COAVolume 2 | Number 1 WINTER 2006

The College of the Atlantic Magazine

There is a moment at the end of summerwhen, engrossed in a leisurely bike ride, or a quiet hike, a breath of an autumn breezecomes through. Surprisingly, despite theglory of the summer’s day, that scent of fall is so powerful that I find myself wistfullylonging for autumn’s crisp excitement and Ifeel physically torn between the moment andthe future.

As we say goodbye to one president andhello to another, I know I’m not alone in feel-

ing this odd split. For thirty-three years, for as long as COA has been acollege teeming with students, Steven K. Katona has put his heart intothis institution, working to shape it as a vibrant community of participa-tory, active, insightful learning. As a teacher, as founder and director ofAllied Whale, and as COA’s fourth president, leading this institution forthirteen years, Steve has been integral to COA.

This issue of COA pays tribute to the careers of both Steve and hiswife and partner, Susan Lerner, as they prepare to end their formal connection with the college at the end of June and move on to newpathways. It’s hard to say goodbye.

But saying hello is thrilling. With this issue, we briefly welcome theman who will be COA’s fifth president, David Hales, who will take officeon July 1. Look for more about him come summer.

There is one other moment to recall during this intense winter ofchange; a moment of stasis between goodbye and hello, a momentwhen the soul of COA shone, with no president present. On Saturday,January 21, the day after the last of three presidential candidates visitedthe college, the day before the search committee made their decision,the COA community—students, staff, faculty, alumni—were asked toshare their insights on the three presidential finalists. For four hours,beginning at noon, people stood one at a time, and talked. With mucheloquence, great humor, strong perceptions and deep thought, thecommunity spoke and the search committee listened, furiously writingnotes. This moment of democracy, this recognition of community, willblaze as a touchstone for the All-College Meeting for years to come. It,too, is human ecology.

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.

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

COVER: Convergent Evolution,Benjamin Nimkin ’07

Created for Biology throughthe Lens taught by COAvideo professor NancyAndrews and vertebrate biology professor StephenRessel, Fall 2005.

As a means of defense,each of these species—from invertebrates to warm-blooded hedgehogs to reef-dwelling fish—havedeveloped spikes or spinesor other forms of sharp bodyparts to prevent predation,defend territory or threatenrivals. See page 35.

Ben Nimkin ’07, is from SaltLake City, Utah. He is study-ing film, graphic design and ethnography at COA.While his future plansinclude filmmaker, lobster-man, graduate student, professional wonderer andfilm teacher, for the momenthe enjoys eating pears.

BACK COVER:While in Uganda studyingthe anthropology of develop-ment, Marcin Matuszek ’06took this picture of a womanwalking through reservoirsfrom which salt is extracted.

EDITOR

Donna Gold

EDITORIAL BOARD

John AndersonSarah Barrett ’08

Richard J. BordenNicholas Brazier ’06Noreen Hogan ’91Shawn Keeley ’00

EDITORIAL CONSULTANT

Bill Carpenter

ALUMNI CONSULTANTS

Shawn Keeley ’00Jill Barlow-Kelley

COPY EDITOR

Jennifer Hughes

DESIGN

Mahan Graphics

PRINTING BY

JS McCarthy Printers, Augusta, Maine

COA ADMINISTRATION

Steven Katona President

Kenneth HillAcademic Dean,

Associate Dean ofAcademic Services

John AndersonAssociate Dean forAdvanced Studies

Andrew CampbellAssociate Dean of Student Life

David FeldmanAssociate Dean forAcademic Affairs

Andrew GriffithsAdministrative Dean

Karen WaldronAssociate Dean of Faculty

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Samuel M. Hamill, Jr.Chairman

Elizabeth D. Hodder Vice Chair

Casey Mallinckrodt Vice Chair

Ronald E. BeardSecretary

Leslie C. BrewerTreasurer

TRUSTEES

Edward McC. Blair, Sr.Life Trustee

Eliot ColemanKelly Dickson, M.Phil., ’97

William F. DohmenAlice Eno

David H. FischerWilliam G. Foulke, Jr.

Timothy Fuller, ’03James M. Gower

Life TrusteeGeorge B. E. Hambleton

Charles HewettSherry F. Huber

John N. KellyPhilip B. Kunhardt III ’77Elizabeth & Peter Loring

Susan Storey LymanLife Trustee

Suzanne FoldsMcCullagh

Sarah A. McDaniel ’93Jay McNally ’84

Stephen G. MillikenPhilip J. Moriarty

Phyllis Anina MoriartyWilliam V. P. Newlin

Daniel PierceHelen Porter

Cathy L. Ramsdell ’78John ReevesJohn Rivers

Hamilton Robinson, Jr.Walter Robinson, M.D.

Henry D. Sharpe, Jr. Life Trustee

Clyde E. Shorey, Jr.Donald B. Straus

Life TrusteeAnn F. Sullivan

Cody van HeerdenJohn Wilmerding

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

::

:COA’s Fifth President ~ p. 3Noted Environmentalist, David Hales

Of Graffiti, Graft & Green Business ~ p. 14Jay McNally ’84 and the Human Ecology of Electronic Discovery

From Undersea Chemistry to COA Presidency ~ p. 16A Personal Look at Steve Katona’s Legacy by Gregory Stone ’82

Taking on the Big Picture ~ p. 26Allied Whale “Graduates” Move into Environmental Policy

The Colors of Susan Lerner ~ p. 28A Pause for Reflection

A Conversation with Leslie C. Brewer ~ p. 32The Man Who Has Made Things Happen from the Very Beginning

Haeckel Project ~ p. 35The Artistry of Nature, the Natural Science of Art

Falling ~ p. 38A Short Story by Becky Buyers-Basso ’81

Poetry ~ p. 43Poems by Shamsher Virk ’07

Remembering ~ p. 51Josh Jones, Samuel Hamill, Jesse Tucker, David McGiffert

Annual Report ~ p. 52Letter from the Board

Scenes from a Homecoming ~ p. 64Amy Toensing ’93 Follows the Colorado Lynx Restoration for National Geographic

Grinning in the Garden ~ p. 65The Human Ecology Essay Revisited

features

This publication is printed on recycled paper. Chlorine free, acid free manufacturing process.

www.coa.edu

COAVolume 2 | Number 1 WINTER 2006

The College of the Atlantic Magazine

departmentsLetter from the President ............p. 2

COA Beat ........................................p. 4

Class Notes ......................................p. 44

Faculty & Community Notes........p. 49

Susie and I arrived at campus in ourtwenties and by now have spent morethan half our lives here. Here we havegrown up, learning from years of teach-ing, learning to be a president or directan art gallery, learning to explore thefertile nexus of Human Ecology togeth-er, challenged to be the best people wecould be. Sharing this adventure deep-ened our relationship on a daily basisas we immersed ourselves in purpose-ful learning, made cherished friend-ships with students and colleagues,and merged our energies into theexciting task of bringing a college to life.

Our sons, David and Nick, were born here, andtheir lives will be forever enriched by this communi-ty’s mission, intellectual curiosity, tolerance, kindnessand caring. Deeply imprinted in their souls are thenatural attractions of this beautiful campus that theyexplored as boys.

Here we gladly entered the immense web of rela-tionships that connect each of us to all that exists,past, present and future. We felt privileged to teachand learn about the evolutionary drama of life andour role in preserving its rich diversity, frommicrobes to whales. What could be more engagingthan investigating the distinctive cultural legacy ofour own species and its role in the drama? And whatcould be more satisfying than contributing to thegrowth and success of this vibrant community andthe success of the urgent mission we share?

Today’s student cannot imagine the gulf that pre-vailed between human and ecology when the collegebegan. Innumerable debates plumbed whether wewere part of nature or not, whether animals thought,loved or felt pain, or whether there was any geneticcontinuity between the social behaviors of animalsand us. Making Human Ecology whole, acknowledg-ing our common relationship and responsibility to allof nature, will be remembered as one of the col-lege’s, and humanity’s, deepest accomplishments.That essential awareness enables us, requires us, tobegin repairing the damage we have caused, perhapsultimately becoming worthy of the responsibility thatconsciousness necessarily confers. A distinctivebirthright of our college was avoiding other gulfstoo, particularly those engendered by traditional aca-demia between modes of inquiry and ways of know-ing. Without departments and without boundariesbetween disciplines, theory and practice, we ranged

freely as intellect and circumstancedirected. We found joy and value byexploring connections between sci-ence and politics, art and nature, litera-ture and all of the above. By tending anorganic garden, we came to under-stand plants in ever richer ways. Wefelt boundaries dissolve in the specialmoments when science discovers, intu-ition speaks or art moves, when orangefeels, a poem tastes, the ocean speaks.We learned the beauty of people andthe value of difference ever moredeeply and happily as students from all

over the world joined our college. These people,these pleasures, these tangled currents nourish usdaily as we go about the difficult work of making oursocieties, our ecosystems, our fellow humans wholeand healthy again.

What a privilege it has been to be part of a com-munity that cultivates these values, skills and goals.Amidst the confusion, tension, corruption, violenceand disorganization that command perhaps toomany headlines, it is deeply reassuring that Collegeof the Atlantic is successfully teaching another, bet-ter, more hopeful, respectful and sustainable path.

