College of the Atlantic earth science professor Sarah Hall is spending a year in Washington, DC and at conferences around the US as a Science and Technology Policy Fellow with the United States Geological Survey
An unconventional senior project has College of the Atlantic student Simone E Le Page counting grains of rice, creating clay pots just to break them, and walking campus backwards as they consider time, success and failure, and breaking the bonds of an alienating world.
Maine public and independent higher education institutions that prepare students for teaching careers, including College of the Atlantic, are honored with Excellence Awards by the New England Board of Higher Education.
Wriley Hodge ’24, a College of the Atlantic student with a passion for seabirds and the islands they inhabit, is named a Barry Goldwater Scholar, a prestigious, highly selective designation supporting students intending to pursue research careers in the natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics.
Alejandra Morales Torres ’23 will provide a six-week mental and emotional health course for children staying at a support and refugee center in her hometown of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, and will create a permanent reading and wellness space there following a $10,000 Projects for Peace award.
Newly named Thomas J. Watson Fellow Charles-Olivier Lévesque ’23 will travel through Europe and Asia after graduating from College of the Atlantic to explore how collaborative experiments within communities can address social and environmental issues on both regional and global scales.
College of the Atlantic’s environmental activism group Earth in Brackets and Mount Desert Island High School’s Eco Team join up to bring the annual Fridays for Future strike to Bar Harbor.
College of the Atlantic students share posters and academic research at the annual Acadia Science Symposium, a forum hosted by the National Park Service and the Schoodic Institute to promote networking and learning among regional scientists, educators, students, and others working in a range of fields.
College of the Atlantic’s 11th annual day of giving features a bonfire, social media livestreams, and campus visits from alumnx. All members of the community are invited to help COA raise $100,000 in order to unlock a $100,000 matching gift contributed by a group of COA alumnx, trustees, and friends.
Off-shore research, coastal island expeditions, and novel ways to extend College of the Atlantic classrooms onto the water are all part of the program for Rebecca, a 44-foot sailboat restored by scores of COA students.
COA is among the nation’s top 10 colleges and universities for great professors, strong financial aid, students who study the most, and, taking the #1 spot, schools where everyone cares about conservation, according to the Princeton Review’s Guide to the 388 Best Colleges.
College of the Atlantic’s new foothold in Northeast Harbor, featuring both residential and retail space, comprises apartments for 15 students, a staff/faculty residence, and, at sidewalk level, the Salt Market, a project of COA alumna Maude Kusserow ’15.
Tess Moore ’23 plans and implements a novel independent study to take advantage of an accidental catch and promote important shark research.
Tiny College of the Atlantic has topped Princeton Review’s list of the country’s greenest colleges for the past six years. Here’s how its dining program fits into that success.
With high marks for regional and organic foods, a strong culture of waste diversion, and a broad commitment to sustainability-focused academics, College of the Atlantic takes the #1 spot in The Princeton Review’s 2022 Guide to Green Colleges. It is the sixth year in a row for COA to be named the greenest school.
A Fulbright Specialist Award leads to a month-long teaching adventure in Colombia for College of the Atlantic business professor Jay Friedlander.
Shawn Keeley ’00 brings a wealth of experience and a deep-seated understanding of College of the Atlantic’s human-ecological mission to his new role.
A total of 81 students are granted Bachelor of Arts degrees in human ecology from College of the Atlantic during the school’s 48th commencement ceremony.
Filled with positivity, acceptance, and humor, “Being Bucky” is a children’s story featuring a transgender chicken and a host of cute animal characters. Created by Mason Pellerin ’20 for his College of the Atlantic senior project, “Being Bucky” is a dream project four years in the making.
Mount Desert Island’s volcanic history may well be in the past, but a new mountain just popped up last summer on the COA campus. The accidental result of building construction, the “mountain” quickly became a favorite spot on campus, both as a classroom and recreation area.
Among the challenges of social separation, quarantines, and transitioning to a completely online learning format, College of the Atlantic students are doing their best to find creative solutions to engage from a distance and stay occupied with their free time.
Grace Leary ’22 identifies and describes whales for hundreds of eager tourists, rescues injured seals, and works 25 miles out to see on remote Mount Desert Rock island as part of a research internship with the Bar Harbor Whale Watch and College of the Atlantic Allied Whale.
