS
    Nnimmo Bassey, Nigerian climate activist

    THE QUESTION: If people struggling under great odds and danger could persist, what’s my excuse?

    THE RESPONSE: A graphic biography of Nnimmo Bassey, a Nigerian climate justice activist.

     

  • NEWS
    Sean Foley, Curses and Oaths, detail, 2017, oil on canvas, 33”x28” The image is part of art faculty member Sean Foleyâ...
    Melancholia

    In 2016, COA art faculty member Sean Foley explored the qualities of wonder in art. Currently, and for the last four years, he’s also been exploring the humor, frustration, and sadness inherent within a more personal subject, the chronic depression that has been passed down through his paternal line. 

  • NEWS
    The Bow Shop
    The Bow Shop, an excerpt

    I couldn’t believe what I was about to do, but I concentrated, held out my hand, and placed a finger on her mouth. She stopped speaking and I leaned forward to meet her. The next few moments felt both an eternity and an instant, then we were back outside, her hand in mine.

    I felt more alive than I had ever felt. She was beside me now laughing into the night. I was grinning like an idiot and couldn’t stop.”

    An anticipated date goes a bit awry in this short story that’s an excerpt from a full-length novel.

  • NEWS
    Maria Hagen ’17 and Großmutter in the summer of 2016.
    My Summer with Grossmutter
    THE QUESTION: How was an entire country convinced that deporting people based on their religion, sexual orientation, political beliefs, or physical ability was acceptable or even necessary?
    THE RESPONSE: My Summer with Großmutter: I Didn’t Understand What Happened Then; That’s Why I Remember
  • NEWS
    Kali Lamont ’18 seals a window insert destined for a member of the Mount Desert Island community. She is volunteering wi...
    Community As Classroom: COA’s Energy Outreach
    The Community Energy Center or CEC was created to connect COA’s sustainability and renewable energy efforts to our surrounding communities, and to ensure the continuation of efforts based in classes, internships and independent studies once each term is done.
  • NEWS
    Abe Noe-Hays ’00, research director, and Kim Nace, executive director, are co-founders of the Rich Earth Institute.
    Enriching the Earth: Abe Noe-Hays ’00 and his Rich Earth Institute
    “How long would it take my family of four to save enough urine to fertilize our hayfield?” I ask fellow alumnus Abe Noe-Hays ’00. He raises his eyebrows. “It’s five acres, you said? You’re going to need some friends.”
  • NEWS
    Negotiating for the G-77 in 2011, Juan Hoffmaister ’07, seated, second from right, consults on national adaptation plans...
    In Their Own Words: Juan Pablo Hoffmaister ’07: International Policy Specialist
    Since 2005, College of the Atlantic students have attended the annual Conference of Parties, or COPs, to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UNFCCC. Soon COA students were shaping entire terms around meetings, taking classes and full-term residencies to pore over diplomatic language and investigate international treaties with Doreen Stabinsky or Ken Cline, sometimes both.
  • NEWS
    Matt Maiorana ’11 at the COP 21 in Paris, France in 2015. Photo by Julia DeSantis Maiorana '12.
    In Their Own Words: Matt Maiorana ’11 Organizer
    Matt Maiorana ’11 went to his first UN negotiation as a second-year in 2007. He’s since attended multiple UN meetings, but after that first meeting he helped create COA’s environmental justice group Earth in Brackets, or [Earth], and obtain official observer status at the UNFCCC. Matt has worked for both the government and advocacy groups, including as an organizer for the 2014 People’s Climate March. Currently, he’s with the nonprofit Oil Change International. He also cofounded the website activistlab.org with Sam Miller-McDonald ’09.
  • NEWS
    Threshhold, film negative, liquid emulsion on rice paper, 16x20 inches, 2015.
    Elutriate: the work of Kathleen Donohoe (’91)

     

    Kathleen—Kate—Donohoe (’91) has strong childhood memories of passing through the New Jersey Meadowlands, a region rife with stories about the dumping of illegal chemicals and Mafia victims. “We would hold our noses driving through,” she says. “Still, I thought it was beautiful. I wanted to run away from home, get a boat, find an estuary, and disappear into it.”

  • NEWS
    A view from the ridge of Dulan Mountain over the Beinan River flood plain.
    Why Teach in Taiwan? Reflections on immersive learning
    From December 2016 to March 2017, nine students from eight countries joined education faculty member Bonnie Tai in Taiwan. For the first three weeks, Suzanne Morse, botany faculty member, was with the class, called Human Ecology Abroad in Taiwan, or HEAT. Students studied Mandarin, explored local food systems, participated in several forms of intercultural education, including a primary school of the indigenous Rukai community, wrote travel essays and epistolary poetry, and interviewed residents about the Japanese occupation, among other independent studies.
  • NEWS
    Illustration by Peter Kennell ’17
    Remembered Earth
    Fire in the field and the birth of fire. Dry rivers and thirsty soil. The strong wind, steady as a blast furnace, and windmills drawing deep. This is the remembered earth that is lodged within her. This is what clogs her ears and crowds her vision: and it is greater than the thunder of fifty million buffalo. This is the known world, these plains. She’s touched them with her hands through every season, and she asks of them: Are these dry hills I see around me also inside?
  • NEWS
    High school students participating in COA’s Summer Field Institute class, Wonder of Acadia, join Christie Denzel Anastas...
    Changing So what? to Aha!

    As deputy chief of interpretation at Acadia National Park, Christie Denzel Anastasia ’92, seeks to ensure that every visitor intersecting with the park has the best experience possible. What this means is that Christie spends a lot of time behind a computer so that the seventy-odd rangers, volunteers, interns, and partnership program staff she oversees can be outside, doing their jobs.

  • NEWS
    College of the Atlantic 2016 Commencement
    Leave No One Behind
    On June 4, 2016, noted writer and naturalist Barry Lopez spoke to the seniors and their friends and families during COA’s commencement. He generously offered COA  this written version of his powerful talk.
  • NEWS
    Erickson Smith ’15 raises a portable receiver capable of hearing and tracking bats at the Blue Hill overlook on Acadiaâ€...
    Seeking Acadia’s Bats
    Acadia’s bats are suffering from the often deadly fungus known as white-nose syndrome. Erickson Smith ’15 joined a team of scientists surveying and measuring the bats in hopes of protecting them.
  • NEWS
    Writes Rebecca Haydu '16, "In my time in Yucatán, I've had three host families. The moments I've gott...
    Cracking the Coconut: COA’s Yucatán Program

    The Yucatán Program—with its language immersion in either Spanish or Mayan—is celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year. As COA’s first ongoing off-campus program, it has transformed the lives of multiple students, among them Rebecca Haydu ’16.

  • NEWS
    Aaron Lewis '05 has played in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Th...
    The Ears and Eyes of American Music
    Aaron Lewis ’05 takes down-home American music across the ocean, with his Corn Potato String Band. Why the name? “We’re the ears and eyes of America.”
  • NEWS
    Lisa Bjerke '13, MPhil '16
    Waste is a Verb: The Odyssey of Lisa Bjerke ’13, MPhil ’16
    Lisa Bjerke ’13, MPhil ’16 is transforming how COA thinks about what and how we dispose. Waste, she says, is a verb; not a noun.