COA Volume 7 I Number 2 I Fall 2011 1/5/8 m the middle of a great city, like Paris, one write for a quick little piece of green wilderness. THE COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE COA Vision The faculty, students, trustees, staff, and alumni of College of the Atlantic envision a world where people value Letter from the Editor creativity, intellectual achievement, and diversity of nature and human cultures. Just as COA was being formed, the generation With respect and compassion, of 1992-President Darron Collins' individuals construct meaningful lives generation-was being born. Like the college, for themselves, gain appreciation of these children came into a chaotic world. the relationships among all forms of Nineteen sixty-eight, the year Les Brewer life, and safeguard the heritage of answered Father Jim Gower's question about future generations. what could be done for the people of Mount Photo by Julia De Santis '12. Desert Island with the definitive, "Let's start a college," was the same year Martin Luther King Front Cover and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. It Marketa Doubnerova '13 was also the year students shut down Columbia University, the University of "In the middle of a great city, like Chicago went on strike, and the University of California Berkeley erupted. Paris, one wishes for a little bit of Education was in total upheaval-and by 1970 the unthinkable happened: green wilderness." Watercolor on at Kent State University four students were killed by members of the Ohio paper. National Guard. While protests against the war, against segregation, against authoritarianism, Back Cover and for women's liberation continued, while Ohio's Cuyahoga River actually Andrea Molina '13 caught fire due to the pollution within, a quiet group of COA's first trustees "El Arbol." Ink on paper. and founding president Ed Kaelber pondered just what kind of education was needed for those troubled times. These images were created during a COA term in Vichy, France last Clearly this college would need to train students to fathom, and work to spring with art faculty members Dru resolve, some of these terrible rifts-not only for humans, but also for the Colbert and Nancy Andrews. Nine plants and animals that were here long before we were. A college devoted to students studied French, French film, viewing the world as an integrated whole didn't only make sense-it seemed and created artistic travel journals, essential. or carnets de voyage. The images on the front and back covers were shown Much of this magazine is devoted to the alumni of our middle generation, at exhibits in Vichy in May and at the college's Ethel H. Blum Gallery in the men and women who-whether in Switzerland, Hawaii, or Maine- October. were born with COA. As COA's founders were exploring education, the generation featured in these pages were infants beginning to examine their world with eyes and ears and tongue and hands. What is ultimately so brilliant about COA is that the approach favored by our founders is focused on encouraging and channeling the adventurousness, curiosity, and enthusiasm that is so apparent among children, and so likely to be educated COA is published biannually for the out of adults. College of the Atlantic community. Please send ideas, letters, and submissions (short stories, poetry, and Read through the profiles of Darron's generation at COA, and the celebration revisits to human ecology essays) to: of Lou Rabineau, COA's third president, who led us through those years. The original COA mission-based on a passion for learning and doing, and basic COA Magazine College of the Atlantic respect for the world and for each other-is clearly embodied in this middle 105 Eden St, Bar Harbor, ME 04609 generation, those who have come of age along with the college. dgold@coa.edu Damn Donna Gold, COA Editor MX PRINTED WITH CERTIFIED Paper - WIND POWER Printed on recycled paper with vegetable-based inks on equipment using 100% wind-generated power. Letter from the President 2 COA NSSE Survey: COA Students are Constant Learners 3 The College of the Atlantic Magazine Volume 7 Number 2 Fall 2011 Notes from the Classroom 5 Bronwyn Clement '13 on Karen Waldron's Nature of Narrative EDITOR EDITORIAL GUIDANCE Behind the Eyes 6 Donna Gold Rich Borden An excerpt from a comic book by Nancy Andrews Lynn Boulger EDITORIAL CONSULTANT Ken Cline Bill Carpenter "Sauntering Towards Bethlehem" 7 Julia De Santis '12 DESIGNER Danielle Meier '08 An excerpt from from an essay by John Anderson Rebecca Hope Woods Jabulile Mickle Molefe '14 COA's Capital Campaign 8 PRINTER PROOFREADERS J.S. McCarthy Printers Jennifer Hughes Donor Profile: The Maine Brewing Company 12 Augusta, Maine Jabulile Mickle Molefe '14 ALUMNI CONSULTANTS Julia De Santis '12 GENERATION '92 Jill Barlow-Kelley Dianne Clendaniel PROFILES BY SARAH HAUGHN '08 President Darron Collins '92 14 COA ADMINISTRATION An interview with Bronwyn Clement '13 PRESIDENT A Conversation with the New Ms. Frizzle 16 Darron Collins '92 Diana Papini Warren '92 DEAN OF ADMISSION Sarah Baker Intimacies of Artifice 18 DEAN OF DEVELOPMENT Heather Sisk '93 Lynn Boulger Plants, Pages, and Passersby 19 ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR FACULTY Ken Cline Clark Lawrence '91 ADMINISTRATIVE DEAN Andrew Griffiths From Sharks to Spills 21 Jean de Marignac '91 ACADEMIC DEAN Kenneth Hill How to Become a Loving-Kindness Secret Agent 22 ASSOCIATE DEAN OF STUDENT LIFE Mark Tully '92 Sarah Luke ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR ADVANCED STUDIES A Head Full of Legs 24 Sean Todd Richard Emmons '92 The Art of Strategic Ambivalence 25 COA BOARD OF TRUSTEES Leslie Jones '91 CHAIRMAN BOARD MEMBERS Aristotle Goes to Jail 27 William G. Foulke, Jr. Leslie C. Brewer Jeremy Norton '91 VICE CHAIR Nikhit D'Sa '06 Elizabeth D. Hodder Education on the Rocks 28 George B.E. Hambleton VICE CHAIR Bridget Mullen '91, MPhil '93 Philip B. Kunhardt III 77 Amy Yeager Geier Suzanne Folds McCullough SECRETARY Alumni Artists 30 Ronald E. Beard Sarah A. McDaniel '93 David Vickery, Jr. '89 and Joshua Winer '91 TREASURER Linda McGillicuddy Short Story 34 William N. Thorndike, Jr. Jay McNally '84 Our Weekend on Shelter Island by Eric Wolf '93 Philip S.J. Moriarty LIFE TRUSTEES Phyllis Anina Moriarty Poetry 37 James M. Gower Monhegan Woods by Patti D'Angelo Juachon '92 Samuel M. Hamill, Jr. Hamilton Robinson, Jr. Sweet Honey and You by Jeff Wells '92 John N. Kelly Walter Robinson Susan Storey Lyman Nadia Rosenthal What's New and What's Good 38 William V.P. Newlin Marthann Lauver Samek Louis Rabineau: COA President 1984-1993 John Reeves Henry D. Sharpe, Jr. Henry L.P. Schmelzer Oral History 40 Clyde E. Shorey, Jr. Joan Van der Grift Steve Thomas Director of Admission 1989-1998 Paul Van der Grift TRUSTEE EMERITI Cody van Heerden Alumni Notes 42 David Hackett Fischer Sherry F. Huber Faculty & Community Notes 46 Daniel Pierce Helen Porter Q&A with Ben Hitchcock '15 52 Cathy L. Ramsdell '78 By Julia De Santis '12 and Donna Gold John Wilmerding COA in Our Hearts 53 WWW.COA.EDU Letter from the President Our college, depending on where you put its origins, is about four decades old. This issue is dedicated to our college at forty and to the alumni from my era: the late eighties and early nineties. Most of us from those times are also in our fifth decade and it seems appropriate to reflect on where we are in this life stage. Looking to reacquaint myself with the COA classroom experience in preparation for this piece, I sat in on visiting faculty member Robert Parker's photovoltaics course on the first floor of Turrets. Honestly? It was a perfect COA class. About ten students, staff (Andy Griffiths), other faculty beyond Robert (Jay Friedlander), and a group of COA friends (including Willy Osborn, Steve Hinchman and former faculty/ president Steve Katona) all sat huddled around a table. It was dialogue- driven; it exhibited no disciplinary boundaries but drew on many disciplines; it was focused on problem solving; it demonstrated just how focused and motivated our students are, how deep their knowledge is, and how much they care. Like I said, it was perfect. Coming out of that class I thought through our unique niche around photovoltaics and did this thinking alongside faculty member Dave Feldman who summed it up like this: "Big schools with more resources will be able to out-green us: UC Davis can build a net-zero-energy dorm complex for up to four thousand students. Nor is it likely that COA will push technical boundaries and develop new types of solar cells. But what we can do extremely well is give students educational experiences in and outside the classroom in planning, siting, financing, purchasing, installing, and communicating about photovoltaics. It is hard to imagine another college where students can help plan and carry out renewable energy projects in discussion with the college president, CFO, director of buildings and grounds, and donors. This is interdisciplinary, project-based learning at its best." That kind of learning is at the core of so many COA experiences, whether it's Jeff Miller (my old resident advisor, by the way) changing the transport world through bicycling and walking, or Heather Sisk crafting facial prosthetics and changing the way we think about art and science, or today's students working on everything from a documentary on Maine artists to photovoltaics. It's a vertical integration of thought that has piercing consequences for our world at small and large scales. Enjoy it! Darron Collins '92, PhD 2 COA COA Beat SURVEY: COA Students are Constant Learners COA education in the top 10% of all colleges surveyed We say we engage students. We truly believe our form of hands-on, intensive, student-faculty involvement is how people learn best. But how do we know? Fortunately, one of the most highly regarded means of assessing a college education also endorses our approach. The National Survey of Student Engagement, or NSSE, offers an objective assessment of how students are learning in colleges in the United States and Canada by asking first-year students and seniors some eighty questions about their college experience. This isn't a ranking. We don't know how specific other schools do. But we do know how we did. And we know that COA did better than the top 10 percent of all schools who participated. For those who note such things, among the 751 colleges that did participate were eleven of the colleges ranked among US News & World Report's top twenty-five, including Claremont McKenna, Colby, Colgate, Grinnell, Hamilton, Middlebury, and Washington and Lee. COA Elsewhere COA is Interdisciplinary Yes, students integrate ideas from various courses in classwork: 94% seniors 76% seniors COA Emphasizes Critical Thinking Yes, coursework emphasizes analysis: 99% seniors 85% seniors Yes, coursework emphasizes synthesis: 94% seniors 86% seniors Yes, coursework emphasizes application: 91% seniors 85% seniors COA is Life Changing Yes, college life confronts strengths/weaknesses of personal views : 82% seniors 64% seniors Yes, education contributes to self-understanding: 85% seniors 76% seniors Yes, education helps develop personal values: 88% seniors 69% seniors COA is World Changing Yes, education helps aid community welfare: 86% seniors 61% seniors Yes, education looks at solving complex real-world problems: 92% seniors 68% seniors COA Offers a Strong Learning Community Yes, students often discuss class ideas with faculty out of class: 67% seniors 41% seniors Yes, students often discuss class ideas with friends, family: 91% seniors 73% seniors COA is a Diverse Community COA may be a small college, and have the reputation as a school of similar minds, but students confront ideas, people, and cultures quite different from themselves. Yes, students are encouraged to contact those of different backgrounds: 82% first years 66% first years Yes, students work to try to see another's perspective: 87% seniors 71% seniors Yes, students have serious conversations with those of different beliefs: 76% first years 63% first years Yes, students have serious conversations with those of different ethnicities: 88% first years 59% first years COA is a Cultural Community COA might be on an island in Maine, but look at these stats! Attended an art, dance, music, theater or other performance: 76% first years 39% first years Yes, COA also does increasingly well in US News & World Report's ratings, and folks at Princeton Review, Forbes, and other outlets praise us (placing COA high on lists of most beautiful campus, most politically active students, best value colleges, and more). But NSSE provides evidence that what Princeton Review describes as our "unique approach to academics" as offered by our "eclectic and brilliant" faculty, really does make a difference. Our education gives students the tools to move beyond COA to useful, compelling work. Full details of the report can be found on the NSSE website at: http://nsse.iub.edu. COA 3 Rwanda Journey Dave Feldman heads to Kigali on a Fulbright Math and physics faculty member David Feldman is off to Kigali, Rwanda in January 2012 to teach in the Department of Applied Physics at the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology, or KIST, thanks to a grant from the Fulbright Scholar program, the nation's flagship international educational exchange program. "I expect that living for six months in Rwanda will expand my horizons in ways I can't even imagine," says Dave. "KIST is a new, dynamic, and growing institution; it sounds like an exciting place to work. Photo by Julia De Santis '12. I am certain I will grow as a teacher and am very excited about gaining new colleagues and friends." Dave has spent five summers teaching at an international graduate summer school in complex systems in China, jointly sponsored by the Santa Fe Institute and the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Working internationally propelled him to apply for the Fulbright. "It was a great sight to see Chinese, American, and other students living and learning together for a month. Students in the program learn about each other's cultures and countries, and form enduring personal and professional bonds that will lead to better science and better understanding between our countries," he says. "I believe that this sort of exchange is among the most important diplomatic activities the United States can conduct, and I am proud that I was able to help make it happen. A Fulbright fellowship seems like an ideal way to continue this work." COA Welcomes New Faculty and Teaching Staff Heath Cabot Linda Fuller Ryan Bouldin Anthropology Education Studies Associate Chemistry and mathematics Director Heath comes fresh from a Ryan, a visiting faculty member, postdoctoral position in Princeton Linda, a teaching staff member, is focused on substance. University's Program in Hellenic comes to COA with twenty- Physical substance. Ryan holds Studies and a PhD in cultural eight years in public school a PhD from the Department of anthropology from the University education. That's middle school, Chemical Engineering at the of California, Santa Cruz. Her high school, technical school, University of Massachusetts, BA is from the University of and guidance. Linda is currently Lowell and a master's degree Chicago's interdisciplinary completing her doctorate in in chemical engineering from undergraduate program, educational leadership at the Tufts University. He is driven Religion and the Humanities. University of Maine. "COA is to understand how to create She has jumped right into COA, pretty impressive," she says. "This designing courses, supervising is a school that understands the materials with less energy and independent studies and senior world is complex and its students in a more environmentally projects, serving on committees. are willing to look at things benign manner. His approach "I am so excited by the COA through many lenses." Having starts with the fundamentals students! They bring unparalleled started out in a tiny, three-room of green chemistry and results energy and openness to the schoolhouse, where multi-age, in imaginative projects like classroom that makes teaching at multi-discipline programs are a transforming cashew nut shell COA extremely rewarding and- necessity, she feels she has come oil into a flame retardant. "That's quite simply-fun!" full circle. nuts!" he says. 4 COA COA Beat Notes from the Classroom Bronwyn Clement '13 on Karen Waldron's Nature of Narrative "I have always been interested in stories, in the shapes they take," says Karen Waldron, faculty member in literature and minority, cultural, and feminist theory. "Nature of Narrative challenges students to really learn to read-to read closely and curiously-to think of language aesthetically and as something that is deliberately manipulated and manipulating." This intensive text-based course delves deep into the human ecology of literary analysis and challenges students to examine how narratives create meaning and how we create meaning from narratives. The pursuit is deeply experiential. Over the course of the term the class reads upwards of a dozen twentieth-century fictional works. Some are deliberately experimental while others are more Photo by Julia De Santis '12. subtle in their innovation, from Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner to Italo Calvino and Clarice Lispector. Each challenges our expectations of form, discussions I always wish to re-read and re-examine technique, and narrative strategy. "There are certain the text," says Katie Perry '12. The discussions, narratives or shapes we expect stories to take on, presentations, and the texts themselves encourage certain archetypal plots that have been taught to us continued learning, the hunger to read more, and since childhood," explains Karen. These works push read well. against those limitations of fictional prose, stretching the imagination; each emphasizes narrative Essential to the course is the quest to understand technique, creating works rich in texture and form. how we use stories-from books, from friends, from media-to understand our lives, drawing from As someone who loves fiction, I was attracted to narrative theorists. "The class is about relationships the focus on close reading and the balance between and theory is about creating surface area with those individual and group analysis. We read each novel interactions. You can imagine it like a dough ball," individually, then process and analyze the works says Eli Mellen '11, Nature of Narrative TA and through writing response papers and passage current MPhil student. "Theory squashes that dough analyses. In class we test our analyses and place ball and consequently creates more points of contact the texts within theoretical frameworks-we then to analyze experience." retreat and reflect, returning to the novels to re- read. Through such close analysis of the text and Theory provides different lenses to look through discussion of what it is doing, we become much while analyzing the texts in an effort to better more attentive to our own reading experience and understand how narrative becomes incorporated how we extract and project meaning onto the texts. into our being. Narrative is everywhere, it is more than simply how we tell stories, it is how we Nature of Narrative requires constant thought; organize our lives, how we conceive space and it's a full immersion of sorts. We read at a fast time. and demanding pace and often cover more than one novel a week. Yet depth of analysis is not This pursuit is personal and intense: Nature of compromised for the sake of breadth; in fact, depth Narrative is an experiential class. Each piece of is inherently created through the breadth of our literature is a field trip, each text an opportunity to reading. By reading Faulkner in the second week delve into the molding of language and the effects of term, we then have two months to build on our of narrative. In reality, all reading is interactive; it is analysis of his work, comparing it to other texts a dialogue between the text and the reader and one and theories. "The pace of the class also means that can argue that a novel can only be a novel when it we never leave a text exhausted. After our class is being read. COA | 5 Sensory chrects have an elaborate Behind the Eyes system of Dense organs. spidee Splice Indite hairs - concentrated (vision) These images are from the comic on antennae, palps, eyes 8898 apimal and legs and tassi, book Behind the Eyes by Nancy (Ruman) cores the critine Andrews, faculty member in time- aly based art. It reflects her motion meural body. Moths, bitterflies ants and picture Behind the Eyes are the Ears. honeybees have The comic, like the movie, follows extra- ordinary the research of Dr. Sheri Myes and her revolutionary attempts to expand senses notion meanson of smell, our perceptions and consciousness. muscle guy Some insects see fibers imdia (human) sparal infrared, others hen for The 25-minute DVD plus the comic cord beyond the range of book are available by writing Nancy human hearing. Andrews, PO Box 142, Seal Harbor, Maine 04675. The cost is $20. 