COAVolume 4 | Number 1 SPRING 2008

The College of the Atlantic Magazine

You would think that it would be simple tocover a college the size of COA, with its threehundred-odd students, thirty-two-odd facultymembers, thirty-five years of history andfewer than two thousand alumni.

Think again. At COA, everyone is an indi-vidual. Everyone has a story. There reallyaren’t groups—and though college guidesmay try to reduce our students to types, theyare such adamant individualists that they risebeyond characterization. As I grab a salad at

lunch, I see some first-year students who managed to raise $2000 for theHeifer Project at the end of winter term, another first-year student whochoreographed a compelling dance from the perspective of Gertrude,Hamlet’s mother, for her Shakespeare midterm, some committed poli-cy analysts who were at the United Nations Framework Convention onClimate Change in Bali, others who were at the convention in Nairobi,and those who devote their analysis to the energy use on campus—aswell as avid researchers of birds and whales and lizards and mush-rooms. But what is so amazing to me is the brilliant writer who isintending to go to veterinary school, the pre-med student who is alsoan artist and writer, the sustainability expert who has just co-authored abotanical paper. And that’s just the current students.

Whether it’s the COA graduate who has chosen to instill a family with the mission of human ecology as a stay-at-home parent or DaveFeldman, faculty member in math, going off to China each July to teachin the Santa Fe Institute’s Complex Systems Summer School in Beijing,COA offers an ever-changing multitude of stories—some two thousandof them! My story list is already impossibly long.

In this issue, we are featuring science alumni who are making a markin medicine, conservation, even in the military. Also check out the backof the magazine for the work David Malakoff ’86 is doing on the sciencedesk of National Public Radio as one of the co-creators of the station’syear-long Climate Connections series, broadcast to as many as twenty-five million people.

One more note. After thirty-five years, College of the Atlantic has itsfirst faculty retiree. JoAnne Carpenter, who taught at the college almostsince the very beginning, retired at the end of the fall term. The artworkon this issue’s cover, like that within the spread, is part of a tribute toCarpenter by those who were deeply influenced by her sweeping intel-ligence and her attention to artistic detail. We wish her a deeply cre-ative retirement.

Donna Gold editor, COA

COA VISIONThe faculty, students, trustees,

staff, and alumni of College of

the Atlantic envision a world

where people value creativity,

intellectual achievement, and

diversity of nature and human

cultures. With respect and com-

passion, individuals construct

meaningful lives for themselves,

gain appreciation of the relation-

ships among all forms of life, and

safeguard the heritage of future

generations.

EDITOR

Donna Gold

EDITORIAL GUIDANCE

Nancy AndrewsRichard J. Borden

Lynn BoulgerKen Cline

Naveed Davoodian ’10Noreen Hogan ’91Jennifer Hughes

EDITORIAL CONSULTANT

Bill Carpenter

ALUMNI CONSULTANTS

Jill Barlow-KelleyMilja Brecher-DeMuro

COPY EDITOR

Jennifer Hughes

DESIGN

Mahan Graphics

PRINTING BY

JS McCarthy Printers, Augusta, Maine

COA ADMINISTRATION

David Hales President

Kenneth HillAcademic Dean

John AndersonAssociate Dean forAdvanced Studies

Sarah BakerDean of Admission

Lynn BoulgerDean of Development

Andrew GriffithsAdministrative Dean

Sarah LukeAssociate Deanfor Student Life

Karen Waldron Associate Dean

for Faculty

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Samuel M. Hamill, Jr.,Chairman

Elizabeth D. Hodder,Vice Chair

Casey Mallinckrodt,Vice Chair

Ronald E. Beard,Secretary

Leslie C. Brewer,Treasurer

Edward McC. Blair, Life Trustee

David H. Fischer

William G. Foulke, Jr.

James M. Gower,Life Trustee

George B. E. Hambleton

Charles E. Hewett

Sherry F. Huber

John N. Kelly,Trustee Emeritus

Philip B. Kunhardt III ’77

Susan Storey Lyman,Life Trustee

Suzanne FoldsMcCullagh

Sarah A. McDaniel ’93

Stephen G. Milliken

Philip S. J. Moriarty

Phyllis Anina Moriarty

William V. P. Newlin,Life Trustee

Elizabeth Nitze

Helen Porter

Cathy L. Ramsdell ’78,Trustee Emeritus

John Reeves

Hamilton Robinson, Jr.

Henry D. Sharpe, Jr.,Life Trustee

Clyde E. Shorey, Jr.,Life Trustee

William N. Thorndike, Jr.

Cody van Heerden

COA is published twice each year for the College of the Atlantic community.

Please direct correspondence to:

COA MagazineCollege of the Atlantic

105 Eden StreetBar Harbor, Maine 04609

Phone: (207) 288-5015 email: dgold@coa.edu

::

:

L E T T E R F R O M T H E E D I T O R

Academic Program Review ~ p. 4By David Hales

COA Leads the World by Going Carbon Neutral ~ p. 5

COA’s Astoundingly Sustainable New Housing ~ p. 6

Bali Buzz: ~ p. 8 30+ hours of youth life at the UNFCC

The People Behind the Dike ~ p. 10Juan Hoffmaister ’07 reports from his Watson year

We Wanted to Form Our Own School ~ p. 13Excerpts from an oral history with Fran Pollitt ’77 of COA’s first class

Horizons Only, No Lines ~ p. 15A tribute to JoAnne Carpenter

Samuel Hamill, Jr. Ardent Environmentalist ~ p. 20A donor profile of COA’s devoted board chair

COA Teaches Lifelong Learning ~ p. 22Alumni making a difference in science

Human Ecology as a Discipline – Two Views ~ p. 30Essays by Bill Carpenter and Maxwell Coolidge ’05

Culebra, selections from a novella ~ p. 32By Erica Maltz ’08

Poetry ~ p. 37By Candice Stover

Financial Operations Report Revisited ~ p. 45

Expanding Horizons ~ p. 46David Malakoff ’86 and NPR’s climate change series

Human Ecology Essay Revisited ~ p. 47By Greg Rainoff ’81

features

Printed on recycled paperpowered by windpower.

www.coa.edu

COAVolume 4 | Number 1 SPRING 2008

The College of the Atlantic Magazine

COVER:Pitkin Interior by David Vickery ’892007, oil on linen, 20" x 15"

BACK COVER:The Beach Hill Farm Gang,August 2007Photo by Alexander LanePortland Monthly

Michelle Soto ’10, AlishaStrater, Isabella Perkins ’10,farm manager Lara Judson’04, assistant farm managerDiane Lokocz ’03, DawnMatlak, Phoebe Van Vleet’08 and Tess Faller ’09pause during a day’s workon the farm.

SUSTAINABLE PRINTING:COA is printed on recycled,FSC-certified paper withvegetable-based inks at J.S.McCarthy, which purchaseswindpower credits for all itselectricity. McCarthy recy-cles more than 100 tons ofwaste paper and cardboardeach month and continuesto work to reduce wastage.It has also substituted envi-ronmentally friendly productsfor most of its hazardouschemicals and recycles andreuses its press wash, theonly remaining hazardouswaste generated.

departmentsCOA Beat ........................................p. 5

Class Notes ......................................p. 38

Community Notes..........................p. 42

College of the Atlantic is now NetZero forgreenhouse gas emissions. COA’s pledgeto become carbon neutral, made October

8, 2006 at the inauguration of President DavidHales, was fulfilled December 19, 2007.

As the first college or university to becomeNetZero, COA’s leadership was applauded aroundthe world, in articles and comments from suchglobal leaders as Mohamed El Ashry, chair of the Renewable Energy Network for the 21stCentury, REN21. Wrote El Ashry to Hales, “I alwayssay we know the causes as well as the solutionsto most of our environmental problems—whatwe lack is leadership.”

COA’s process was painstaking, but doable. A team of faculty, staff and students spent theyear calculating the college’s greenhouse gasemissions, while also researching ways to reduce,avoid and offset them. The 2,488 tons of green-house gases emissions COA could not reduce oravoid this year have been offset by investing in aproject operated by The Climate Trust of Oregon.

COA has now also switched to a low-impacthydroelectric generator for electricity, reducingits emissions by 22 percent or about 450 tons.

Incandescent lightbulbs have been replacedwith compact fluorescents where possible, car-pooling and biking are being promoted, as areflexible work plans so employees can work fromhome at times.

“We have much more to do to directly reduceour emissions,” noted Hales, “but it is satisfying to know that our contribution to the increase ofgreenhouse gases in our atmosphere over the last fifteen months adds up to zero.”

The decision to go with Climate Trust wasbased on months of student and staff investiga-tion into the complicated and at times controver-sial carbon offset market. The project chosen willoptimize traffic signals and manage traffic flow inPortland, Oregon, limiting the time cars spendidling at traffic lights. The entire project is expect-ed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more

4 | COA COA | 5

L E T T E R F R O M T H E P R E S I D E N T

than 189,000 tons over five years—equivalent totaking more than 34,000 cars off the road for ayear. It can also serve as a model for other cities.

COA has also been working nationally andlocally to help other institutions further carbonreductions. It is a founding member of theAmerican College & University Presidents ClimateCommitment, a member of the Maine Governor’sCarbon Challenge and has recently teamed upwith the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce toreplace member businesses’ incandescent light-bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs.

The urgency of these actions cannot be under-estimated. Upon his return from the UnitedNations Conference on Climate Change (see page8), COA sophomore Matthew Maiorana called climate change “the challenge of our generation,”adding, “After the conference, I realize that COAis a world leader in addressing the climate crisis.While the United Nations and the United Statesare taking small steps toward creating a just climate future, COA is taking giant leaps.”

To read more about the process and see our calculations, please visit the web site atwww.coa.edu/html/carbonzero.htm.

COA Leads the Worldby going carbon neutral for greenhouse gas emissions

Dick Cough (right, son of founding trustee Bernard “Sonny”Cough), at the launch of Green Lights Bar Harbor, in which COA and the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce linked up to replace member businesses’ incandescent lightbulbs withcompact fluorescents. As Cough, part-owner of Atlantic Oakes,switched to a cfl bulb, the entire room wondered, How manyecologists does it take to change a lightbulb? Three, it seems.One to change the lightbulb and two more (COA sophomoresJordan Motzkin and Leland Moore, who are managing the light-bulb exchange for COA and the chamber) to note the carbonfootprint reduction.

When College of the Atlantic opened its doors in 1972, it was

designed to be a very different higher educational experience.

With one major—human ecology, no departments, no tenure, a

very low student-teacher ratio and an interdisciplinary approach, COA was

an experiment in progressive education.

We are no longer an experiment; in 2008 COA is an acclaimed institution

of higher education whose focus on the study of the relationships between

human beings and their environment has never been more relevant. COA

draws students from around the world who are committed to applying their

learning to improving prospects for a sustainable, peaceful and just society.

“Life changing, world changing” speaks to the hope and promise that an

education in human ecology can help solve some of this century’s most

complex problems: from climate change to social justice to the disparity

between the world’s richest and poorest peoples. By all measures, COA

has succeeded.

It is precisely because of this success that we are in a position to system-

atically assess and strategically improve our academic program. Over the

next sixteen months or so, College of the Atlantic will engage in a process

of academic renewal to ensure that we meet the needs of our students, and

that they understand the world as it is and the changes occurring in it as

they develop the knowledge, skills and methods to positively influence

those changes.

As part of this process, we will explore the intellectual foundations—and

the myriad challenges—of seeking sustainability, peace and justice in this

century. Faculty-led working groups will examine our current curriculum,

focusing on the skills and knowledge we need to impart to our students

to enable them to understand and be effective in the twenty-first century.

Concurrently, we will invite others to join us in this exploration of the

future of human ecology.

It is clear that the twenty-first century will be characterized by massive

and rapid change—a time of great danger and great opportunity. Edu-

cational institutions will be the crucible in which both individual and

societal responses to this challenge are shaped. No other societal

institution can play this role. Higher education must move beyond the

responsibility to prepare students to live in the world as it will be; we

must embrace the responsibility to prepare students to shape the world

in which they will live.

We will report frequently on our progress in our publications and on

our website. We intend for this effort to be as inclusive as possible, and

we invite your interest and participation.

David Hales

C O A B E A T

COA | 7

COA’s Astoundingly Sustainable New HousingKathryn W. Davis Student Residence Village surprises even its creators

6 | COA

There’s green design, there’sofficial certification, andthen there’s the human

ecological approach to sustain-able building. The Kathryn W.Davis Student Residence Villagemay be the first-ever human eco-logical complex built—and oneof the most sustainable campushousing projects in the country.

“It’s interdisciplinary,” saysMillard Dority, COA’s director of campus planning, buildingsand public safety. “It’s as muchsocial as it is structural. We’re not just talking about the build-ing, or what’s in it—you have totalk about the whole packagetogether.”

As part of the human ecological approach,everyone was part of the discussion at the outset.It’s typical at COA for the entire community—students, faculty, staff, trustees and alumni—toweigh in on a project, but this time the planningmeetings also included Coldham & HartmanArchitects of Amherst, Massachusetts, COA envi-ronmental consultant Marc Rosenbaum ofMeriden, New Hampshire’s Energysmiths, andeven contractor E.L. Shea from Ellsworth, Maine.

To allow a strong connection between stu-dents—another aspect of the human ecologicalapproach—the buildings were planned as family-style units, with no more than nine students perhouse. Each of the three buildings contains twohouses, joined by common space. What soundscomplicated on paper already has become asmall village nestled between Seafox and theKathryn Davis Center for International andRegional Studies, across a little stream from TheTurrets. This village, along with Deering

Common, the new student center that’s builtwithin the 1886 Sea Urchins cottage given to thecollege by the Ryle family (see COA Summer/Fall 2007), are scheduled to open in August.

Early tests predict extraordinary energy effi-ciency, primarily because the buildings are soeffectively air-sealed. With a foot of recycled cellulose insulation (shredded newspapers thatdon’t emit volatile organic compounds) andtriple-paned windows, says Dority, “there is bare-ly any thermal connection between the insideand the outside of these buildings.”

The complex is so tight, that the college planson heating the three duplexes—six homes serv-ing fifty-one students—with just two residential

wood pellet boilers. That’s one boiler of a sizethat would typically heat a one-family home,heating three residences of seventeen people.

Says Richard Riegel Burbank, who withSamantha Riegel Burbank '00 owns EvergreenHome Performance LLC, the company that pro-vided the insulation and blower door testing forair tightness, “I think COA can make the claimthat these buildings are the most airtight of anydorm, perhaps in the world.” The tightness alsobodes well for the air qualitysystem, allowing, he says,“the heat recovery ventila-tion to provide superior airquality at the lowest energycost.”

To reduce the energy usedin heating water, the build-ings have a heat recoverysystem, using the warm graywater to temper the incom-ing hot water. To make stu-dents aware of usage, allshowers have meters. Tominimize water use—andmaximize recycling—thebuildings are fitted withcomposting toilets.

Ultimately, the waste fromthe Phoenix CompostingToilets will feed the sur-rounding landscape. Here,too, alumni play a part. Abe Noe-Hays ’00 of FullCircle Compost Consulting installed the toilets;Ben Goldberg ’90 is the regional representative.