None of us present in the college’s earliest daysforesaw what we could together achieve. Optimismand naiveté invariably shielded us from dwelling onobstacles that could sink this frail bark, but thanks tothe extraordinary work of our students, alumni, fac-ulty, staff, trustees and a great many friends, weslipped past most of them. What a magnificent voy-age it has been, and what marvelous vistas liebeyond.

Everyone asks what our next personal vistas willbe. We will travel and refresh for the first fewmonths, visiting close friends and looking at issues of sustainability in the U.S. and abroad. By early next year we will choose our next positions. We are excited by the challenge of helping the world in new ways. We intend to keep our home and baseon Mount Desert Island, and look forward to con-tinuing the personal and institutional relationshipsthat have meant so much to us here.

Susie, Dave and Nick join me in thanking theCollege of the Atlantic community, past and present,for changing our lives and remaining a beacon ofhope for education and for the world.

2 | COA

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

Noted Environmentalist to Become COA’s Fifth President

It doesn’t take much for David Hales to once again hear the wind howl and tastethe grit in his teeth from the dust storms that blew across the small west Texastown where he was raised. As a boy, the storms would come so thick and strongthat no matter how many rags and clothes his family stuffed into the cracks ofdoors and windows, dust still blew right through his home.

But it wasn’t long before Hales noticed something else about these storms:Eventually they stopped. Though created by poor environmental management,they were resolved by getting people to think differently about their approach toland and water. This fact is central to Hales’ career as an environmental leader.

Come July 1, Hales will bring his skills as a leader and team manager to Collegeof the Atlantic, where he will serve as the college’s fifth president. Hales was chosen from among thirty-six applicants by COA’s board of trustees on February4, 2006.

A lifelong environmentalist, Hales has had numerous positions promotingsustainable development nationally and internationally. Most recently, he heldthe position of Counsel for Sustainability Policy at Worldwatch Institute, an independent research organization focused on energy, resource and environ-mental issues. As counsel, Hales advised policymakers on sustainable approach-es to global issues. Under the Clinton administration, Hales was director of theGlobal Environment Center of the United States Agency for InternationalDevelopment where he was charged with integrating environmental concernsinto all development decisions. Earlier, under the administration of Jimmy Carter,Hales was a deputy assistant secretary at the United States Department of theInterior, with responsibility for the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish andWildlife Service. Between these times, Hales served in academia, holding theSamuel Trask Dana Chair of Natural Resources at the University of Michigan.

Underscoring his belief in the ability of humans to make good decisions andhence truly make a difference, Hales believes in the power of education. “We arefacing a time of tremendous opportunity and unavoidable change in the twenty-first century,” said Hales shortly after being chosen for the COA presidency. “Therole of higher education has always been to envision the best possible future and enable society to achieve that future. I believe that COA, with its excellentfaculty and students, will be a fundamental institution in charting that course.”

A search committee of trustees, faculty, staff and one student had workedsince spring to review applicants. Says literature professor Karen Waldron, a member of the search committee, Hales “is a vibrant link between COA’s missionof human ecology—its interdisciplinary, problem-solving approach—and itsongoing effort to create, through its graduates, a world that is sustainable andjust. His belief that education fosters our shared responsibility for world citizenship will help COA enrich and extend its learning community.”

COA’s current president, Steven K. Katona, plans to retire June 30 after 34 yearsat the college, beginning in 1972 as a founding faculty member. Katona is thrilledwith Hales. “With his distinguished record in administration and his lifelongengagement in issues of natural resource conservation and sustainable develop-ment, David Hales will be a superb leader,” says Katona. “The college is fortunateindeed to have attracted a person of his quality. When I turn over presidentialduties to David, it will be with full confidence for a very bright future.”

COA | 3

C O A B E A T

4 | COA

By Brett Ciccotelli ’09 and Sarah Neilson ’09

In late November, six COA students headed toMontreal for the United Nations FrameworkConvention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) andthe first meeting of the parties under the Kyotoprotocol. The conference coincided with the firstcommitment period of the protocols, in whichcountries agreed to more drastically cut green-house gas emissions and actively engage in all ofthe political, economic and social processesentailed in mitigating and adapting to climatechange.

The COA group, Elsie Flemings ’07, Juan PabloHoffmaister ’07, Sarah Neilson ’09, Henry Steinberg’06, Kathleen Tompkins ’08 and myself, are allmembers of the Maine branch of SustainUS, a nonprofit youth organi-zation promoting sus-tainable development.Drawn to Montreal by a concern for the future,we were hoping to seehow the U.N. works, net-work with activists andpolicy makers, and learnfrom this historic event.We quickly found outhow much there was todo.

Our group had a strong presence on the youthlobbying team. Through this we were able to meetwith many delegates, including the U.S. delega-tion, gaining New York Times coverage. One of ourmajor goals was to convince delegates to addressglobal deforestation’s impact on climate change.

As youth representatives, we worked alongsidescientists, environmental groups and indigenouspeoples to demand that action be taken by thecountries of the world to slow global climatechange and ensure a stable future. With so manypeople from such different places with differentideas about how to manage the planet, it becameobvious that to secure a safer environment wemust work together. Saving the world looks a loteasier when the world is with you.

~ Brett Ciccotelli ’09

I was not expecting so many other youth toshow up, but I was acutely underestimating thededication and passion of my peers. Remember-ing this passion now makes my heart explode intobright silver hope.

As part of the Youth Expression theater group, Imet ten or twelve others inside the busy, fluores-cent halls of the Palais des Congres at noon everyday to solidify our plan for the daily theatricalevent that we put on at the bottom of the escala-tors. These events attracted delegates and pressedour message of the need for post-2012 commit-ments from both those who have signed the KyotoProtocol and those that have not signed on, suchas the current U.S. administration. On this day, wehad come up with the idea to “take the steps.” We

choreographed a Stomp-like routine to performon the empty staircasebeside the escalators. Aswe moved up the stairs inour clapping and stomp-ing routine, each of ustook our turn turningaround and shouting outa step we were taking inour own communitiesand lives to mitigate dan-gerous climate change: “Icommit to making my

voice heard in my local government!”“I commit toriding my bike to work!” “I commit to educatingmy peers!” Clad in the t-shirts of various youthand non-governmental organizations, our peerscheered for us, creating a flare of noise thatseemed to infiltrate the hearts of everyone pres-ent, speeding up their beat. As we moved into ourgrand finale chanting, “We’re taking our steps, youtake yours!” all the youth joined in. Suddenly, in about of collective consciousness that still gives mea rush of adrenaline, we stormed the stairs—sixtyor seventy young people who feel in their verypores the potential for a sustainable future—shouting our chant, running up the stairs as peo-ple in business suits and security guards in bluestood in what seemed to be momentary surpriseand shock.

Sarah Neilson ’09, second from the left, joins other youth inthe Montreal Stomp.

The Montreal Stomp

COA | 5

I now see that this energy is what the Montrealyouth embodied in both numbers and passion. Asyoung people, we are as important as anyone. Weare currently the ones most affected by climatechange; each subsequent generation will be expo-nentially more affected. Individuals can make adifference in the health of our planet. I am startingnow; we are starting now. Everybody carries with-in their spirits the love it takes to bring us alltogether in this process of healing the earth andourselves.

~ Sarah Neilson ’09

...each of us took our turn turning around and shouting out a step we were taking inour own communities and livesto mitigate dangerous climatechange: “I commit to makingmy voice heard in my local government!” “I commit to ridingmy bike to work!” “I commit toeducating my peers!”

When Juan Pablo Hoffmaister wasfifteen, he went to Nicaragua tohelp rebuild a community that hadbeen leveled by a hurricane. Therewere three young children in thehousehold, Hoffmaister recalls;each one of them was sick. “Onechild was seven, but he lookedlike he was four years old. Wetalked a lot. One day we talkedabout trees, about how importantit is to take care of trees.”

Having finished building thehouse, Hoffmaister got ready to return to his nativeCosta Rica. For a moment, though, the boy detainedhim. “He gave me the seed of a tree. He said it was sothat I could have clean air wherever I went.”

When Hoffmaister thinks of the future of the planet,he thinks of this boy and children like him, children whowill be breathing the air of the late twenty-first centuryand suffering the dramas of climate change.

But now, Hoffmaister has a wider audience. At a recent youth conference in Bangalore, India, the twenty-one-year-old COA junior was elected to represent North American youth to the UN Environmental Programme, or UNEP.

Since 1999, the UNEP has facili-tated the election of fourteen inter-national student advisors to act asliaisons, representing youth intereststo the UNEP and UNEP interests to youth. One of Hoffmaister’s firstduties was to attend the UnitedNations climate change conferencein Montreal last November. InFebruary, he flew to Dubai, UnitedArab Emirates for the Global Minis-terial Environment Forum. As ayouth advisor, says Hoffmaister, “I

feel that what we’re doing is to make room for youthaction within a huge social institution. We’re trying tofacilitate change that benefits not only youth, but theworld that we’re going to inherit. After all, the planet isour heritage.”

Ultimately, Hoffmaister plans to be working in international public health, focusing on water and sanitation. In the meantime, he hopes to help unify the growing youth environmental movement in theUnited States and to begin to bridge these efforts with youth elsewhere in the world.