6| COA From "Sauntering Towards Bethlehem" by John Anderson When I was still young enough to remember most things, my father took me to Ely Cathedral in England and showed me a great maze made in the colored stone slabs beneath the West Tower. He explained to me that this maze was based on medieval examples in France, where penitents would walk the maze on their knees over and over, with so many successful trips "counting" as a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He then looked at me with a serious expression and said that he himself felt that the pilgrims would have "gotten a lot more out of an actual trip to the Holy Land." The lesson stuck with me: you could learn certain things-and gain a measure of grace-by simulation, doing things that were like other things or stood in for other things. At the same time, however, something was always lost. It wasn't as simple as simply having had the experience but missed the meaning. Somehow the experience itself was the meaning. One can earn Brownie points in heaven by following a maze, but think of all the experiences that one misses! I suspect that a medieval priest would say that those experiences are things of this world and that the whole point of pilgrimage is to get to another world, but think of all the opportunities for deeds good and bad that the pilgrim who takes the actual road will encounter! Both may arrive at the same destination in spirit, but they will not, cannot be the same in experience or understanding. Of all Thoreau's writing I still find Walking the most engaging. Thoreau seems to know that he is writing for the ages, and he does his best to paint a picture that is both immediate and real (the neighbor in the "Stygian fen") and abstract to the level of the sublime ("in wildness is the preservation of the world"). The title and central metaphor, however, are what really grab me. Thoreau is walking, and he wants us to walk with him. The entire essay is an invitation to get out, go do something, experience for yourself whatever may come around the corner, behind the hill. Early in the essay he engages in a bit of etymology, which one would like to be true, even if the professionals have ruled otherwise. Thoreau dwells upon the verb "to saunter." He suggests that sauntering is a very particular type of walking that is both essential to the true traveler and also has a touch of the divine: a saunterer, he suggests, is literally a sante terre on a journey to the Holy Land. It is here that I find the intersection of a small boy and his father in Ely Cathedral staring at a maze, and natural history, writing, and the value of experience. Thoreau would have had little time for walking a maze as a surrogate for a true pilgrimage. He wants his reader out of doors, on the true highways and byways of the world, drinking in and recording everything that we see and feel, and organizing it in some sort of coherent scheme. The Holy Land that Thoreau is approaching is literally transcendental-he is dying-and also very real and present. The entire essay is filled with "every day" imagery that most of us simply skip over. Thoreau thinks much of swamps and common wildflowers. He is less interested by the more or less predictable variety provided by human gardens, he wants the wild. He seems to suggest that at every turn we are at the edge of another and in some way grander world that is on the one hand subsisting quietly, unobserved, next to us and at the same time is constantly threatening to break through our conscious selves. Excerpted from John's essay in The Way of Natural History, edited by Thomas Lowe Fleischner, Trinity University Press. 2011. www.wayofnaturalhistory.com Photo by Benjamin Drummond. COA 7 COA's $32 Million Capital Campaign Investing in our greatest strengths By COA Dean of Development Lynn Boulger Already million raised! COA was a visionary institution when the first a barrier to those students who clearly should be students arrived forty years ago to partake in this enrolled-whether from rural Maine or Mumbai. new experimental college on the coast of Maine. Over the last four decades, a lot has changed. We Davis United World College Scholarships have increased our student population ten-fold, COA is one of the five pilot schools of the Davis expanded our campus, acquired two farms and United World College Scholars, with Princeton, two island research stations, gotten a little grayer, Wellesley, Colby, and Middlebury. Since 2001, and a lot more well known. But one thing has not one hundred sixty-five Davis scholars from seventy changed: COA continues to hold true to its ideals and mission. nations have studied human ecology at COA. These are students like Yiftusira Wondimu '11 To lead COA to an even greater level of excellence, from Bishoftu, Ethiopia, who was one of only five in January 2010 the board of trustees voted to students from her country chosen to attend a UWC undertake the largest capital campaign in our in her year. While at COA she was one of the history. The goal: to enhance the college's core first students strengths: faculty, students, academic program, and accepted into learning environment. Unlike many campaigns a demanding which focus on buildings and sports arenas, COA's internship Life Changing World Changing campaign supports program at the growth of the academic program and keeps the innovative tuition affordable. Ragon Institute, where WHAT WILL COA ACHIEVE? scientists from Massachusetts SCHOLARSHIPS General GOAL: $12,000,000 Hospital, MIT RAISED TO DATE: $9,733,000 and Harvard Scholarships are COA's lifeblood, supporting work together almost 85 percent of our domestic and international to understand students. COA is committed to making a human how the AIDS ecology education affordable; we are doing our best virus impacts the to ensure that financial limitations do not create immune system. 8 COA Partridge Foundation Scholarship The Partridge Foundation believes in the value of local farms for local food. In August, the foundation committed one million dollars to the college's Food Systems Program; three- quarters of that will go toward scholarships for students from rural New England interested in farms and farming. Noted Sarah Baker, COA's dean of admission, "Students visiting COA light up when they learn about the college's food systems program. They've visited other colleges that have farms, but COA is the first school they've encountered that integrates farming with food systems in such a thoughtful and comprehensive way." "The greatest educational experiment in recent history." - Darron Collins '92, COA president BROADENING THE CURRICULUM GOAL: $7,500,000 RAISED TO DATE: $5,724,000 Adding academic programs at a school with a faculty of thirty is transformational. Given COA's interdisciplinary approach, each addition impacts the entire college, offering the possibility of new, transdisciplinary classes and perspectives, such as the following: The Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Chair in Earth Systems and GeoSciences There has never been a more important time to understand the dynamics of earth science and global systems. Now, thanks to a matching fund donation by Northeast Harbor summer residents Anne and Robert Bass, COA is well on its way to getting a position in Earth Systems and GeoSciences. "The Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Chair in Earth Systems and GeoSciences will enable College of the Atlantic to add a new discipline in an important field," Robert Bass told us. "The addition of a new professorship will add both depth and breadth across COA's curriculum." The position will offer field-based courses and labs in geology and earth sciences, particularly in climate science, earth systems and the environment, environmental chemistry, and energy and natural resources. SUPPORTING FACULTY GOAL: $3,750,000 RAISED TO DATE: $2,500,000 COA is endowing three current faculty positions. The most recent one is: John Visvader, Richard J. Borden Chair in the Humanities John Visvader, COA faculty member in philosophy, is now the holder of the Richard J. Borden Chair in the Humanities, named for longtime COA professor Rich Borden, faculty Photo by Julia De Santis '12. member in psychology and former dean. "I am honored," says John, "especially since it is a chair named for Rich." Even before John joined the COA faculty in 1986, the two professors had been attending Society for Human Ecology conferences together, talking about the COA | 9 college's singular mission and the importance of human ecology New Faculty Chairs as an integrating discipline. The chair was established by two trustee families, alumnus and trustee Jay McNally '84 and his wife, Jennifer; and life trustee Henry Sharpe and his wife, Peggy. COA faculty members are defined The chair honors Rich's shaping of the notion of human ecology by commitment: To their discipline, in the international arena-work Rich and John have shared for to their students, and to working decades. with each other to create COA's collaborative learning environment. R/V OSPREY Endowed faculty chairs continue to GOAL: $1,000,000 allow COA to expand our faculty, RAISED TO DATE: $611,000. bringing new programs to students, College of the Atlantic is aptly named. Not only is Frenchman strengthening and diversifying Bay our front yard, COA's campus includes two islands: Great our current ones. (Read previous Duck Island and Mount Desert Rock. Because of these remarkable assets, we have many marine-related programs, research announcements of chairs in past opportunities, and courses, including Oceanography, Marine COA issues at www.coa.edu/ Biology, Ornithology, Piloting and Navigation, Conservation magazine.) Biology, Ecology of the Winter Coastline, and Fisheries and Their Management. Our dedication to marine-related research is reflected in our The Allan Stone Chair in partnerships with institutions such as Penobscot East Resource the Visual Arts Center, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, Mount Desert $750,000 left to raise Island Biological Laboratory, the Maine Department of Marine Chair: Catherine Clinger Resources, and Marine Environmental Research Institute, to name just a few. The Partridge Chair in Food and To do this work, we Sustainable Agriculture Systems need a boat or two. We are building a new Too Chair: Molly Anderson boat, the R/V Osprey to replace the R/V Indigo. She will cost The David Rockefeller Family approximately $675,000 Chair in Ecosystem Management to build and require an and Protection operating fund $350,000 Chair: Ken Cline to maintain for a total of $1,000,000. CONNECTING TO THE WORLD The Richard J. Borden Chair in the Humanities GOAL: $1,000,000 $140,000 left to raise RAISED TO DATE: $25,000 Chair: John Visvader Bringing the world to COA-and COA to the world-through expanded teleconferencing capabilities, presentations, and conversations. The Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Chair in Earth Systems and Information technology makes our world smaller and more GeoSciences accessible. The capacity for our students, faculty, and alumni to access other people and information resources is limited only by $999,000 left to raise our imagination. To keep COA current with the ever-changing This chair will be filled by a new technological landscape, we must upgrade our infrastructure faculty member when the and develop state-of-the-art learning environments, information funding is complete. technology, and global access in all classrooms. 100% CLEAN ELECTRICITY N 10 YEARS USI "Aggressively interdisciplinary, intensely personal, immensely practical." " - Bill Foulke, COA board chair INNOVATION IN EDUCATION GOAL: $2,000,000 RAISED TO DATE: $2,000,000 Kathryn W. Davis Global Engagement Fund Towards Peace COA's hands-on, experiential approach means that students work on real-world problems while they are still in college. To do this well, off-campus experience is essential. Our students will need to take their place in a world in which climate systems are global, markets are international, and solutions must reflect understanding from many stakeholders. Kathryn W. Davis, now 104, recognized the importance of personal connections in the journey toward peace when she crossed the Caucasus Mountains on horseback at the age of twenty-two. She has given COA a challenge grant to fund travel by students when their research, internships, or projects lead them away from campus, whether in the US or elsewhere. "The most important objective of international education and engagement is world peace. It is the best legacy we all so fervently desire. I am honored that COA will recognize my deep commitment to promoting international education and peace by naming the fund the Kathryn W. Davis Global Engagement Fund towards Peace." A big thank you to all who have contributed so far! For more information on the campaign, go to www.coa.edu/coacapitalcampaign or call Lynn Boulger, dean of development, at 207-801-5620. COA| 11 Donor Profile Ales for Whales: Maine Brewing Company gives 1% of profits to Allied Whale By Donna Gold This is the story of how a rained-out vacation made for a very special connection between a Portland brewery and COA's Allied Whale. Several autumns ago, David Kleban came up to Acadia National Park to go camping and hiking with his wife Heidi and their young daughter Zoe. Then it rained. Instead of hitting the trails, the family headed into Bar Harbor, where they discovered the Bar Harbor Whale Museum. * Lured by the brilliant white whale skeletons hanging in the window, the family found itself delighted by the many interactive exhibits that packed the small museum. At the time, David was working as a financial analyst in Portland. Next to being with his family and adventuring outdoors, he loved hanging out local farmers. "We knew from the get-go that we with his brother Daniel, a lawyer with a passion wanted to give back," says David. for brewing beer. Then David had an inspiration. Why not switch things around? He asked his brother While trying to figure out how best to do that, he whether he wanted to spend his life in an office stumbled upon the website for One Percent for or in a brewery. In 2009, they launched Maine the Planet, an organization that makes it easier Brewing Company. for businesses to give a percentage of profits to environmental causes. Browsing the website, they While not fully letting go of their day jobs, they purchased a fifteen-barrel vat known as a found that among the certified organizations in brewhouse-a huge steel cylinder where the hops Maine was one connected to the very museum that and grain are mixed-and an even larger fermenter had brought a smile to Zoe's face. They now donate where the beer sits while the yeast does its work. a percentage of the profits from one of their beers After testing and retesting their recipes, they began to Allied Whale, and a percentage from another to brewing, then bottling. the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International. "I have a thing for animals that don't have a say," comments I met David one October afternoon in his Portland David. "Especially the highly intelligent animals." brewery, now containing five spotless, gleaming, stainless steel vats, each about as large as the The ale that connects to Allied Whale is called Zoe. mixer of a cement truck. We talked about David's Another beer is named Lunch, after a finback whale love of beer, his fascination with whales, and his followed by Allied Whale since 1982. connection to the environment, fostered during his childhood in Toledo, Ohio. David had been Maine Brewing Company is small, hands-on. The a member of a local organization known as the day I visited, Daniel was busy driving a little red Naturalist Scouts, taking hikes and camping, and forklift; David was working the phones. Between also helping to maintain local parks. their two fermenters, they net about 1,500 barrels a year. In the beer world, their resulting 46,500 Raised to care about the world around them, just gallons of beer is about as tiny as COA's student brewing beer wasn't enough for the brothers. Their body. "We are really small," emphasizes David. beer carries a message: "Do what's right." This "We don't have aspirations to get big." Sounds like a corporate motto is announced on their website perfect match! and inscribed on their beer labels. And they follow it, getting their electricity from wind power and *The Bar Harbor Whale Museum is currently closed due donating their used grain, yeast, and grain bags to to construction on its former site. 12 COA ENERATION 92 Profiles by Sarah Haughn '08 There's a powerful quality to having an alumnus as president. Darron Collins '92, COA president, Photos top to bottom: Bridget Mullen '91, MPhil '93, and Jeremy Norton '91 meet with school children during an education class that took them to New Zealand; Jenny Rock '93; Jeff Wells '92; Leslie Jones '91 (left) with Cynthia Chisholm '86 who was working in alumni relations and special is what we are. He embodies it, he's had the COA experience-staying up late wrestling with the meaning of human ecology, puzzling over the most significant senior project, playing guitar, and kayaking every nearby river. This feature provides a context for Darron's presidency. events; Lou Rabineau with friends; Darron Collins '92. Photos courtesy of the College of the Atlantic Archives. Like Darron, like COA itself, these alumni have taken their place in the world as scientists, lawyers, educators, artists, counselors, academics, and a myriad of other professions. For those who still wonder what one does with a degree in human ecology, the following profiles hold a few answers. It is a tribute to the founders that they have created a generation of young leaders so ready and willing to take the helm, and so very Dacer committed to the ideals of human ecology. - Donna Gold COA 13 President Darron Collins '92 An interview with Bronwyn Clement '13 Our new president likes to tell stories almost as much as he loves rivers. No wonder he seems to be able to weave some river analogy into every talk he gives. Many of us know he traveled on a Watson Fellowship after leaving COA, and then headed to Tulane University for a master's in Latin American studies and a PhD in anthropology. We also know he spent a lot of time in Mongolia doing environmental conservation work with the World Wildlife Fund. What we wanted to know was how he got there? What were the stories behind these adventures? The following is an excerpt from a talk with Darron in October. Bronwyn Clement: Where did your passion for rivers come from? What drew you to the idea of river conservation? Darron Collins: I always loved the outdoors but I grew up in New Jersey, which you don't normally peg as "Oh, he was born on the banks of some great river..." My mom loved the Photo by Julia De Santis '12. outdoors and would always bring me outside. Apparently I almost drowned in a river when I was little. We were just goofing around and I seem to remember I fell through the ice; something like that. As a child I was a terrible swimmer. I definitely remember being seven years old and my neighbor had a pool and I was terrified of jumping in the water, even the shallow end. My daughters, on the other hand, have been jumping into water since they were infants. So I can't say I was born a fish or grew up loving water or swimming, that wasn't me. In the summers between sixth and seventh, and seventh and eighth grades I went to the Vershire Outdoor School, an outdoor wilderness camp in Vermont. We did climbing, hiking, and canoeing and I remember that being pretty formative in loving rivers. High school summers I spent out west. I worked for the Student Conservation Association-it's for high school students to work in the national forest or park system. I worked out in Challis National Forest, in Idaho, building fences. I spent another summer backpacking out west. I loved the outdoors, and I really liked, more than rivers, the adventure, the idea of an adventure To be honest, it was Raiders of the Lost Ark that made a big impression on me. I was eleven when it came out; my aunt took me to see it. I remember that sense of adventure, that sense of awe. Then in middle school, in health class, when they start teaching about the birds and the bees and everything else, we had a discussion about who you would imagine your best match to be and what their characteristics would be and I said, "A girl with a sense of adventure." I remember that very clearly. The girl that I liked at the time thought that was really stupid. 