The building materials are mostly local, reduc-ing transportation emissions while promotingMaine’s economy. Rooms are situated to receivemaximum sunlight, cutting the need for electriclighting, which will be provided by compact fluo-rescent bulbs and LED, or light-emitting diodes,further reducing energy use. All appliances areEnergy Star rated.

Because COA’s students are so innately envi-ronmental, architect Bruce Coldham found thatcertain energy-saving systems were simply redun-dant. “COA’s student body has a uniquely reliableconservation mentality,” he says. Take lights. Theyjust don’t get left on, so there is little need foroccupancy sensors. “Why leave the lights on for apre-set period when the COA human computer isprogrammed for immediate switch-off? This wasa first for us,” adds Coldham.

“These are very smartinvestments, economicallyand environmentally,” com-ments COA President DavidHales. “More than resi-dences, these spaces repre-sent our fundamental valuesas an institution. They’redesigned to meet the fullrange of human needs—including fun.” After all,what’s more human ecologi-cal than students fromDetroit, Maine and Mumbaiplanning a dinner for theirhousehold of eight, minglingdishes, laughter and conver-sation as they sauté onionsand chop carrots?

Designed to enhance con-nections, the three buildingshave plenty of common

space—because learning does not end at theclassroom door. At COA especially, relationshipsenhance learning through assumption-challeng-ing discussions, observation and the kind of playthat leads to immense creativity.

And yet, visitors frequently forget about car-bon footprints, energy savings and compostingtoilets when they step inside these waterfronthomes. They just stare out the window at theocean beyond and try to figure out how theymight return to school—if only to live here forjust one term.

C O A B E A T C O A B E A T

“I think COA can make theclaim that these buildings are the most airtight of anydorm, perhaps in the world.”

The six residences in COA’s new waterfront student housingcomplex are fitted with triple-paned windows, compostingtoilets, metered showers and super-electricity saving LED lights,as well as carbon fluorescent bulbs. Heated by renewable woodpellets, these buildings are not only beautifully situated, they areamazingly kind to the Earth they are built on—and from. Photos by Donna Gold.

~ Richard Riegel BurbankEvergreen HomePerformance LLC

3 a.m.: Return to the hotel after learning the talkswill resume at 8 a.m.

7:30 a.m.: Rush to the conference center, makesome quick banners and head to the entrance witha sign that says “Please,” and the Canadians’ ban-ner that states, “This will follow you home.” Got abit of media coverage, but we were there to let theofficial delegates know we are watching and wait-ing.

8:30 a.m.: Return to the plenary room. The negoti-ations get going again!

9:15 a.m.: The session is adjourned due to con-tentious language in the text. A twenty-minutebreak turns into two hours.

11:15 a.m.: The session resumes, but is quicklyclosed. This is going to be a long day. . .

. . . Leading us to reflections by Lauren Nutter ’10 a few hours later.

Friday night and Saturday were an amazing cap toCOP 13. We were up almost all night Friday seeingvery little progress. Saturday was a totally extra dayof COP—negotiations had gone over that much.When I walked in to the plenary, people werestanding and clapping as Papua New Guinea bold-ly condemned the United States for blockingprogress, basically saying, either take leadershipand join the consensus or get out of the way.There was thunderous applause! Shortly after,Under Secretary of State for Democracy andGlobal Affairs Paula Dobriansky made a statementsaying the US would not impede progress. Therewas more thunderous applause and the mostvibrant wave of emotion. The US had committedto something with relatively decent language.Things were moving forward. The pressure fromeveryone—from us—had helped that happen.

We felt our impact again during the Ad HocWorking Group on Further Commitments whenCanada tried to block progress on Option 2, toreduce emissions from 25 to 40 percent below1990 levels by 2020. The youth stood right next tothe Canadian delegation, clapping for each state-ment of support. Eventually Canada backed down;progress proceeded. Tuvalu’s prime minister cameup to us—the youth—and thanked us for puttingpressure on Canada. Wow! Talk about a fulfillingend to two weeks of hard work!

The Pleasure Drivers

Adam Haynes, an outstanding stu-dent in the first Aesthetics of Violenceclass in 1996, published his seniorproject as a serialized novel in the oldOff the Wall to great controversy.Haynes later trained in screenwriting atthe American Film Institute in LosAngeles and soon had a dozen scriptsin circulation. Director Andrzej Sekula,cinematographer for Quentin Tarrantino’s Pulp Fiction andReservoir Dogs, picked up The Pleasure Drivers and itcame out as an indie from Leonidas Films in 2005, mostlikely the first Hollywood movie written by a COA alum.

In a 2006 podcast, Haynes calls The Pleasure Drivers a“Freudian thriller” which finds its way to spirituality throughthe darkest zones of the unconscious. “Sex is the enginefor this movie,” Haynes remarks, “and violence is thegasoline. All my work is about pleasure and pain.” Threeintertwining narratives represent Freud’s superego, ego,and id, and the film’s X rating gives him plenty of leewayto investigate Eros and Thanatos in the raw. Daphne, thesuperego character, is the caretaker for a brain-damagedyoung man. The id character is a well-armed, leather-jacketed hitwoman, and the ego character is Bill Plummer,a college professor of Freudian dream theory (AngusMcFayden). When Daphne (Lauren Holly) kidnaps thepriestess of a televangelist cult, hitwoman Marcy is sent tokill her. Meanwhile, Professor Plummer discovers his wifein bed with a woman, and so picks up one of his students(Lacey Chabert) who turns out to be a prostitute just“auditing” his class. All three plots converge at the BigCock Motel, whose roof icon of a giant rooster presidesover a great expenditure of ammunition and a burningVolvo. This reduces the extensive cast for the redemptionscene. Behind the wheel of a Mercedes convertible, thebrain-damaged man and prostitute start out for a new lifein Portland, Maine. She smiles and says “I feel blessed;”the young man answers, “Me too,” as scenes of sex, goreand violence transform to spirituality in the pale morninglight of the Californian desert.

The Pleasure Drivers definitely walks on the dark side of human ecology, but, as Heraclitus said, “the way downand the way up are one.” When the young couple headEast in that gorgeous sunrise, top down, I find myself hoping their journey will take them past Portland to Bar Harbor, so they can opt for a real change of life andvisit the admissions office at COA.

By Bill Carpenter

Screenplay By Adam Haynes ’98

8 | COA

In December, COA second-year students MatthewMaiorana (left) and LaurenNutter joined the UnitedNations FrameworkConvention on ClimateChange in Bali, also knownas COP 13. The COA stu-dents quickly learned to come

to consensus with the other one hundred and fifty youth participants from around the world, creating and implement-ing strategies that actually helped to move the proceedingsforward.

COA students have attended international climate changemeetings for three years running. What’s it like? What dothey do? Here’s an hour-by-hour description from Maiorana.

~ DG

A day in the lifeof a youth delegateBy Matt Maiorana ’10

Friday, December 14, 2007

6 a.m.: Start the day’s work after passing out ataround 2 a.m. on the hotel floor while writing apress release for the upcoming day’s action.

8 a.m.: Jump on the shuttle to the conventioncenter; work on the press release with others.

9 a.m.: Attend the daily international youth meet-ing; continue work on the press release.

10 a.m.: Strategize with other youth regardingspecific activities for the day.

10:30 a.m.: Work as a group to track down goodquotes for the press release; finalize it; send it tomedia contacts.

11 a.m.: Go to the “bunker,” the space beneath astairwell that’s been designated as the youthcommand center.

11:30 a.m.: Pass out flyers highlighting an absurdstatement made the previous day regarding

climate change by James Connaughton, seniorenvironmental and natural resources advisor toPresident Bush: “The US will lead, and we willcontinue to lead, but leadership also requiresothers to fall in line and follow.”

12:30 p.m.: Realize the banner for the day’s actionneeds to be finished and that the press releaseneeds to be printed and the action is in thirtyminutes. Finish both. International youth workunbelievably well together under pressure.

1 p.m.: The youth statement at the high level ple-nary hasn’t been given yet. Aaagghhh. This iswhat we have been waiting for!

1:15 p.m.: The speech is amazing. Almost every-body in the high level plenary session at COP 13is moved to tears. This is our future. If the wrongdecisions are made, we won’t have time to goback and fix them.

And so it goes, meetings, actions, more meetings.

5:30 p.m.: Head to “Fossil of the Day,” a dailyaward given by Climate Action Network to themost climate-unfriendly countries of the previousday. Today, the United States and Canadian youthperform a song/dance to the tune of “AnythingYou Can Do, I Can Do Better” to see who gets it.Canada and the US share first place.

6:30 p.m.: A conga line starts, snaking out of the conference center. Outside, we perform“Oooooo, It’s Hot in Here,” the unofficially official youth climate song and dance.

7 p.m.: Head to the last international youthdebrief where we discuss how to build on themomentum and create a sustained global youthclimate movement.

8:30 p.m.: Get food!

9:30 p.m.: Return to the plenary where the negotiations are supposed to begin again.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

2 a.m.: Realize I fell asleep on the floor and thatthe negotiations still haven’t started.

BaliBuzzThirty-plus hours in the lives of COA’s delegates to the United Nations Frame-work Convention on Climate Change

COA | 9

C O A B E A T

By Robin Katrick ’09

If you get excited about anidea, you never know whereit's going to take you," says

Nishanta Rajakaruna ’94, COAfaculty member in botany. Hisenthusiasm for serpentine ecology, the study of plant life in extreme geologies, earliertook him to California for hisPhD and post-doctoral studiesand has now driven him to bringto campus the SixthInternational Conference onSerpentine Ecology. The confer-ence, June 16 through 23, is heldevery few years in a differentnation, bringing together scientists working infields such as botany, zoology, ecology, geology,microbiology and conservation biology. The sev-enty-plus presenters are coming from literallyaround the globe.

Rajakaruna became enthusiastic about serpen-tine ecology during his sophomore year at COA,while taking a Plant Systematics course taught bythe late COA botanist, Craig Greene. Rajakarunahas been hooked ever since, choosing to returnto COA as a faculty member precisely because

there was such a need for ser-pentine research in easternNorth America—which is alsowhy he is excited to bring theconference to Maine.

Serpentine rocks and theirassociated soils have high con-centrations of heavy metals, mak-ing their environment less hos-pitable. Says Rajakaruna, "thinkof these rocks as their ownislands," because the area sur-rounding them is so different.The habitats may start with theserpentine rocks, but they affect

the plants and other organismsfound in the area.

Rajakaruna’s spring course,Plants with Mettle: Lives of Metalophytes, offersopportunities for students to research topics tobe discussed at the conference; he’s hoping stu-dents will attend. “Meeting other researchersprovides students an incredible opportunity tolearn the most recent discoveries by those on thecutting edge of the field,” says Rajakaruna. COAstudents will also be able to hear presentationsby alumni and students Tanner Harris '06,Nathaniel Pope '07, Laura Briscoe '07, BrettCiccotelli '08, and Naveed Davoodian '10.

Serpentine Enthusiasts Gather Rajakaruna brings Sixth International Conference on Serpentine Ecology

Nathaniel Pope '07, who will be present-ing at the Sixth International Conferenceon Serpentine Ecology, is taking GPS coordinates for Minuartia groenlandicaon the summit of Cadillac Mountain.

C O A B E A T

10 | COA

C O A B E A T

Meaningful mapsCollege of the Atlantic’s Geographic Information SystemsLab—GIS—has worked with the towns of Mount DesertIsland and with Acadia National Park since 1987, providingthem with maps to assist in planning. This map, made by students in an advanced projects lab, represents what may be a new era of GIS for the island: a modelingprocess that is both flexible and extensible, allowing multiple stakeholder values to be represented. In this map, students have included the aesthetic, community and environmental values of planning, following the work of landscape architect/planner Ian McHarg.

~ Gordon Longsworth, director, GIS Lab

This was selected from more than three thousand maps to be includedin the 2008 ESRI Map Books, Volume 23, which will be released thisAugust.

COA | 11

projects, I offered my views on what I thoughtwere the highest funding priorities: small-scaleflood management and primary response at thecommunity level, post-disaster recovery of rurallivelihoods, and the prevention of small-scaleland degradation. I am horrified to see that cur-rent adaptations could leave vulnerable commu-nities outside the dikes being built to protectinvestment and economic growth.

History will be the judge, but I believe that current (in)action to prepare communities forenvironmental challenges leads to global envi-ronmental injustice. The vulnerable and marginal-ized always get pushed around. The current dis-course of international relations and environmentneeds to fully embrace the environmental justiceimplications of the issues being negotiated in thecapitals of the world and correct its deficiencies.

Vietnam is emotionally challenging. This nationhas suffered immensely from war and othercalamities. Watching communities be destroyedonce again by natural disasters was not uplifting,but I was encouraged to see communities rebuildthemselves. As I leave, the rice paddies are greenagain; soon it will be harvest time. As Vietnamprepares for a new lunar year, it is clear that eth-nic minorities, children and women will continueto suffer the most. And yet, I know the communi-ties I visited are becoming stronger. There will bebetter days. But environmental justice must bringthose behind the dikes to the front of disasterrisk reduction efforts.

Midway through a year spent studying the responses to climate change in various locales around the globe, JuanPablo Hoffmaister ’07 reports from Vietnam. His travels are funded by a Watson Foundation Fellowship for his project, “Changing Climate: Community Response to Water Crises in Extreme Weather.”

The typhoon season is technically over inSouth East Asia, which gives us some timeto think about the past few months.

Vietnam, where I have been living, was affectedby five typhoons in 2007, and some of the worstfloods in its history. In the midst of these record-breaking statistics, one reality is evident: whilemuch has improved in curbing the economiclosses to national infrastructure from disaster, themost affected groups in every storm are the poorand marginalized.

Issues of environmental justice continue toshock me in South East Asia. Sometimes I feel lostand discouraged. Asia, the most populated conti-nent in the world, is already experiencing anincreased intensity of severe weather events withgreater risk of flooding—1particularly in mega-deltas and coastal areas. Combined with thegrowing pressure over such natural resources asfreshwater supplies and unsustainable develop-ment patterns, this increased intensity is deadly.

I could spend hours rambling over whom toblame for these environmental threats, but imme-diate attention needs to be given to the fact thatthe main focus continues to be on reducing eco-nomic losses, leaving millions vulnerable. Whiledikes diverting floods effectively guard industrialareas and cities from big floods, poor communi-ties often end up living behind the dikes.

I came to Vietnam to explore potential areas to be financed by the newly created community-based adaptation focal area of the Small GrantsProgramme, a joint effort of the GlobalEnvironmental Facility and the United NationsDevelopment Programme. After meeting withcommunity leaders, national and internationalnonprofits, and government representatives, after visiting dozens of disaster sites and recovery

The people behind the dikes Concerns from the corners of AsiaBy Juan Pablo Hoffmaister ’07

Juan Pablo Hoffmaister '07 in Vietnam.

An Interview with Fran Pollitt ’77A member of COA’s first class

The last issue of COA featured an oral history with BillCarpenter, one of the college’s four founding faculty members. He ended his reminiscence saying that themoment that clinched his decision to remain at College of the Atlantic, and not return to his tenure-track positionat the University of Chicago, was a paper by an eighteen-year-old COA student, Fran Pollitt ’77. This issue, we decided to interview Pollitt, who entered COA’s first class as a first-year student.