~ Donna Gold

the planet is our heritage

Above: Kathleen Tompkins ’08, Brett Ciccotelli ’09 and Juan PabloHoffmaister ’07 take a moment’s pause during an intense week at theUnited Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal last November.

Juan Pablo Hoffmaister ’07 advises the U.N. on youth

It’s the quiet season at College of the Atlantic’s BeechHill Farm. Next season’s garlic is planted, this year’s rootcrops are out. Having seeded the plots with cover cropsto hold the soil, build organic matter and suppressweeds, Lara Judson ’04 is taking some time off. Comesummer, Judson wakes before dawn and commits atleast seventeen hours to managing the farm and farm-stand, while also weeding, tilling and seeding each day.

Last summer Judson became the interim farm man-ager of College of the Atlantic’s organic farm. To someextent, she comes by her job naturally. Raised on a 112-acre farm in Nipanos Valley, near Williamsport,Pennsylvania, she grew up with angora goats, sheepand gardens. The very first week after she came to COA,in January 1999, she headed to the farm, pruning apple

trees in three feet of snow. Though sheworked as a field biologist on

Fire Island and at COA’s AlliedWhale, she realized she wasn’thappy accumulating data.She wanted to producesomething. Farming was inher blood. A year ago, whenassistant farm manager

Maggie Smith left to start herown farm, the college ran a

search for an assistant farmmanager. Judson was cho-

sen. Within nine months,Lucien Smith, the formermanager moved on andJudson, just twenty-four, stepped into his shoes.

“I’m still learning allthe time,” Judsonsays, and yet, havingexperienced a fewsummers, she feelsconfident in her skills.Come summer,these skills will bein even greaterdemand, as the

farm has received a $35,000 grant from the Woodcock P.Foundation to host classes from local schools and cre-ate educational outreach programs on food, health andsustainable agriculture. Judson has already gotten someexperience in educational outreach, thanks to a five hun-dred-dollar grant from Healthy Acadia that brought localelementary school children to the farm last fall.

Among other items, the Woodcock grant includesfunds for multimedia programming, the purchase ofsheep and sheep fencing, and special food productionworkshops on such topics as making apple cider andfour-season vegetable production. Keeping a connectionto local, organic food is essential says Judson. “Youcan’t hold a human ecological perspective without supporting organic, sustainable agriculture. That’s key interms of the health of ourselves and the environment.”

And yet, Judson acknowledges that despite trans-portation costs, organic food from California is cheaper:the scale is larger and wages are lower. The economicsof local agriculture is just one issue that COA’s new farmcommittee, composed of faculty, staff, trustees andcommunity members, is currently pondering. “If we can’tsolve this problem here, within our campus,” saysJudson, “it can’t be solved anywhere. This is localorganic food. If were going the route of trying to figureout the problems of the world, we need to figure it out inown backyard.”

beech hill farm cultivates education

Interim farm manager Lara Judson ’04 distributes seeds from a sunflower to kindergarten students at the Connors-Emerson School in Bar Harbor. Photo by Sarah Hinckley.

Kindergartner Karin Eloyan is delighted with his potato. Photo by SarahHinckley.

$35,000 grant makesoutreach possible

The Society for Human Ecology comes to COA inOctober 2006

“Ideas really do change the world,” says RichardBorden. As a COA psychology professor for twen-ty-six years and the founder and executive directorof the Society for Human Ecology, Borden haswatched human ecology become part of a ferventdialog around the globe. At the twentieth anniver-sary meetings in Salt Lake City, Utah last October,Borden also saw COA’s own John Anderson, facul-ty member in biology and dean of graduate stud-ies, elected president of the society in anticipationof COA hosting the next meetings, from October18 to 21, 2006. The theme will be InterdisciplinaryIntegration and Practice: Reconciling Humans and Nature.

The 2005 Utah meetings had a strong COA pres-ence, with presentations by Anderson, Borden,Ken Cline, Davis Taylor and John Visvader as wellas by student John Deans ’07 and graduate students Christie Mahaffey and Amy Zader. Thetheme was Human-Environmental Interactions:Research and Practice. Bruce Babbitt, formerSecretary of the Interior presented the keynoteaddress, while the mayor of Salt Lake City, Ross“Rocky” C. Anderson gave the welcoming addressshortly after he became known as the antiwarmayor.

In his talk, Borden spoke passionately aboutconservation psychology and the value of interdis-ciplinary studies. “There is great beauty in mixingacademic knowledge and human compassion,”Borden said, comparing conservation psychologyto the harmonizing of biological science andhuman sympathy. “Environmental conservation isessentially an extension of the healing tradition.Instead of focusing on a human individual orgroup, its subject matter enlarges to include otherspecies, critical habitats, significant landscapes, oreven the sustainable potential for all futurebeings.”

By interdisciplinary thinking,continued Borden,“ideas are thrown into fresh combinations . . . newsolutions are found, people listen with new ears.”

Many a new ear at COA eagerly awaits theupcoming solutions and discussions coming inOctober, so stay tuned. The society is now gather-ing initial proposals for the Bar Harbor meetings.These may be sent to the society’s website, or tothe COA conference address for Anderson andBorden, humanecology@coa.edu.

Please visit www.societyforhumanecology.orgfor more information on how to submit your proposals.

Human Ecologists of the World

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

Inquiring Photographer Sarah Barrett ’08 took a random sampling of students and asked:

“How do you describe COA?”

“I would describe COA as an overwhelminglyenjoyable and eye-opening experience.”

~ Stefan Calabria ’08

“COA is a tool. You can use it as little or as much as you want and you use it forexactly what you want to achieve. If you use it correctly you can achieve exactly what you want.”

~ Jessica Lach ’07

“A small school where students feel empowered to be individuals and have their voices heard.”

~ Ben Nimkin ’07

“A place where really talented and inspiredpeople come to pursue their passions andinterests in a way that relates to somethingabout human ecology and live in a way thatuses discourse and love and relation tochange community and the world as weknow it.”

~ Sophie Pappenheim ’08

8 | COA

Conservation comes to the George B. DorrMuseum of Natural History with help from theIMLS

With some 2,500 catalogued artifacts, COA’s DorrMuseum of Natural History is the state’s primaryyear-round museum dedicated to natural history.In addition to the scenes of animals in action that delight children and adults alike—a racoonslurping from a soda can, or an owl snagging a mouse—the museum’s teaching collectionincludes study skins, birds of all sizes, bones smalland large, eggs, amphibians, reptiles and muchmore. These items are often used in classes,whether they are outreach programs to local ele-mentary schools, summer programs for teachersor COA’s own students. “It’s an invaluable collec-tion,” says Ronald Harvey, a noted private museumconservator based in Lincolnville, Maine, who is indemand across the nation.

Thanks to a major conservation grant from theInstitute of Museum and Library Services, Harveywill be a frequent visitor to the Dorr Museum overthe next year and a half, guiding students and staffas they inventory and properly conserve the col-lection. Currently, Harvey, along with a team ofstudents, staff and faculty, is involved in recording

humidity, temperature and light levels in exhibi-tion and storage spaces, while also determining ifthere are any toxic materials from early taxidermymethods. “You need to know what conditions youhave in order to know how best to deal with thecollections,” says Harvey.

Understanding how to deal with toxic olderspecimens and safely conserve new items—

April Boucher ’06, Jessica Lach ’07 and Laura Briscoe ’07, left to right, test for the presence of arsenic, often found in historic animal mounts.

Saving the Study Skins

at sea for art’s COA artist and art teacher Ernest McMullen doesn’t alwaystravel in packs, but last August, when he wanted to takesome photographs out at the Edward McC. Blair MarineResearch Station on Mt. Desert Rock, a boatload of friendscame along for an adventurous night twenty-five miles off-shore in the light keeper’s house.

From left, back row: Marine ecologist Judy Perkins; Sean Todd,COA professor of marine biology; Sam Hamill, chair of the COAboard of trustees; Tara Stevens ’08, who works at Allied Whale;Anne Zoidis, Allied Whale research associate; Bethany Holm ’03,Allied Whale research assistant and Boykin Rose, COA friend andart collector. Front: Margo Rose, COA friend and art collector, AlliedWhale research assistant Jessica Sharman ’05, Perry and Bill Trimble, cousins to the Roses, Ernie McMullen and his wife,Svetlana McMulllen.

generally through a freezing process—is essentialfor students, says Harvey. “These students aregoing out into the world. Some will work withmuseum collections. If we can introduce collec-tion management skills and raise their levels ofawareness about protecting materials, studentsare going to come away with a much better educa-tion—and a healthier life.”

The $18,600 grant will also be used to designand implement long-term environmental monitor-ing strategies for the museum’s galleries and storage space, stabilize museum specimens andupgrade storage. The Dorr Museum was one offorty-nine museums chosen by the IMLS from 189applications. Though conservation is behind thescenes, says COA biology teacher Stephen Ressel,who has spearheaded this effort, it’s essential.“Collections care and management is the life-blood of museums. Good management ensuresthat exhibitions happen.” Given the global declineof species, he adds, collections such as those heldby the Dorr may be vital: “Scientists have extractedDNA from century-old specimens to better under-stand biodiversity,” he says. “They’ve also used nat-ural history collections to establish baseline dataregarding environmental pollution.”