14 COA Rivers are perfect for adventure: they're fast, they in the world, but they had also given up a lot to do move. I can't cross a river without thinking, "Where it. They didn't have families. That was a fork in the does it start? Where does it end?" Maybe there's road, there was a choice to be made, should I go some of that Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer-type thing the more academic path or live the adventurous life happening. of a river guide? And, well, I wound up getting a PhD in anthropology and it was the right choice-I Bronwyn: How did COA fit into your love of the met my wife at Tulane and now I'm here. I probably outdoors? wouldn't be president of the college as a river guide. Darron: One of the main reasons I was drawn to COA was the place, the beauty of the park, and Bronwyn: You're passionate about rivers and yet the water. I loved that it seemed like people were your dissertation was something entirely different? interested in spending as much time outside as Darron: Correct. My dissertation was on a group of possible. Mayan speakers in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala, the Q'eqchi Maya; it was an ethnobotanical dissertation. At COA I met Ken Cline [faculty member in law and The Q'eqchi had been migrating out of the environmental policy]. I was here before he was, but highlands into the lowland tropical forest partially in my sophomore year I got word that Ken had been because of political violence, but mostly because of out in Oregon and knew how to kayak. I cornered a lack of land, and not being able to grow enough him and said, "I want to learn how to kayak." So we corn to be self sufficient. I was interested in how went out to Echo Lake to practice rolls, because if these people were adapting to a completely new you want to kayak you've got to learn how to roll. In botanical world. Those were two amazing years, my junior year, we started doing trips on the Union one of them with my wife. It was very interesting to River, and that's when I started taking environmental be a married couple in a Guatemalan village. The law and policy, on top of my courses in science. adventure quotient was real high. Ken helped me get an internship with the Oregon Bronwyn: One of the many ethical discussions Natural Resources Council, now called Oregon within anthropology is the issue of demonstrating Wild. I spent the summer between my junior and gratitude, how to give back to the community where senior year in Oregon, a kayaker's paradise. I worked four days a week and spent the three-day you lived and worked? weekend paddling. My comfort and my confidence Darron: That's a great question. In terms of the with rivers skyrocketed. question of respect and mutual trust, I was fully committed to learning Q'eqchi and interacting with Bronwyn: And the Watson Fellowship was an people from their standpoint rather than my own. extension of that? Second was developing a platform based on respect. Darron: Yes and no. My Watson was looking at The fact that I had my wife there, and we lived as the large-scale impact of dams, of hydropower, and a family, and I purchased food from local people, the cultural and ecological impact of those types and compensated people for their time, helped of projects. That took me to New Zealand, then develop that sense of trust. My father and I wound Chile, then the Amazon basin. I totally fell in love up building a church for one of the communities with Chile. I was in the Bio-Bio River Valley which I lived in. My father actually ended up moving to is in central Chile; it was a world-class whitewater Guatemala and starting his own non-profit, From river slated to be dammed by a World Bank-funded Houses to Homes, building homes for locals. So hydropower project. The river wound up being in a sense I've given back through my father and dammed. Then, in the Amazon Basin I was looking actually, he has given back way more than I have. at oil exploration in the Ecuadorian Amazon. And there were still more stories, with Darron's That Watson year got me keyed up on Latin enthusiasm evident throughout our conversation. America; I learned to speak Spanish fluently. In fact, His office is filled with mementos from different I spent another year oaring baggage boats on river parts of his life, along with family photos and trips after the Watson, mostly in Chile and some in plenty of books. He frequently gets up to take one Labrador and Quebec. I worked with a stellar group off the shelf, illustrating our conversation with called Earth River Expeditions. There was part of ethnographies, a visual presentation handbook, a me that wanted to be a river guide. I was around letter from John Anderson. I know the stories could all these guys that were probably in their thirties easily continue-and clearly they will, as will the or forties, I was twenty-three or so, and they had adventures, but now they will inextricably be bound spent their lives guiding some of the craziest rivers to the stories and adventures that are COA. COA 15 A Conversation with the New Ms. Frizzle Diana Papini Warren '92 on Technology, Democracy, and Education in Hawaii Diana Papini Warren '92 conducting water tests with schoolchildren. On any given day you are likely to find Diana conceptualized school as a site of social influence Papini Warren guiding kindergartners as they collect and ideally of social reform. He pioneered data along a transect line, traipsing with teenagers experiential education and was a crucial proponent through Hawaii's wetlands, or training hundreds of academic freedom. Also informing her work of K-12 instructors across the state to teach science is Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. She with renewable energy in mind. finds exhilarating and relevant his idea that you must "question your reality in order to embrace From playing Ms. Frizzle's tech-savvy doppelganger it and change it, to make it yours and to make a as developer of Maui's Educational Digital Bus difference." program to designing energy-based science curricula for Hawaii's public schools, Diana has spent the past Channeling Dewey and Freire, Diana continues decade championing her conviction that kids are to explore and implement innovative approaches powerful. She believes kids can make real change to science in public education. For the past three when equipped with authentic opportunities to years, she pioneered an initiative known as Geotech investigate their world. And she knows this cannot for Hawaii Schools. This work promotes the use happen unless their schooling actively encourages of GIS, GPS, and remote sensing equipment in them to engage their environs. K-12 education through teacher trainings. Diana developed the initiative under the auspices of "Kids are not going to end up being active citizens Women in Technology, a workforce development in their community if they're not fully participating project geared to encouraging girls, women, and in their lives as they grow into young adults," other underrepresented groups into what are now says Diana. "I think that's why I was turned on known as STEM careers-in science, technology, by authentic scientific inquiry: it's letting kids ask engineering, and math. The initiative draws their own questions and come up with their own steam from its conviction that kids, regardless of answers." demographics, need the tools to become decision- making leaders in their communities. Courseswork on Dewey's concept of democratic education with former education professor Etta In addition to implementing geospatial technology Mooser (now Kralovec) was pivotal. Dewey in public schools, Diana has spent seven years as 16 COA a professional development and curriculum specialist facilitating workshops for science teachers. She focuses primarily on developing science curricula with a Jeffrey Miller '92 renewable energy theme. The state of Hawaii plans to produce and utilize 70 percent clean energy by the year Birthplace: Hollywood, California 2030. To this end, Diana has developed modules and kits Current Home: Washington, DC with models of sustainable energy devices so that teachers can engage their students in solving genuine challenges. Work: President/CEO, Alliance for Biking & Walking Through two statewide networks the seminars have trained over two hundred teachers; thousands of students Senior project: Bicycles in Acadia and have participated in hands-on projects. During one MDI: Planning and Education investigation, students analyzed wind energy, collecting What are the core principles guiding data and adding to a discussion of undersea cables your life? for windpower. They also conducted audits of their classrooms for energy efficiency, developing conservation When you find your way to help change plans based on their findings. This curriculum is now the world, live and breathe it, but keep being translated into the Hawaiian language. Diana it fun and find ways to connect with hopes such work continues to burgeon, "not just to get others. None of us will solve the world's sustainable for the islands, but to nurture the human side problems just doing it by ourselves, but by and honor that part of it too. I am still totally a human modeling, influencing others, and working at it, we just might be able to inspire ecologist," she says, "I've never lost my passion for change in others. (I'm still trying to figure education, for true, empowered leadership and effective this one out, big-time.) decision making in our communities." If you could tell the world one message When Diana is not participating in the democratic reform what would it be? of Hawaii's public school system, her revolutionary work Ask yourself as a mother keeps her heart grounded and her mind on before you fire. "My goal has truly been to transform education in go there Hawaii in a positive way that is going to empower kids (anywhere): to be better leaders and make better decisions. I feel like "What is the I've achieved that so far. But I am at a place where my best way to priorities are shifting. I'm ready to catch my breath, and get there?" soak up these sweet moments with my children." Twenty-five percent of the time your answers might include walking (25 percent of all trips in the US are one mile or less); 50 percent of the time your answer should be biking or walking (yep, even in our sprawled-out, over-built, highway-obsessed, gas-guzzling country, half of all trips are three miles or less). Think critically about your transportation decisions; by simply questioning the best way to travel, you may find you don't need to drive two tons of steel every time you want to go somewhere. If you could teach a course at COA what would it be? Human Ecology in Motion: The past, present, and future of active transportation Diana Papini Warren '92 and her family. COA 17 Intimacies of Artifice Heather Sisk '93 on Acrylics, Silicone, and the Human Spirit "Skin may be our largest organ, but the human spirit is larger." - Heather Sisk '93 A resident in the art and anatomy of facial prosthetics, Heather Sisk knows that bodies are not inevitable. For her patients, people disfigured at birth or by illness or injury, the organs she crafts allow a sense of return to social normalcy-to work, to play, to love without fear of being viewed unsightly. Her trade is one of rigorous finesse, rendering synthetics such as silicone and acrylics into flesh. The science of anaplastology-literally, the study of that which is formed anew-occurs in an intimate clinical environment. But sculpting a human eye, ear, or nose demands much more than technical expertise; it requires a sense of personhood. Spending hours and years working with a cancer patient, a veteran, or a survivor of domestic abuse, an anaplastologist learns the moods and modes of being that inform her patients' everyday lives-from talk of weather to memories of war. Stories are embodied in each part she produces. From this social space emerges an organ both artifice and during which she interned as a hospital chaplain original. at an outpatient oncology clinic. The difficult and very rewarding internship confirmed her interest in "Once you have spent time with such an individual working directly with people, but not in an ordained you begin to lose an objective sense of what capacity. As she finished her dissertation, she shifted is 'normal'," Heather says. "I believe this is so from pastoral counseling to spiritual direction. because you are in relationship. It is surprising to me sometimes when patients respond with such Encouraged by the confluence of spiritual and gratitude and tears in their eyes when I deliver a bodily healing, it did not take her long to discover body part that is essentially fake. But they are out her niche-a residency program in facial prosthetics, in the world encountering strangers daily, and offered through the Bronx Veterans Affairs Medical it speaks loudly to how important it is for us to Center and Columbia University. When finished appear acceptable to others. There is a real sense with her three years as a resident, she will qualify that appearing whole assists the patient in feeling as a licensed practitioner. She envisions utilizing spiritually okay and well with the world around her license not only clinically, but also to volunteer them. I think a definition for 'human being' is to be with organizations such as the International in relationship." Confederation for Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery Foundation. She specifically resonates with Heather's interest in human relation and her journey their Women for Women initiative, which provides to anaplastology began with her COA senior pro bono restorative surgery to female patients project, a study on the use of masks as vehicles of suffering from socially excluding bodily trauma. transformation across religions. Transferring from Earlham College, Heather found inspiration in the As a site of synergy for her pursuit of art and her intersections among philosophies of science and art, training in pastoral care, the field of anaplastology as well as the culture of museums. After graduation provides Heather ample opportunity to practice she pursued museum studies, working at natural and her art, her science, and her spirituality. "I am very cultural history museums in Arizona and on Mount fortunate to have these patients in my life," she Desert Island. After also working at the MDI Water reflects. "They teach me daily about the resilience of Coalition, Heather realized she needed to address the human spirit. They humble me, reminding me of injustice from the perspective of individual suffering. the mysterious nature of our bodies, our existence- This realization led her to a degree in theology, and that beauty is by no means only skin deep." 18 COA Plants, Pages, and Passersby Clark Lawrence '91 on the Care and Cultivation of a Centuries-Old Italian Castle Among those who adore the Italian countryside, few conjure images of factory farms. Yet according to Clark Lawrence, curator of the nineteenth century, neo-Gothic Castle of Galeazza, industrial agriculture defines the landscape-seeming almost to parody the once ubiquitous parterres of sixteenth and seventeenth century horticulture. "Here in Emilia-Romagna-and all of the Po Valley for that matter-we're surrounded by immense fields and factory farms of cattle and pigs," he says. "In this area thousands of acres of perfectly flat land are planted with one crop or another, mostly corn or wheat, and they are grown by using massive quantities of chemical fertilizers and insecticides." In distinct contrast blooms forth Clark's garden-a tangle of intention and accident both. Though primarily the curator of an extensive library within Galeazza's walls-where for eight years Clark has hosted reading retreats, courses, concerts, art exhibits, parties, book presentations, and theatrical events-Clark now exercises his focus on the tending of plants over the turning of pages. The transition is one of sheer necessity as the castle's doors and windows grow choked with ivy, vines, and wisteria. Given Galeazza's location distant from Italy's more storied realms, Clark cultivates the garden grounds without formality of ornament. "Here I can create a softer atmosphere reminiscent of English gardens, and I can try to imbue the place with a peace that other gardens around here don't COA 19 Sabrina in the garden at Galeazza. have," he explains. "I can also make it a place of And of Galeazza's immediate future? "The castle's great biodiversity. Tree frogs sing by the pond. next individual art exhibition, opening in the spring The flowerbeds and borders might not be perfectly of 2012, will feature works by COA graduate clipped or weedless, but they are starting to fill up Dina Petrillo '89," announces Clark. "Yes, COA is with plants and trees that visitors have never seen very much a part of Galeazza, and I'd love for the before. This is the only garden for miles around connections and collaborations to continue!" where fireflies and butterflies can still be found." Clark's COA experience introduced him to his love for the Mediterranean, not from Italy but Greece. Katherine (Kate) Clark '91 His senior project chronicled one hundred Greek sculptures and vase paintings created over eight Birthplace: San Juan, Puerto Rico (My father centuries. "I was obviously biting off more than was working in the public health service at the I could chew, but it tasted good, anyway. By not time; we moved back to Boston when I was going to graduate school and continuing my art two years old.) history studies I spat out a bit, but the taste remains Current home: Cambridge, Massachusetts and becomes refined just the same, and my love of Greek art and archaeology lingers." Work: Employment attorney at a Boston law firm From the mythos of Greek and Italian ruins, Clark Senior Project: Comparative Analysis of Four has forged a life and many loves. Growing ever National Park Management Plans more interested in the ethos of plants over people, he realizes-much in the COA spirit-that "by the The core principles guiding my life: Striving for end of it all, you are just about to begin." While he meaningful and satisfying work that is aimed at plans to persist as the host of reading retreats, Clark problem-solving while maintaining family and also hopes to see the garden's growing reputation community connections that allow me to feel continue to attract visitors from across the country that I am important to those around me. and around the world. 