~ Donna Gold

Donna Gold: How did you first hear about Collegeof the Atlantic?

Frances Pollitt: I was taking an extra high schoolyear with the National Audubon ExpeditionInstitute—called Trailside then. Somewhere alongthe line, I heard about the college. When I didhear about it, I knew that it was the only school Iwanted to apply to. It was perfect for what I wasinterested in—ecology, environmental educationand alternative education, too.

DG: And what did your parents think about yougoing to COA?

FP: They were all gung-ho. They were alternative-minded parents. They had to be, to send me outto a National Audubon Expedition program.Anything I wanted, fine.… [laughter] Those werewild times. And the National Audubon ExpeditionInstitute was completely consultative in nature, soCollege of the Atlantic was just a natural.

DG: Tell me about your classmates—

FP: We were thirty-two, and a little more than halfwere really committed to environmental educa-tion and the concept of the college. It was just theplace we wanted to be. And then there was anoth-er group who were trying it out because it wasinteresting for whatever reason … and a lot ofthose people went on to a different kind of edu-cational experience. You had to be pretty commit-ted to take a chance on a place like COA.

DG: Tell me about arriving at COA—

FP: It was thrilling. Those were thrilling moments.It was the start of a whole new world.

DG: In the last issue, I interviewed Bill Carpenter,who said that the faculty had spent the summerplanning the college and then the students cameand said, “We’re doing the planning—”

FP: Oh yes. Our community meetings were reallylively, and we wanted to form our own school, like

“We wanted to form our own school, like it said in the brochure. . .”

12 | COA COA | 13

By Naveed Davoodian ’10

COA revelers turn up the heat on MDI'snightlife during the off-season to combat the bitter cold. The result? Dance parties that are the envy of Bacchus himself.

COA nightlife

A book-weary stu-dent takes a breakfrom philosophicalinvestigation andcuts loose with hissolo interpretivedance compositiontitled Wittgenstein:Man or Machine.

DJ Ames keeps the party going all night longwith only the finest obscure techno.

The now-infamous “Hula Hoop Bros” embarkon yet another death-defying dance number.

As is the custom, dancers adjourn the party with a jovial, non-competitive game of soccerball.

College of the Atlantic's sum-mer program for rising highschool juniors and seniorsexplores the environmental,aesthetic, cultural, political,historical and economicaspects of coastal Maineislands.

• Visit whale feeding grounds, seal haul-outs, seabirdcolonies and the intertidal coastline. Gain firsthandexperience in data collection and research withmarine experts at offshore island research stations.

• Explore music, writing and litera-ture while visiting the places youare reading about.

• Reflect on your experiencethrough writing, music, video andother media.

Students enjoy hands-on, individualized instruction withCOA faculty members while continuing to expressthemselves in music, writing, and photography, workingas a team to develop a final multi-media presentation.

$3,200 program fee includes food, lodging, sea traveland college credit. Room for 18 students. Limited financial aid is available.

Faculty: John Cooper, music and media, Helen Hess,invertebrate zoology, Steve Ressel, herpetology, SeanTodd, marine studies, Karen Waldron, literature.

Deadline for applications: May 23, 2008

For more information and an application, visit www.coa.edu/islandsthroughtime. If you havequestions, please contact Amanda Hooykaas, Program Coordinator, islandsthroughtime@coa.edu, or (207) 288-2944, ext. 374.

Islands Through TimeAugust 2–14, 2008High School Students: Earn college credit in one of the most beautiful places on earth!

C O A ~ I N T E R V I E W

14 | COA

it said in the brochure that we would be doing.We wanted to have full say about how everythingwas done. In the end, we probably did quite a lotof what the faculty had planned. But we wantedto munch it around a little bit.

DG: Do you remember what issues you were par-ticularly concerned about?

FP: One of the issues that I was really concernedabout was the studentadvising system; who woulddo it and how it would getdone. Some of us wantedeveryone to be advisors toeverybody else. Others didn’t want to advise, didn’tlike to do it, or weren’t verygood at it. The students, thestaff, the teachers. You see?That was the whole point ofthis college.

DG: So you knew what you wanted and—

FP: I didn’t necessarily know what I wanted, but Iwasn’t shy to talk about it. But then, you had a lotof people at the college who were shy, or whodidn’t know how to ask, or who were strugglingalong with all their different issues, whateverthey were.

DG: That’s interesting, because every single oneof these students had to be taking a risk. Right?

FP: We were really like any other kind of studentbody, but willing to take on something a little dif-ferent. I would say we had a lot of heart.

And that’s of course what human ecology is atits center—that love of our entire world. You real-ize you’re not just a person walking through itbut you have responsibility for it.

DG: That’s a wonderful description of humanecology…. And after classes, what did you doafter hours?

FP: Hmmm. Well, there was not much happeningdowntown. There were maybe two bars open, ifthat. In the winter there was nothing to do exceptwhat was on campus.

DG: What attracted you to COA?

FP: If it had just been aninclusive, community-centered school, I would nothave been interested. It wasthat strong interest in theenvironment and the world,the ecology and natural history and the sanctity oflife on the planet and beingresponsible for that and getting out of the old way of thinking about being

external to the natural world and putting our-selves in—

DG: And is that something that you talked about?

FP: Oh, yes. We were avid. We were wild aboutit—and then we would tire ourselves out and goto the movies.

One of the hard things was how strong theforce was for peer conformation. You had to wearhiking boots, jeans and a flannel shirt. Most ofour meals were organic, healthy—

And one of the great things was that CathyJohnson ’74 led us in madrigal singing. Cathy hadthe capacity to help us really have a great timesinging. Our graduation was filled with music,because we all knew how to sing together.

Fran Pollitt’s book, Historic Photos of Maine hasjust been published by Turner Publishing.

“And that’s of coursewhat human ecology

is at its center—that love of our entire world.”

~ Fran Pollitt ’77

COA | 15

JoAnne Carpenter in front of a painting she was working on at a time when COA was much smaller and the pool tablesat in Take-A-Break. Photo by Randy Ury.

In the early COA years, there was a sense thatthe earth was in a dreadful emergency andthat art was a frill or pastime that had little

relevance to the problem or the solution. So formore than a decade, there was no artist or art historian on the full-time faculty. Year by year,however, working her way from visitor to adjunctto part-time and finally to full-time, having toprove herself and her subject at every step,JoAnne Carpenter established the living centralityof art to the human ecology curriculum. Herstory is central to the story of art at COA. Herunsurpassed intellectual range—from Minoanantiquity to the latest Whitney biennial—broughtto a remote Maine island the full spectacle of visual culture. JoAnne also embodied theessential human ecology doctrine that theory and knowledge had to be realized in the world.

Though fully contemporary, her elegant paintingsare layered with reference both to Renaissanceaesthetics and her own deep-rooted connection,through her Mediterranean background, to theclassical world.

I must say personally that some of the highpoints of my own time at COA came from team-teaching with JoAnne, from Maine Coast Historyand Architecture to The Fifties, to the many itera-tions of Turn of the Century—thirty-five years ofteaching collaboration. I would just add to allthese student tributes a colleague’s deep respectfor JoAnne’s endless self-generating energy, herconstant questioning, her passionate intensityacross a staggering range of subject matter, herinsistence on an all-out integrity of approach,and her humility before the words, images, ideasand reality of the world we share.

~Bill Carpenter

A tribute to JoAnne Carpenter, faculty member in art and art history from 1973 to 2008: COA’s first faculty retiree.

Horizons only,no lines

16 | COA COA | 17

“JoAnne’s inspiring teaching and influence were the foundation of mycareer as a fulltime painter. What has kept me going when I’ve been discouraged, however, has been thiscomment: ‘Talent isn’t as important ashaving something to say.’ After twentyyears, I’m still making a good livingwith my artwork. I’d like JoAnne toknow that I’m grateful.”

~ David Vickery ’89

“JoAnne’s passion for the study andpractice of art represents the best ofCOA. She encouraged her students tobe intellectually curious and to makeconnections across disciplines. Shehelped me to connect my own love ofhistory and politics with architecture,cinema and visual art. Her inquisitive-ness has made us all more completepeople and better students.”

~ Nat Keller ’04

“I have rarely known teachers who aremore giving of themselves. To haveJoAnne as a teacher was to have herentire attention.”

~ Jude Lamb ’00

“JoAnne taught me two of the mostimportant things I learned at COA. The first was that it was okay to bringmy whole self, my spirit, to myprofessors, not just my intellect. The second was that there is no such thing as a line, only a horizon. I apply this to almost every difficultsituation I encounter.”

~ Josie Sigler ’99

“While taking JoAnne’s watercolorclass, she leaned over my shoulderduring a speedy-gonzales-time—painting a vase of flowers in thirty seconds. She whispered, ‘I think you’ve found your style.’ As a writer, I often reflect on that exercise, or paint in that same speedy style for a pre-writing activity. JoAnnerevealed to me a fresh approach to all creative work.”

~ Leah Stetson, BA ’01, MPhil ’06

Encouraging GiftsJoAnne as Art Teacher

“When I started at COA, I wanted to study marine biology. But when I asked other students about the best professors, JoAnne’s name keptcoming up. I took one of her courses.After that I took every course sheoffered.

I now compare the passion andlevel of discussion in her classes to the seminars I attended in graduateschool. She challenged her students toask big questions, think independentlyand engage in academic rigor beyondthe classroom.

JoAnne is probably one of thegreatest single influences in my life. I have gone on to become a film professor, and when I plan my courses,it is her inspiration I recall.”

~ Jason Harrington ’96

“I remember JoAnne saying she couldnot sleep the previous night becauseof the conflict in Iraq. She emphasizedan attention to self-consciousness thatwas as relevant to her art courses as to her humanitarian insomnia. JoAnnehelped to convince me that I hadmuch to gain by continuing my studies in the arts. Now, every time Iwork on a painting I remember hersuggestions of technical and conceptual theory. Thanking JoAnnewill always be insufficient because of her effortless sincerity and her inexhaustible fascination with peopleand art.”

~ Sam Wustner ’04

“I was doubtful of my ability to complete the portrait assignment inJoAnne’s watercolor course, which wasprobably why I left it for last. But as Ibegan to paint, everything she taughtstarted to make sense. I mixed the colors correctly, used the right hues of pinks and browns for the face.When I was finished, I couldn't wait to hear her comments. Because ofJoAnne, I see the world in a differentway and I discovered my love forwatercolors.”

~ Julianne Kearney ’06

Rusty At SeaJulianne Kearney2005, watercolor, 12'' X 15''

Solstice (Monhegan)David Vickery 2007, oil on panel, 11" x 17"

Chutes andLaddersJude Lamb 2006, acrylic,20" x 30"

Fast Watercolor, 2000Leah Stetson2000, watercolor, 6" x 9"

ReunionJason Harrington1996, mixed media4’ x 8’

“In my Greek art class, JoAnne mademe feel as if I lived in the BronzeAge with the Minoans. She was definitely a Renaissance woman in our Renaissance art class, reflecting the dunamitis of that time.”

~ Kathy Massimini ’82

“JoAnne taught me the importance of history—that all art, whether fromyesterday or four hundred years ago—is made within a context whereby welearn how we see the world around us.Whether it’s mannerist structure ofspace or the light emanating from abaroque canvas, what most concernedthe artists of their time speaks volumesto all subsequent generations—as Ibelieve the art we make today will tellfuture generations how we saw theworld.”

~ Ellen Sylvarnes ’83

Forever An Inspiration

Look at him, That face Cheek tucked behind nose In the repose of Grecian foothills Chin rising to lips Conjure a flowering Goblet ready to drink Its eyebrows inverted pietas Cradling bright lakes And its ears Ears curled to its contours’ many winds And gently informing its expression

~ Mark Tully ’93

Each Meeting,an ExplorationJoAnne as Art History Teacher

“There are so many things to be thankful to JoAnne for—sincerity, tireless dedication, wonderful sense of humor. But I am especiallygrateful for the enthusiastic and probing attitude that infused her work. During an independent study I did with her on Greekarchitecture, JoAnne had such enthusiasm for each image thateach meeting became an exploration. JoAnne is an immenselycreative thinker and I couldn’t help but have it rub off a bit onme—by osmosis I learned to be constantly learning, observing,making connections, seeing things anew.”

~ Liz Cunningham ’82

Balancing Heart,Mind & SpiritJoAnne as LifeTeacher

“JoAnne taught me to involve mydreams in my work. To those of us for whom dreams are both a blessing in their vibrancy and a curse in theirfrequency, paying attention to themopens worlds not necessarily open tothe rational mind. Her influence willremain with me as long as I dream.”

~ Ethan Rochmis ’98

“JoAnne has the ability to carve out the essence of each of us in words, finding meaning in each of our unconscious habits. She was the first person who lifted the everyday to the divine for me, and with such boundless passion!”

~ Alice Leeds ’76

“JoAnne’s ability to help her studentsand friends balance matters of heart,mind, and spirit is an amazing gift.Those of us who have been blessed toreceive this gift will forever be grateful.COA is what it is partly because ofJoAnne’s love, light, and wisdom.”

~ Sarah Keeley ’05

18 | COA COA | 19

Back From IsraelLiz Cunningham2007, India ink on paper, 24" x 18"

Reading #1Lisa Damtoft2006, Pine nee-dles and paper,3" x 3"

MirageEthan Rochmis2007, oil, 18" by 60"

BethSam Wustneroil on panel,9" x 12"

Just AnotherDay in IraqNeil Mick ’85August 12, 2004,collage and oil,16" x 22"

COA | 21

Hamill says, he was lured by COA’s promise, and its ability to retain its core values while adapting to twenty-first-century challenges.

Still, says Hamill, “it seemed to many in the college community that more was required to assure our longevity.” As with his planningwork, Hamill has taken a big-picture approach to COA, first as co-chair of the Strategic Planning Committee, then working on Buildingsand Grounds and other committees.

The college’s first endowment campaign was initiated in the mid-nineties. The campaign’s success was evidence that COA was becoming a mature institution with fine prospects. “With an endowment,” saysHamill, “you become responsible to a larger universe of people. And thatis a wonderful thing; it shows that there are a growing number of peoplewho care about the college and are willing to invest in its future.”

In 1998, when his wife, Mary Richards, died of cancer, Hamill’s connections to the college deepened; in 2004 he became chair.Hamill’s tenure has seen the successful presidential transition fromSteve Katona to David Hales; a closer working relationship among thetrustees and between the board, the administration and the faculty;and ever-growing connections between the college, the greaterMount Desert Island community and the world beyond.

Last September, with the help of Patrick Uwihoreye ’06, Hamill initiated the Great Lakes of Africa Scholarship, offering full tuition to astudent from Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi or Kenya. The pro-gram complements the Davis United World College Scholars Programfunded by Shelby and Gale Davis. To launch it, Hamill is funding fouryears of COA tuition for the first scholar, to begin this fall.

“Starting with the Davis family’s remarkable commitment to COA,we can—even in this downeast corner of New England—expand ourinternational program so that every student has significant overseasexperience and COA has a demonstrable impact on the global envi-ronment,” says Hamill. “With President Hales’ international experienceand vision, we have a leader uniquely suited to accomplish this.”