According to the IMLS, 65 percent of thenation’s collecting institutions have experienceddamage to their collections because of improperstorage; 40 percent of such institutions have nofunds allocated for preservation or conservation.Yet, says the IMLS, the health of these collections“is vital to our democratic society. They inform andinspire our children, and they advance scientificdiscovery. They help us celebrate achievementand resolve that our generation will do better.”

The grant also funds a class in museum manage-ment that will be team-taught by Harvey andRessel in the spring of 2007, the first collectionmanagement class taught in Maine, possibly theonly class devoted to natural history collectionstaught in New England.

This grant holds special meaning for Harvey.Having visited COA and the museum over theyears, he had always hoped to teach at the college.From just a few encounters at COA, he’s found hisexpectations rewarded. Though he has taughtgraduate students in dedicated museum pro-grams en route to museum careers, Harvey hasfound COA’s human ecology students among themost eager he has ever encountered: “They have a hunger for broader concepts, for seeing howthings interact or relate.”

sake

10 | COA

There’s a better way, say the Carnegie Foundation,Pew Charitable Trusts and Washington Monthly

What makes a college desirable? Look over how somenational ratings are gathered and you find it’s about howmuch money alumni give, how much faculty members getpaid and how many students apply but don’t get in.

None of these criteria says much about how much stu-dents learn, how exciting a class is, or what impact graduateshave on the world.

HOW STUDENTS LEARNRecently, other measuring devices have been developed. Six years ago,the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the PewCharitable Trusts teamed up to find a more meaningful way to measurecollege excellence—a way to judge how well students are learning andhow engaged they are with their classrooms—and in the process, alsogive schools ways to improve. That instrument is now known as theNational Survey of Student Engagement, NSSE, or “Nessie” for thoseclose to it.

College of the Atlantic’s commitment to intellectual developmenthas been extraordinarily confirmed by the results of a study conducted

by this nationally-known research organization, now admin-istered by Indiana University’s Center for PostsecondaryResearch. After surveying some 204,000 freshmen and sen-iors from more than five hundred colleges and universities,NSSE ranked COA in the top ten percent of colleges in mostof the categories and the top twenty percent in all cate-gories. Among the colleges surveyed were Bates, BrynMawr, Carleton, Colby, Marlboro, Swarthmore and Williams.

To measure educational quality, the study focuses on fiveareas: academic challenge, active and collaborative learningexperiences, student-faculty interaction, enriched educa-tional experiences and supportive campus environment.

COA faculty members were particularly gratified to seethat students recognized the college’s close student-facultyconnections. In questions about access to faculty members,

such as whether students discussed ideas generated by the classes with faculty members beyond classes, or worked with facul-ty on research projects outside of class requirements, COA scoredmore than five percentage points higher than most of the top schoolswho took this survey.

Working with COA botany professorNishanta Rakajaruna ’94, Nate Pope ’06and Kathleen Tompkins ’08 look forplants that thrive on soils steeped withheavy metal. Such plants, known ashyperaccumulators, might prove usefulin cleaning up superfund sites. A recentNASA grant ensures the continuation ofthis research in 2006.

Dressed in protective gear, COAPresident Steve Katona makes a callduring the annual faculty-staff-studenttug-of-war that raises money for thesenior gift. For the second year in arow, COA seniors reached a perfect 100 percent giving.

how to rate a college

COA | 11

In the category of supportive campus environment, in which COAstudents were asked about the quality of relationships with other stu-dents and with faculty, and whether the environment provides the aca-demic, social and other supports a student needs, COA first-year stu-dents similarly placed the college high in the top 10 percent of colleges.

Some other differences are especiallyindicative of the kind of education COAoffers. At COA, 80 percent of first-year stu-dents said that they contributed to classdiscussions as opposed to 77 percent ofstudents in other colleges; 87 percent ofseniors said they put together ideas orconcepts from different courses whencompleting assignments, vs. 66 percent ofthe national norm of students; and 86 per-cent said they discussed class ideas out-side of class, vs. 72 percent of studentselsewhere.

Students Santiago Salinas ’05, Marjolaine J. Whittlesey ’05 and Sarah Bockian ’05 recordwater quality statistics for the Whitewater and Whitepaper: Canoeing and River Conser-vation class taught by COA law professor Ken Cline and COA zoology professor HelenHess.

COA students rehearse for the annual Cultural Fandango show.

12 | COA

WHAT STUDENTS DOIn September, just after the spate of annual collegeguides and rankings came out, Washington Monthlydecided to ask a whole different set of questions. In theirfirst “Washington Monthly College Guide” the editorswrote, “While other guides ask what colleges can do forstudents, we ask what colleges are doing for the country.”

The editors decided to examine three categories: the social mobility of college students, the researchefforts of the institution and their community service outreach. After doing so, COA weighed in as number 27 among all colleges in the United States. Visit

www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0509.collegeguide.html

THE TRADITIONAL RATINGSAnd then there are the traditional rankings. For the second year ina row, when U.S. News & World Report created its Survey of BestColleges, COA was singled out for two very distinctive aspects of thecollege experience. It was rated as having the largest percentage ofinternational students in the nation and placed within the survey’s top-ten list of schools with the most classes under twenty students.

As in the past, COA also appeared in Princeton Review’s bestcolleges and in Princeton Review’s America’s Best Value Colleges.

Marianna Bradley ’06 and Jessica Lach ’07 work together to band chicks as part of their summer research on the Alice Eno FieldResearch Station on Great Duck Island.

Justin Feldman ’08 and Megan Smith’90 listen to a classmate’s novel in cre-ative writing and literature professorBill Carpenter’s class, Starting YourNovel.

COA | 13

SAN LUCAS TOLIMAN, Guatemala—For monthsnow, the eight students in College of theAtlantic’s inaugural Guatemala program havebeen immersed in the life of this land. We havefelt the weight of people’s faith in patron saints aswe carried their images on our shoulders, movingto the rhythm of a religious procession in whichwe were honored to partake. We have exploredlearning the Kaqchikel language, allowing us towalk through doors we never thought we couldopen. Yet our mission to bridge theoretical andpractical learning can best be represented by oneday spent with a commonly consumed product:coffee. Though we all arrived with some under-standing of international commodity markets andtheir impact on those who labor in them, it took amountain, a mission, and a man named Hector to really drive the lesson home.

The day began with a tour of Ija’tz (pro-nounced “ee-hots”), a workers’ cooperative locat-ed in San Lucas Toliman, a small town on LakeAtitlan across from the tourist hub Panajachel. The orga-nization’s mission is to perform all the tasks along thecoffee production chain, right up to selling its beans onthe international fair trade organic market, with the goalof ensuring a living wage for its members.

We started the climb at midmorning with the ideathat we would be harvesting organic shade-grown cof-fee, without knowing what that would entail. The steephike proved to be fairly strenuous; as we arrived at theplot we were to harvest, we began to wonder what thatwalk must mean for someone who does it every day.

The coffee came in two varieties, one red and oneyellow, both brilliantly colored and similar in size andshape to the cranberry. Hector, our guide, divided usinto pairs and told us to go down each row, one personon either side of each plant, picking all of the ripeberries and placing them in the grain bags that we hadtied around our waists. A small child would comethrough later to get any berries we missed.

We picked for several hours, a task that proved to bemore difficult than it first appeared, at least for us. Theeasiest plants to harvest were ones that were abundantwith fruit; plants with scarce berries required a meticu-lous search through the thick leaves to find just a few.Our impatience with the scarce plants quickly led to ourbuddy system falling apart—but we had the privilege

of being choosy, of skipping plants, of takingbreaks. We were only students in the

field; we were not there to earn aliving or feed a family.

It quickly became clear that thosetwo goals are not easy ones to achieve

on coffee alone, even fair trade coffee. As Hectorexplained, people cannot live off of coffee in San Lucas Toliman, they all have second jobs as carpen-ters, construction workers and other positions. This isn’t surprising, given that a fair trade coffee pickerearns about three dollars per hundred pounds of coffee, about the maximum yield of one person in a day. About half that would go towards the tortillas necessary to feed an average-sized family, leaving little for medicine or education.

We descended the mountain, each of us carryingabout ten pounds of coffee, slipping on the steepslopes, exhausted from the heat and the harvest. Asmen began to pass us carrying one hundred pounds on their backs, supported only by a strap on their fore-heads, we came an inch closer to understanding howmuch inequality there is in the coffee industry, howmuch the culinary privilege of the north shapes it andhow fair trade can be a step toward solving the prob-lem. Being at the top of the coffee production chain, as consumers of this labor-intensive product, we werebeginning to see how much work goes into one cup of coffee. We had already learned how our sips of coffee intimately linked us to the people that grow it,obliging us to consume responsibly. At Ija’tz we metthose people, sealing our commitment.

Kati Freedman ’05 is spending this winter working asprogram assistant to COA’s 2006 Guatemala Program.

Shade-grown coffee in the bag. Top row: Amanda Muscat ’06, GalenBallentine ’08, Mauro Carballo ’07, Katarina Jurikova ’08, SimonMichaud ’08, Grace Grinager ’08. Bottom row: COA historian ToddLittle-Siebold, Hannah Semler ’08 and Ana Maria Rey Martinez ’08.Photo by Kati Freedman ’05.