20 COA From Sharks to Spills All Things Marine with Jean de Marignac '91 Before the advent of the Davis United World spill response in the Gulf of Mexico. Initially he College Scholars Program, Jean de Marignac was conducted surveys with a Shoreline Cleanup one of the few students to study at COA from Assessment Technique team, mapping oil abroad. Jean found the school during a year he spent distribution on the shorelines and providing in the United States on a high school exchange from clean-up recommendations to the spill's incident Switzerland. When he learned of COA's unique command center. Most recently, Jean served as chief pedagogy and the accessibility of marine biology scientist for NOAA's Natural Resource Damage research, he knew he would attend. Assessment initiative on offshore, mid-water zooplankton surveys, gathering information to assess "From a very young age I was fascinated by the the environmental cost of the spill. marine world. I grew up in a landlocked country," he says. Summers he'd go to his grandmother's While this work requires a high level of home in southern France; winters he'd watch circumspection, especially compared to academic Jacques Cousteau. At COA, he realized, "I couldn't research, Jean was surprised at the cooperative just be a scientist; I had to be able to communicate and congenial nature of the team on this politically with others. The interdisciplinary nature of COA was charged project. "We were able to follow protocols. really special in that way." There was not much room for controversy. Maybe somebody would say there was 50 percent oil Jean's childhood connection to the sea stems also and somebody would say there was more like 55 from his love for sharks. During his time at COA percent. It was more small differences." Only when he worked with former president and biology the team returned to the command center, and faculty member Steve Katona and spent time needed to estimate the extent of seepage from the in the Bahamas studying lemon sharks. For his well, did he note that cooperation was not always as senior project he wrote the research paper "Site good. Attachment and Homing of Juvenile Lemon Sharks," then continued this focus into his graduate work. "Working on the response of such a large-scale environmental disaster that touches so many people But Jean has not always loved sharks. His interest in with conflicting points of view and interests, I the often-misrepresented creatures began early, and realized how critical communications among the "started more as being very afraid of sharks. I was different groups involved is. We need to develop a always afraid to go in swimming pools or bathtubs language that allows us to understand each other." for fear a shark would come and get me. Then I found some books and I saw some documentaries. I realized that as people we know so little about them and that's, in part, why we fear them." Public misinformation and his own curiosity inspired him to spend a large portion of his career in the crucible of his phobia. Jean's research took him seaward in vessels to gather data on lemon sharks, and chest to chest with the species he grew to adore. Recently, Jean has drifted away from shark study to work with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. As part of the research team with California's Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, he designed and led studies of marine ecosystems. Using underwater robots and submersibles, he characterized and monitored deep- sea habitats and communities. He also conducted fish, sea bird, and marine mammal surveys. By tracking changes over time, the team is hoping to determine the effectiveness of marine protected areas and monitor the health of the sanctuary. For more than a year, though, Jean's NOAA work has been with the Deepwater Horizon oil COA 21 How to Become a Loving-Kindness Secret Agent Mark Tully '92 A widely quoted proverb from Winston Churchill suggests if a man is under thirty and not a liberal he has no heart, and if over forty and not a conservative he has no brains. If anyone can disturb such reductive logic with Bodhisattva-like compassion and endearing crankiness it is Mark Tully. Community organizer, arts activist, improv actor, teacher, and radical faerie, Mark's life work lovingly contradicts the inevitability of repressive political binaries. watercolors as political insight. No one talks like that. So there we are, with each other, blessed be. Sarah: How did your time at the college prepare you 50 for your life's work? Mark: The COA experience cultivated the capacity for empathy and solidarity; an assumption that those were the primary skills in our primary role-as Mark Tully '92 helps the Str8 Up youth group in Woonsocket, Rhode Island build large props to allies to everyone and protest restricted access to prophylactics in poor neighborhoods. everything. I got to spend my professional Sarah Haughn: How did you find the college? career going into community organizing projects and coalitions, working to connect and coordinate Mark Tully: COA's course book was being passed people-especially through blending arts into around the hippies in my high school, who all of political organizing. COA led me directly into my course worshipped the curriculum, but we assumed that something as anti-establishment as politics work, equipped rather well to serve as an ally. The and philosophy could never be part of a "legit" level of intentional communication at COA alone institutional curriculum. So we blew it off as a kooky builds invaluable skills in dealing with the variety of and obviously unaccredited enclave. I was choosing people in this world and their perspectives. between majoring in theater or chemistry-and ended up so confused I went nowhere. Our friend Sarah: And where has the journey led? Kim Courchesne [Paola] '90 went in '86, and half a year later was on the phone yelling "Get Up Here!" So I came up, and was sitting in on Don Cass' Mark: Meiklejohn [Don Meiklejohn, former faculty organic chemistry class. The discussion of amino member in political science] wanted me to be a acids rapidly transformed into one asking which lawyer, Etta [Mooser, now Kralovec, former faculty animals are harvested for amino acids to provide for member in education] wanted me to teach, and then the scientists. Don got an order book out that had Alesia [Maltz, former faculty member in history] the animal- and human-organ sources and prices, and a riotous discourse ensued. That decided it for said I should wage my philosophy and activism me. through the arts. She was right, but it took me fifteen years to get here. My first job was with ACORN Sarah: COA has stuck to your ribs then, so to speak? working in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and I kept with neighborhood organizing-in the Bronx, Mark: You just can't talk to people out here like we talk with each other. All possibilities and then leading citywide programs in San Francisco. I perspectives on the table; refusing even activist brought arts activism in as I could and in the process orthodoxies; musing about things like the link took a master's in human ecology at the University between the diet and music of a culture; citing of Edinburgh. 22 COA After I exchanged professional organizing for a life, Sarah: What would you share with the COA I worked a lot more helping youth and community community as it begins a new chapter with alumnus groups manifest props and puppets and skits to color Darron Collins at its administrative helm? and activate their protests and gatherings. Five and a half years ago I came home to New England with Mark: Three things: an approaching-forty conviction to try and build 1. Being an underappreciated human ecologist and thrive in a life based in the arts. Within weeks I often goes hand-in-hand with being right, became involved with Playback Theatre. which holds the danger of becoming an underappreciated jerk. As an attitude check, Playback takes people's told stories and improvises dig that there's a lot of fabulous connections a version of them using many forms, abstract to and movement happening everywhere, and very literal. The power of this ritualized gift to the growing. So get over yourself, and be loving. teller is really hard to overstate. It is being used to You can be out there doing the good work help Afghan refugee boys integrate into Holland, it's while also being a crank about everything and being used in prisons and schools, and in elderly switching jobs as your tolerance and passions housing in New Orleans and Haiti. I've been in a and ability to be of use transform. troupe for three years now, working mostly with the 2. Some of the issues you're aware of that are elderly, youth, grieving families, and social work manifesting at a critical level right now, and the students, and gathering often with playbackers from paradigms you're transcending, and the hot- around the country and world. off-the-press tactics and best-practices you're studying-won't make the news, be adopted by I've just scored a personal gig teaching Playback the Movement, or gain any significant research to middle-schoolers in the regional YMCA's anti- for at least ten years, if ever. You'll be pushing bullying programs. The personal affirmation of my thresholds your whole life. Of course that gives work cannot be exaggerated. What's more, my you the freedom to just drop out for a decade troupe got a grant so we Actually Started Getting and still emerge a highly relevant player. Bonus. Paid! For Interpersonal Improvisational Theater! 3. Be very, very, very, very kind to yourself. Really. Ridiculous. Do not punish yourself over what you could be doing, or the gaffes. In every situation, personal Sarah: Your dramatic work continues to grow. Have to political, that you perceive failure, realize the magnitude of vision and intention that you you explored other kinds of storytelling in addition brought into that space. That kind of magic to improv? echoes forward, and will blend with others to manifest awesome things, forever. Seriously. Mark: I also got sucked into the Providence film- making scene, rather against my will, and now find myself in four projects and learning editing. The music-making/DJing program is getting clearer, and writing is miraculously ensuing, albeit mostly through reading. Sarah: And how does your work with interpersonal improv build into your everyday life? You mentioned belonging to the Vermont collective of Radical Faeries Mark: Right. We're an international tribe of radical queer spirits, building sanctuary among ourselves and focused on healing each other and the world through actively manifesting love and empathy and solidarity. The primary COA-related thing about the faeries is that the consciousness and discourse defy any orthodoxy, of any stripe, always in search of the radical-fundamental. So it's been a real COA homecoming for me, after all these years of insisting on interdisciplinary consciousness within academics, politics, and art. I am home. Mark Tully '92 on campus during his COA years. COA 23 A Head Full of Legs The Human Ecology of Fruit Flies, Ethics, and Patent Law with Richard Emmons '92 As a tenacious teen working with loggerhead sea turtles on Georgia's barrier islands, Richard Emmons was not about to shift from sea to shore only to bury his head in the proverbial sands of academia. His college experience would have to be one of hands-on research from the start. Enter College of the Atlantic and biology faculty member Steve Katona. Richard Emmons '92 and his daughter Kali. "I remember the first trimester I was at COA, Richard, if this gene does not function correctly the I was taking a marine mammals class with Steve fly develops a pair of legs protruding from its head. Katona and the second or third week of class he announced that he was looking for volunteers "One of the first questions I always get about my to help necropsy a blue whale that had washed graduate research is: Who cares about fruit flies, ashore on one of the outer islands. I think almost anyway? COA has one central theme: we are all everyone in the class volunteered. It was an amazing connected. As it turns out, this is more true than experience that I still remember vividly. I don't anyone would have ever imagined. One of the know of any other college in the country where central paradigms to emerge from developmental students at the undergraduate level would have biology over the last thirty years is that most multi- been able to participate in this type of research." cellular organisms are 'built' from the same genetic pathways that have been co-opted and recycled and At the college, Richard worked primarily with adapted through evolution," Richard explains. science professors Bill Drury, John Anderson, Steve, and former visiting professor Don McCrimmon. It "The same gene that helps create antennae in flies was Don, through his affiliation with the Mount is also present in humans, although it has a different Desert Island Biological Laboratory, who steered name-aryl hydrocarbon receptor-and plays a Richard from field research toward laboratory different role by sensing and destroying certain toxic science. Studying with Don as an undergraduate chemicals. The antennae of the fly play an important at COA, Richard realized the work he wanted to role in the fly's ability to sense certain chemicals. do was better explored in a lab setting. With Don's During evolution, this chemical sensory ability has assistance he was awarded the prestigious Pew been co-opted and modified in humans to serve Fellowship to spend a summer learning laboratory another role; however, the underlying genetic techniques from the renowned professors Franklin pathway is the same. I like to think of evolution Epstein and Patricio Silva at the Harvard Medical as the classic hot-rodder of the fifties and sixties, School. After his fellowship, Richard spent three pulling parts out of different engines and car bodies, semesters away from the college as a visiting and seeing how they could be reassembled in a new student at Emory University in preparation for a PhD form." program at the Washington University School of Medicine. Not only has Richard made a hot-rod life of evolutionary study, his own professional life has also Eventually earning a PhD in developmental biology, evolved remarkably. From his early field research he studied how a fertilized egg forms the various on loggerhead sea turtles to laboratory studies on tissues, organs, and structures that make up the adult fruit fly and cancer genes, he boasts a prolifically animal. Richard's dissertation contributed crucial successful career in the sciences. Yet after nearly research to developmental biology by identifying two decades of vanguard scientific research, and characterizing a master regulatory gene called Richard has dramatically altered the course of his "spineless-aristapedia." The gene distinguishes career from hard science to patent law, a leap both the leg of a fruit fly from its antenna. According to ethically necessary and personally gratifying. 24 COA "I went on to do a post-doctoral fellowship at the property group of Edwards Wildman Palmer LLP, a Harvard Medical School, where I studied a group major Boston law firm. Having passed the US Patent of genes required to prevent cancer," he explains. and Trademark Office bar exam, he is now a patent "However, toward the end of my graduate career, agent. Working days at the firm, Richard attends and throughout the course of my post-doctoral law school at night in pursuit of his JD, which he fellowship, I became progressively disgruntled anticipates receiving in May. He credits, among with the academic research community after others, Anne Kozak, faculty member in writing, experiencing and witnessing several cases of gross for teaching him how to communicate effectively. ethical misconduct on the part of senior faculty, "Writing has been a constant theme in my life as a which were overlooked by the various universities scientist, and it is an essential skill in my life as an in question because the respective faculty members were tenured. From my standpoint, such behavior intellectual property professional," he says. was at odds with the basic principles of science. At about this time, I also began to realize that I was "I still look back on my time at COA with fondness," more interested in solving problems than creating Richard reflects. "It's a wonderful and unique problems, which is the central purpose of scientists combination of faculty and students who have truly conducting basic research." combined to be greater than the sum of their parts. This type of synergy is hard to find anywhere, and With this epiphany, Richard decided to accept a should never be taken for granted by the few who position as a technical specialist in the intellectual are lucky enough to experience it." The Art of Strategic Ambivalence Walking the Political Line with Lawyer and Conservationist Leslie Jones '91 While it was certainly not collegiate athletics that drew soccer aficionado Leslie Jones to transfer from a formal, old Bostonian school to wily, young College of the Atlantic, once settled she found an academic community that encouraged her toward a law career in which she still flourishes. Leslie has worked with The Wilderness Society since 2000 and has served as its general counsel since 2006. She is currently on loan to the United States Department of Agriculture, or USDA. Key to her career and process was a 1989 session of mock international climate change negotiations with Ken Cline, faculty member in law and environmental policy at COA. "I represented a 'developing' country that wasn't about to let the red, white, and blue tell me that I couldn't foul the world in just the way they had simply because in the ensuing two hundred years we'd learned more about greenhouse gases. These days, I'm told that one of my strengths as a COA 25 counselor of law is putting myself in the shoes of the opposing side. Go figure." Even today, Leslie's role in the mock negotiations informs her approach to the labors of law and lobbying. To Leslie, the lines distinguishing two sides of an argument must be understood in order to accomplish a common goal. The danger of like- minded communities, Leslie believes, is a myopic sense of confidence in one's perspective, an insularity that allows no space for dialogue with a diversity of opinions and agendas. As a lawyer and lobbyist, Leslie practices her activism by placing herself in the shoes of those with whom she may not concur. "Sometimes I lobby people I like and whose opinions I respect, sometimes not so much. Often the latter encounters are more interesting, certainly more challenging. And, I suppose, this is another lesson of COA: while you may know that you are in the right, that's immaterial. What matters is figuring out how your world view fits in their world view and how to make the two synchronize to meet your goals." Jenny Rock '93 Leslie's passion-landscape conservation-finds her Birthplace: Troy, Maine now interacting with both public land managers and private landowners who together form the basis for Current home: Dunedin, New Zealand true landscape scale conservation-conservation Current position: Lecturer in Critical & Creative that transcends ownership boundaries. "Public parks Thinking, Centre for Science Communication, and forests are one of our greatest shared legacies," University of Otago she notes, "but they represent only a portion of land that needs to be consciously maintained and Senior Project: Sequence Polymorphisms in the Sodium Potassium ATPase Gene of the protected." In this sense, Leslie's work continues Spiny Dogfish Shark (Squalus acanthias) the legacy of Acadia National Park's founders, who donated the nation's largest gathering of private What are the core principles guiding your life? land to be converted to a national park benefiting all of us. It is this work that brought her from The and Wilderness Society to the USDA as a special advisor If you could tell the world one message what on landscape conservation and "America's Great would it be? Outdoors"-a conservation initiative of President Barack Obama. Aesthetics Govern Paradigms. The sensory stimulation from our environment directs After graduating from COA, Leslie worked on our neuroprocessing-aesthetics drive our cultural landscape protection for the National Park cognition. So what we sense and enjoy Service. She then went on to receive a JD and a guides how we think, and what we know and value. Paradigms are our transient narratives, master's in environmental law from Vermont Law no more, no less, in the sciences and the School. More than two decades after her epiphany humanities the ramifications of this extend in Ken's climate course, Leslie understands and limitlessly and are both fearsome and practices her human ecology as a ubiquitous freeing. | treasure the fact that the cool rough necessity. granite that surrounded my study is affecting my thought process and aesthetic, still. "The very fact that I find human ecology, well, quite ordinary, is why it's something special," she writes, "That anyone couldn't see the connections between Above: Off the Ends, intaglio collograph print by that me what Jenny Rock '93. place and those that inhabit it to is is exceptional." 