College of the Atlantic opens 53rd academic year

COA community members run into Frenchman Bay at the beginning of the annual Bar Island Swim.

Fall 2024 COA All College Meeting Moderator Keenan Ovrebo-Welker ’27 and COA President Sylvia Torti both shared words of wisdom with the crowd gathered for the convocation ceremony in the Thomas S. Gates Community Center on COA campus.

Speaking to the assembled students, including many in their first year, Ovrebo-Welker described COA as a world of possibilities, where students can seize opportunities to learn about making positive change, both on campus and abroad.

“As moderator, one of my goals this year is to make sure that every member of our community feels empowered to get involved,” he said. “This is a space where your ideas, your energy, and your voice can truly shape the direction of not only our Celebrating convocation with a community cookout and live music by professor Jonathan Henderson and friends.campus, but the campus of future generations, whether it be engaging in open dialogues, joining a club, or attending ACM or steering meetings, there are countless ways for each of you to participate in shaping the college in the way that is best for you.”

This fall, COA welcomes an incoming class of 99 new students from 24 US states and 18 countries, including Canada, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Germany, Laos, India, Iraq, North Macedonia, Pakistan, Peru, and Zambia. Eighteen members of the incoming class hail from the State of Maine, and 20 are transfer students coming from a wide range of institutions including state universities, community colleges, and private colleges such as American University, Dickinson College, Northeastern University, Northland College, Prescott College, and Skidmore College. Total enrollment at COA is capped at 350 students and the school has hovered around that number for several years.

Torti, celebrating her first convocation as COA president, encouraged students to develop resilience by leaning into the challenges ahead.

“This year, ask yourselves to be brave enough to step outside your comfort zone, to be brave enough to challenge your perceptions of yourself, others, and your culture,” she said. “The more you take on hard subjects and uncomfortable realities, the greater understanding and empathy you’ll cultivate in yourself. You’ll College of the Atlantic President Sylvia Torti, PhD.be better equipped to live in this globally connected, diverse, complicated, and often tricky, ambiguous world, and ultimately, I hope, to put your talents and energies to work in service of a better one.”

Torti, formerly dean of the Honors College of the University of Utah, began her term on July 1 of this year. She will be officially invested as COA’s eighth president on Sunday, Oct. 20, at 2 p.m.

Convocation was preceded by COA’s annual Bar Island Swim, during which over 100 swimmers, watched over by dozens of safety crew members on boats and kayaks, took the plunge from Bar Island back to the COA pier. The water temperature was 58 degrees. In the evening, scores of community members enjoyed a cookout put on by the COA Take-A-Break kitchen crew and live music by music professor Jonathan Henderson and friends.