“Every college is a reflection of its trustee chairs,” comments Hales.“COA has had giants in this role, and Sam Hamill is one of the mostimportant leaders we have had. COA has made the transition from anexperiment in higher education to an established alternative widelyrecognized for its excellence and creativity. No one is more closelyassociated with this successful transition than Sam Hamill.”

Though Hamill is retiring as board chair in July, one of his biggestundertakings is just beginning—making faculty and staff salaries moreequitable. “Our pay scales are too low,” says Hamill. “I’m glad thetrustees have begun to focus on this.”

As Hamill moves on to other endeavors, he continues to beamazed at the college’s capacity for self-renewal. “I have such admira-tion for Father Jim Gower, Les Brewer and their early associates whoshared the vision of what this college could be—and for the faculty, staff, trustees and friends who have worked so hard to bringthis college where it is today. We are well-poised to address the challenges of the twenty-first century.”

20 | COA

D O N O R P R O F I L E

As a graduate student in regional planning at the University ofPennsylvania, College of the Atlantic board chair SamuelHamill, Jr. studied with Ian McHarg, a landscape architect and

seminal thinker considered by many to be an early human ecologist.In the early 1970s, says Hamill, the McHarg program, based on anunderstanding of natural systems, was a “magnet for ardent environ-mentalists.”

Hamill was among them. Though his father was a textile executive,Hamill was raised on a dairy farm in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Just amile walk through hayfields would bring the young Hamill to the farm-house where his grandfather, a professor at nearby PrincetonUniversity, lived with his grandmother, a student of the natural world.Long before Hamill was born, his grandmother had come to know thegreat landscape designer Beatrix Farrand, who had been hired to workout a plan for Princeton.

Farrand also created a design for the old farmhouse property whereHamill’s grandparents lived. “She got my grandmother interested inwhat was referred to then as ‘the wild flowers’—two words,” saysHamill. “And my grandmother got me interested in the wild flowers,and from there an appreciation of the natural landscape.”

As corporate headquarters and tract housing began to encroach onHamill’s childhood landscape, he first became dismayed, then curiousabout the forces that were behind them. Eventually he sought to dis-cover what could be done to reverse or at least deflect them. “When Ilearned, in the late sixties, that there was actually a profession called‘regional planning,’ I was delighted,” Hamill recalls.

Hamill has spent his professional career working to manage growth,conserve land and renew cities, applying a big-picture, regional plan-ning approach to places like the Hudson River Valley and the State ofNew Jersey. He still serves as senior consultant to New Jersey Future,one of four nonprofit organizations that he founded. The organizationis an independent research and advocacy group that advances solu-tions to issues of suburban sprawl, environmental conservation, socialjustice and economic progress. “With magnificent landscapes, urbanblight, high population densities, sprawl and social injustices, NewJersey has some of the most pioneering and effective land use regula-tion in the nation. It couldn’t be a better place to work,” Hamill says.

So much in Hamill’s background resonates with human ecologythat it’s actually a surprise to find he didn’t get involved with COAuntil 1994, at the invitation of late trustee Alice Eno. At the time, hesays, he was attracted by four aspects of the college: COA’s mission tomake the world a better place, its commitment to Mount DesertIsland, where Hamill has summered since 1968, and the opportunity tobe among those who share the college’s values and goals. Lastly,

SAMUEL M. HAMILL, JR., ARDENT ENVIRONMENTALISTBy Donna Gold

Photo by Toby Hollis

Photo by Donna Gold

on water pollution and land use, she studiedMount Desert Island lake chemistry with COAbotanist Fred Olday for her internship, and raisedEuropean oysters in the Skillings River for hersenior project.

Roy’s concern for ecosystem health has shapedher life ever since. She currently works for theNew York State Department of EnvironmentalConservation directing research for theAdirondack Long-Term Monitoring Program,which looks at the impact of and recovery fromacid rain in water bodies across the Adirondacks.

Growing up in northernMaine, Roy loved the out-doors and was intrigued bynatural systems, yet thoughtan outdoor science careermeant being a forester orgame warden—until she discovered environmentalbiology.

Studying water resourcesfor a master’s degree at theUniversity of Vermont, Royfocused on the relationship between rain pH andstream acidification. Soon after, she became aproject analyst for the Adirondack Park Agency,serving as the agency’s acid rain spokespersonwhile also evaluating New York conservationdepartment policies affecting the park. This expe-rience gave her the credentials necessary for hercurrent work.

In 2001, Roy began directing research for theAdirondack program, which now has more thantwenty years of data at its disposal, making it one of the most comprehensive studies of lakechemistry in North America. The program monitors fifty-two lakes and three streams in the Adirondacks, collecting the acid neutralizingcapacity and levels of sulfate, nitrate, pH and toxicaluminum. Located downwind of Midwest coal-burning facilities, the monitoring program waslargely responsible for establishing the directconnection between emissions and acidification.Thanks to the Clean Air Act amendments of 1970and 1990, sulfur emissions have decreased by

about 50 percent over the past thirty years. Roywas a leading author in the final report, Adiron-dack Acid Rain Research, which came out in 2005and has been recently issued as Acid Rain in the Adirondacks: An Environmental History byCornell University Press, one of Roy's seventeenpublications.

Roy spent much of her early career in the field,getting to know the Adirondacks. She still occa-sionally gets out, though her job now is translat-ing field data for policy makers and the public,staying abreast of current research.

Roy loves the process ofrecognizing a problem,establishing a monitoringsystem, then collecting andanalyzing data with the eventual goal of influencing policy. “Working with a sys-tem of observation devel-oped over time is hugelyinteresting,” she says.

Ultimately, Roy sees science as a way to head off

future problems by understanding the present.She is upbeat but practical about the recoveryprocess of the Adirondack ecosystem.

“We’re no longer arguing whether or not emissions lead to acidification of lakes. We’regoing in the right direction with emissions control, but it’s taken a long time to reverse acidification and we haven’t gotten there yet. The question becomes one of urgency, how committed are we as a population?”

She and her husband, Steve Engelhart (’77), a historic preservationist, live in Keeseville, New York where she gardens, composts, uses a clothesline and drives a high mileage, low-emission vehicle. Son Noah is a musician andhigh school junior and son Sam studies altern-ative energy at Clarkson University. They’re allactive promoters of local food, music and art. An ethos gained long ago has clearly become her own. “At COA, I learned individual responsi-bility, that every person and every action counts.”

“At COA, I learned individualresponsibility, thatevery person and

every action counts.”~ Karen Roy ’77

22 | COA COA | 23

Alumni Making a Difference in ScienceDonnie Mullen (’97)

“COA teacheslifelong learning”

WATCHING OUT FORTHE HEALTH OF THE WATERSKaren Roy ’77, Conservation Research Director

In the early 1970s, as the environmental sideeffects of one-hundred-plus years of industrial-ization splashed across the headlines, Karen Roy transferred from the pre-med program atDartmouth College to COA—in part for the “takeaction” sentiment she found at the college.“Everyone had to do their part,” she says. Focused

Whether ten or thirty years separate the fol-lowing alumni from their college experience,the influence of COA remains a force in theirlives. As I interviewed six graduates workingin various scientific fields, all expressed gratitude for the personalized learning theyreceived. When it came to remembering theCOA faculty and staff that played influentialroles in their lives, the list reads like a cam-pus-wide roll-call of past and present, staff,faculty, trustees and presidents. For thesealumni, the COA community provided a supportive platform for their academic andpersonal growth.

COA’s ethos remains a part of each life: vaccine scientist, acid rain researcher, con-servationist, behavioral ecologist, biology professor and environmental consultant are all sure to keep recycling, composting,bicycling to work, and otherwise conservingenergy. They’re also sure to think broadly andcreatively, as demanded by human ecology.

Each of these six scientists credits COAwith offering challenges and lessons tailoredto their needs: assistance with discoveringtheir life path, help with honing skills in writing, science and the humanities, andencouragement to approach life with both acritical eye and open mind. COA was as muchan experience as it was a college.

~DM

Karen Roy ’77 stands in one of the nearly two hundred head-water streams of the Oswegatchie-Black River system nearHarrisville, New York. These waters were intensively sampled for acidification chemistry from 2003 to 2005. On this day, Roy was sampling for chemistry and scraping rocks and collecting sediments for biota.

who lives with his wife, Elizabeth Freedman, afamily physician, and daughter Frances, eight, andson William, three, in West Hartford, Connecticut.

He credits writing faculty member Anne Kozakwith helping him to recognize his natural ability.“I connected with her. She saw my talents andpushed where it was needed.”

He also worked in chemistry with COA facultymember Don Cass, helping him to develop exper-iments for a bioorganic chemistry class. “Dontaught me how to take a scientific book or paperand figure out what it meant,” he says.

When asked about the influence of COA in hiseveryday life, he speaks about his environmentalawareness and minimizing his ecological foot-print: “We’re a part of the world rather than incharge of it.”

A LIFE RICH INSENSORY EXPERIENCELauren Gilson ’88, Field Biologist

Lauren Gilson gained her love for animal behavior during childhood summers spent inNew Hampshire, swimming, catching turtles,watching loons and visiting the Squam LakeScience Center where a live-animals educationprogram exposed her to a red-tailed hawk andsnowy owl. An animal lover fascinated by flight,these birds captivated her. At thirteen, sheworked at the center as a future naturalist anddiscovered that the study of animal behaviorcould become a career.

Several decades later, having been a field biologist from Nebraska to Madagascar, Gilson is now studying the endangered red-cockadedwoodpecker at the Avon Park Air Force Range in Florida.

Gilson transferred to COA in search of profes-sors who would take the time to become involvedin her education.

As she designed non-competitive games toteach animal behavior, the late Bill Drury, facultymember in biology, challenged her to question thevery notions she was laying out in her curriculum.

He encouraged her to think beyond the estab-lished precepts of animal behavior, to “always beopen to another way of interpretation.”

She now routinely finds that animals do notnecessarily repeat predicted behavior. The localdifferences she sees in her current work with the red-cockaded woodpecker lead her to applya regional lens to existing federal management regulations.

Lauren Gilson is flagging a tree in which she has found a newwoodpecker excavation, or a “start” (the start of a cavity).Though it may be years before the woodpecker excavates into the heartwood and hollows out a chamber to roost in, the starts are tracked to see how long they take to finish, how often new starts are made, who in the group works on them, what characteristics the chosen tree displays, and other information to help scientists manage the bird and its habitat needs. Photo by Lynne Flannery.

24 | COA COA | 25

THE JOY OF DISCOVERY:CREATING VACCINES FROM INSECT CELLSClifton “Trey” McPherson ’84

“I didn’t grow up knowing what I was going todo,” reflects Clifton “Trey” McPherson. Today, hefinds himself playing a leading role in the develop-ment of the first non-egg-based flu vaccine.

McPherson transferred to COA in 1981. He initially explored architectural design, then med-icine. Fascinated by discovery, he ultimatelyfocused on molecular biology.

Following COA, he worked as a research assis-tant at The Jackson Laboratory, in Bar Harbor, mapping the genes of anemia and other blood dis-orders. He went on to Vanderbilt University for aPhD. Most of his colleagues had to adjust to beinghanded the responsibility for their education, butcoming from COA, where, “everything was basedon interest,” McPherson was already a motivated,independent thinker.

Later, while at a post-doctorate fellowship inmolecular genetics at Brown University, he pub-lished a groundbreaking article in the journal Cell (one of seventeen he’s published to date) on how DNA is packaged differently aroundgenes that are actively expressed.

In 2005, he brought his enthusiasm and scien-tific acumen to Protein Sciences Corporation inMeriden, Connecticut, a company that specializesin developing and manufacturing vaccines.

He's now focused on the licensing of FluBlOk,a cell-culture vaccine manufactured using insectcells. The Food and Drug Administration hasnever licensed a vaccine of this type, soMcPherson has had to answer a lot of questions.

Currently, one fertilized chicken egg isrequired to grow a dose of flu vaccine. Thedecades-old process takes six months andrequires that the flu virus, often a live virus, be altered to grow in eggs. FluBlOk offers theadvantages of safety, speed and an exact match ofthe virus, explains McPherson. The cell-cultureapproach eliminates exposure to the actual virusas well as the potential risk of a poultry-born ill-ness, making it safe for both manufacturers andpatients: The vaccine is made from a single pro-tein taken from the surface of the flu virus.FluBlOk can be produced in as little as six weeksand the protein used to make the vaccine is unaltered from the original virus. Cell-culture vaccines are not new technology—polio, hepatitisA and chickenpox vaccines fall in this category—yet the use of insect cells is uncommon; mammalian cells are the norm.

These days McPherson spends more time in his office than the lab. As director of qualitycontrol, he is charged with establishing protocolsfor the battery of tests that must be administeredover the proteins produced. He also works onanalytical method development, raw materialstesting and carries out stability studies. He’s alsostill project manager for Protein Science’s SARSvaccine project. Human clinical trials will likelybegin at the end of 2008.

“Being involved in a new way of making vac-cines is exciting and stressful,” says McPherson,

Trey McPherson ’84 at his lab at Protein Sciences Corporation,looking into one of the details of licensing FluBlOk, a flu vaccineusing insect cells.

In Guatemala, cultural distance and a languagebarrier prevented Collins from gathering the hardscience he was after. As a result, he began to con-sider tools beyond science; the lesson has carriedover into his international conservation work.“The world is too crazy to use science all thetime,” he says. “We have woefully inadequate datain a rapidly changing world. You need instinct,creativity and a look at the cultural systems.Natural systems are hard to predict; whenhumans are thrown into the mix, it becomes evenharder. Science can help prioritize, but a lot ofthe time it’s about talking to people and tappinginto local knowledge.”

His work in the Amur Basin—the Amur Riverflows from the mountains of Mongolia andbecomes the border between Russia and China—has focused in part on the taimen or “river wolf,”the world’s largest salmonid, the family thatincludes salmon, trout and whitefish. Collins saysthe forces working against taimen, which cangrow to one hundred pounds, are numerous,including gold mining and overgrazing. He hopesthat a locally based sport fishing industry, empha-sizing catch and release, might bring some relief.And yet, the greatest threat to taimen is localizedsport fishing of a different breed—for trophyfish—a popular pastime among Mongolia’s elite.

Six months ago, to work closer to the Decatur,Georgia home where he and his wife Karen andtheir two daughters, Maggie, six, and Molly, four,live, Collins added the rivers and streams of thesoutheast to his job description.

Working in the US offers significantly betteraccess to resources and expertise, but propertyrights activists pose a challenge, he says. Thesouthern Appalachians support the richest in-vertebrate and fish populations in the temperateworld. But this diversity is threatened by the ever-expanding urban centers of Chattanooga,Tennessee, Charlotte, North Carolina and Atlanta,Georgia. “People don’t want to be told what todo,” says Collins, “but they are starting to comearound as the negative consequences of not planning become apparent.”

Collins has a gift for grasping the importanceof the microcosm within the context of a globalclimate, and for him these two seemingly diver-gent regions have a binding similarity—theimportance of paying heed to the local per-spective—another lesson that dates back to a college campus on the Maine coast.