A Day in the Life of a Coffee CooperativeCOA students get first-hand lesson in international commodity production

by Kati Freedman ’05

When government investigators getready to look into the deep files of a company like Enron, one ofthe first people called is Jay

McNally ’84. McNally’s electronic discovery firm,Ibis Consulting, Inc., has been charged with bothsafeguarding and finding data. What the invest-igators find, should they meet McNally, is an icon-oclast with a deep, grey-eyed gaze and a longponytail, someone whose early rebellion lingerson with a certain amount of sadness and gravity.Having dropped out and left home while in highschool, McNally applied to only two institutions of higher education: COA and a plumbing school.Despite his 1.8 GPA, COA took a chance andMcNally accepted; there was mandatory atten-dance at plumbing school.

McNally has since advised members of theHouse and Senate on the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, worked with the chief inform-ation officers of homeland security departmentsto help understand how to bring spy data into theopen and investigated numerous high profileinsider trading matters including the investiga-tions that linked Arthur Andersen, LLC to EnronCorporation’s fraudulent acts. Today, McNally,who has been a trustee of the college since 2002,insists that many of the skills he uses in these taskswere learned at COA.

Though McNally’s livelihood depends on hiscomputer skills, computers were not his focuswhile at COA. Art was. His senior project was amultimedia extravaganza. “I wrote music andenlisted a bunch of students to be in a band, do

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C O A ~ P R O F I L E

Jay McNally ’84 and the human ecology of electronic discovery

By Donna Gold

OF GRAFFITI,GRAFT &GREENBUSINESS:

painting, dance and sing,” he explained one warmfall afternoon after a board meeting. This was during the years when faculty and students weredismayed at the changes COA’s second presi-dent, Judith Swayze, was making. McNally didn’tshy away from the politics. “A lot of my senior project was about galvanizing anti-administrationsentiment; we liked what we had, we didn’t want to see the school be traditionalized.” He and hisfriends protested with graffiti, painting “SwayzeHall” on the trailers used as classrooms after thefire. “But we were COA students,” he notes, “wespray-painted Styrofoam, we didn’t want to dam-age anything.”

Those were the post-fire years. There was nocampus library, no internet and just one computer.Students carpooled to Orono for research. Butthough the facilities were grim, the camaraderiewas intense, with little divisionbetween faculty and students. “I wasintellectually curious, I didn’t likethe social homogenization that Ifound in most schools,” McNallyexplained. At COA, he found thekind of intellectual honesty he wasseeking. “I learned a lot about howto learn, how to engage people, howto communicate. COA faculty have a unique wayof causing you to look in the mirror in a non-threatening way.”

While studying psychology, philosophy and sta-tistics with Rich Borden and taking writing courseswith Bill Carpenter, McNally developed his com-puter skills on his own, using an old digital PDP 11. At one point, he recalls, “the students decidedthey needed a real college experience. We prac-ticed drinking for a few weeks, then we went downto Colby. In the first fifteen minutes it was so clearthat we were totally outclassed by them in drink-ing that we got into the car and went back.”

The intensity of the time, and his work with governance at the college, led to a fascination withhow a collection of people becomes a stronggroup. This, he says, isn’t far from what he doesnow, leading and encouraging the hundred-oddpeople that McNally is very proud to employ ashead of Ibis.

After graduating and moving to Boston, McNallytook on a temporary job supplying services to lawfirms involved in litigation, drawing on lessons inpsychology as well as literature. After all, he says,“tracking and analyzing corporations is a lot aboutunderstanding plot.” The human drama of litiga-tion was just another aspect of human ecology.

In the days of 1980s excess, one litigation jobgot so intense that he found himself with a staff of 120 in three cities and hired a catering companyto bring five meals a day to the workers. But whenasked to lay off staff just before Christmas,McNally objected to the inhuman—and inhuman-ecological—demand and decided to launch hisown business. Quitting his job, he applied forevery credit card he was offered and built IbisConsulting. The secret ingredient in Ibis is anoth-er harvest of interdisciplinary thinking, a program

based on feline night vision thatcan classify documents throughimages, thereby distilling from lit-erally millions of pages the preciseinformation lawyers might need.

Even before McNally became atrustee, he was a COA donor. “Idon’t know where, and I don’tknow why, but I always had a sense

that I should give back to institutions that gave tome—and COA gave me a rare and precious gift.”He also felt that by concentrating his gifts on a fewinstitutions, his donations would be worth more.At COA, McNally feels that his money helps pro-duce better stewards for non-profits and business-es with missions consistent with COA. McNallyfurthermore seeks ways to spur giving to the col-lege. When Nat Keller ’04 decided to strive for fullparticipation in the senior class gift, McNallypromised to match the gift. Currently, with lifetrustee Henry Sharpe, he is focusing on COA’s newgreen business leadership program.

“COA is in really good shape,” says McNally.“The board is very strong, morale is high, we areaddressing real issues that I think are going to helpthe college over a broader horizon. Trustees areencouraged by what they see and are energized bystudents and faculty,” he says, adding, “COA rocks,it always has, it has a lot to offer, it needs moreambassadors, more people telling its story.”

COA | 15

“COA faculty have a unique way of

causing you to lookin the mirror in a non-

threatening way.”

from

toc a undersea

Steven K. Katona came to College of the Atlantic as a foundingfaculty member in 1972. In 1993, he became COA’s fourth pres-ident. As Katona plans to retire, the tiny institution that beganon a twenty-acre campus now has ten times as many students,a nine-fold increase in endowment and more than five times asmuch land, encompassing twenty-five acres of shorefront,ninety acres of farmland, ten acres of island research sta-tions—and the educational scope of the world.

Through Katona, COA began its transformational link withthe Davis United World Scholars program, bringing an excep-tional array of international students to campus. Thanks to abroadening of the COA curriculum during Katona’s presidency,

students may now study the human ecology of coastal Mexico andhighland Guatemala, spend a year at like-minded ecological institu-tions through the EcoLeague and study organic farming at COA’sBeech Hill Farm. Students can learn the intimate details of bird life onGreat Duck Island, now the Alice Eno Field Research Station, orobserve whales on Mount Desert Rock, now the home of the EdwardMcC. Blair Marine Research Station. From observations of the largestmammals, students can turn to some of life’s smallest particles, joiningresearch teams at the Jackson Laboratory and the Mount Desert IslandBiological Laboratory as a partner in the government-sponsored IdeaNetwork for Biomedical Research Excellence, or INBRE program. Butas the college expands, its environmental footprint lessens. The col-lege holds a ten-year contract for wind energy, new buildings incorpo-rate innovative green design and gatherings are becoming waste-free,following the lead of COA’s zero-waste graduation ceremony in 2005.

While numerous minds and still more hands have gone into shapingthe college, COA is what it is in part because a young professor filledwith intellectual curiosity came here with a dream of saving the oceanand never stopped believing in the power of one small college—or oneindividual—to make the world a better place.

~ DG

by Gregory S. Stone ’82presidencychemistry

HEY DAD, CAN I BORROW THE KEYS?

On a summer day in 1981, fellow College of the Atlantic student EricRoos ’87 and I decided to go SCUBA diving in Frenchman Bay. It was aFriday. The ocean was flat and calm; the sky was clear and blue. Ourplan was to photograph and study the marine life off Bald PorcupineIsland. We had access to the twenty-foot COA Boston Whaler, but weneeded a vehicle strong enough to tow it to the Bar Harbor town boatramp. Knowing Steve Katona’s Toyota Land Cruiser was in the COAparking lot, his keys under his seat, we figured he wouldn’t mind if weborrowed it for an hour or two. We knew he was leaving for the week-end that day using his other car.

So without asking, Eric and I headed off for a day ofdiving with Steve’s vehicle and the COA boat. But onthe boat ramp that day, the brakes on the jeep failedand the whole rig—boat, trailer and Land Cruiser—went into the sea. Standing on the ramp, I watched inhorror as the front and back seats filled with water, Ericstill at the wheel. I called out to him to get out. Hecrawled out the window and onto the roof where hecurled up in the fetal position as the Toyota began todrift out to sea, buoyed up on one end by the boat,which was still attached to its trailer. I ran into the freez-ing water, trying to push and pull the vehicle, but it wasuseless. Meanwhile, a large crowd gathered at the townwharf shouting suggestions. Eventually, a passing boatpicked Eric up and towed the Toyota, boat and trailerback to the wharf. Because there is a sharp drop-off atthe bottom of the boat ramp, we could not simply pullthe boat and jeep back out of the water, and the closestramp or beach where that could be done was a half-mile away. The jeep needed to be lifted up somehow.

There were now about three hundred people gathered on the wharfand sitting on the grass of the park watching while we tried to figureout what to do next. Then Steve arrived. To this day, I can still see himcross the parking lot while the crowd parted between us. It was one ofthe very lowest moments in my life. But where others would have been angry or shocked, Steve immediately took in the situation, includ-ing what was happening to Eric and me inside. As we walked towardeach other Steve called out, “Hey Dad, can I borrow the keys?”

He ended up selling the jeep for seven hundred dollars to local fish-erman Perley Fogg, “where she lay.” Eventually the jeep was pluckedfrom the ocean with a clever series of pulleys and winches by Perleyand soaked in a lake for a few days to leach out the salt water. It workedfine for many more years. A couple of days later Eric and I were walkingon campus in front of Turrets when we sighted Steve walking out thefront door. I called out, asking if we could borrow his remaining car,and Steve replied, without missing a beat, “Sure, the life jackets are inthe back seat.”