26 COA Aristotle Goes to Jail Jeremy Norton '91 on Addiction, Happiness, and the Grateful Dead If one were to inquire from Jeremy Norton where "I became more conscious of the politics of skin he imagined himself ten to fifteen years after color than I ever had before," he says. "I was graduation, he might have mentioned political concerned that COA was a bourgeois, white kid organizing, education, or the hermetic enclave experience. I needed to go, as a human ecologist, of neo-Aristotelian philosophy. Clinic work at a to people who really deal with the consequences community corrections center? Never. of environmental degradation. My mentor [at Bell] gave me economic and political frameworks for Jeremy did spend important time laboring in his human ecology. It isn't just white kids who feel predicted arenas. During a COA internship he bad about whales and dolphins. It needs to be an organized Patrick McGowan's 1990 campaign economic struggle, a struggle about women, and the against Olympia Snowe, one of that year's closest workers of the world, and people of color, as well as races. Then, with help from David Malakoff '86, the environmentalist. It needs to be about praxis." he worked for an environmental magazine in DC, and later found his way into student teaching at From Bell, Jeremy headed to Houston, Texas where Washington's now-famed Bell Multicultural High he coordinated The Earth We Share, the summer School. youth program launched by Mae Jemison, the first COA 27 black woman in space. The program promotes Dartmouth for ten years. Currently in its fourteenth science to teens through experiential exploration. year, it is the longest-running Dead show in history. The band means a lot to Jeremy; it even brought Jeremy went on to study philosophy at Dartmouth him to COA, after hearing friends on the road talk College where he grappled with his demon: about "this really cool environmental college up addiction. His master's thesis examined Aristotle, in Maine." Now, even in his professional career, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Dartmouth's Friends in the people he counsels recognize him for his radio Narcotics Anonymous, or NA. He applied the show. In many ways, life has come full circle. philosophers' ideas to NA's twelve-step program, specifically examining Aristotle's eudaemonia- living the good life-and Aquinas' ideas of faith, Education on the Rocks hope, and charity, to the lives of those struggling Bridget Mullen '91, MPhil '93 on with addiction. Academics and the Class Divide Jeremy now finds himself on the other side of Growing up in the tiny island community of the law, working for the Dukes County sheriff's Vinalhaven off the coast of Maine, Bridget Mullen department on Martha's Vineyard. As program left her home "rock" as a high school junior to director for the Community Corrections Center he attend COA. Her departure marked the beginning helps clients navigate the legal consequences of of a nearly decade-long matriculation, during which their drug and alcohol abuse. Oddly enough, he she earned her BA and MPhil in human ecology. feels that his history with substances led him there. "My own experiences allow me to feel comfortable At age seventeen, she was only two years older with a population of people who are in trouble or than the college itself. "I had a ton of growing up are unsuccessful by society's standards I don't to do and it was a privilege and a lot of fun doing judge them. I've been there. As they say, we go from it there," she says. Bridget dabbled in education, Yale to jail." history, and public policy-eventually becoming certified to teach high school social studies. She His current work at the center's community day distinctly remembers former education faculty reporting program incorporates evidence-based member Peter Corcoran's New Zealand seminar processes such as motivational interviewing. As course. Life-changing was the experience of trekking a counselor, Jeremy openly listens to clients in a abroad, learning about the country's school system. manner that leads them to their own resolutions "It was an eye-opener on a number of levels: regarding their addictions. While the strategy has far Perspective; Assumptions; Limits; Appreciation. We higher success rates than older punitive approaches, met interesting and generous people-and it was an Jeremy admits the work can be both tremendously amazing, talented group of COA people." It was on tedious, and discouraging. He also recognizes how difficult it is to measure success. "I have to say no to people maybe for the first time. Too often I see people who come from dysfunctional families where there was way too much permissiveness and bad boundaries. I have to tell them, 'You're making unhealthy decisions. We have to intervene and make decisions for you-not because there's a law, but because it's about your health and about your drag on society when you're using. Your family is hurting. You're not productive or employable.' I have to help them understand that every action has an impact on society, friends, family, and most importantly themselves." When Jeremy is not counseling clients at the center, he hosts the Grateful Dead podcast "Shakedown Stream with Jer Ber" on mvyradio.com, a successor to "The Night of the Living Dead" which he hosted at Bridget Mullen '91, MPhil '93. Photo courtesy of Bowdoin College. 28 COA this trip that she discovered her life partner, former COA outdoor program staffer Chris Kenoyer. Amy Toensing '93 Bridget is also one of the college's first graduate Birthplace: Irving, Texas students, mentored by Etta Mooser, former education faculty member. Her thesis investigated Current home: New Paltz, New York drop-out rates among students in Maine's public Work: Photojournalist school system. Through her research and Etta's guidance, Bridget found Upward Bound-the Senior Project: Country Veterinarian, a photo federally funded educational program providing essay an introduction to college-level learning to youth from low-income backgrounds. The program makes If you could tell the world one undergraduate study more accessible to students message what from characteristically disadvantaged or isolated would it be? communities. Follow your Says Bridget, "COA gave me not only the tools heart. that I needed: grant writing, teaching, problem- solving, teamwork, but also a passion for addressing the class divide. I was hardly more fired up than I was when I read Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed or when I saw Cornel West or just about any afternoon in [former political economy faculty member] John Buell's class. On some level, every day I channel that anger into this work." As the director of Bowdoin College's Upward Bound program, Bridget works with students originating from communities much like her own Vinalhaven roots. Though Bridget is hopeful about the potential of such programs, she worries that access to education is only growing more difficult, especially as the middle class shrinks. "I think we all know this on some level, whether it's intellectually or through hard experience-the growing gap between rich and poor is having a Dan Farrenkopf '93 devastating impact on us as individuals and as a larger society. I've seen access to education shrink Birthplace: Cape Ann, Massachusetts exponentially in just these last two decades. When Current Home: Sullivan, Maine I first started this work, when students engaged with us and did what they needed to do, a college Senior Project: Concrete Pots as Landscape opportunity awaited them. Now, the students that Sculpture I work with who are incredibly bright, have paid their dues, taken tough courses, jumped through Work: Potter/Designer, co-founder of Lunaform all the right hoops-they get into the University of If you could teach a course at COA what would Maine and the unmet financial need is so large it be? that they simply cannot go, even with merit-based scholarships." | would enjoy teaching and learning within the framework of a Sustainable Materials As she works to heal the gap, Bridget has one Survey course, a straight-up architectural-type wish for COA-that it maintain its commitment to materials course with a philosophical thread financial aid that ensures that the COA student body of patterns of consumption and usages. Given just a few moments, one can imagine the is representative of the larger world, "helping all numerous directions such a study could take. COA students understand, care about, and address In ten weeks, whoa, we could cover a fair bit of the class divide in relation to their work in the ground. world, whatever that might be." COA 29 COA Alumni Artists HAWKES Plaza David Vickery, Jr. '89 My work is about the merger of nature and culture; an attempt to make sense of our place in the world. This work emerges from an intuitive viewpoint which was informed and expanded during my time at COA. I look at interior spaces and our imprint on the landscape with an eye for the imperfect, quirky, and sometimes elegant adaptations we've made in order to live here. Above: (left) Trapezoid Sun, oil on panel, 18"x15," (right) Hawkes Plaza, a 1962 sign for a former TV/radio business in Westbrook, oil on panel, 18"x15." Opposite: Dormer, Monhegan cottage, oil on panel, 34"x24." 30 COA 3 M NA Joshua Winer '91 To be perfectly honest, I struggled for some time with the very idea of calling myself a landscape photographer. I wanted my pictures to matter, to mean something, and I felt that images made of "just" the natural environment weren't enough. Thankfully, I had teachers who knew better and through conversations with many of them I was introduced to what I would call a more modern or even postmodern understanding of the way that landscapes function as cultural mirrors, able to reflect our values and actions. In that context I was able to explore a completely new idea of what the landscape means, what it has to tell us about ourselves and how that relates to so much of what COA teaches about the interconnectivity of our everyday lives. These photographs are made within landscapes that exist for brief, sometimes momentary spaces of time; they are generally not places that we imagine a landscape photograph should be either seen or made. They are mostly industrial and by many standards should not be expected to represent the picturesque. Yet they all share a shape, a symmetry that is at once clearly manmade and also outside of us. Piles, stacks, hills, mounds, and certainly mountains are ancient and iconic symbols and forms that have been linked to our sense of self and place for centuries. These modern day ziggurats are everywhere and nowhere, both fleeting and timeless. They are, in many ways, the ultimately modern landscape. Photographs from top to bottom: 42°23'12N,071°02'10W, 32"x40;" 42°23'13N,071°02'09W, 32"x40;" 42°23'12N,071°02'10W, 32"x40." These photographs are from Josh's Chelsea, Massachusetts portfolio, taken at a waterfront site where salt is imported for industrial uses. All images are shot on 4x5 color negative sheet film and output as Type C prints. They are titled using global positioning system (GPS) coordinate data taken from a portable GPS receiver at camera lens position. COA 33 Our Weekend on Shelter Island By Eric Wolf '93 I would like your permission to dream would say, "Watch out for her!" and we'd keep an with you for a while. Let's pretend that we were eye on her and make sure she was okay. both nine together. Maybe you're nine already. I Then the ferry would come and my parents remember it was fun to be nine. I hope your nine would yell, "Come on, come on! Get back to the was as fun as mine. car!" and we'd run, racing back to the line of cars I hope when we were friends I invited you waiting there. We'd all pile in, sitting and waiting out, out on a long drive from the city. Out past all for the ferry to come. It wouldn't get there for little towns on the way, past the pie shop, out to another ten minutes. Greenport, where we'd drive up and join the line of If we were lucky, we would be the first cars waiting for the ferry. We couldn't just wait for car in the line. We'd drive on the ferry and my the ferry to come; we'd have to go and watch for it. dad would park right there in the front of the ferry, We'd get out of the car and run across the old rail so that he could pretend the entire ride across the tracks, past the old railroad station, out on the old sound that he was driving the ferry. He would rotten pier where no boats have docked for years. pretend to crash it, and we'd get nervous. "Oh no! I We'd stand there, looking out at the water in Long wanna drive! I wanna drive!" We'd finally pull up; Island Sound, breathing in the smell of warm tar the ferry would let out a long horn. It would slow on the dock, and we could see the other side, the down and dock and the great counterweights would Shelter Island side. We could see the ferry coming- be brought to bear. The ramp would come down, it was so far away. We could hear the seagulls and and the cars would come off the ferry, passing the smell the salty air; we were so excited just to be giant oak trees that had stood there for a hundred there. years, then the empty long-term parking lot. Maybe my little sister would tag along; she Up we would drive, into town. We would would be five that year when I was nine. My mom drive past the tennis courts, and then we would see 34 COA the old drugstore. Many a fine day was spent in that making sure that each one was clean. Then my drugstore with its silver chrome counter where we father and mother would spend a lot of time cutting got root beer floats. Then we'd drive past The Cook, them up, while we would go swimming. the only five-star restaurant on the island, past the I would pull out my snorkeling gear, and post office and out past the Tuck Shop. Of course I would show you the part of the entire property any child on Shelter Island knows that the Tuck I knew the best. It wasn't the part from the front Shop is the place to go. They have video games and door to the water but the part in the water about a ice cream. Oh! It's the best place to be on the island. hundred feet out into that saltwater creek. I would And then we'd drive that long road through go in the water, and I would show you where each the forests and the old dump on the left, and on the of the scallops hid. And we would catch them in our right the single marina, the one not anywhere near nets; they were so cute-their little shells with the the water, which I never really understood. Out ridges built in. They would open up their shells-if past the trees until the trees came to an end and the you put your hands together now, put your fingers cornfields began. We'd drive out those long corn together, and imagine it opening up a little bit, all fields until we took a right, then we would find a little eyes peeking out, that's exactly what they little community of houses that had been built back would look like, with one hundred eyes peeking in the 1960s. There in that little square we'd find out at you. When you hunted a scallop, you would our house. My parents have rented it from this nice reach for it underwater and it would shoot out this older couple, telling them that it was just them and little stream of water. It would move about three a few of their friends. Then they told every single feet, which is a great defense against its natural person they knew. All of them got together and put enemy, the lobster, but doesn't work against human money in to rent the house. In the beginning it had beings. We'd just go pick them up. They were so been just me and my sister, but over the years it cute-and delicious. We'd put them into our basket. became a whole gaggle of families with kids. Then if we were feeling really brave I If you and I were nine there would be at would show you where the crabs lived-the spider least five other kids there all younger than we were. crabs, the giant monsters of the deep. We'd swim We could tell them right up to the dock what to do, where and there, underneath to go, and what to Maybe if I took a real liking to you, I the deepest pylons of be. We'd play games the neighbors' dock, together all day, and would show you my secret place-that we would find a we'd bike around the spider crab. Not tasty loop-about three- tree on the left side of the yard out by for eating, but very quarters of a mile the beach. It's still there today. monstrous! We'd poke around-over and it with a stick. over again. We'd bike And if we round and round and were in the mood round, we'd have races and all sorts of things. And and if my father asked us, we would walk to a spot because we were oldest, we would always win. further down the edge of the creek on the other Sometimes I'd let you win, and sometimes you'd let neighbor's property, which had no dock on it. There me win. we would find mussels, black and purple and blue. On Saturday afternoon, my mother would They couldn't run like the scallops; mussels are say, "Let's go to the library." We'd all get on our bound in place. We'd pick just the biggest ones and bikes and we'd bike out to the library. It would be leave the rest to grow bigger. quite a ride for us; we'd be so tired and hot. We So we'd take the mussels and the scallops would run in the door and that hot summer day back to my dad, and he would wash them in water would fade away on the cool stone floor of that and put them in a steamer to cook them up. Later library. The librarian would look at us and tell us that night, we'd have a little butter and pasta with to shush, and then we would be really quiet as we those scallops. Ohh! So good! Fresh scallop tastes went in and picked out all the children's books that nothing like the scallops we have in restaurants. It's we wanted. more like a little pat of butter by itself. After dinner We'd go back outside with all those picture would be the best part. My father would take his books and pile them into the baskets of our bikes. pride and creation out of the oven-an apple pie! Then we'd bike over to that ice cream shop there in And we would share with you one glorious piece- the center of the town. Not the Tuck Shop, not as maybe with a scoop of ice cream from the Tuck good, but it was right there and close by. We'd each Shop. buy one cone, and with that new energy we'd bike Then that night, before we went to bed, we all the way home through the cornfields and the might go stand outside and look up at the stars. They forests. would seem so bright! There just weren't that many Assuming it was late in the summer or lights on the island. early fall, when we got home my dad would say, On Sunday morning we would say, "It's "Let's gather up some apples." We'd run around the time to go sailing." We would go out in a little apple