FULFILLING ACHILDHOOD DREAMJim Kellam ’96, Tenure-Track Biology Professor

Jim Kellam only applied to one college. He lovedCOA’s infectious optimism, the personal atten-tion and getting to know his professors—arefreshing change from his Richmond, Virginiahigh school of two thousand. Longing, early on,to be a biology professor, he delved into classestaught by COA faculty members in biology John

Jim Kellam ’96 is attaching a radio transmitter to the crow’sback so his team can determine whether it was part of thecommunal roost and where it spent the daylight hours.

26 | COA COA | 27

Her job is often a creative challenge as federalregulations limit the methods she can use. Forexample, getting a permit to use telemetry unitsto track juveniles is very difficult, for fear thateven simple monitoring devices would harm the birds.

“My goal is to figure out the most about theseanimals with the least impact,” she says.

Working with the red-cockaded woodpeckerhas made her more attentive to how a species utilizes the landscape, as she also monitors theresources on which the birds live. By observing the productivity, survival rates and growth of thered-cockaded woodpecker, she can recommendwhat will increase the overall number of species.While many studies simply emphasize learningabout a species, her current work included,Gilson has long made it a point to try and usebehavior to learn from a species.

Although she has spent much of her careerworking with birds—her master’s thesis at BoiseState University was on raptor biology—her truepassion is the study of behavior itself, in anyorganism. She tries to consider the world fromthe perspective of her subject, focusing on individuals, challenging herself to know themwell enough to recognize the slightest change in vocalization or behavior.

“I could watch a species for hours and hours,paying attention to what they are doing, how theyare using their environment, and how they reactto each other,” she says.

Beyond birds, Gilson soon hopes to be study-ing reptiles with her partner, behavioral ecologistBill Bateman of the University of Pretoria.

High-paying work has never been Gilson’sfocus. Her life is rich with sensory experience.Nature’s sounds and sights offer endless delight.The red-cockaded woodpeckers she studies arelike her children, she says.

Drury’s focus on individuals has opened thewidest of worlds. “I love knowing so many birds;I’m very fortunate to spend a lot of time workingwith organisms that are very different from us,”Gilson says, adding, “Everybody should end updoing the thing that is most important to them.”

LISTENING, THEN ACTINGDarron Collins ’92, World Wildlife FundConservationist

Darron Collins loved COA from the moment hestepped onto campus. Beyond the beauty, sizeand proximity to Acadia National Park, he felt likehe shared a similar intensity with the students hemet. “I wanted to tie myself to trees as an EarthFirst! activist,” he recalls. Today, as a WorldWildlife Fund conservationist, he understands the importance of listening to all parties. “Who’sto say we know more?”

Collins’ interest in activism evolved into a fascination with field biology and then into acuriosity with environmental law.

The same drive that led him to design the pop-ular Whitewater/White Paper class with Ken Cline,COA faculty member in public policy and envi-ronmental law, now finds Collins directing twoWWF priority areas: the Amur Basin of Mongolia,Russia and China, and the rivers and streams ofthe southeastern United States.

“COA allowed me the flexibility to figure outwhat made me tick,” he says.

As a Watson Fellow, Collins studied the socialand ecological consequences of development on rivers in Latin America, later earning his PhDin anthropology from Tulane University, where hestudied the plant usage and lore of Guatemala’sQ’eqchi’ people.

Darron Collins ’92 mounts a camera trap to capture images of the highly endangered Amur leopard (Panthera pardusamurensis).

early. In fifth grade, she was engrossed by whatshe could grow in a petri dish.

For her internship at COA, she worked onAllied Whale’s long-term study of the ecologyand habitat of finback and humpback whales. Her senior project looked at how high-speed vessels affect whales. She has since presentedher research in Maui and Massachusetts.

Damon later worked for Allied Whale and awhale-watching outfit in Bar Harbor, earning her captain’s license. She also researched theendangered right whale under Scott Kraus ’77 at the New England Aquarium.

“There is nothing like being far offshore, in asmall boat with a few other dedicated individuals,watching a species you’re not certain will bearound for another hundred years—knowingyou’re making a difference.”

But Damon found earning a living from fieldbiology difficult. She had already worked onimplementing federal policy during whale andsea turtle encounters as a certified biologicalobserver aboard dredging vessels along the eastand gulf coasts. Seeking to start a family, she

returned to policy work with AH EnvironmentalConsultants, a small firm in Newport News,Virginia. Come April, she and husband JamesYoung, an Army logistics officer who works at the Pentagon, are expecting their first child.

As an environmental consultant, Damondesigns and implements an environmental man-agement system for the Navy, streamlining andenhancing existing policy execution.

Whether it’s hazardous waste regulations orhistoric building preservation, Damon must knowthe policy, and how federal, state or Navy regu-lations affect her client. Then she must find efficient ways to implement that policy. Here,Damon goes beyond teaching how to effectivelydisseminate rules, striving to integrate humanecological thinking into the minds of influentialpeople. She seeks those who manage others,such as department heads or doctors, and teach-es them, for example, why recycling matters andhow it affects their lives, in hopes that they will inturn pass the awareness onto their subordinates.

“You need a concise message and you need tocommunicate with the right people. Success is allabout effective communication,” she says.

Damon has been surprised by how much sheenjoys seeing a project produce a more edu-cated, contented and greener client. The bulk of her time is split between writing environ-mental policy, and interacting with people toensure implementation at the hospital. She is alsoworking toward a master’s degree in environmen-tal management at the University of Maryland.

In an effort to morph her career back towardmarine research, she wants to extend her con-sulting to include the greening of ChesapeakeBay. Whether it’s keeping pollutants out of thebay or working directly with a species in need,any future move will stand up to the internal litmus test that has guided her work since herCOA years: “If I’m not making a difference, I’mnot living up to what I could be.”

Donnie Mullen (’97) is a writer and photographerliving in midcoast Maine.

Jessica Damon at work in her office at the Navy.

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Anderson and Craig Greene. He loved field tripswith Greene and his approach of teaching aboutthe relationships among plants. From Andersonhe learned to remain open to variation in the natural world and to think beyond his booklearning. For his senior project, Kellam studiedhow weather influences the roosting behavior ofpileated woodpeckers. Today, he’s still studyingbirds as a tenure-track biology professor at SaintVincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.

While his contemporaries were outside play-ing basketball, Kellam was wandering through the woods, watching birds and identifying wild-flowers. Even in elementaryschool, science was hisfavorite subject—he still has his fifth-grade rock col-lection. He and his motherkept a feeder in their back-yard and together theywould keep track of whovisited. In eighth grade hewas asked to interviewsomeone with a professionhe was interested in—hechose an ornithologist.

Kellam earned his PhD inbiological sciences from Purdue University, study-ing the pair bond maintenance of downy wood-peckers in winter, an interest stemming from hisCOA senior project. At Purdue, Kellam looked at whether males and females compete at for-aging during the winter. In opposition to well-documented literature, Kellam found that theydon’t—he observed that males and females for-aging within fifty yards of one another didn’taffect each other’s success. He also implantedtestosterone in one group of birds—the methodhad never been practiced in woodpeckers—tosee if it would strengthen the pair bond relation-ship. The added testosterone did influence thepair, but only to the advantage of the male.Females foraging with testosterone-added maleswere less successful when compared to theircontrol group counterparts.

After Purdue, Kellam taught at Franklin &Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania as a visiting professor. Teaming up with MargaretBrittingham of Pennsylvania State University, heresearched the effectiveness of managementtechniques utilized by the United StatesDepartment of Agriculture to move a crow roostthat had been deemed a public nuisance. Themethods ranged from flares and noisemakers topoison, with a few hundred actually killed. Overthe course of three years the roost size droppedfrom about 40,000 to circa 15,000 individuals, yetKellam could not say that the shift in roost size

was directly correlated tomanagement practices. Itcould have simply been abehavioral shift.

He’s now looking intobirds and sleep—how stresslevels and weather affectsleep behavior in birds andhow sleep affects their socialinteractions during the day.

Since arriving at SaintVincent, Kellam has focusedon designing his teachingcurriculum. “I enjoy being

like John Anderson,” he says, referring to his for-mer advisor’s knack for challenging assumptions.Kellam asks his students a lot of questions, hop-ing to elicit an “I never thought of it that way”revelation.

INFLUENCINGTHE INFLUENCERSJessica Damon ’98, Environmental Consultant

When asked to think outside of the box at COA,Jessica Damon rose to the challenge: “In my post-COA life, I have never been afraid to try," shesays. Her sense of empowerment is astonishing.

Growing up on a small farm in Buckfield,Maine, with a gamut of chores from milking cowsto fixing the snowplow, Damon came to science

“‘I enjoy asking students a lot of

questions, hoping toelicit an “I neverthought of it thatway” revelation. ”

~ Jim Kellam ’96

Ispent most of my time at COA in human studiesclasses but the arts and design curriculum was

where I learned the value of discipline. Discipline is a word that has taken on a negative

connotation these days. In the world of child rearing(which I am in the thick of) it has been conflatedwith the word punishment. In academia it hasbecome something in need of transcendence. Westrive to be multi-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary,trans-, post-, cross-, etc. The result unfortunately isthat many of us forget to be disciplinary in the firstplace.

Discipline was the last thing I expected to find inmy art and music classes. Art and music in my mindwere where people went to “expressthemselves” and “find their innervoice.”

Students who enter ErnieMcMullen’s painting classes or JohnCooper’s music tutorials with thisattitude quickly discover otherwise.There is no room for fudging intheir classes; you paint; you practice.Cooper and McMullen are not mid-wives assisting at the birth of yourcreativity; they are disciplinariansand masters of their fields whoknow the difference between beauty and bullshit.They expect students to be just as committed tomastery as they are.

Many teachers, from the elementary to the collegelevel, have given up on the idea of discipline.Education in this country has shifted from an intellec-tual model, with a focus on the acquisition and mas-tery of skills and knowledge, to a psychotherapeuticmodel where feelings, opinions and self-esteem arewhat count. Teachers no longer teach but rather helpstudents make discoveries and voice opinions.Teachers are no longer regarded as masters and stu-dents no longer regarded as disciples; in fact thewhole notion that the older generation has some-thing of value to impart has fallen out of fashion.

Discipline involves developing effective, regularstudy and work habits; it also involves staying withindisciplinary bounds. Human knowledge is dividedinto disciplines because it is vast and there are spe-cific tools and methods that can be best used for

studying different phenomena. I recall history facultymember Todd Little-Siebold’s annoyance at the pop-ularity of Jared Diamond’s book, Guns, Germs, andSteel, which sought to explain the Spanish conquestof the Americas in terms of material and biologicaladvantage. A biologist who writes a history book mayhave a popular following, but his cross-disciplinarymove cheapens the work of historians who trade inthe in-depth study of specific people and events.Likewise, any student trying to draw conclusionsabout social sciences from something they studied inbotany class was sure to evoke the ire of my wise(and disciplined) classmate Yaniv Brandvain ’04.

If human ecology is to develop as a discipline, wemust guard it against being broad-ened out of existence by beingdefined as the study of humans andtheir environments.

Rather than becoming a new andimportant field of inquiry, humanecology might merely become justanother interdisciplinary “study”like the “gender studies” or “ethnicstudies” programs elsewhere. Theseare not fields of inquiry, but rathercurricula that draw from a numberof different disciplines and lead the

student to pre-determined (politically biased)conclusions.

Human ecology is also in danger of being so nar-rowly defined that the prime activities of the humanecologist become preaching environmentalism andthe superiority of human ecology. The college hasgotten a lot of good press for its commitments toenvironmental concerns but it would be a shame ifthe college’s educational mission took a back seat toits non-intellectual pursuits such as signing the EarthCharter or becoming carbon neutral.

Both of these extremes are anti-intellectual pit-falls. Students, commit your attention to studying thefields that interest you the most. The disciplines youmaster, and more importantly the discipline youdevelop, will last you a lifetime.

Maxwell Coolidge ’05 and his wife Jennifer(Wahlquist) ’03 live in Orland, Maine. Coolidge is a candidate for the Maine State Legislature.

Human EcologyDARE TO BE A DISCIPLINE

By Maxwell G. Coolidge ’05

“Human ecology is alsoin danger of being so

narrowly defined that theprime activities of the

human ecologist becomepreaching environmen-talism and the superiori-

ty of human ecology.”

~ Max Coolidge ’05

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In the fall of 1972 COA convened as an academicinstitution with thirty-two students; every issue

involved in running a college was on the table, rightdown to whether we would turn the clocks back to standard time. I think of those first years as theBig Bang of human ecology; we were willing toquestion all that came before in education, level itto the ground if necessary and build it over.

With a visionary challenge, the trustees had takena brand-new concept—human ecology—and askedus to breathe life into it and make it work as a col-lege education. They knew and we knew that itwouldn’t be just another academic discipline, but a complete transvaluation of how we learn. Of theuncountable gifts the trustees havebestowed on us, the greatest hasbeen those two words, human andecology, the zygote of the organismthat has come to be COA.

The first handful of faculty spenta summer thinking and talking andmade a definition, “humans andtheir relation to the environment,”which has kept its focus not on thethings of this world but on theseparate relationships that holdthem together.

But a definition is only the skin ofan idea, not the heart. It was not till the studentscame that we truly began this great evolutionaryexperiment in modifying liberal education to serve anew millennium. The liberal arts had been formed inthe Middle Ages to respond to a world that was fixedin place while the sun revolved around it. Humanecology would teach an open, unconstrained, cre-ative response to a post-Darwinian world that willnever stop changing. You can’t freeze and definehuman ecology; but its mercurial indefinability is theideal instrument for understanding and respondingto the world we’re in.

The first students have long since gone forth tocreative life voyages in service to both humans andthe environment, while the faculty is still here tryingto figure out what human ecology is, a task we’vebeen chipping at for one score and fifteen years. Bynow you would think we could take that hairy, anar-chic tarball we call human ecology, wrap it up in a

textbook, Human Ecology, and impart it to our stu-dents in an orderly way.

But I see the faculty as having quite the oppositemission: never to let human ecology freeze into adiscipline to be known and transmitted by profes-sional human ecologists to passive students. Ifanything, the faculty must use all our knowledge ofhuman ecology to keep it unknown, so that each fallit is as new to us as when we first encountered it.

Human ecology is not a subject matter. It is a wayof apprehending the world through the relations ofthings in their ceaseless interaction and change. Asstudents, if you assume the faculty already knowsand all you have to do is take notes, if you assume

the administration already knowsand all you have to do is follow therules, you will be missing the pointof human ecology, which is yourown creative involvement in thedestiny of your personal educationand of the institution as a whole.

It takes courage for the facultyto give up the comfort of masteryand see our subjects as unknownsagain; and courage for students togive up being disciples and con-sumers. In the eyes of human ecol-ogy, students and faculty are joint

partners in this limitless investigation. Facultyshould take on the best qualities of the students—their radicalism and eager openness, and studentsshould assume the best of the faculty, our wisearticulateness and self-confidence, right or wrong.In this way we can join against one-way authoritari-an learning and keep the Big Bang going in its cre-ative intensity and freedom.

What keeps human ecology from being justanother academic discipline is the deeply personalencounter each of us has with it, student or teacher.And the highest expressions of this encounter arethe superhuman achievements of the senior projects,because all-out creativity is the only response to theunanswerable questions that will be asked of you,and that you will continue to answer all your lives.