Broad integration of sustainability into the curriculum, development of a fossil fuel-free campus, and an experiential learning pedagogy push College of the Atlantic to the number one spot in The Princeton Review’s Guide to Green Colleges for the fourth year in a row.
Tiny plankton, the powerhouse of the Atlantic Ocean, are the focus of a year-long water quality monitoring study designed by Analise Wittenberg ’20 as part of her College of the Atlantic senior project. The data can tell us a lot about the health of local waters.
The 2019 College of the Atlantic Champlain Institute—Art: Dissent and Diplomacy explores the ways art challenges, promotes, undermines, and advances political, social, religious, and cultural norms.
College of the Atlantic founding faculty member, literature and creative writing professor, novelist, and poet William Carpenter steps away from teaching after nearly five decades with the college.
Peace activist and prominent atomic bomb survivor Koko Tanimoto Kondo is the keynote speaker at College of the Atlantic’s 46th commencement.
Student editors with College of the Atlantic Bateau Press head to Portland to sell their in-house literary magazine, Bateau, and the winning chapbooks from their annual competition. The 2017 Bateau winner, “Grief is the Only Thing that Flies,” by Laura Wetherington, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Members of College of the Atlantic’s student delegation to the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change return energized to act at home.
A lifelong passion for books leads College of the Atlantic student Halle Smith ’20 to an inspiring internship with Feminist Press at City University of New York.
Team taught by arts faculty members Catherine Clinger, The Allan Stone Chair in the Visual Arts, and professor of drawing and painting Sean Foley, Journey into Substance is a three-course expeditionary program located in physical and cultural landscapes. Through curated immersive experience, students explore the concepts of beauty, wonder, and the sublime in the context of 19th Century American landscape art.
In “Environmental Politics for a Changing World: Power, Perspectives, and Practice,” COA professor Doreen Stabinsky draws on her science background and decades of international policy work to teach students how to engage in local and global politics.
The 23rd International Conference of the Society for Human Ecology brings together transdisciplinary thinkers from 35 countries and scores of colleges, universities, and private sector companies for four days of presentations, symposiums, and exchange in Lisbon, Portugal.
College of the Atlantic’s commitment to sustainability—through grassroots campus initiatives, community governance, and innovative academics—wins the college the #1 spot on The Princeton Review Guide to 399 Green Colleges for the third year in a row.
College of the Atlantic students and education professionals study place-based education, mindfulness, and connecting the local with the global at the Sustainable Coastal Communities, Educators, Students, and Schools Institute, a collaboration between COA and Island Institute.
Five seniors share their perspectives at College of the Atlantic’s 45th annual graduation ceremony. From international climate politics to writing, theater, and food systems, their degree paths reflect the multiplicity of passions that contribute to COA’s human-ecological ecosystem.
Three College of the Atlantic seniors share their unique experiences with human ecology at the annual Laurel Ceremony, a gifts and awards event taking place the day before commencement. Their self-designed COA majors have focused on creativity, social justice, literature, and more.
Educators, entrepreneurs, artists, and scientists are among 78 students from 27 states and 13 nations set to receive human ecology degrees at COA’s annual graduation ceremony. His Excellency Anote Tong, fourth president of the Republic of Kiribati (Kiri-bas), is the keynote speaker.
Prominent environmental advocate His Excellency Anote Tong, who led the Micronesian island nation from 2003 to 2016, is the keynote speaker at College of the Atlantic’s 45th graduation.
Playwright Sarah DeLappe’s exhilarating take on adolescence and isolation takes the stage at College of the Atlantic, following a nine-week intensive effort by students in Performing Arts Chair Jodi Baker’s Special Topics in Production course.
Packing gear through a snowy forest and sleeping in canvas-walled tents at -11°F provides the perfect start to winter term for an adventurous group of College of the Atlantic students.
[Re]Produce, a sustainable business startup created at College of the Atlantic by Grace Burchard ’17 and Anita van Dam ’19, moves forward to the mentor round of TV business competition Greenlight Maine after a winning pitch in the semifinals. The team joins just 12 others competing for the show’s $100,000 award.