trees and we'd gather up huge piles of apples, rubber dinghy with plastic oars out to the little blue COA 35 sailboat, the Blue Grundel. We'd all pile now; I don't know if it's any good. The post in the boat and leave the dinghy behind. office is still there and the hardware store. We'd sail out to the bay and spend the day But the forest and the fields of corn, they wandering here and there, in a little sailboat grew houses. And the scallops, they are no like a bunch of refugees. Seeking, seeking more. For the houses brought septic fields to never, ever, go home again. and septic fields leaked out nutrients, A sailboat is the most perfect and the nutrients flowed into the ocean, combination of wind, sun, and silence you feeding the red plankton, and the red tide, have ever experienced. We would fly which took all the oxygen, was born. across the bay, one turning tack at a time No oxygen meant fewer fish and no as if in pursuit of a dream, until the sun scallops or mussels either. There is talk started to lower itself in the sky. that someday they may come back. Maybe, if I took a real liking I've yet to see them when I swim. to you, I would show you my secret The tall oak trees that have greeted place-that tree on the left side of the visitors at the ferry landing for over a yard out by the beach. It's still there today. It had a branch, a low branch hundred years are gone-wiped out that only a child under thirteen by a hurricane in the nineties. could handle. Anyone older would All those birds on that long spit break it. I would pull myself up, of beautiful, fine sand next to then pull further up to the higher Greenport are also gone; that branches, and then you'd have a sandy point is covered with chance to pull yourself up, too. houses. So I think perhaps We could stand there, where no the island is no longer the adults could ever catch us. And island that I knew. we could pretend that we were The truth is that you pirates on a sailing ship or sailors can't go home-because of old on a clipper ship going home does not stand still in around the Horn of Africa. Or we the river of time, but is bent could pretend we were in a fort and battered, an old person or that we were Robin Hood's who was once young. That men up in the tree, waiting to doesn't mean that you can't ambush our first pick of the day. find a place like this. Your But soon enough Sunday little piece of heaven may would end and it would be time be just around the corner to go home. And my mother from where you live. Seek would call us, and my father and you will find. Protect would pack the car, and we'd and it will last. Forget and all tumble in for that long ride it will not. back home. We'd drive the car Eric James Wolf '93 (Weikart past those fields of corn, at COA) lives in Yellow out past the trees, till Springs, Ohio, where he finally we got to the ferry. is a professional children's As the ferry would take storyteller focusing on us away from the island, environmental themes. After old forgotten worries would graduating from COA, Eric arise again, the coming week's received an MS in environmental troubles returning and the island education from the Audubon fading away. Time is not a friend of Expedition Institute, accredited mine; Shelter Island, like my through Lesley College. In 2010 his life, has moved on in new and podcast series, The Art of Storytelling unexpected directions. I am with Brother Wolf Show, received an sorry to tell you that the apple Oracle Award for Distinguished Service trees around the house were cut to the National Storytelling Community. It is down long ago. The Tuck Shop is still available at www.artofstorytellingshow.com. there-filled with teenagers every weekend. His website is www.ericwolf.org. So is the drugstore, but The Cook closed down years ago. There is another restaurant there Illustrations by Alice Anderson '12. 36 COA Poetry Monhegan Woods Sweet Honey and You Patti D'Angelo Juachon '92 Jeff Wells '92 The leaves' wet blinking; In a dream I asked the fire how to be closer to you. plum-skinned puddles; There he sat in his bright and colorful suit, cursives of rain promising smoking and shimmering with tiny sparks. I made offerings step by step, like a new piece of choreography, unending squalls, stalled exactly as he instructed me with his long finger. fronts, new pieces of air The copal went flaring up, smelling so strong and sweet. as strange and familiar I dipped my hand in melted chocolate, brown and dripping, and I offered it with my hand in the flames. as the gold vein of an The chocolate fell, sizzling into his mouth, his coals. early aspen in the I piled on so much rich, moist, and pungent tobacco the fire smoked and smoldered green body of summer. as I willingly made the circular walk around it. And then I offered a huge piece of fatwood. My love for what dies Blazing heat shot out at me and cooked the ground on which we stood. and comes back is as irrefutable, As I sat and asked for guidance, he cut my hand. My blood fell, the waters of thousands of rains coming through my heart, as empty, as these through my veins and out onto the ground in a perfect red puddle. woods after migration: Out of this puddle grew flowers which opened blossoms. no sound One of the plants grew a brown bud and this one opened slowly revealing a larger than life honey bee which flew right up to my eyes. but a singing sung I lay my head back and this huge bee showed me its sweet and cunning tricks - by no voice but a settling honey is the path to this woman's heart. in the forest full of no trees She needs honey, chocolate, flowers, and the sweetness of your blood baked into breads, cakes and fragrant brownies. but a great leaning and firmness of will, I returned from the dream spilling these letters onto paper. growing not high Like drips of chocolate, they spelled out my passion, my wishes to be closer to you, in front of the fire. but into a light that neither To be under the Weather Beings as they dumped their rain through us. rises nor sets but becomes To be breathing our love alive again with the help of sweet, thick honey. what it touches: seedling spruce, shadowed sphagnum, hay-scented fronds offered like treaties to the country of everything I am not; while off the slackened path thick trunks sway as imperceptibly as planets in a slow-drying sky. COA 37 What's New and What's Good Louis Rabineau COA President, 1984-1993 By Donna Gold Lou Rabineau came to COA to help us recover from major crises-a building had burned down, a president resigned, enrollment had plunged. Lou believed in COA, and found legions of others who did too, restoring our confidence in ourselves and our place in academia. This tribute to Lou, COA's third president, who served during our middle years, is based on conversations with COA community members Rich Borden, Bill Carpenter, JoAnne Carpenter, Patricia Ciraulo '94, MPhil '05, Steve Katona, Anne Kozak, Susan Lerner, Cathy Ramsdell '78, Lucy Bell Sellers, and Peter Sellers. Sadly, Lou died just after this issue went to press. We will have more in the spring magazine. Lou Rabineau loved to talk. During the nine years they had a man who really knew his business." that he was president, if you walked anywhere One daring choice was to increase the faculty- near his door, he'd be likely to draw you in, eager and raise their salaries-at a time when student to discuss your interests, his interests, the college, enrollment was so low, there didn't seem to be the connections between you. His old high school the need for additional personnel. Says Bill, a friend had become a translator of Dante. "Let's talk founding faculty member, "He made an investment about Dante," he'd say to Bill Carpenter, faculty in the faculty and it paid off with a reinvigorated member in literature. Dressed in tailored suits and curriculum and a sharp rise in enrollment and starched shirts fastened by cufflinks, he'd talk to retention." Enrollment, which was just above one students, to faculty, to trustees, to staff-and to his hundred when Lou came on, more than doubled friends and contacts from a vast network of higher within six years to nearly two hundred and fifty. education savants. "What's new and what's good?" With these visionary moves, and his ability to rally he'd ask one and all. And he wouldn't limit himself and restore enthusiasm, Lou turned COA around. to his office. As his great friend and former COA theater faculty member Lucy Bell Sellers recalls, "If For a moment, let's remember those troubled, you were on campus, somehow you would meet transformative days, a time that Steve Katona, also Lou. He was around." a founding faculty member who served as provost under Lou and followed him as COA's fourth Around and connected. You'd be in Lou's office, president, calls "ultimate chaos." Judith Swazey, discussing anything-an idea, a problem-and no COA's second president, had resigned in June matter how obscure the issue, Lou would know 1984; that previous summer, in July 1983, the an expert. He would turn to the phone-this was college's major building had burned to the ground. pre-computer, of course-call his friend, and, says Enrollment dropped by a third. former faculty member and gallery director Susie Lerner, "That issue would get advanced right there." Lou, who received an EdD from Harvard University, had been the chancellor of the Connecticut Lou's magnanimous love of discussion, his astute Commission for Higher Education, and had ability to engage experts in a wide variety of fields- served on the New England Board of Higher especially higher education-and to fascinate them Education and the editorial board of the Harvard with COA, is generally credited with adding a range Educational Review. He accepted the challenge of effective individuals to the board of trustees in the of COA as a consultant through his position aftermath of some difficult years. Higher education as a senior vice president at the Academy for powerhouses came on: Ed Meade, Jr., who directed Educational Development. Hired for a year to get the higher education work of the Ford Foundation, COA back on its feet, Lou later told an audience and Frances Keppel, former US Education at a Commonwealth Human Ecology Council Commissioner, and dean of the Harvard Graduate Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, "COA was too School of Education, under whom Ed Kaelber, exciting a place to leave." COA's first president, served. Lou also brought in Leonard Silk, columnist and editorial writer for the Yet unlike subsequent presidents, Lou didn't come New York Times, and Phil Geyelin, former editor of to COA as an environmentalist, or as a crusader the Washington Post. for experimental education. He came as someone who knew education and cared about quality-and "He was such a forceful and yet at the same time, then fell in love with this unusual little college on polite and approachable, person," says Peter Sellers, the coast of Maine. Says Bill, "the quality that I a mathematician at Rockefeller University and remember most about Lou is that he was slightly another trustee brought on by Lou. "You couldn't amused by COA. In that amusement was also this say no to him." The board respected Lou; "they felt wonderment that we were something new; his 38 COA underlying sense of humor also brought us some perspective when things seemed dire." "We were sort of a hippie band," adds JoAnne Carpenter, faculty emerita in art and art history. "What he did was bring a kind of excellence to the college. Lou made us more reputable." It was something of an odd pairing: "We were the 'be here now generation.' Lou wasn't," says Steve. He was thinking ahead, reviewing implications and impacts of any action. "He knew what life was like." He also understood human complexity. Having received a BA and MA from the State University in Albany, Lou served as a code breaker in the US Army in World War II, undergoing special wartime training in languages at Yale University. Lou was present during the weeklong crucial battle to capture the Remagen railway bridge across the Rhine, allowing Allied forces to cross into Germany in March of 1945. According to Rich Borden, faculty member in psychology who served as Lou's dean, Lou was with a unit that liberated one of the concentration camps. In 1975, he received an honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Yeshiva University. Lou knew that healing was needed at COA; he trusted it would happen by conversation- whether in the Turrets hallway or around his dining table at home. Patti Ciraulo was both Lou's assistant and a student. She remembers how Lou would always take the time to explain the philosophical underpinnings of his decisions; she-and others-might continue to disagree, but they would understand his thinking. The legendary parties hosted by Lou Photo courtesy of the College of the Atlantic Archives. and his wife Mona, an education professor at the University of Maine Farmington, renewed a COA's then-director of government relations, and tradition of strong friendships between faculty and others, the college received three Title III grants, for trustees. The conversations, recalls trustee emerita a total of $2.5 million. To put that into perspective, Cathy Ramsdell '78, were unforgettable. at Lou's inauguration in 1984 he announced the largest single gift the college had received up to that On campus, Lou instituted Lou's Place, a dessert date: $400,000 from the Pew Memorial Trust. cabaret with tablecloths, candles, and performances by students, faculty, and staff. Lou's jokes stole the show. He once told Rich that if he hadn't gotten into In looking back over the tenure of this urban, and education, he might well have become a bartender. urbane man, Steve reflects on the young college he had been hired to oversee: "When the college His methods worked. Anne Kozak, faculty member started, there was a sense of a divide between nature in writing, remembers the reaccreditation visit just and people. Nature was good, and people weren't. after Lou came on. He won the respect of the entire Lou, when he came, wasn't a nature person, he team, netting COA a great review. wasn't an experimental person, and he wasn't an environmental person. He was a people person. And A multitude of important events happened during in the end, of course, it is all about people, because his tenure, including Lou's influence in getting without the beneficial efforts of people, the beautiful a Title III grant to improve and strengthen the stuff simply will not survive. If you can work with academic quality of institutions of higher learning the people, and get the right people working with that enroll a large percentage of low-income you, you can set up the situation in such a manner students. With the help of Rich, Ted Koffman, as to bring success. Lou knew that in his heart." COA 39 Oral History Steve Thomas Photo courtesy of the College of the Atlantic Archives. With this issue's focus on the college's middle years, we decided to check in with Steve Thomas, COA's director of admission from June 1989 until September 1998, who is now director of admission at Colby College. The new Kaelber Hall had been dedicated the summer before. The student residence Blair/Tyson had not yet been built. With enrollment at about 180 in a new campus designed for 250, COA was still in recovery mode from the 1983 fire. Donna: What was it like coming to COA? maybe five years later, COA is number one in the Steve: I remember thinking at my interview, "This country for food at any college. isn't like any other place I'd ever worked but I really love these people and I love the mission." Donna: And then Blair/Tyson was built? And I went with my gut, like I hope kids do when Steve: It really changed everything. Now we were they visit. sort of a destination college instead of one where- get an apartment downtown, you're on your own, I remember walking down the driveway to Turrets sorry. Which is fine after you've been there for a my first day, walking into this sort of fairytale stone year, but the parents certainly don't want to hear castle. I literally had to pinch myself. I did. I pinched that for their 17- or 18-year-old kid-no matter how myself! independent they are! And then I learned all of the intricacies of COA. So, we began this talk about integrating student Well, I began to learn. One of the things that was services, and it was decided that I would become really difficult was that I don't think we had room director of admission and student services. Because for maybe forty kids on campus, for student housing. as an admission person, you had to be able to I remember saying to Lou [Rabineau, COA's third promise something and then deliver. And if you president], and to [trustee] Ed Blair. "I can explain didn't have control of things like housing and food to a parent why we don't have a gym. But I really and orientation and activities, you couldn't really can't explain why we don't have a place for students deliver on very much. to live. That just doesn't fly with them." I didn't feel like you had to have a room for everybody on Donna: So was that was the first time COA had campus, but you had to have a room for the first student services and counseling? years, and for most of the second years. Steve: Oh, we had it. We had had housing, food, There were other problems. We didn't serve many orientation, counseling-but it didn't report to one meals. I said, "Call me crazy, but I think we've got person. We slowly put all those units together. to have a meal plan of some kind!" You could get When I left, it split into different things. soup and bread, but there were no dinners. There I think that the housing, probably more than wasn't anything organized. You had to give the anything, held back the growth in numbers. Once people what they wanted, and they wanted good you took that off the table as a barrier, people food. One of the great things is you go from 1989 looked at COA very differently. We went from where we're serving a pot of soup and bread, to 180-I don't know how many years this took, three 40 COA or four years, maybe more, but we got up to the to whom we offered financial aid, and after Nishi 250, 260 mark. got there, I thought, COA's ready for international students. It turned out that we were only the second Donna: How did it happen? and third American admission directors/deans ever Steve: The school was becoming more well-known, to be at the Nordic UWC. They'd just opened. And for one thing, and so the niche that COA had was they were so excited to see us. This was where becoming more well-defined. And we went to we learned that Shelby Davis had pledged forty more data-driven admission. I think that helped us million to the United World Colleges, primarily identify the right people; when you combine that for scholarships to US colleges. I came back and with the integration with student services, COA I went into Steve Katona's office and told him the became a really compelling story to tell without too whole story. And Steve said, "That's great. Why are many barriers for people to say, "I want to go there, you telling me this?" I said, "Because he lives in but: But you're on an island. But you don't have any Northeast Harbor." And he goes, "Say no more." housing. But you don't have any food." We took the buts away. Then you began to attract people Donna: And Darron worked in admission? who really could more purely identify with the Steve: My goal was to hire all the COA Watson philosophical mission of human ecology. winners after they came back, so he came back and worked for us for a year. I hired Jeff Miller '92, too. I remember, maybe the third or fourth year before Both had such compelling stories to tell and were orientation, I said to Donna MacFarland [now such great examples of what this education could associate director of admission and student services], help you imagine. I liked Darron right away. He "I think I know just about everybody who's coming in this class. There might be ten kids I don't know; was such a sharp thinker, and so sensitive, down-to- I bet I can find out who they are during registration earth-he's just right there with you. I got to know and introduce everybody at the orientation, by him and then discovered that we had grown up very sight." So, I kind of figured it out. We worked so close to one another in New Jersey. His parents closely with these kids that I did all-whatever it owned this restaurant/bar called Collins, two blocks was, eighty-five?