Excerpted from Carpenter’s speech at COA’s thirty-fifth convocation, September 5, 2007.

Human EcologyBEYOND DISCIPLINE

By Bill Carpenter

“Human ecology is not asubject matter. It is a way

of apprehending theworld through the

relations of things intheir ceaseless interac-

tion and change.”

~ Bill Carpenter

I open my eyes to a world as bright as blueflames and as old as diamonds. Outside the win-dow a rooster sings his solitude to neighborhoodanimals in a series of short, splitting crows. TheCaribbean dawns like a bad dream, a day thatkeeps on repeating, a modern day Isle ofNausicaa worthy of Odysseus. To Odysseus, thepicture was wrong, a perfection and clarity thatmust not exist on a proper earth. Somewhere inhis memory, Odysseus knew that he must gohome, something sad that would not bend to thewill of the beauty before his eyes. The boy besideme in my bed is asleep with dreams of moonlightand snow, girls that will come and sweep him offhis feet. I will get out of the bed, cook him break-fast, but will not eat anything myself.

The rooster continues to scream, though thesun floated into the sky two hours earlier, hissense of time lost in his ancestry, this feral colo-nial descendant of the more well-behaved roost-ers of the conquistadors. Roosters were bred tocrow at dawn, to awaken humans with the firstray of light; that was the purpose of roosters, thereason for their being so carefully kept by mas-ters of another species. In this story, the conquis-tadors mixed their blood with the unwillingTaíno, and then eventually nobody taught theroosters when to crow.

The slow, archaic clawing of a green iguana onthe cement roof joins the sound of the rooster. I

start to cook eggs with the slight sense ofrevenge of the rooster who would have neverfathered these eggs anyhow.

* * *

In the Caribbean, roosters and iguanas live in thesame space, the rooster where the roots of thetree enter the ground, the iguana where thebranches meet the sky. The civilized world, as Ihave come to realize, is a zoo of animals dumpedwhere they did not evolve. The iguana belongshere and so has always, to some sunlit tree inthese latitudes. With the scratch of his frontclaws, and then a pull of his hind, he is not tryingto tell me anything, not telling me to wake up. Hedoes not know I am here several feet below him.He will simmer on my roof in the morning sununtil his insides are cooked, then slide off to acoconut palm and disappear into cooler, moreinvisible places of the world, long after my chick-en’s eggs are cooked and eaten.

Through the metal shutters the sun percolates,the rays only a few minutes old. That is how longthey take to get to the earth. A year ago I was notin the Caribbean, but a year from now the faintlight of stars behind the blue sky of this day willhit the ground beneath my feet and end theirtravels.

In the beginning there was only water andlight, then the creatures in the sea.

I. Runaway

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BY ERICA MALTZ ’08

T he Caribbean dawns like a bad dream, one that you forget soon after waking,

but that flavors your day with a precarious feeling of something about to happen.

I came to the Caribbean because the low latitudes evade me like an infantile memory, a mess of light and color, indiscernible to myeyes that cannot yet focus. The warm wind and curved horizon lived in my brain before I could formulate the series of thoughts that I needed to interpret those rough waters, before I could analyze its presence, before the amphibious syllables of words could creep forth from a mouth that had not yet said anything that anyone else could understand.

culebra selectionsfrom a novella

Pho

tos

(5) b

y D

onna

Gol

d

* * *

In the beginning, the boy and I set out to dis-cover all of the secrets of this small island. In thebeginning the boy and I just were, and just werewith each other, and we did not know the territory.

* * *

You had a picture already in your mind, beforeyou came here. Bone white and azure blue, thewaves fan out, recede, fan out, recede, breathe-quiet, fan out, fall back, in that endless, stochas-tic, admirable fashion of waves. A slow Jurassicmist rises from sea grapes and coconuts, instantlymarooning us on a forgotten isle of piracy, a rum-laden kingdom of rats and outcasts, giant schoolsof silver fish, and twisted mangrove roots.

If I am stranded here forever, I would slowlyforget what exactly it was that I did before this,grow bark and tree rings: My skin will be scalesand my eyes a spy glass looking always to a hori-zon that I would never reach. As the soft sweetcoconut water steals my taste buds, my nailsparched like teeth, a tongue raspy and salty likethe skin of the iguana and a crepuscular sense oftime, rising with the moon instead of the sun.

* * *

At the sea-grape gate of the shore, the boy picksa hibiscus flower and tucks it behind my ear. Iwander up into the bush away from him, trying toname the stones as if they were my own cre-ations.

When the boy isn’t looking I pull the hibiscusfrom behind my ear and place it on the grave ofconchs, a pile of empty shells, scabby skin cover-ing a spiral of pink and pearl. They say that onlyliving things can produce spirals, and that spiralsare always evidence of something that has lived.This hibiscus marks well this grave, a star-spiral ofits own in the center of these hollow shells.

Before we walk away, the boy asks me wherethe flower has gone. I tell him it must have fallenout. He looks to the ground for a brief momentand we continue to the shore.

II. CastawayShells of bombs that exploded fifty years beforescatter the beach along with sandals and bottles,piles of bottles that will one day outnumber theliving conch in Culebra’s shallows. The hills crum-ble into the ocean and the bombs slowly turn torock, to raw metal, and one day you will not beable to see where they are. It is not the job ofrocks to record history, it is not the job of rocksto remember and forget or to say where it is theyare going.

Someone goes to sleep in Culebra whensomeone else is waking. Someone is choking inthe generations of confines of a small islandwhile someone else is wondering when to leave.Someone decides to stay, someone decides to goand never come back, whether by intention ornot.

A hand-painted sign stands guard over the vastcoastline of Culebra, a landscape that you willnever see even if you live here. It is abandoned tobirds and to bombs, with rocky beaches that willnot turn to sand for thousands of years. Some ofthe deepest waters of the Caribbean lie justbeyond this coast, this western point, and manywaves that strike this shore travel first over thedark trenches of ocean.

Whoever translated this sign with its unevenlettering did not do so completely. It is meant to

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* * *

I pack up all my words to you in a glass-greenbottle. The message is composed of the manywords I have never said to you, words that mighthave made your leaving different had you readthem. I write it on the paper we had scrapped torecycle, the ink runny from the humidity thatrises every day since you left.

A fly lands on my words, leaving a tiny ink trailof fly footsteps before it hovers away. If the mes-sage ever reaches you, look for these, and youwill know what state I am in.

There must be people who still look for mes-sages in bottles, look for little written pieces ofother people’s lives on the ground, lost or dis-carded, people who will pick up my bottle, crackit open, and send the letters I write to you. I mustbelieve in these people, even if they are only chil-dren, children not old enough to send letters.They make it plausible that you might one day getthese.

I fling these words as far as I can into the blue,beyond the reef, to the current that may carry itaway and closer to where you are. Where areyou? You are beyond the reef, where it might not

make it, my arms have never been that strong.I look in the mirror of the casita bathroom to

see if I am still there.The words are as delicate as if I wrote them in

ash, as if I set fire to the footsteps of the fly andfilled the bottle with smoke instead of ink.

* * *

Herds of urchins surround my words, resting in abed of turtle grass, just beyond the reef. The seaegg, the inflated and flattened sea biscuits, thegreen urchin, the black urchin, the spiny urchincrawl slowly on the bottom, eating detritus. Youdo not know it, but they have been there forthousands of years, hundreds of thousands, mil-lions.

This doesn’t impress you; maybe I should havesaid centuries, and our brains could begin tounderstand the age of their lineage. The urchinshave lived here for centuries, among the first toclaim these waters. The seas have since shifted,and maybe Culebra was once under water. I holdthe body of a sea biscuit, the first human to touchits pored shell, and I tell you that the star shapedflower on the surface of a sand dollar is perfect.

This one, from his first steps, longedto carry home in his arms all creatureswild, bovine, other, rare. As if he might lead the moo-cows he called out toin the meadow by a string drawn from his pocket, might guide themto his bedside and tie them there, cow by cow, like private angelsto watch a boy sleep.

Once, by a lake, three deer liftedtheir heads and watched him approach, let him take his stance of entrancement and did not run. The boy turned eight. That summer his father found a turtlestranded between ditch and pavement, a baby snapper he scooped in his palm to bring home.

The boy kept it in a sink on the porch.He tempted his turtle with bits of grass,lumps of hamburger, lettuce, strawberries. He gave it a rock to stand on, cooled itwith rain trickled from the red spoutof his mother’s Mexican watering can.The black curves of the turtle’s tiny clawsstrained and scratched to climb the basin.Its head, a leather thumb, stretched for sky.

Every day the boy nudged the rough puzzleof its shell and studied the sleepy slits of its eyes. He named it a secret name.This went on for a week. Then, one twilightunder a quarter moon, the boy cradled the turtle into a paper cup and walkedto the pond.

Candice Stover is a COA lecturer in writingand literature. She is also the author ofHolding Pattern published by Muse Pressand Another Stopping Place by Oyster RiverPress.

Intuition

1. April Thawfor Jane Disney

Thinnest near the edge, white layers keep vanishing: breathover dark water.Sublimation, science callsit, how we change forms, hover . . .

2. Latitude: Coyotes in Winter

Shrill city yankingits twilight chain, unleashingwhat still clamors, wildto reach us, touching what’s raw—Dusk sinks the pond plum.

3. Waking After Midnight: That Thirst

One loon calling, onenote floating from the pond’s dark kingdom bats glidingblind mosquitoes whine, suckingblood leaves sizzle wings beat hush

4. On a Day She Heard No Voices

The pond: tea-coloreddark clarities no memoryof ice sealing itthen—shearing up—graduallyshe enters her reflection

5. Minus 14 Degrees Fahrenheit, with Wind-chill

Ice like a banditsteals the pond overnight, shutsfragile edges inwhere clouds float lilac, earlysunset: cold jewels burning

In Season: Five Tankasfrom the Pond

poetry candice stoverFrom her book, Poems from the PondPublished by Deerbrook Editions, Cumberland, Maine 2007

36 | COA COA | 37

warn you that the U.S. Navy did not keep track ofall unexploded artillery, and that among the cob-ble, pieces of Culebra’s history have not yetexposed themselves.

The boy and I walk and know, as only travelerscan, that no one will find us here. No one knowswe are absent, or even that we have a place to beabsent from. We pass beyond the web that socie-ty weaves around us, into a protected part of a lit-tle island, a phantom limb of an amputee land.The boy is pretty sure that this limb has beengone for many years.

* * *

Between, below these hollow bombs are bottles,thousands. They are inside the bombs, filling theempty shells with sand and with words. Each bot-tle tried to reach someone and failed on theseforgotten northern shores of Culebra, or elsesank and drowned in the sea.

It is impossible to tell, trash to be left or a bot-tle to be found and read, sent to someone waitingor someone who is no longer here.

* * *

It has been one year since we met for the secondtime. I can’t remember the date. See? It is some-thing you would have never remembered, butyou didn’t have to because I didn’t remembereither. Was that how it was always going to be?The years pass without seasons, like Culebra, andwe would never remember to remind each otherhow many it had been. I don’t think I could livelike that.

I am still on Culebra. I am looking at the giantsand dollar you found for me at the bottom of thesea, beyond the corals. It is whole. I can’t believeyou discovered one entire after all the brokenones I pulled up disappointedly from the sand. Ithought my lungs would burst looking for thisone rare treasure. You can’t tell if they are wholewhen they are on the bottom, the sand too oftenhides the broken half.

Every time I pick it up I hold it with both myhands. It will be an heirloom I leave to my chil-dren, so they can show their children what per-fect designs millions of years had rendered. Theywill marvel at its symmetry, its size and how it’spuffed up unlike the common sand dollars we

have at home in the North. Their young faces willwant to trace the perfect petals on its surface withthe tips of their fingers, and ask for its history.

You said I’d have to marry you if I wanted thisgift. I stared at it for hours after, marveling atevery detail etched in calcium.

These are my treasures. Someday, after I die,my progeny will uncover great hordes of these,shells, rocks, antlers, teeth.

* * *

The whole Caribbean fills up with bones andsomehow no one sees them. Turtles and conch,dogs and fish, horses and cats, coral and sand.

* * *

Ten years from now, I will return to Culebra to digup the only thing we left on the island, one bottleof cheap Australian wine, mostly because we hadnothing more personal to bury.

I still have the map, measured out in my smallpaces, wandering from a particular palm out toward the sea on the nearly hidden Resacabeach. Remember? I made sure to measure outthe paces in my own steps knowing in somesense that I would return alone to find this bottle.I know I will set foot on that beach again, climbthrough the little tunnel of poisonwood and seagrape, larch and a broadleaf of which I neverlearned the name.

The day will be sunny and completely clear ofclouds or stars, there will only be the solitaryfrigate birds gliding thousands of meters above,looking down at one small girl moving throughthe trees.

The bottle will be salty, the label faded, andthe wine sour. I will put it to my lips and gazeout onto a horizon, wondering what about thatthin line has changed since we were here. I willdrink sweet coconut milk instead, and fallasleep under the palms. When I wake up, every-thing will look the same. I may even wish youwere there.

We should have buried rum, or photos, or jew-elry, or words. I don’t know why we didn’t.

After completing the novella Culebra for her sen-ior project, Erica Maltz is taking some time totravel.

I’m still teaching English at a university in the United Arab Emirates where I’vebeen since 1999,” writes Bone Jo Rodgers ’85. “In my free time I often go outlooking for art and/or traditional dyes. A year ago that meant going to northernVietnam to check out how they used indigo. I also stop into museums in Europeon the way home each summer, still doing an assignment that JoAnne Carpentergave us twenty-five years ago: ‘Plan a trip through Europe, tell me where youwant to go, what you want to see, and why you want to see it.’ Thanks, JoAnne,that assignment has taken me to some very interesting places!”

Sara Wendt ’85 recently released her second album Weightless With Love withindie label City Canyons, downloadable through the iTunes store. She is tryingto live “gently” in New York City where she rides her bicycle, avoids plastic andworks as a hypnotherapist, part-time human resources manager and copyeditorfor college textbook publishing companies. She attributes most of her good lifeto her “awesome education in human ecology.” sarawendt@gmail.com

Paul Boothby ’88 and his wife, Krista, have moved to Lynchburg, Virginia wherePaul is now the minister of First Unitarian Church, promoting environmentalstewardship in the church and social healing through a city-wide dialog on racerelations. “Our relations with our neighbors and with the environment arereflections of each other,” he writes.

Natalie Springuel ’91 and husband Rich MacDonald are excited to announce thebirth of their little girl, Anouk Liesl Springuel MacDonald, born on April 29,2007. At five weeks, Anouk was the youngest student enrolled in the 2007 COAcourse, This Marvelous Terrible Place, The Human Ecology of Newfoundland,which Natalie co-taught with faculty member in economics, Davis Taylor, andSean Todd, faculty member in biology. Writes Natalie, “Anouk was so happy tocamp her way around Newfoundland with her fellow COA students that shecaught a serious travel bug. She has since ventured to Norway for some back-packing and Belgium for her uncle’s wedding.” nspringuel@coa.edu

Cedar Bough Saeji ’93 is adjusting to life in the United States as she starts herPhD in culture and performance at the University of California Los Angeles.Husband Karjam’s CD, Pilgrimage, can be found on iTunes and at CDBaby.http://www.cedarsphotography.com

E. Anne Gustavson ’94 is living in Seattle, Washington and recently passed theexam to become certified as a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design(or LEED) architect. She is working to reduce the percentage of greenhouse gasemissions from buildings.