18 | COA

COA | 19

FROM THE SMALLEST OF CREATURES TO THE LARGEST

I don’t usually write about people. I guess you could say that my beat isthe ocean. It is easy for me to write about the sea because I have a con-suming passion for it and everything in it—and there is one person, agreat mentor and teacher, largely responsible for focusing this obses-sion, for developing my career in ocean science and my ability to com-municate. That guy is Steven Karol Katona.

The first class I had with Steve was in 1976. He was thirty-three yearsold, trimmed out in a thick black beard. The welcoming twinkle in hiseyes was topped by full eyebrows and a crown of curly hair. I was nine-teen years old: a freshly-minted SCUBA card in my pocket, a generousfinancial aid package in hand (thank you, COA), an interest in scienceand a sense that the world’s environment was in some kind of trouble.

The class was in the southeast corner of the old COA building thatlater burned, facing the ocean from the third floor. With the sun stream-ing through the window, Steve was teaching us about marine biology,chalk in hand, tapping away food chain diagrams vertically on the black-board—shrimp eat plankton, fish eat shrimp, whales eat fish—and lifecycle diagrams in a circle. Steve taught us what we needed to knowabout the ocean and the earth, what humans were doing to it and howwe all might be able to make things better—the human ecology partthat we were trying to figure out.

Steve Katona measures a whale skull with Matt Gerald ’83 and former COA professor Sentiel Rommel.

20 | COA

And in those early years we all had a lot to figure out and Stevehelped us, like few teachers can, by nurturing the individual assets each student arrived with and guiding us into our respective careersand lives. Before I came to COA, I worked summers as a dishwasher.Building on this experience, my first job at COA was washing the glassware in the chemistry lab. As I labored nights and weekends in thelab for my work-study funds, Steve saw some potential in me that evenI could not yet discern, and offered me the job of running the MountDesert Rock Whale Watch research station, a major coup and opportu-nity for a first-year student who had never even seen a whale. It gaveme my first research experience. Having never traveled beyond myhome state of Massachusetts, spending the summer on a small islandtwenty miles off the coast of Maine provided my first taste of realadventure, an experience that would eventually lead to exploring anddiving in Antarctica and in every ocean of the planet.

Because he devoted far more time and attention to finding out aboutus than talking about himself, it was a while before I learned Steve’sown background. Later, I found that he was from Cincinnati, Ohio witha brother named Gene. Steve had considered medicine, like his ownfather, and it was a big turning point, a family decision, when he decid-ed on a career in marine research.

In the late 1960s, Steve could be found walking the streets of Boston,Cambridge and Cape Cod with long hair, legendary beard and a plank-ton net slung over his shoulder. He had just finished his undergraduatedegree, cum laude, at Harvard and stayed on to work under therenowned George Clark for his Ph.D. Steve was researching the waytiny shrimp-like animals called copepods used chemicals, called

Steve Katona dissecting a white-sideddolphin with Brad Barr.

pheromones, to locate each other for reproduction. He collected thesecopepods in his plankton net by filtering the water rushing underbridges along the coast, in Nahant and even in the estuarine parts ofthe Charles River. He then brought the tiny creatures into his laborato-ry where he isolated and reproduced their life cycles and conducteddetailed experiments, separating the flea-sized female and male cope-pods, then putting them through a maze to discover how they foundeach other by “smell.”

To this day, Steve’s Ph.D. dissertation and later scientificpapers on this topic remain seminal references in marine bio-logy, then in its adolescence as a science. While pheromoneshad been documented for land creatures, it was the first timesuch reliance on chemicals for sexual behavior was docu-mented in the sea. Plankton, and most marine animals, werenot looked at as individuals, but more like commodities. Steveteased these tiny animals out of the immense oceans, describ-ing them as individual creatures with sex lives they chose.Even though he researched this topic forty years ago, Stevestill remembers the smallest details of his research, brighten-ing when he talks about it because he enjoyed the work somuch. He even made a short film depicting their successfulsearch that ended when one copepod swam down the finalpathway to his/her intended, accompanied by animated fire-works that Steve laid into the film.

COA | 21

Steve Katona, Lisa Baraff ’84 and Greg Stone ’82.

Harp Seal on pack ice in Bar Harbor.Photo by Mindy Viechnicki.

He was awarded a prestigious Fulbright scholarship in 1967–68 so that he could extend his plankton studies at the University of Southampton in England. With Susan Lerner, his high school girl-friend who later became his wife and partner at COA, he went toEurope on the Queen Mary and came back on the Queen Elizabeth,carrying samples of plankton in each direction. After a brief post-graduation stint on the west coast at the California Institute of the Arts, followed by a very cold research expedition to the Alaskan Arctic,Steve was drawn to COA as a founding faculty member. He felt thatCOA’s environmental mission could better address the world’s prob-lems. But the art and design students he encountered on the west coastprepared him well for the eclectic COA students he would spend thenext thirty-four years guiding.

Upon arriving in Maine, it wasn’t long before Steve’s incessantcuriosity leaped from his early studies of one of the smallest creaturesin the sea, to founding a research program on whales, the earth’slargest creatures.

A PILLAR OF MODERN WHALE RESEARCH

How it came about is a legend in itself. One day, so the story goes, inCOA’s first month, Steve led a cruise on a Coast Guard boat into the fogfor a field trip to Mount Desert Rock, about twenty-five miles south ofBar Harbor. Each and every one of the thirty-two students the collegehad enrolled was with him. They landed, tromped around on the tinyrock without much to report, and were about to leave when a halfdozen sixty-foot finback whales barreled by like B-1 bombers, burstingtheir warm breath thirty feet high in clouds of spray. Steve’s interest inwhales crystallized.

With the students of the day, he created Allied Whale, founded toimprove the relationship between whales and humans, a relationshipthat was significantly troubled at the time by commercial whaling. Itwas his human ecological vision to mend the relationship. AlliedWhale’s activities led to research, education and policy initiatives, andis credited with the foundational studies of whales, dolphins and seals

22 | COA

Finback whale with a blow hole view.

Breaching humpback whale.

in the Gulf of Maine and later around the world. Steve’s resultant FieldGuide to the Whales, Porpoises, and Seals from Cape Cod toNewfoundland, co-authored by Valerie Rough and David T. Richardson,was first published by COA in 1977. It was since picked up bySmithsonian Books and went into four editions.

As Steve was working on the book, he got together withRoger Payne, Judy Perkins and founding student ScottKraus ’77, to project photographs of humpback whaleflukes on a screen. They reckoned that each one wasunique, like a fingerprint, and that the photographs couldbe used to study the animals by taking pictures of thesame animals at different times and places. Scott took iton as his senior project with Steve as his advisor. Theirwork became the world’s first humpback whale fluke cat-alogue. Today, everyone seems to know humpback whalescan be identified individually with photographs of the undersides oftheir tails, but it was a pioneering idea of the day.

The humpback whale catalogue is now a model for humpback stud-ies. The effort consolidated a field of science into a standard powerfultechnique. Steve’s scientific credibility and welcoming personalitybecame the center point for this project because he was able to get thediverse and independent-minded humpback scientists of the westernNorth Atlantic Ocean to work together, sharing their data because theytrusted him. This was my first glimpse of Steve’s extraordinary leader-ship ability, which later blossomed in his COA presidency. Prior to this,every researcher held on to their photographs and refused to con-tribute them to one central location. Once consolidated at College ofthe Atlantic, the data on individual humpbacks led to breakthroughs in understanding their biology. As in his early copepod work, Steve’sinsights struck through to the heart of what was essential. His scientificcontribution remains a pillar of modern whale science.

COA | 23

Ed Blair, life trustee and former chairman ofthe board, Steve Katona and George Page,former host of the PBS program Nature, on a whale-watching adventure.

Moira Brown, former COA professor of marine biology, Scott Kraus ’77, Steve Katona and Judy Allen, director of information services, on a teachingtrip to Nova Scotia.

RENAISSANCE MAN

Fast-forward a decade or so to January 1985. Steve’s black hair is short-er and beginning to show flecks of silver; the beard will soon be gone. He is seventy miles north of the Dominican Republic on a twenty-five square-mile coral reef system named Silver Bank. Steve isleading an expedition of scientists and students on the 100-foot sailingresearch vessel Regina Maris.

By now I’ve graduated from COA. Steve and I are on SilverBank because it is the winter breeding ground for humpbackwhales, the same whales that spend summers thousands ofmiles north near Mount Desert Island, swimming down andback each year. We are on a smaller skiff deployed from thelarger ship. As Steve settles in the bow, I sit in the stern, man-ning the boat with a small sputtering outboard engine. The sunis hot and high in the sky and we are surrounded by thousandsof humpback whales. As we glide across the aquamarine waters,passing the colorful shadows of coral heads, seeing whale

flukes and blows popping up and disappearing like surprise targets at acarnival game, Steve points towards a group of seven or eight malewhales, rolling and jumping as they all converge and compete for onefemale. I idle the engine as Steve dons a diving mask. He carefully low-ers himself into the ocean to photograph the whales underwater.

After our work on Silver Bank, Steve and I began a series of forays tothe Caribbean and Bermuda, tracking what at the time were truly mys-terious giants. Through his leadership, a group of scientists in theAtlantic pooled their efforts and laid the foundation for understandinghumpback whale distributions in the entire ocean basin.