A collection of the most popular Stanford Social Innovation Review articles of 2017 highlighting environmental issues and climate change innovation features a piece on the Abundance Cycle business framework by COA sustainable business guru Jay Friedlander.
The founder of College of the Atlantic’s sustainable business program Professor Jay Friedlander shares his Abundance Cycle model of entrepreneurship and COA’s interdisciplinary approach to receptive audiences at the 2017 Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavík, Iceland.
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.
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.
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.
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.
BAR HARBOR — A Rolex watch given by actor Paul Newman to College of the Atlantic alumnus James Cox ’87 sells for a whopping $17.8 million at auction.
Two College of the Atlantic students are semifinalists on the third season of TV business startup contest Greenlight Maine with their sustainability-focused venture, [Re]Produce. The business, which freezes and packages surplus farm produce, was created in the Diana Davis Spencer Hatchery, the College’s sustainable enterprise accelerator.
College of the Atlantic leads Princeton Review’s “Top 50 Green Colleges” ranking for the second year in a row, landing the number one spot with their ongoing commitment to sustainability - through both campus initiatives and innovative academic programs.
Instead of just pushing students to recycle and take shorter showers or use just one paper towel here and there, a number of schools have made deeper commitments to being green — including plans to cut down fossil fuel usage, increase spending on local and organic food and teach about sustainability.
College of the Atlantic’s farm-based and student-coordinated food access program is now taking applications.
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.”
Allure magazine bestows the “Best Mom of the Year Award” on Virginia Mellen ’12, after she shaves off her her hair to show her 15-month-old son that there is no particular way a woman is supposed to look.
College of the Atlantic is pleased to welcome their newest faculty member, Mount Desert Island native Susan Letcher. Letcher has been named a professor of plant sciences, and will begin working at the school in September 2017.
Brought back to life by the passion and dedication of faculty and students at College of the Atlantic, the small-scale literary magazine Bateau returns to print after a several year hiatus.
Private well owners on the northern half of Mount Desert Island who are curious about the potential presence of arsenic and other elements in their drinking water are encouraged to join a water study led by College of the Atlantic earth sciences chair Dr. Sarah Hall.
Darron Collins ’92 joins the leaders of over 400 colleges and universities from across the country in signing an open letter urging the preservation of the DACA program, which protects undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country as children.
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.
Representatives of College of the Atlantic and numerous other international climate change groups gather with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in New York to mark the entry-into-force of the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change.
U.S. colleges and universities are increasingly deploying solar arrays and other forms of renewable energy. At College of the Atlantic, one focus is on teaching students how to participate in local, renewable energy economies, from the ground up.
Among representatives of hundreds of countries from around the world gathering in Marrakech, Morocco at the 22nd Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change are 10 College of the Atlantic students and their professor as part of the school’s annual delegation.
An expedition to unexplored ocean depths by a team of scientists, including Conservation International Executive Vice President Greg Stone ’82, aims to produce valuable information regarding deep-sea ecology.
Sierra, the national magazine of the Sierra Club, names College of the Atlantic the greenest college in the country in its 10th annual “Cool Schools” ranking. The school jumps 15 spots from last year’s ranking of 16 to occupy the #1 slot “by a landslide.”
A group of Japanese educators and political officials who are planning a new Japanese college based on College of the Atlantic’s interdisciplinary, experiential model will visit COA and Mount Desert Island for three days this month.
A total of 100 new students, hailing from 18 countries and 22 states, will be welcomed to the COA community during the annual convocation ceremony. Scores of students, staff, faculty and alumni will swim from the Bar Island sandbar to the COA pier in the morning, continuing a much-loved, yearly tradition.
Vivid photographs of Acadia National Park by landscape and wildlife photographer Tom Blagden are featured at College of the Atlantic’s Ethel H. Blum Gallery.
A new initiative aims to bring economic, social, and environmental sustainability to communities across Maine.
Excerpts from a Traveling Journal
By
Anouk de Fontaine ’14
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.
College of the Atlantic’s fourth-annual 24-Hour Challenge fundraising blitz is slated for Wednesday, Feb. 24. The college is seeking a total of 750 gifts – of any size – over the course of the day to qualify for $24,000 pledged by an anonymous donor. Students, staff, faculty, alumni, parents, community members, and friends are all invited to take part. There is no minimum gift amount - just give what you can!