“I have just entered the magical world of motherhood and feel the strength andpower of having gone through thirty hours of labor to get there,“ writesElizabeth Rousek Ayers ’95. Daughter Eva was born November 20. Elizabeth hassince left her job as head gardener at Openhearth Estate to enjoy her time withEva and work in her own gardens. She writes, “I love hearing from COA andCOA friends, as it grounds me to my core values and beliefs—which I plan topass on to my daughter.” elizzierousek@yahoo.com

Deborah Keisch Polin ’96 is living in Northampton, Massachusetts with her hus-band, Mitch, and ten-month-old daughter, Willa. Deborah is in the PhD programin cultural anthropology at the University of Massachusetts while, she says, “try-ing to figure out the mama/school/work balance.”

Ryan Ruggiero ’96 lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, Sarah, a middle schoolscience teacher, and their two children, Mason, 5, and Stella, 2. Ryan is a naturalresources and landscape planner with Vigil-Agrimis, a firm working in, “multi-disciplinary environmental design and consulting,” and is close to licensure as alandscape architect. “The Pacific Northwest offers so many incredible opportu-nities to connect with the natural world, at the beach, in the mountains, andalong the many rivers that are central to the region’s identity.”

C L A S S N OT E S

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For a week each spring since 2000, Jackson Gillman ’78 has been living atRudyard Kipling’s historic Brattleboro, Vermont home while he portrays“Rudyard-in-Residence.” Because of its inspirational setting, he also rents thehome in early February to host workshop sessions he calls Springboards forStories, helping individuals develop stories by doing some exploratory miningof personal experiences and considering ways to refine, polish and share thosenuggets. Find out more at www.jacksongillman.com.

On November 18, Loie Hayes ’79, Glen Berkowitz ’82, Terri Goldberg (’76) andKathy Weinstock ’81 attended the annual conference of the MassachusettsClimate Action Network (MCAN). Glen is president of Beaufort Windpower;Terri is deputy director of Northeast Waste Management Officials Association.Kathy is a social worker and a member of C-10 (Citizens Within a 10-Mile Radiusof Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant) and Loie (photo, with another BCAN mem-ber), is an editor and also coordinator of Boston Climate Action Network.

Frank Twohill ’80, a private practice lawyer, was recently elected to his eighthterm in the Branford, Connecticut, Representative Town Meeting. The thirty-member town legislature passes the $85 million annual budget, prepares ordi-nances and hears from citizens. Frank was also elected minority leader. Since2005 Frank has served on the COA Alumni Association Governing Board wherehe is, “committed to improving the COA alumni experience.” He writes theoccasional COA News, Views & Gossip column on the COATribe@yahoo.comgroup and is especially interested in hearing from classmates who attendedCOA between 1973 and 1978. franktwohill@hotmail.com

“I am still living in Santa Monica,” writes Greg Rainoff ’81, “spending a lot oftime in Tijuana working on a documentary about the US/Mexico border fence.(see page 47) . . . I think I have left Hollywood and visual effects for good exceptto keep contacts to facilitate more socially conscious ventures than blowing upspaceships for television, although that was kinda fun. I can’t just be a consumeranymore with things the way they are. The whole world is about to go greenwhether we are tree huggers or not. If I have garnered power in the world ofmedia, it’s my job as a human ecologist to use that power to facilitate thatchange. . . . I still ride my bike like a fiend. Not too fat or bald yet, forty-ninegoing on seventeen.” greg.rainoff@earthlink.net

Johannah Bernstein ’83 recently moved to Geneva, Switzerland, having decidedthat she had to see Mont Blanc every day. She says she has re-created the bal-ance she had at COA, “minus the all-nighters in the original library and blue-berry pancakes at Jordan’s at the crack of dawn!” She starts her days with aswim in Lac Léman (Lake Geneva) and hikes, skis or climbs on the weekends.Yes, she is still doing international environmental law consultation. Her newhome is “always open to COA alum who may be passing through.” johannah-berns24@hotmail.com

Pam Cobb Heuberger ’83 is the owner and director of Camp Runoia, a summercamp offering, “a human ecology experience for girls ages seven to fifteen.” Shealso volunteers with the American Camp Association as president of the north-east section.

“I’ve been in Seattle almost ten years now, having fun being an aunt to Vera, 5,and Arlo, 8, learning how to garden and commuting to an island with llamas andvery furry goats,” writes Anna Hurwitz ’84. She works for the consulting firmSocial Enterprise Group, which recently launched a hands-on, acceleratedmethod for developing social ventures, called Sustayne. She and her partner,Wendy, are planning a trip up the eastern seaboard in 2009 and hope to comevisit. msannarh@hotmail.com

C L A S S N OT E S

COA Alumni Relations

Alumni: Stay in Touch!Update your contact

information, tell us of changesin your job or life or find outabout regional alumni events

and other alumni services:

Jennifer Hughesin the Development Office

207-288-5015 ext. 329 or jhughes@coa.edu.

“We live our days in a beautiful, bountiful and slow manner filled with lots oftime for play and attention to detail,” writes Jennifer Wahlquist Coolidge ’03. “Weraise organic produce, floral bouquets and fall ornamentals for sale at the BlueHill Co-Op and farmers markets.” She and her husband Maxwell Coolidge ’05live in Orland, Maine with their two young sons, Matthew and Thomas. Maxworks as a cook at the Wescott Forge restaurant in Blue Hill and the Hiram BlakeCamp in Cape Rosier. They also started a bakery out of their kitchen. Late falland winter are cuddle down times when they dream of next season’s crops.“Every day has allotments for outdoor running around, music making, fortmaking, driveway-bike-riding, kitchen-dance-parties, food creation, eating andnaps!”

Ranjan Bhattarai ’04 and Deodonne Dustin (Bhattarai) ’06 were married this sum-mer in Kathmandu, Nepal. Ranjan oversees web development and video pro-duction as a designer for MediaWORKS Enterprise, a graphic design firm train-ing at-risk youth in multimedia. He is also working as a lead designer forEnvironment News Network. www.enn.com

“I just got the new COA Magazine and realized I should brag on what I’ve beenup to lately,” writes Aaron Lewis ’04. This summer he won the blue ribbon in theBluegrass Fiddle Category at Galax Fiddle Convention. In September his band,Special Ed and the Shortbus, was a finalist in the Billboard Magazine/DiscmakersIndependent Music World Series. They later went on to win the Grand Prize.They recently released an album titled Ground Beef Patrol. Aaron has also beenplaying with a band named Jackass Flats, whose new album will be availablesoon.

Briana Duga ’04 and Seth LaFlamme announce the birth of their first child,Zooey Lynn Duga LaFlamme, born on the morning of June 5, 2007, by way of anatural water birth. They are still living in Atlanta, Georgia, working on chiro-practic degrees. phoenixluna@gmail.com

Jennifer Jones ’05 is now a teacher in North Carolina and owns, she says, “thecutest puppy in the world,” named Oakley Edward Jones.

Marisa Glass ’06 is studying in the Islam program at McGill University, workingon a cultural study of the Bedouins and how their Islamic lifestyle is being influ-enced by Western culture and tourism. She is planning a master’s thesis on howIslam was practical for a nomadic desert people and how things are currentlychanging. “Ultimately I have aspirations of doing several things with thisdegree,” she writes. “I am concerned for the preservation of the Bedouin cul-ture and the conservation of the environment, especially in Jordan, becausemajor ecological problems face this amazing area. I also want to work towardscreating better relations between the Arab and Western worlds by working forexchange student programs. There’s lots to be done in the region and I want tospend my life going between the States and the Middle East, hopefully bringingmore awareness and sustainability.”

Nickilynn Estologa ’07 and Tom Rush ’07 were married on June 3, 2007 inBucksport, Maine, at Tom’s parent’s camp. Sarah Baker, COA dean of admission,performed the ceremony. Both Nicki and Tom are working at the private lan-guage school Nova as English instructors in Osaka, Japan until September 2008.

C L A S S N OT E S

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C L A S S N OT E S After more than eight years working for the Girl Scouts in Ann Arbor, Michigan,Margaret Hoffman ’97 has moved back to coastal Maine. She is now the directorof marketing and visitor services at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens inBoothbay. Visitors are welcome to her two guestrooms in Southport. margaret11274@aol.com

“I am engaged to be married to my boyfriend of five years, Ben Rosenberger,”writes Jen Zankowski ’98. She is also working with the activist investment firmRelational Investors in San Diego. What she likes most about this job is learningabout corporate governance and the process by which shareholders createchange. “Business plays such a critical role in politics and creating change,” shewrites. But while finance is interesting, she says, “it is not my passion.” Jen is alsoapplying to graduate school to study city and regional planning. She’d love tohear from old COA friends. jenzen310@hotmail.com

Luciana Pandolfi ’98 and Luke Wagner ’99 are back in Antarctica for their fifthconsecutive summer season, their third in the deep field. They are working inEast Antarctica as logistical support staff for the University of Maine’s ClimateChange Institute on its International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition(ITASE). The project, funded by the National Science Foundation, seeks to obtainan overview of climate change through ice core and surface sample analysis aswell as ice penetrating radar surveys. This year they aim to traverse 1400 kmfrom a site at the head of the Byrd Glacier to the South Pole. Their progress canbe followed on the logbook on the ITASE website:http://blogs.bootsnall.com/luke/

“I have recently moved back to Portland and am so happy to be in Maineagain!” writes Hannah Fogg ’99. “Life is in constant flux. The chilly weather hasbrought on much inspiration for knitting scarves, shawls and sweaters and alsofor canning food—mango chutney, applesauce, pickled jalapeno peppers andquince jam. We should get together and laugh and eat good food!”

After a year of learning, teaching, living and playing in the Tetons, Jamie Duval’00 has returned to her home state of Maine. She is now assistant director at theFerry Beach Ecology School in Saco. She writes, “my favorite part of the job iscoordinating a children’s garden program and getting my hands dirty! I wasrecently engaged to Rob Beranek, whom I met through my graduate studies atAntioch University New England. We are basking in the enjoyment of life andwill keep you updated on a date!”

Addie Dupree ’02 is living in Leysin, Switzerland as a high school science teacherat an American boarding school. Her students come from across the globe. Shewrites, “The town I live in is a small village on a mountain and has a ski resort. Inthe winter, I spend many days with my skis strapped to my feet, searching forfresh snow or snowshoeing to chalets for a hot drink. Working with such adiverse student body has given me a better understanding of the world as awhole and how we are all interconnected. I have been given a new thread tointertwine in my human ecology perspective by working with students from theMiddle East, Eastern Europe, Russia, Asia and South America.”

Fae Silverman ’03 continues to work as a nationally certified sign language inter-preter and to teach scuba divers a system of international hand signals contrivedduring her senior project. She is also working part time as the first HillelAdviser/Jewish Associate Chaplain at the University of Southern Maine. faejoliege@yahoo.com

Career & Internship ServicesAlumni: We can help!

+ Career Information and Guidance

+ Searchable Database+ Graduate School Information+ Job Search Skills+ Resume Review+ Relocation Guidance+ Employment Websites

Interested in providing an internship? Working with

prospective students? Mentoring current students

and other alumni?

Contact Jill Barlow-Kelley, Directorof Internships and Career Services,at jbk@coa.edu or 288-5015 ext. 236

Rich Borden, Rachel Carson Chair in Human Ecology and faculty member in psy-chology, served as a member of the conference planning committee for theXVth International Conference of the Society for Human Ecology, or SHE, lastOctober in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In the symposium, Psychology Looks at Mindand Nature, he made the presentation, “Ecology - Scientific Foundations andMythic Imagination.” With Sean Berg ’08, Borden presented, “Actual Events andVirtual Possibilities: The Past, Present and Future of the Society for HumanEcology on the World-Wide Web.” This was for a workshop and roundtable onNew Directions in Human Ecology - Education for Sustainable Development. Aspart of his Rachel Carson Chair activities, Borden made a research visit to theSeaside Institute in Florida, and the Institute of Ecology at University of Georgia,where Borden gave seminars on ‘ecological thought’ to both the Odum Schoolof Ecology and the School of Engineering. He also attended a planning meetingat Huxley College for the Environment in Bellingham, Washington, in prepara-tion for the XVIth SHE conference in September 2008.

Ken Cline, faculty member in law and policy, has again been asked to evaluateUdall Scholars for the Morris K. Udall Foundation. Cline was also recentlyappointed to the Keeping Maine’s Forests study group, comprised of sixteenknowledgeable Mainers involved in studying and evaluating some of the long-term trends of private forest ownership in the state. COA board member SherryHuber is also a member of the group. In January, Cline took a group of studentsto the hearings about Plum Creek’s Moosehead Lake Concept Plan (see Winter2007). The photo includes students Jenny Lynch ’11, Jordan Motzkin ’11, CaseyRayburn ’11, Matt Maiorana ’10, Brett Ciccotelli ’09, Saras Yerlig ’11, RebeccaAbuza ’11, Maxwell Van Houten ’08, Brooke Welty ’11, Cline and Galen Ballentine’08, standing. Alumni Garrett ’78 and Alexandra Conover ’77 are kneeling infront with Eliah Thanhauser ’09.

In October, Gray Cox, faculty member in political philosophy, spoke on “EthicalRelations Amongst the Coming Post-human Species” for the Acadia SeniorCollege. He also gave a talk for the Human Ecology Forum, “Todos Somos Otros(We Are All Others): Ethical Research in Human Ecology and the COA ERRB,”otherwise known as the Ethical Research Review Board, of which Cox is the cur-rent chair. Cox also spoke on “Quaker Process and a Culture of Peace” at theEllsworth Unitarian Universalist Church.

Lynn Havsall, director of museum programs at the George B. Dorr Museum ofNatural History, attended the Northeast Mycological Federation’s annual confer-ence at University of Maine Orono last August, then came back to share hernew insights with students working on a mushroom group study. She and thestudents attended the Maine Mycological Association’s annual meeting inHallowell in November. Havsall is also a member of the board of DowneastAudubon and led their moonlight tidepool walk near Otter Cliffs in lateOctober.

In November, COA library director Jane Hultberg served on a panel presentationof local librarians at Birch Bay Village in Hulls Cove on “What Will Your Grand–children Want from Their Public Libraries?”

Chris Petersen, faculty member in biology, was an invited speaker at the JapaneseIchthyological Society Annual Meeting in Sapporo, Japan in October, where hespoke about his work on sculpins in the northeastern Pacific. Peterson was alsoa guest at Dr. Hiro Munehara’s lab on Hokkaido where he went diving with Dr.Munehara (see photo) and spent time with graduate students.

Faculty member in languages, Camille Vande Berg, attended the NationalAssociation of Self-Instructional Language Programs in Washington, DC inNovember and the Learning Chinese in Maine conference at Colby College inDecember.