Somewhere between our moment on Silver Bank, washing glass-ware in the COA chemistry lab, my early days on Mount Desert Rock,diving in Frenchman Bay, the multidisciplinary view Steve gave me of the oceans and the earth—somewhere amidst this and much more, my career and life in expeditionary marine conservation science was forged.

24 | COA

The Edward McC. Blair MarineResearch Station at Mt. Desert Rock.

Steve Katona, Susan Lerner, former COApresident Louis Rabineau, his wife Monaand their daughter Elizabeth.

Steve has now left most of the whale field work to others while he has gone on to new things, mostnotably guiding the College of the Atlantic for thirteenyears. His scientific, educational and fundraising abili-ties have firmly established the college as one of themost important and unique environmental colleges inthe world. Even during this busy time, Steve has main-tained his hand in some research and offered his lead-ership to dozens of national and international effortstoo numerous to mention, including the advisoryboard for the Marine Conservation Action Fund, pres-ident of the Maine Independent Colleges Association,president of the Maine Higher Education Council, scientific advisor for the U.S. Marine MammalCommission, international scientific advisor for theBermuda Underwater Exploration Institute, chairmanfor the scientific advisory committee of the Society forMarine Mammalogy, president of the AmericanCetacean Society and co-chairman of the NationalMarine Fisheries Services Humpback Whale RecoveryTeam.

A renaissance man with a balanced armament of intellect, interestsand interpersonal abilities, Steve initiates and loves discussions aboutideas more than anyone I know. Even though his research specialty isthe oceans, Steve can talk about anything and he celebrates anyone’saccomplishments or interests. The home of Steve and Susan Lerner andtheir two sons, David and Nicholas, has always been a beehive of gath-erings with student travelers, artists and people from all walks of life.The artifacts in their home, gathered from their many travels andreceived as gifts from their many friends and admirers, are a partialrecord of their eclectic interests. Their home is a veritable museum,which always enriches these gatherings.

What struck me about Steve that very first class I had with him somany years ago was the way he gazed around the room, connectingwith individual students. He viewed each person with great respect andkindness. Amazingly, with all that has been on his plate while COA’spresident, that warm personal thoughtfulness can still be felt today andis even stronger.

Gregory S. Stone ’82, Ph.D., is vice president for global marine programs at the New England Aquarium, a Pew Fellow for marine conservation, editor of the MarineTechnology Society Journal from 1997–2003, member of the Explorers Club andchairman of the scientific advisors for the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute.Since graduating from COA, where he worked closely with Steve Katona, Greg haslogged over five thousand SCUBA dives, lived in an underwater research station for thirty days, explored the ocean down to twenty thousand feet in deep sea submersibles, and has worked and lived in Japan, New Zealand, and Fiji. His 2003 Antarctic book, Ice Island, about his expedition to B-15, the largest iceberg in history, won the National Outdoor Book Award. His fourth article in NationalGeographic Magazine, on his expedition to study the effects from the Sumatra tsunami on the coral reefs of Thailand, appeared in the December 2005 issue.

COA | 25

Steve Katona and Greg Stone ’82 at areception at the Bermuda UnderwaterExploration Institute.

26 | COA

FROM ALL-COLLEGE MEETING TO NEW ENGLAND FISHERMENScott Kraus Seeks Solutions

Scott Kraus ’77 was one of the firsttwo COA students to spend a two-week stint on Mount Desert Rock,recording whale sightings as part ofthe fledgling Allied Whale and gettingto know the Coast Guard men sta-tioned there. “They were young like usbut their attitudes were very differentfrom the New England politics of envi-

ronmentalism and human rights that I’d been steeped in,”said Kraus. Sharing the close quarters, even staying secureduring a hurricane on the Rock, taught Kraus a great dealabout the importance of toleration and accepting people fortheir actions as much as for their ideas.

Kraus found that COA’s All-College Meeting was anothergreat exercise in listening and working to find a solution.“Town meetings had such a diversity of viewpoints. It waslike combining a debating society with a course in logic andanother in politics.” In many ways, the research trainingKraus received through Allied Whale, along with his partici-pation in COA’s self-governance, served as the perfect train-ing for his work at New England Aquarium, where he is cur-rently vice-president for research. “There are many moreplayers in the marine environment than there were twentyyears ago,” he noted. “Often a government agency talks toall the interest groups and then takes years to impose some-thing no one likes. Sometimes you get to feel that it’s notworth doing anymore.”

To counter the slow pace and lowest-common-denomi-nator quality of bureaucratic policy writing, Kraus finds inspi-ration in working directly with stakeholders such as fisher-men and shipping companies. “They want to have controlover their own lives. If you show them proof of a problem,they will test and adopt new tactics, often quicker than if youhad to wait for regulations to force compliance.” One exam-ple of this approach is Kraus’ current work with chemistsand engineers to test rope that glows in the dark, reflectssound, becomes stiff when submerged, or dissolves uponcontact with blubber. “The forces of modern chemistryhaven’t been brought to bear on fishing gear. It could opena door that will allow us to make progress.”

Scott recalls the contentious discussion during COA’sfirst year about the name of the workshop that eventuallywas called Allied Whale. While it might seem trivial now,even the process of choosing a name can be a step foward,even when reconciliation and mutual recognition seemimpossible.

FLYING POLICY AROUND THE GLOBENicole Cabana at NOAA

In her first year at COA, NicoleCabana ’99 wrote a paper con-demning the killing of harpseals. While the seals stayed onher mind, Cabana worked atAllied Whale, dedicating manyhours to cataloging humpbackwhale tails for its Years of theNorth Atlantic Humpbacks, orYoNAH, project. The more shelearned about whales andseals, the more she realized

that policy should be based on hard data, rather than, as shesays, “an emotional attachment to a charismatic species.”

Eventually Cabana traveled to Newfoundland to meetsealers and see the harvest in person. This research tripbecame the basis for her senior project. Her conclusion rancontrary to her earlier beliefs, supporting the way the harvestwas being managed by the Canadian government. Thinkingabout that time now, she reflects, “What surprised me mostwas my change in world view. Before coming to COA, I hadbeen very closed-minded and set in my viewpoints. I had ahardnosed, definite position one way and totally changed bythe time I finished at COA in 1999.”

After graduation, Cabana wanted to find work that allow-ed her to travel and continue learning. A chance encounterintroduced her to the Commissioned Corps Officers of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, orNOAA. This uniformed group of roughly three hundred indi-viduals serves NOAA as ship and aircraft operators on envi-ronmental and scientific missions. Though she feared that a“military mentality” might dominate the corps, she waspleased to find her fellow officers to be scientists and engi-neers like herself, committed to impartiality in their research.

The corps has fulfilled its promise of travel and educa-tion. Of her six years in a NOAA uniform, Cabana has spentfour in the Pacific, both on ship and shore assignments, andhas conducted research in the Atlantic from the Bay ofFundy to the Dominican Republic. As her experience hasgrown, Cabana has also been introduced to the political sideof NOAA through a short stint in Washington, D.C., whereshe expects to be assigned in the future. She looks forwardto bringing to her policy work the open-mindedness that shehas won through hard questioning of her own biases.

taking on the big BY LOIE HAYES ’79

Loie Hayes ’79 is a freelance editor and writer, still grate-ful for the reading and writing skills she learned at COA.

ENGAGING A BROAD AUDIENCE Greg Stone and South Seas Conservation.

The college “woke me up,” says GregStone ’82. Transferring after a stultify-ing first semester at a major universi-ty, COA’s hands-on learning thrilledhim. “Suddenly we were out on theocean or mucking around on the sandbar—that connected for me in waysno other academic experience everhad. If it weren’t for COA, I’m not sure

I ever would have become as academically engaged as Ihave in my career and life.”

Stone experienced a “visceral, emotional immersion inthe ocean” through his work with Allied Whale at COA.Reading Tolstoy, Melville, Marge Piercy, Thomas Hardy, andMary Shelley, studying philosophy and writing, aren’t stan-dard parts of a biologist’s training but they were importantparts of Stone’s education as a human ecologist. He creditsCOA’s interdisciplinary model with helping him build his second career—as a journalist, as well as a scientist.

Much of Stone’s time in recent years has been spentworking to protect New Zealand’s Hector’s dolphins. Using“pingers” developed by COA alum Scott Kraus ’77 andsatellite tags, Stone has worked with commercial and re-creational fishers, native Maori communities, the dolphintourism industry, and the government to find new ways toprotect the dolphins in what he calls New Zealand’s“increasingly urbanized” marine ecosystem.

Another very complex project that Stone is involved withis the creation of a marine conservation area around thePhoenix Islands within the territory of Kiribati. This nation of100,000 Micronesians has domain over thirty-three islandsspread over a territory larger than the United States. Withvirtually all of the national welfare dependent on the sellingof commercial fishing licenses, Kiribati’s survival depends on finding ways to sustain its marine productivity. Borrow-ing a tactic that’s been used on land—the buying of dev-elopment rights to keep farmland and forests from beingturned into subdivisions and strip malls—Stone is leading a team setting up the first market-based solution to oceanresource degradation. “It’s the most complex thing I’ve ever been a part of,” he says. “We’ve got dance contests,posters, fundraisers, research cruises, economists valuingnatural resources, lawyers writing legislation…. We’re key-ing into biological, social and financial systems. Some conservationists have just one objective and no awarenessof the social issues involved. COA taught me to see the big picture.”