-with their town. I remember from my father's insurance office. My father used to Millard [Dority, director of campus planning] came go up there for lunch all the time. up and said, "You got everybody's name right? That's unbelievable." So the next year, everybody Donna: You bike, right? Did you bike a lot at COA? came to watch-and there were more kids! And Steve: Craig Greene [late faculty member in botany] there was all this pressure. I did it for four or five and I were always riding up Cadillac. Our goal was years. to coast all the way down to the COA pier and into the water without ever once pedaling. Which you Donna: And you also did the Bar Island Swim? could do if you were really crafty. That was the great Steve: Well, I felt like if I'm going to get them all thing. You could invent your own adventures. revved up, I've got to jump in the water. But it would be one of the more suffering things I would Of course the students were way beyond anything do. we were doing. I didn't even want to know what they were doing. I would occasionally find out One year a writer from Yankee Magazine came up. because there was no dean of students, so the really He wanted to be in the swim! I said, "Oh, God! bad disciplinary stuff would end up on my desk, He'll be out in like, three seconds." 'Cause it's so somehow. freaking cold. This little skinny guy shows up and he jumps in. He was all excited-he's going to really It would come to Ander Thebaud, who worked in experience it and write about it. He was out of the student life, and she'd say, "I think you'd better talk water in like ten seconds. You know what the title to They were just way out there. of his article was? "Skinny Guys are the First to Freeze." Donna: You admitted them, so you were responsible. Donna: Tell me about the UWCs. You visited before there were the Davis scholarships? Steve: Exactly! I'm going, "I should have seen this in the app!" Steve: Yes. What happened was Parker Beverage, who was the dean here at Colby, he and I were It was a really wonderful time in my life, I hated to good friends and he said to me, "Would you be leave the community, but my daughter Bailey was interested in an international trip? There's this new born with spina bifida and I felt that we needed United World College up in Norway. Do you want to be closer to civilization. Really the community to go up there?" couldn't have been more supportive. I get emotional just thinking about it. I loved the people I worked Nishi [Nishanta Rajakaruna '94, now COA botany with. I loved working at COA. It was a place I really faculty member] was the first international student felt like I could be myself. I was very, very happy. COA 41 Alumni Notes 1979 Vashro '99 are constructing a Will, the son disentanglement mannequin for of COA's late This past June, Detroit Repertory the NOAA Fisheries Service. The faculty member Theatre produced Andrea mannequin will be used to assist in botany, Craig Lepcio's play, Looking for the in training people who respond Greene. Seven Pony. to entangled whales. They are years ago Jeff She was also articulating the skeleton of and Will hiked delighted "Stumpy," a fifty-foot female right Katahdin with to learn whale, along with that of her fetus. Bo Greene and other friends to recently The skeletons will be prominently scatter some of Craig's ashes on that the displayed in the North Carolina one of his favorite mountains. This Rogue's Gallery dubbed Lisa Museum of Natural Sciences' new time they climbed up Cathedral Lauren Smith as best actress for Nature Research Center which is and crossed the Knife Edge. her performance in the play. scheduled to open in the spring of Jeff can be found on Twitter at: Andrea is at work on a number 2012. @JeffreyBCMiller. of other projects. Room 16, a musical about G. Gordon Liddy, 1992 1993 E. Howard Hunt, and the events Darron Collins left his job at the surrounding Watergate, was Eric Wolf (Weikart) is currently World Wildlife Fund and moved recently showcased at Bound for touring Hawaii as a storyteller with his family to Maine to Broadway. Tunnel Vision was where he has been featured in become the President of College workshopped at Wellfleet Harbor the talk story festival and has of the Atlantic! Actors Theatre. Andrea has been performed in school, library, and selected as one of six writers to prison shows. He could use an participate in Groundbreakers, a agent if any of you know one. developmental playwriting lab. She is also enjoying serving as the 1996 Dramatists Guild Fellows program Margaret (Youngs) Coleman director and working with ten writes, "Our daughter, Lilianna exciting emerging writers. Harlem Coleman, was born last August. I is home, but Andrea and partner recently left my Lynn love spending as much time Patti D'Angelo Juachon and Jim farm manager as they can on Mount Desert Juachon welcomed all 6 pounds, job at Chewonki Island. 13 ounces of Logan Eliana into to spend more 1984 their lives on June 29. They are time at our place rediscovering the wonders of life in Whitefield, Amy Sims drove to Los Angeles together in El Sobrante, California. Maine growing in 1989 to attend graduate school food and taking for architecture, and completed Marla Fugazzi writes, "After care of Lily. I am the program in 1993. After twelve spending the last five years in doing part-time work at Hidden years of working for a commercial- North Carolina, I am very pleased Valley Nature Center in Jefferson based firm, she brought her to be returning to Maine. I'll be and my husband Chris teaches sustainability practice and human working as a nurse in the OR at fourth grade." ecology background to a fledgling Eastern Maine Medical Center, company in Santa Monica, and I can't wait to come home. LivingHomes. The company Maine is where I belong, and I'm is committed to a high level of looking forward to enjoying all sustainability and is continually this area has to offer and seeing doing research to create better fellow COAers again! So glad I prefab homes for less cost and held on to my wool sweaters and with a more beneficial ecological long underwear!" footprint. Jeff Miller was recently elected 1991 to the board of America Walks, a coalition working to improve Dan DenDanto's business Whales federal and local policies for Children of Heather Dority, and and Nails has two projects nearing pedestrian safety. He hiked in Deirdre Dority and Adam Bishop completion. He and Courtney Baxter State Park this fall with '00 (and grandchildren of staff 42 COA member Millard Dority) proudly Nixon has a new website for and lace from her mother's and represented COA at the Rockland her Ramshackle Enterprises, Nick's mother's wedding dresses. Lobster Festival this summer. www.ramshackleenterprises.net. Nick and Chelsea live in Los Pictured are (center) Molly, 2, Beth creates puppet shows and Angeles, California where Nick daughter of Heather, with her pageants with communities of is a writer and Chelsea works at cousins Greta, 9, and Simon, 3. all kinds, from folks in addiction the Society of Children's Book recovery and mental health Writers and Illustrators. Mike and Lynne Staggs toured the centers, to schools, camps, senior UK and Germany and visted with centers, churches and protests. 2001 Kelly Dickson, MPhil '97, and She's also been touring her own Ben and Kate (Caivano) Macko Miriam Broady '87. solo clown act and working on a are the proud parents of Juniper, 1997 new collaboration about fracking, COA's first third-generation baby! houseboats, and accordion music. Kate, who is the daughter of Helen This year Rebecca Hancock Beth, her partner Joshua, and worked as first mate on the their toddler Ida Rye live in West Stewart J Cort for two month-long Philly in a cardboard castle and stints while the permanent first welcome visitors. mate was on vacation. She writes, "this represents an increase 2000 in pay, but more importantly, "It was a big year for us," write greater responsibilities and new Shawn and Sarah (Cronin) Keeley challenges!" '05. "Shawn began a new job with the Institute for Sustainable This fall Jesse Kowalski curated Communities in January and we Villains and Heroes: The Comic '80 and Roc Caivano, former moved twenty minutes outside of Book Art of Alex Ross at the faculty member in architecture, Montpelier, Vermont to a sweet Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. He grew up on campus and has spot on the Hancock Brook, just offers tours to any COA people in returned here as the Sustainable downhill from the Worcester the area before January 8, 2012. Business Program Administrator. Mountain trailhead. Sarah is (COA took him up on the offer Juniper Helen Macko arrived at beginning to take doula clients to host a group of COA alumni 4:33 PM, on September 6, just in again and homeschooling Noah, and friends on the evening of time to start the school year! 6, with Aliyah, 2, close by. We November 29.) spent most of our weekends 2002 One Maine educator's dedication this summer building a chicken to the environment is out of this coop, restoring a cabin, exploring world. Challenger Learning Center the brook and woods, getting to of Maine Education Director know our new neighborhood. We Jennifer (Weston) Therrien was hope to make it to MDI before too named a NASA earth ambassador long." in September and travelled to Chelsea Mooser married Nick the NASA Goddard Space Flight Confalone on September 24 in Center in Maryland. With earth the old mining town of Bisbee, scientists investigating climate Arizona where her mother, Shawn and Ardrianna French change, she studied how to McLane welcomed their daughter effectively communicate these Annabel on July 12. issues to the public. In addition to sharing resources with teachers, Brianne (Press) Jordan and her this spring Jennifer will organize husband Brian are expecting an Earth Day event at Challenger their first child, a little girl due on Learning Center of Maine in January 6, 2012. cooperation with NASA. 2003 1999 former education faculty member Amanda Hollander is moving Clown, cardboard crafter, Etta Kralovec, lives. In true COA off-island for the first time since teaching artist, puppet builder, fashion, Chelsea made her own graduation. She's starting new and parade practitioner Beth wedding dress from vintage silks adventures in Portland. COA 43 Alumni Notes When she's not managing the focusing on refined wooden lively film production company utensils, with hopes of expanding she works for (www.personafilms. to larger sculptural pieces and com), Maria Skorobogatov is fine furniture. This winter she spending quality time training her will build a larger body of work cat to use utensils for the dinner to sell through galleries and parties she one day envisions craft shows. She can be found having. She has plenty of room on Facebook or via her website, in her NYC apartment to host any www.rosebyrddesigns.com. apprenticeship opportunities COAers needing a couch to crash for children in underserved on, or kitty to snuggle with. Aoife O'Brien recently graduated communities across the country. from Columbia University with Eamonn is at Sasaki Associates 2004 an MS in nurse midwifery. Now in Watertown, Massachusetts in a certified nurse midwife, Aiofe their urban design studio. is back in Maine looking for work, but is prepared to relocate 2007 if needed. She writes "Yes, I am very, very happy to be done and Juan Hoffmaister concluded his finally, finally a midwife! It's a master's at Stockholm University, quest I started and is currently a candidate during my time at for a post-graduate degree COA apprenticing in international law from the Mukhtar Amin and Sarah Hurlburt ('02) are proud parents with Julie Havener, UNITAR/University of Geneva. of Salim, born September 16, 7 CPM, and Anna He is working as negotiator pounds 8 ounces and 19 inches Durand '86, CPM, on climate change and other long. Everyone is healthy and and seeing my first development-related processes in very happy. birth of the child the United Nations, including as of fellow COA lead negotiator on adaptation for 2005 classmate Jennifer (Wahlquist) the G-77, an alliance of over 130 With colleagues from the Field Coolidge '03, about seven years developing countries. He is also Museum, Laura Briscoe spent ago." a research fellow for the Third three weeks in Fiji collecting World Network and an associate 2006 bryophytes, ferns, and lichens researcher for the Stockholm and helping to set up long-term Deodonne (Dustin) Bhattarai co- Environment Institute. ecological monitoring plots as authored an article on the right part of a grant funded by Conser- to housing that came out in the 2008 vation International. She writes, October issue of the Clearing- Andres Jennings reports, "I am "Aside from a few nasty allergic house Review. She is currently now living in Prague for my third reactions, it was a fantastic trip. serving as the Human Rights year, working as an English teacher We collected several new records Law Fellow for Northeastern for Air Navigation Services of the University's Program on Human Czech Republic. I teach air traffic Rights and the Global Economy controllers, technicians, and with the Human Rights Law administrative directors. I'm often Network in New Delhi. She and Ranjan Bhattarai '04 visited traveling in Europe and saw ten family in Nepal and celebrated countries just last year. It's been the fall holidays. fantastic. I'm planning on moving to Brazil next year to teach for the for Fiji, and many probable new Amy Hoffmaster and Eamonn Brazilian government and prepare species. I myself collected what Hutton '05 were married for the 2014 World Cup. Life is is sure to be a new species in the September 3 in Cape Neddick, good!" genus I am studying for my thesis, Maine. Amy has a new position as so I will be describing it and the program design manager for Kate Tompkins is surviving her giving it a name!" the National Program Department first year of medical school at at Citizen Schools, which partners the University of North Carolina Danielle Byrd started rosebyrd with middle schools to expand Chapel Hill as part of the class of designs, a one-woman show the learning day by providing 2015. 44 COA 2009 ranger at Acadia National Park, Sarah Short Heller and Sam introducing visitors to Mount Heller were married on August Desert Island's landscape and 6. Sarah shares, "It was a truly wildlife. This year, she created and presented seashore exploration magical day and we were lucky programs at the Dorr Museum's to have so many close friends and touch tank with Virginia Brooks family there to celebrate with us. '12 and three local high school Here is a photo of all the COA Heller, Jonathan Carver, Laura students, and served weekly as a alumni present including Nick Howes, Dominique Walk) park naturalist aboard the Dive-In Jenei, who married us." (Left to 2010 Theater of Ed Monat '88. Between right: Nick Jenei, Linda Mejia, seasons she volunteers at science Sarah Jackson, Jessica Woiderski Sasha Paris has spent two museums in her hometown of '08, Sam Heller, Sarah Short summers as an interpretive Ithaca, New York. Stay Connected to COA! COA Alumni Career Services As an inquisitive and passionate human ecologist, Resources include: your life is likely to take several twists and turns. Send Career & Resumé Information and Guidance the alumni office updates on your life changes and choices. Graduate School Information You may update your information three different Networking Opportunities ways: Searchable Employment Databases 1. Phone: 207-801-5624 Interested in providing internships, guidance, or mentoring opportunities? Contact Jill Barlow-Kelley, 2. Email: alumni@coa.edu director of internships and career services, at 3. Website: www.coa.edu/alumni jbk@coa.edu or 207-801-5633. FIV JOIN THE BLACK FLY SOCIETY and we won't bug you anymore! BLA The Black Fly Society is the paperless way to give to COA! Joining is easy-go to www.coa.edu/support and click "Give A Gift Online" on the left-hand side. Then under the "Gift Frequency" drop-down menu, choose "Monthly," submit your gift, and you're done! COLLI MLANTE OF THE NO SOLICITATIONS IN YOUR MAILBOX! NO RESOURCES SPENT ON POSTAGE, PRINTING & PAPER! NO WASTE FOR OUR ENVIRONMENT! If you have questions about this society or how the process works, please give us a call in the Development Office at 207-801-5622. COA 45 Faculty & Community Notes "Want to help save the humpback John, who will present a summary access path, and completing whale? Pick up a camera and start of the sea-level rise study. various building and painting jobs. taking pictures," says Allied Whale fluke matcher Gale McCullough. Molly Anderson, the Partridge In August and September, COA's So begins the CNN piece, "How Chair in Food and Sustainable Ethel H. Blum Gallery exhibited Flickr Can Help Save the Whales," Agriculture Systems, along an installation by Nancy Andrews, posted after a conversation with with Suzanne Morse, Elizabeth faculty member in time-based citizen scientist Gale, following Battles Newlin Chair of Botany, art. The installation, Beauty accompanied seven COA students Sleep, featured drawings, video, her appearance at the Pop!Tech to Witzenhausen, Germany, giant Rorschach blots on fabrics, conference in Camden, Maine in late October. for a Future of Food Summer Academy, where they co- John Anderson, the William H. facilitated an interdisciplinary Drury, Jr. Chair in Ecology and session. Molly also planned and Natural History, is the treasurer of is conducting a distance-learning the Natural History Network, whose course, "Redefining Food Systems primary goals are to articulate Efficiency," with participants from and promote the value of natural Germany, England, Finland, South history and promote the individual Korea, Argentina, Ghana, India, and collective practice of natural and COA. The course focuses on history. The network has created a innovations that are promoting multimedia website and recorded greater sustainability in food some of John's comments at http:// systems by sharing what people histories.naturalhistorynetwork. are doing from seed to sewer in of org/conversations. students' respective geographic regions. Molly also submitted an invited paper to the Journal of Rural Studies, "Beyond Food Security to Realizing the Right to Food in the US." Meanwhile, she writes, "we sculpture, and a 1950s educational are honing down the strategic goals film loop of a man calling, "Fear, for an integrated COA farms plan Rage, Love," and writing those and starting to use the new Peggy words on the chalkboard while a Rockefeller Farms for vegetable large white rat runs through a wire production, permaculture fruit maze. Her latest film, Behind the On Great Duck Island, John production, research, and a public Eyes are the Ears, was screened in supervised the research work of Aly access trail." July at the Maine International Film Pierik '14, Kate Schlepr '13, Robin Festival. Nancy also presented the Owings '13, Matt Dickinson '12 talk "Changing Course," about her and EcoLeague student Amanda current work as part of an evening Posey, thanks to support from the for Maine-based artists and others National Park Service Cooperative seeking to explore new ideas and Ecosystem Studies Unit and the approaches to creative change. It Drury Research Fund. In addition was sponsored by Artists in Context to their own research, they were and the Maine Arts Commission. studying the impact of sea-level The gathering launched AIC's effort rise on Maine seabird colonies. In to highlight and connect creative the fall, students Jordan Chalfant practices in Maine that intersect '12 and Anna Stunkel '13 studied with fields such as health, nature, migratory