CO M M U N I T YN OT E S

42 | COA COA | 43

College of the Atlantic’s re-accreditation review by the Northeastern AssociationSchools and Colleges has come to a successful conclusion: COA continues inaccredited status through 2017. The board commended COA for its unique andrelevant mission, its work in achieving financial sustainability, its levels of stu-dent engagement, even its approach to the review.

“Baleen whales are not important as prey for killer whales Orcinus orca in high-latitude regions,” according to a paper written by Amee V. Mehta in the MarineEcology Progress Series, Vol. 348, of October 25, 2007. Among the co-authorswith Mehta (who hails from the Boston University Marine Program in WoodsHole, Massachusetts) were Allied Whale researchers Judith M. Allen andRosemary E. Seton. The paper examined the extent to which killer whales feedon baleen whales. Through photographic and sighting data from long-termstudies of baleen whales in twenty-four regions worldwide, the authors deter-mined that most killer whale attacks on baleen whales target young animals,probably calves on their first migration from low-latitude breeding and calvingareas to high-latitude feeding grounds. Adult baleen whales do not seem to bean important prey source for killer whales in high latitudes.

John Anderson, COA’s William H. Drury, Jr. Chair in Evolution, Ecology andNatural History, chaired a session at the international Waterbirds Conference inBarcelona, Spain in October and presented a paper on the impacts of variousconservation strategies on Great Duck Island over the past century.Accompanying him were COA students Mikus Abolins-Abols ’10, Sarah Kebler’08, Kaitlin Palmer ’08, and Anna Perry ’10, each of whom presented papers orposters on their research last summer on Great Duck Island. In December,Anderson and Sean Todd, COA’s Steven K. Katona Chair in Marine Studies anddirector of Allied Whale, took their Literature and Ecology of the Sea class for atwo-week Caribbean sail. The high point of that trip was a night sail across theAnegada Passage to St. Eustatius, where they had plenty of time to climb thevolcano and taunt each other (photo). Finally, those who saw History Channel’sWorld Without People may have heard Anderson’s eloquent discussion of therelationship between humans, oceans and birds.

Over winter break, Nancy Andrews, faculty member in video and performing art,and Dru Colbert, faculty member in design and museum issues, traveled toLondon (photo) and Paris to start laying groundwork for a new set of courses tobe co-taught with language faculty member, Camille Vande Berg. In addition,Andrews spent much of the fall writing proposals for her new film. She is one ofone hundred twenty nominees for a Rockefeller Film/Video fellowship and oneof twenty nominees for another nationwide film/video fellowship. In October,her latest film, The Dreamless Sleep, showed at Cinema Nova in Brussels,Belgium as part of a series of underground films. She was recently invited tosubmit work to The Center for Integrated Media at the California Institute of theArts, so you can now see some of her work online at integr8dmedia.net/viralnet.And this just in: Andrews has received a Guggenheim Fellowship to completeher next movie!

As a member of the Maine Career Development Association governing board,Jill Barlow-Kelley, internship director, coordinated the fall 2007 membershipconference. The association is a membership organization of Maine careercounselors. Among the offerings of the daylong conference, Career Services forDiverse Populations: Working with Clients with Specific Needs, were workshopson serving the needs of alumni, international employees and nonprofit servicesavailable to those with worksite challenges.

At 10:28 p.m. on December 26, 2007, Milja Brecher-DeMuro, former alumni devel-opment coordinator, gave birth to Ruby Eliisia DeMuro. She writes, “Rubyweighed 7 pounds 1 ounce and measured 21 inches long and has a head full ofblack hair! She is beautiful and wonderful and we couldn’t be happier. Rexloves his little sister!”

CO M M U N I T YN OT E S

RevenuesTuition and FeesContributions Endowment Gains and Earnings Government and Other Grants Auxiliary Activities Summer Programs Research Projects Other Sources (includes sale of land in 2005 )

Total Revenues

ExpensesInstruction and student activitiesLibraryAuxiliary Activities Summer ProgramsMuseum and Gallery Beech Hill Farm Financial Aid General AdministrationPayroll Taxes and Fringe Benefits Institutional Advancement Buildings and Grounds Interest Grants, research projectsDepreciation and Amortization

Total Expenses

Change in Net Assets

Net Assets at Year-endEndowment Operations and other funds Plant

Total Net Assets

Financial Operations Report*

7,580,000 5,700,000

973,000 799,000 843,000 482,000 467,000

1,433,000

$ 18,277,000

2,586,000 225,000 544,000 275,000 179,000 145,000

5,365,000 1,316,000 1,291,000

932,000 586,000 105,000 819,000 635,000

$ 15,003,000

$ 3,274,000

17,495,000 (612,000)

10,799,000

$ 27,682,000

8,233,000 6,016,000 3,263,000

705,000 879,000 447,000 669,000 311,000

$ 20,523,000

2,731,000 228,000598,000 265,000 142,000 165,000

5,523,000 1,411,000 1,443,000

953,000 678,000 98,000

1,000,000 671,000

$ 15,906,000

$ 4,617,000

19,999,000 (592,000)

12,892,000

$ 32,299,000

FY 2005–2006 FY2006–2007

College of the Atlantic Statement of Activities, audited For Fiscal Years 2005–06 and 2006–07 (rounded to the nearest $1,000)

F I N A N C I A L R E P O R T 2 0 0 6 - 0 7

*This replaces the Financial Operations Report in the Summer/Fall 2007 issue of COA, whichinadvertently repeated the college's 2004-05 and 2005-06 data.

44 | COA COA | 45

Nishanta Rajakaruna ’94, faculty member in botany, was proud to be a secondaryauthor with adjunct faculty member Fred Olday of a paper written by TannerHarris ’06, “Lichens of Pine Hill, A Peridotite Outcrop in Eastern North America.”The paper, which looks at the lichen flora of a peridotite outcrop on Deer Isle,Maine, in which sixty-three species were found, appeared in Vol. 109, No. 940 ofthe New England Botanical Club journal, Rhodora (2007). Two species were newreports for New England and three were new reports for Maine. Twenty species,including one genus, Lobaria, are new reports for ultramafic soils worldwide.Harris is currently in the master’s program in plant and soil science at theUniversity of Massachusetts, Amherst. And lest we forget, in a badminton tour-nament that brought a Colby College team to Mount Desert Island, Rajakarunawon the men’s singles. (In the photo, Harris and Rajakaruna are collecting seedof Minuartia glabra, a rare plant found on the summit of Cadillac Mountain.)

Davis Taylor, faculty member in economics, writes from the Yucatan where he isco-directing the cultural immersion program with adjunct faculty member KarlaPeña; Katie Freedman ’05 is program assistant. Spanish is the working tongue,with almost all instruction, directions and conversation for Going IntoCommunity: Field Work in Developing Regions (Entrando en la Comunidad:Trabajo de Campo en Regiones en Desarollo) entirely en Espan~ol. This is the firsttime a non-language COA faculty member has taught a non-language course inanything but English. All twelve students live with Yucatecan families. Taylor, too,is living with a family, another first for the International Studies Program. Thelevel of conversation skills in the classroom is impressive and growing, he says.(The photo of Taylor is taken at the ruins of Oxkintuk.)

John Visvader, faculty member in philosophy, gave two lectures recently. LastJune he gave the Cosmos Colloquia Lecture at the Humboldt Field ResearchInstitute in Steuben, Maine, entitled, “The Mountain Poets of China: Finding theSelf in Nature.” In October he gave a Colby College Forum Lecture at ColbyCollege in Waterville: “Nature, Wildness, and Cultivation: Reflections on aDaoist Garden.”

C O M M U N I T YN OT E S

Given the chance, most of us would like to leave a legacy that continues to contribute to what we valued during ourlifetime. Imagine the satisfaction of knowing that because of your generosity and planning, every future generation

of COA students and faculty will be conducting botany classes in Acadia National Park, or studying the migration ofwhales off the coast of Maine, or reading philosophy in a class that is team-taught by a philospopher and an historian—just as they do today.

This can happen through a planned or deferred gift to the college. People who choose to make a planned gift to COAbecome members of the Northern Lights Society.

We thank the following for investing in COA and giving us the most precious gift: Hope for the future.

Interested in becoming a member?Planned Giving opportunites are designed to help you shape a gift to COA. We suggest strategies and resources that,when combined with your financial and estate objectives, create the most advantageous tax and income benefits...good for you and good for COA. For more information, please call Lynn Boulger, Dean of Development at 207-288-5015ext. 350.

Alida E. CampAlice EnoMr. and Mrs. Sidney BahrtMr. Edward BlairMr. Robert BlumMr. Leslie BrewerMs. Ker ClearyMs. Fran Day

Ms. Norah DavisMs. Joanne DevlinMr. and Mrs. Gordon EriksonMr. and Mrs. Philip GeyelinHenry and Sunny GuthrieMr. Sam Hamill, Jr.Mr. George HambletonMr. and Mrs. John Howard

Edward Kaelber and Ann Sewall

Mr. John KaufmannMr. David McGiffertMr. and Mrs. Howard

MerrimanMr. and Mrs. Eliot C. PaineMs. Barbara Piel

Dr. Elizabeth RussellMrs. Robert RyleMr. Charles SawyerMr. and Mrs. Clyde Shorey, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. Donald StrausMr. and Mrs. Joseph ThomasMr. Charles TysonMr. and Mrs. James Wakelin, III

By Lynn Boulger, Dean of DevelopmentCOA’s Northern Lights Society

In the summer of 2006, theUnited States government

voted to construct seven hun-dred miles of high-tech securityfencing along the US/Mexicanborder. Drug smuggling, crime,erosion of our way of life, eventerrorism was used to justify thefence. Arguments against itwere mostly that it would beineffective, costly and wouldnot address the core issues. Fewpeople looked at the environmental consequences of“sealing the border.”

The Tijuana estuary, the last unobstructed estuar-ine wetland on the California coast, sits just insidethe US border where San Diego meets Tijuana.Completing the fence involves filling in three sizablecanyons with millions of cubic yards of highly erosivesoil to create berms for the fence and its accessroads. These desert soils are held together by anintricate web of bacteria and fungi. Stick a shovel inand it takes hundreds of years to return to normal.And when it rains the soil just washes away. The ero-sion and subsequent sedimentation could destroythe estuary, spelling extinction for several species. In1993, a fence was built that has actually served to pro-tect the estuary from migrant foot traffic. But it haspushed migrants eastward where some ten thousandhave died crossing the desert. The federal govern-ment was sued over that fence; the suit was thrownout of court on grounds of national security.

For much of my post-COA life, I wondered whatthe hell was I thinking: human ecology? Creating adocumentary to understand why we’re building thefence has redefined the concept. We cannot separateenvironmental destruction in California from destitu-tion in Mexico, from the US economy.

At one time, the world seemed limitless; exploit-ing it was our manifest destiny. So what if we con-jured up a war to justify annexing half of Mexico? Orcreated the North American Free Trade Agreement toremove trade “barriers?” Now we can’t start our carswithout considering climate change and we have an“immigration crisis” in part because NAFTA displaceda million Mexican farmers who seek jobs in the US.

It’s easy to blame Mexicans. Understandable towant to shut out the poverty and degradation of a

place like Tijuana with its over-population, violence and dis-ease infested colonias, and itsdaily twenty-five million gal-lons of raw sewage flowinginto the ocean. So let’s build afence to keep us safe.

Filming around the fence isdicey. I’ve been yelled at,searched, escorted off andaccused of being an “Al Gorefan.” To look at the fence is

trouble. In Mexico, no one cares, but if the US borderpatrol sees me they tell the Mexican police to scareme away. Since when are our guys in uniform paid tocare if I like Al Gore?

The fence is about fear. Dissent is demonized, asare Mexicans. In the name of national security, wehave been handed the problem and the solutionwith no invitation to the debate. In the name of pro-tecting our national interests, we are willing todestroy our land and our democracy. Keeping usafraid makes us pliable. Keeping Mexicans afraidmakes them cheap. Building a wall ignores our rela-tionship, turns them into invaders. As our fears areexploited, so are their needs.

Human ecology is about relatedness, understand-ing ourselves as part of social and natural systems:not separate, not walled off. Mind, body, family, com-munity and bank account. The Dalai Lama says thatour adversary is our biggest teacher. That whichcauses fear provides us with an opportunity to over-come it. The solution lies within the problem. Wemust walk through our own walls with eyes wideopen, and maybe we won’t need to build walls thatperpetuate fear in the world. Stepping into fear.With a camera.

Greg Rainoff lives in Santa Monica. A former visualeffects artist, he won four Emmys for his work as ananimator for the Star Trek television series. He nowruns Crucible Productions, exploring issues of socialand environmental justice. gr8fx@mac.com

COA welcomes human ecology essays and other work.Please send to dgold@coa.edu or COA / 105 Eden St. /Bar Harbor, ME 04609.

H U M A N E CO LO G Y E S S AY R E V I S I T E D

Human Ecology Essay RevisitedBy Greg Rainoff ’81

46 | COA COA | 47

Q. What did it take to have Climate Connections comeabout?

A. Tremendous patience and organizational skills.

NPR is a very large, very complex organization, and

it has a lot to do. It is not easy to get this entire

organization to focus on one topic. But I think peo-

ple recognized that climate change is a big, compli-

cated, rich issue—and one that is very important.

Q. Do you feel like you have had an impact?

A. NPR has a huge audience, bigger than any TV

news program—something like twenty-five million

people. We are truly national. But it’s hard to know.

I think over time, NPR has made a difference in how

things work, how things happen.

Q. What has surprised you in theseries?

A. The commitment from our

reporters to see it through—it’s

been an amazing effort. A lot of

these stories are hard to do, there’s a

lot of nuance, there’s often not a

black and white conflict. We’re fin-

ishing off the series with the next

generation, and people have come

up with some creative stories—

there’s a Ukrainian rock star, a wild

out-there pop star, for whom climate

change is the leading issue, Ruslana

is her name. She’s also a

Parliamentarian. It shows the degree

to which climate change has permeated culture.

Q. How did your degree in human ecology prepareyou for this?

A. For me, COA was perfect, because it allowed me

to have a highly quixotic, esoteric and diverse edu-

cation—I got to dip into a lot of things. Of course, I

had a huge advantage: I transferred to COA already

knowing I was interested in science journalism. I

spent one winter working for the Christian ScienceMonitor and I did my senior project interviewing

science journalists about strengths and weaknesses

of the field.

Q. What is the most meaningful part of your work?

A. Telling a good story—a good and important story,

either one that people need to know to live an

informed life, or a story that will entertain them or

make their life richer in some way—expand their

horizons.

You might have heard COA’s own Juan Hoffmaister ’07(see page 10) on this series, talking with NPR reporterDan Charles. If you missed it, visit www.npr.org andsearch for his interview on Climate Connections.

Expanding HorizonsDavid Malakoff ’86 and NPR’s climate change series

National Public Radio hasspent an entire year, from May2007 to April 2008, focused onclimate change. The ClimateConnections series, producedin partnership with theNational Geographic Society,involved more than two hun-dred hefty stories fromreporters covering national,foreign, business, arts andculture beats. The impetusbehind this series came fromtwo NPR science editors: COAalumnus David Malakoff and his colleague Alison Richards.Malakoff works as an editor and correspondent on NPR’s science desk,helping to shape NPR’s coverage of science, technology and the environment,occasionally doing his own reporting.

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