COA researchers respond with elation after one of the birds they have been tracking marks a record, 1,700-mile journey along the Atlantic coast.
USA Today asks, “Is urine diversion far-fetched?” No more than our separation of aluminum, glass and paper from landfill-bound trash, according to Rich Earth Institute co-founder Abraham Noe-Hays ’00.
Anna Maddamma ’16 ventures across the globe to pursue an internship and delve into small town life in a foreign country.
This week’s episode is hosted by Evan Martin and Abigail St. Onge. It has many upcoming events and a new segment of featured music!
Alex Borowicz ’14, Antarctic field guide and PhD student in ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University, New York, speaks about his love of the creatures and vistas of the South Pole.
Roshni Mangar ’16 found herself surrounded by dolphins during her time with a Florida-based research organization, and says that the experience helped inform her work back at home.
Battered by waves, coursed by wind night and day, Mount Desert Rock’s location—twenty-one miles out to sea—makes it an excellent platform for studying whales, seals, and other marine life.
Audubon guide Gabriel Willow ’00 offers New Yorkers and visitors a sense of the natural wonders of Manhattan and its islands.
COA to share $340,733 towards hands-on, geoscience training experiences, with Dr. Sarah Hall leading local programming efforts.
Hana Keegan ’18 spent her summer interning with a global network of social entrepreneurs with a strong commitment to social and environmental stewardship. Her recent article for Virgin reflects on the experience.
This week’s episode is hosted by Abigail St. Onge and Evan Martin. It includes interviews with Millard Dority and Noreen Hogan, as well as upcoming events, meetings, and more.
An education in human ecology led Becca Haydu ’16 to the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, where she worked with Project for Peace to promote indigenous culture.
This week’s episode, hosted by Abigail St. Onge and Evan Martin, covers upcoming events, meetings, and more. Also tune in for important registration information.
A passion for marine acoustics led Marina Cucuzza ’16 to an internship at the University of Washington in Seattle.
This week’s program is hosted by Gwen Shope and Evan Martin. It covers ACM, events, the Human Ecology Forum, and an interview with Gray Cox about his new album.
Evan Martin and Gwen Shope host this week’s episode with news about All College Meeting, committee updates, and interviews with faculty member Sean Todd and fourth year student Surya Karki.
Last winter, a recruiter from Sea Education Association sat at a table in Take-A-Break and offered me a wild opportunity at sea. This summer, I climbed on board.
It began on a whim one fall day 25 years ago. Five students, one professor, and a shiny, new dock.
How are we going to tackle climate change? To get started, we need a whole new generation of well-educated people who understand the ins and outs of sustainable living.
And here’s some good news…
A new course intends to connect the community to the compost.
Two coastal Maine institutions join forces to import global sustainability solutions.
Professor Nishanta “Nishi” Rajakaruna’s Edible Botany class took a field trip to visit herbalist Deb Soule, at Avena Botanicals in Rockport, Maine. It was a great opportunity to see botanical knowledge in action and to learn about medicinal plants.
Maine’s most recognized preservation group honored College of the Atlantic today with a 2014 Honor Award for its $3.7 million renovation of Turrets in 2013.
Whether reading an account of the Tuolumne Meadows, volunteering in Yosemite National Park, or spending the weekend visiting a local ranching family, students in The Great West Course saw the American West in its own light—impossible to do from a classroom in Maine.
Ten women stand tight in a pack on an indoor track. They are ready for battle. This is roller derby, contact sport on skates.
Ten women stand tight in a pack on an indoor track. They are ready for battle. This is roller derby, contact sport on skates.
This is the sixth in a series of blog posts from College of the Atlantic students studying ways to develop and implement renewable energy solutions for the Maine coast in a unique multidisciplinary, multigenerational field-based course developed by COA faculty and the Island Institute under the auspices of the Fund for Maine Islands.
I had a great suggestion from Trustee Emeritus Bill Newlin to put together a short photo essay on what the island and campus look like under these conditions.
Enjoy!
“A Visit with Ashley Bryan,” which has been on exhibit at the College of the Atlantic’s Ethel H. Blum Gallery since the fall of 2014, comes to a close on February 20, 2015. The Blum is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday.
Drama course clarifies how theatrical process informs, intersects with other concepts and disciplines.