songbirds and raptors Thanks to the endowment from the and justice to offer new ways of on Great Duck as Acadia Fellows, Peggy Rockefeller Farms, Molly understanding and acting upon the a joint program of the park service was able to hire Neil Oculi '11 and seemingly intractable issues of our time. and COA. Kate, Matt, and Amanda Adelina Mkami '11 to work on the are presenting their work as single- farm doing soil analysis, starting a The Wooden Nickel, written by authored papers at the international vegetable garden, repairing and faculty member in literature and Waterbird Society meetings in moving fencing, mapping pastures creative writing Bill Carpenter, has Annapolis in November, along with with GPS, establishing a public been optioned for film by Mitch 46 COA Waxman and 4AM Productions. mathematics and physics, gave a term daily weather data in Maine, J Miller Tobin, who directed presentation and led the Education looking for statistically significant How You Look to Me with Frank for Energy Literacy panel at the changes in precipitation and Langella, along with some popular annual meeting of the Association temperature over the last century. television episodes, will be the for Environmental Studies and director; his wife Cara Haycak is Science in Burlington, Vermont. The Sustainable Enterprise currently writing the screenplay. In Their presentation was called Hatchery, which Sharpe- November, a staging of Bill's poem "Numbers not Adjectives: Helping McNally Chair of Green and "The Husbands" was performed at Students Understand Energy." Socially Responsible Business Jay Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall Also at the conference, Anna Friedlander oversees, held a press as part of its Opera Shorts program. gave the presentation "Rewards event with the US Department of The score was written by composer and Challenges of Hands-on Agriculture to celebrate a grant Tom Cipullo and performed by The Remarkable Theater Brigade. Renewable Energy Projects for that has funded the hatchery for College Students." This summer two years. Participants displayed Additionally, Bill's essay on Leo their work and Nick Harris Connellan, "Review of The Maine Anna and Dave co-led a workshop on sustainable energy for area '11 demonstrated a portion of Poems," appeared in Fair Warning: K-8 science and math teachers, his Gourmet Butanol process. Leo Connellan and His Poetry, edited by Sheila A. Murphy and "The Science and Mathematics of Attending were representatives from the offices Marilyn Nelson, and published by Sustainable Energy" at COA. The of our congres- Printed Matter Press in 2011. workshop was funded by a grant sional delegation from the Environmental Protection as well as USDA In September, Dru Colbert, faculty Agency's Environmental Education member in visual communication, staff. The story program. "Energy Intuition for resonated with the three-dimensional art and design, Elementary Educators," Anna's and museum studies, gave the media, leading invited article on the workshop, to coverage from keynote address "Nourishing the appeared in the September/October Maine to Texas. Seed, Establishing Roots" at the issue of Connect, a journal for K-8 Maine Art Educators' Conference science and math teachers. Jay's first business case, Leap at Haystack Mountain School of Into the Void, on whether a new A grant from Efficiency Maine entrepreneur should abandon Trust supported Lisa Bjerke '13 a secure job and leap into an in the spring, Phil Walter '11 and uncertain new venture, was Janoah Bailin '14 in the summer, published by Babson College and Carly Segal '13 this fall to work and is listed on the European with Anna on research related to a Case Clearing House. He also renewable energy demonstration published an editorial in MaineBiz: project at Beech Hill Farm. This "Innovation Nation? The US Needs involved an insulation project, to Embrace Sustainability or Get the installation of a heat pump, Comfy in the Dust." In June, at organizing student participation, the International Council for Small Crafts in Deer Isle. The conference, outreach, and documentation. Business 2011 World Conference which included K-12 teachers from in Stockholm, Sweden, one of the across Maine, was themed "Seeds Dave Feldman was second author largest international gatherings of Inspiration." She also led the on the article "Local entropy and for entrepreneurship education, design team for the new exhibition structure in a two-dimensional Jay presented the co-authored "Indians and Rusticators" at the frustrated system," with M.D. paper "Sustainability: A Paradig- Abbe Museum. The exhibit will Robinson and S.R. McKay in the matic Shift in Entrepreneurship continue through the summer of journal Chaos, volume 21:037114. 2012. Also on the team were alumni Dave worked with Kate Shlepr '13 Betts Swanton '88 and Danielle and Lisa Bjerke '13 on a research INNOVATION Meier '08 (assistant director of project in spring and summer of URBAN AGRICULTURE admission for recruitment design & 2011. Kate was supported by a fellowship from the Maine Space BOX FARMS communication). Grant Consortium, and Lisa by WASTER OPPORTUNITY In June, Anna Demeo, lecturer the Rothschild Student/Faculty INVITATION in physics and mathematics, and Collaborative Research Fund. Kate, TO BEANSTORM Dave Feldman, faculty member in Lisa, and Dave analyzed long- COA 47 Faculty & Community Notes Education" and chaired the Botany faculty member Suzanne Yucatan, has another daughter! session on The Making of Soci(et) Morse continues to manage Montserrat joined husband Mix al Entrepreneurship. While in the community garden with its and daughters Scandinavia, he and Lisa Bjerke forty gardeners. Last spring her Mariana and '13 explored the Samso Energy Theory and Practice of Organic Michelle on Academy run by Soren Hermansen Gardening course developed September 22. of Denmark, who spoke at COA a garden for the food pantry, flowers for development, a bean Chris Petersen, faculty member in 2009. At summer's end, trustee seed-saving project, and a small in biology, has become active in Nina Moriarity and former trustee kitchen garden for the kitchen. several organizations working on Lisa Nitze hosted a brainstorming and problem-solving session with That's despite persistent deer downeast Maine natural resource pressure and the re-emergence of use and conservation. He has joined some forty people advising the clubroot impacting the brassicas. the board of the Somes-Meynell hatchery-connected businesses At The Future of Food symposium Wildlife Sanctuary, and represents of Jordan Motzkin ('10) and Nick in Germany, in addition to the COA on the steering committees Harris '12. Finally, Jay, his wife session with Molly Anderson and of the Frenchman Bay Partners Ursula, and kindergartner Max have students, Suzanne led a workshop and The Downeast Research bought a house after an exhaustive on "Participatory Action Research." and Education Network. He also three-year search. Suzanne is currently on a leave supervised six student internships to co-teach a master's course, over the summer: Jesse Karpinnen Agroecology: Action Learning in '13 and Gloria Kahamba '12, Food and Farming Systems, at the who had INBRE grants for work Life Sciences University in Aas, at the Jackson Laboratory; Yuka Norway. Students, including Juan Takemon '14 and Alice Anderson Olmedo '12, work with farmers '12 at Penobscot East in Stonington, and communities seeking to with grants from the Long Cove increase organic food production Foundation; and Marina Garland and consumption. '12 and Kate Ross '12 based out of Bar Harbor to work on downeast COA's coordinator of international Sean Murphy, assistant director of fisheries, thanks to a grant from student services, who came to information technology, performed NOAA. COA as Kylee Allen, is now Kylee Gies. She was married in COA's Nishanta Rajakaruna '94, faculty Farrand Gardens at 4:04 PM on member in botany, is the co- June 25, 2011. She writes, "What a author of a publication with Brett spectacular day it was even though it Ciccotelli '09, Tanner B. Harris rained hard on and off. The magical '07, and B. Connery: "A preliminary misty atmosphere prevailed as the study of the vegetation of vernal bagpiper led us down the aisle pools of Acadia National Park, on the patio above the Farrand Mount Desert Island, Maine, USA," Gardens. The rain let up just in a multi-instrumental electronic for Rhodora 113. December, 2011. time for our ceremony and some soundtrack to Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis as part of the Faculty member in biology Steve pictures." Kylee's husband is Ryan Maine International Film Festival Ressel represented COA at the Gies; when he proposed, a year at Reel Pizza in Bar Harbor in fourth annual EcoLeague Summer ago, an eagle circled overhead- September. The film, a classic Retreat held at Northland College several times. futuristic dystopian masterpiece, in Ashland, Wisconsin in August. is the most expensive silent movie He joined faculty from the four COA painter Mary Harney '96 attended the National University ever made. Sean also performed other EcoLeague colleges to discuss live soundtracks with Joe Perullo and plan future joint initiatives. of Ireland, Galway, for a five- '12 for a double feature of surrealist Over the past year, Steve also week summer school in June films at Reel Pizza in August: Luis worked closely with COA alum and July, where she studied Irish Bunuel's 1929 Un Chien Andalou Timothy Spahr '86, a game warden archaeology and Irish art. The and Salvador Dali's 1930 L'Age for the State of Maine, to obtain a academic workload was intense d'Or. confiscated Gaboon viper for the but it inspired her to apply for the Dorr Museum of Natural History's master's program beginning next Karla Pena, director of COA's teaching collection. This five-foot September. Spanish immersion program in the venomous snake, native to Africa, 48 COA Commission for Africa in Ethiopia. In addition, Doreen's recent publications are: "Drought- induced humanitarian crisis unfolds in Horn of Africa" in Do you know a high school the South-North Development student who's looking for a Monitor, reproduced in Third summer adventure? World Resurgence; "Fiddling with soil carbon markets while Africa burns," a report commissioned by ActionAid International in September; and "Climate change impacts in Africa and the UNFCCC negotiations: policy implications of recent scientific findings." That report, published in October, was commissioned by the African Climate Policy Center. With students Trudi Zundel '14 and Graham Reeder '13, Doreen wrote "Climate Change- Agriculture and Africa: A Primer, for the Surplus People Project, Cape Town, South Africa," published this fall. Bonnie Tai, faculty member in Earn college credit while pursuing interdisciplinary study education, attended the third of Rivers, Islands, or Farms. annual meeting of the Education Circle of Change and co-led the SUMMER FIELD INSTITUTE workshop "Education: Creating COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC www.coa.edu/sfi an Owner's Manual" with Dan Mahler '10 at the Free Minds, Free People Conference. She was found dead on a walking path policy, beginning with one in also presented work in progress, in Saco, Maine in 2010. The Dorr Masvingo, Zimbabwe, at the "Challenges of extending critical Museum became the repository First Encounter of Agroecology exploration," at the annual Trainers in Africa Region 1 meeting of Critical Exploration in of La Via Campesina. Other Teacher Education Group. venues include presenting at a meeting hosted by the Institute Faculty and staff also engaged with for Agriculture and Trade Policy community members throughout in DC, and also representing the summer during the popular ActionAid International at the morning Coffee & Conversation 7th SADC Civil Society Forum series organized by Laura in Johannesburg, South Africa. of the snake following a legal case In the fall, Doreen presented at against its owner. The snake will a conference sponsored by the be part of a new exhibit on the Canadian Coalition on Climate illegal pet trade. Change and Development in Ottawa, at an event sponsored Since June, Doreen Stabinsky, by the Institute for Agriculture faculty member in agricultural and Trade Policy at the UNFCCC policy, international studies, and intersessional negotiating session global environmental politics, has in Panama, and at one hosted given several presentations on by the African Climate Policy Coffee & Conversation agriculture and climate change Center and the UN Economic COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC COA 49 Johnson, annual fund director. member in pyschology, Catherine Jamie McKown, the James Russell Clinger, Allan Stone Chair in FAMILY & Wiggins Chair in Government the Visual Arts, Ken Cline, and and Polity, spoke with Pulitzer Steve Ressel were involved in Prize-winning author and former the inaugural two-week program trustee David Hackett Fischer Rivers: A Wilderness Odyssey, on "Toward a History of Mount in which student participants Desert Island." Carrie Graham, explored science, art, policy, manager of the George B. Dorr and psychology on a nine-day Museum of Natural History, spoke Allagash River journey (photos with Douglas Tallamy, chair of the below). Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware. Karen Waldron, faculty member in literature and writing, talked with Charles Pierce, former chair of the English Department at Vassar College and retired director of New York City's Morgan Library & Museum. Dave Feldman spoke with John Allen Paulos, Temple University math professor and author of the best seller Innumeracy. Steve Katona, former COA president, founding faculty member, and marine science expert, spoke with Allied Whale volunteer Gale McCullough. Bonnie Tai spoke with Phil Geier, executive director of The Davis United World College Scholars Program. Sean Todd, Steven K. Katona Professor in Marine Studies, spoke with philanthropist and marine conservationist Ann Luskey. Ken Cline, faculty dean and David Rockefeller Family Chair in Ecosystem Management and Protection, spoke with Acadia National Park Superintendent Sheridan Steele. Finally, Rich Borden, Rachel Carson Chair in Human Ecology, spoke with COA's new anthropologist, Heath Cabot. Faculty members also participated in COA's two Summer Field Institutes for High School Students. John Anderson, John Cooper (music), Helen Hess (biology), Sean Todd, and Karen Waldron led students as they explored the ecology and culture of Maine's islands in Islands Through Time. Additionally, Ken Hill, academic dean and faculty Photos by Julia De Santis '12. 50 COA ALUMNI WEEKEND and INAUGURATION October 7-10, 2011 Ben Hitchcock '15 Occupy Wall Street By Julia De Santis '12 and Donna Gold Q: Why did you go down to Occupy Wall Street in Q: What did you do all day? New York? A: I spent a lot of time talking to people I would A: My first trip, the first weekend of the protest, never have otherwise crossed paths with, from I didn't have any real expectations. I, like many celebrities to the homeless. Beyond talking Americans, feel frustrated about our economic and marching, there is an enormous amount of system and the devastation it has created socially infrastructure; everyone has a task: sweeping, and environmentally; I thought the symbolism garbage collecting, getting food, preparing it of Wall Street was a good place to voice those according to health codes. There are donations of concerns. The energy was intense-there was a lot food, clothing, camping gear-tons of inventory of intimidation by the police, but the weekend was to log into the occupation's warehouse. There's a incredibly empowering. monstrous committee structure-dozens of working groups and caucuses had developed in as many Q: Empowering? How? days. This isn't freeform anarchy; there is quite a A: I've been going to protests regularly since bureaucratic system. It was very interesting to see it I was fourteen years old-anti-war marches, happen. immigrants' rights, environmental issues-this was my first experience with the consensus-based Q: What do you hope will come of it? direct democracy of the general assembly, and the A: A big part of the movement is the process; potential the assembly has to create community the development of a new community model and a space where everyone's voice can be heard, giving people who have never had a voice in including those traditionally marginalized. It is corporate media or politics the ability to express revolutionary: we're in an incredibly symbolic themselves. That alone is a huge success. Everyone public space between the Twin Towers and Wall has their own hopes for the future. I'd like to Street, we're clothing and feeding and taking care see a restructured government and economy, a of each other, and we're staying until we can come decentralized economy brought to a local scale, to consensus about how to move forward with the especially for rural communities. direction of our nation Q: Can you say what you learned? Q: Is it true that COA had an impact on the general A: I found it fascinating to watch how humans assembly? interact, what people are capable of, and what A: When it first began, there were about a thousand happens when we distribute resources in a different people. We tried to have a whole assembly, but way; it was fascinating to see all the people we couldn't hear each other, so we broke into who were there to express their concerns about smaller groups. Lucas Burdick, a first-year student, capitalism, racism, patriarchy, and other pertinent asked our group whether they'd heard of a people's social issues. microphone; that method of natural amplification has since become a hallmark of the movement. It gave me a lot of hope in people to see how well it worked; to see the common ground develop Q: So you returned to COA? between the Occupy Wall Street people and A: Yes, and worked with other students to get the traditional labor movement. And it gives me Occupy MDI off the ground-a big part of this confidence in humanity-confidence that what is movement is about fostering positive connections now an international movement will continue. within local communities, not just railing against corporate greed. During faculty retreat we traveled Above image: COA students join a march during the first back to New York. It was amazing how much had weekend of Occupy Wall Street: Margaret Maiorana '15 on drums, Ben Hitchcock '15 (center), with sign, and Lucas changed. You'd wake up with people standing over Burdick '15 (far right). Photo by John Stuttle, copyright Guardian you with a camera. News & Media Ltd 2011. 52 COA COA in our Hearts Before inauguration, Sarah Luke, associate dean of student life, distributed markers and plain manila tags around campus, asking those who were here to take a moment to write or draw something about COA on the tag-a dream, a wish, a feeling, a memory. Would that we could include them all! it 7 phobsychess as 2111 bay 1 thing (inal exharbe me 1 pul 1. - 1 - have & is X 1 1 - 424 11 I MO - 1 is June How July25, F Joe There 15am of WE HANDLED FIRE AFTER SURRIVAL Fall throw have generally \ profe offmative ₫ THE or II . if Panable NATURE'S REVOLUTION that is 346 E WE yet WL wish Photos by Julia De Santis '12. with 5 rs this! And W Well-stocked / Story Studio It Hur COA I 53 NON-PROFIT U.S. POSTAGE College of the Atlantic PAID life changing. world changing. AUGUSTA, ME PERMIT NO. 121 105 Eden Street Bar Harbor, ME 04609 NO AQ HERE AVRIL Estoy sentuda frente a un argot 1am sitting M front of a tree. Ahopi leganos a Viday Pienso en 10 legos de todo, on lo mero de tels en el billo de todo la brimer casaquenos hidsonhaces Pue escribir Nuestro homere. El sol sale, la luna cae.call2 Ahoizi y allora. Ayer of Manana Te LOLI a levari aca 0 alla. denis tevas? QUI Wides te vas? pensas 2 penns horas a hablas? cress 3 crees: queres 0 odias? amas? pensas 0 pensas? qui pensas? en quien? Yo; te ext 2010- But think this tree is different estabilidad 7 sustento 03