DISCERNING THE DIVINE IN NATURE’S CONSTELLATIONSKatrina van Dine and the devilish details of ocean governance.

Kate van Dine ’82 was twenty yearsold and had tried two other collegesbefore finding COA. Feeling “ready to be asked to think through stuff onmy own and not be talked at,” vanDine immediately resonated with thecuriosity she found animating COA.Faculty not only avoided dictating theanswers to life’s spider web of puz-

zles, they were “not even telling you that there was ananswer.” The qualities she found among COA’s community—being generous of heart, asking a lot of questions, havinggood humor, listening well and being willing to argue—haveserved her well in her professional and personal pursuits.

One of van Dine’s first memories of COA is of being “kneedeep in a minke whale carcass,” she says. “Water hasalways been my draw,” van Dine continues. As a member ofAllied Whale, she pondered a conundrum that fascinates herstill: whether, “we, the human animal, will accept our role aswithin the natural system or whether we will always be try-ing to stick our foot on the top of the pile.” While van Dine’sinstinct tells her that humans are too restless to fit in, sheintends to keep arguing against the urge to dominate.

As research counsel with the Marine Affairs Institute ofRoger Williams University School of Law and Rhode IslandSea Grant Legal Program, van Dine now focuses on oceangovernance through regional structures. Building ondecades of work by groups like the Gulf of Maine Council,the value of an ecosystem perspective is increasingly recog-nized at all levels of governance. Yet as van Dine strives toturn ecosystem theory into regional practice, the devilremains in the details.

With a wry tone of understatement, van Dine reports thatit is “hard to be a visionary in the political process.” Still, shebelieves that creative thinkers, along with courageous man-agers, can foment a shift from vacuuming ecosystems cleantoward true sustainability. While she hesitates when askedabout how quickly we might get there, she remains encour-aged by the example of COA and by the caliber of its stu-dents and staff. She emphasizes the enormous gratitudeshe now feels for the room that COA accorded her to followher own, still ongoing, process of emotional, spiritual andintellectual maturation. In thinking about the faculty sheworked with in the late seventies, she muses, “What a con-stellation they made.” While the devil might be in the details,the divine can be discerned in the larger patterns.

For more than thirty-three years, Allied Whale has produced scientistswho have studied everything from the diet to the courting behavior ofmarine mammals. But many of COA’s Allied Whale “graduates” havegravitated toward environmental policy, taking on public policy and planning positions, trying to make a difference in large and small con-servation efforts throughout the world. Loie Hayes ’79 profiled four such graduates: Scott Kraus ’77, Greg Stone ’82, Katrina van Dine ’82,and Nicole Cabana ’99.

picture

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Compiled by Andrea Lepcio ’79

A journey has been taken; a road discovered andfollowed to its end. A pause before the next pathbegins; a time to reflect on the experience of learn-ing from and discovering through Susan Lerner.

Loie Hayes ’79: I remember a conversation she andI had about writing. It was probably the first timethat a teacher had challenged me about the authen-ticity of my voice. I didn’t understand at first and feltanxious about having failed to please her. She wasvery gentle and patient in her Socratic way, askingme to think about how I might talk about the sub-ject if I were in a class. It’s a lesson that has beenfoundational for me to present myself as simply andhonestly as possible in all my dealings.

Bill Carpenter, COA faculty since 1972: Susie wasvery much a part of the Big Bang of 1972–75 thatcoalesced into COA, bringing liberated art formsand cutting-edge feminist theory into the humanecology mix. She foresaw that COA would becomea mecca for progressive young women and laid theintellectual groundwork to make it possible. Therewas a certain pressure in those days for a narrowed,pragmatic environmentalism; Susie insisted on awider vision that included dance, arts and crafts,alternative health and especially women’s studies.

Sara J. Wendt ’85: I remember the sound of hervoice, steady, powerful and confident in its soft-ness. She talked straight to me as if I were an equal,a powerful woman, me a girl of nineteen.

Borbala Kiss ’02: Brightness was flickering in hereyes when we met. A heartbeat is all it took. Anintuition. Like a sculptor working with living clayshe just listened first. A chill in the back. Becomingalmost hurts. Daring to say. Listen again. Magichappens. The clay expresses itself. Endless possi-bilities. Did the artist create another artist?

Sara: Susie taught by example and I came to knowthis as the most effective and joyful way to changethe world. I see now how lucky I am to have beenunder the guidance of this wise woman.

Loie: Susie’s so curious about people—how theythink about their experiences, how they choose toconstruct their lives, how the natural and humancontext shapes us and we shape them.

Bill: Susie was our strongest believer in the unityand loving coherence of the COA community. Susieprovided the “glue”—as we called it back then—that held it all together.

Thupten Norbu ’06, gallery assistant: As an inter-national student, I owe a big thank you to bothSteve and Susie for inviting us to dinners duringmajor American celebrations. They really caredabout us and made us feel part of the community.

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SusanLernerA PAUSE FOR REFLECTION

Melita Brecher, artist: Susie’spersonality, playfulness, witand creativity are expressedin her work at the BlumGallery. She can transformalmost anything into anexciting exhibit. Susie hasthe natural skill to connectwith visitors, students andexhibiting artists, making allfeel welcome and special.

Elisa Hurley, Blum Galleryvisitor: The first time I metSusan I was bringing her apiece of art made by my six-year-old son for an upcom-ing show. Susan was de-lighted. When she met myson at the opening a weeklater, she talked with him, artist to artist. She intro-duced him to people in the gallery. She asked hisopinion. He has never forgotten that.

Ashley Bryan, artist: I sing to the sun of my goodfriend Susan! She has enlivened my home onIslesford with visits from COA students. I sing ofSusan’s installation of my puppets, the ingeniousway in which she stood the puppets in the galleryspace as if they were guests at the show!

Ev Shorey, trustee since 1985: Susan, since its found-ing, has been a major resource for COA as a facultymember, gallery director and tremendous supportfor Steve, which has meant so much.

Casey Mallinckrodt (’75) artist, trustee: Susie hastremendous enthusiasm for engaging people in themission and life of the college. I cannot count thetimes I have run into Susie introducing someone to the campus, farm, gallery, to find out later that thiscurator, potential student, author, famous actor,was someone she met the day before at a party, orperhaps at the counter of Pectic Seafood, andbrought into the circle of the college.

Philip B. Kunhardt ’77, trustee: Susie has been a passionate, engaged teacher with a flair for lifeand a true interest in her students. Sparkling, mellowed, statelier than ever, what a person!

Mary-Sherman Willis, poet: In the spring of 1973 Iaudited Susan’s (and COA’s) first women’s literaturecourse. Suddenly I’d found another Virginia Woolfenthusiast—but it didn’t stop there. I’d done somemodern dance, so had she: Let’s do some choreog-raphy! I had work in my studio: Let’s have a show!Susan’s fluid artistry has been a fund of creativepossibility for those of us lucky enough to knowher. Today, two of her monoprints hang above mywriting desk, testimonials of an art-making woman.

Steve Katona: In all her work, and at every scale,Susie enables nature, insight, passion, form, humorand political message to meld in new combinations.Watching her make that magic each day, often inways that surprise, is one of the joys of my life.

Emily Bracale ’90 teaches art classes and workshops, homeschools Hana, 10, and John Henry, 2, practices Reiki and energyclearings, and celebrates lives in art. mamaly@verizon.net.

New York playwright Andrea Lepcio ’79 took classes with Susanfrom 1976–79. The two have been friends ever since.

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“Koi, for my father” by Susan Lerner, paint on silk.

In our continuing history of College of the Atlantic, COA talkedwith Les Brewer, 83, the Bar Harbor businessman, town coun-cilor, school board member and much more who was COA’s firstchairman of the board and still remains our treasurer, a man whohas barely missed one board meeting in thirty-four years andwho has always been instrumental in making things happen.

~ DG

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A conversation with founding boardmember Leslie C. Brewer

You have to accomplishsomething to get peopleto want to join you.

Photograph by Noreen Hogan ’91.

Donna Gold: Before we launch into talkingabout COA, can you tell me a bit about yourbackground?

Les Brewer: I’m a fifth-generation Mount DesertIsland resident. My forefathers have done someshipbuilding and other businesses. I grew up here,of course, and went to the local schools.

DG: You and Father Jim Gower were both onthe football team, right? Father Jim remembersyou as being very studious—

LB: We were quarterbacks but we both did ourown thing. I was valedictorian, maybe becauseother people who were very smart went to otherschools. I then went to the University of MaineROTC program and was in the service in Europe. I came back and finished college, went to Bostonto work a year and then I chose to come back tothe island and go into the family business andenjoy what I’ve always enjoyed—living on MountDesert Island.

DG: And, as I understand, COA was launchedafter a chance encounter between you and Father Jim?

LB: Father Jim was reassigned to work here onthe island. If he hadn’t been, this college mightnever have happened. We just happened to meeton Cottage Street, right in front of my businessand he just happened to say, “I’d like to do somework outside of my church, is there somethingwe can do together?” I said, “The Chamber ofCommerce has been trying to start a school hereon the island but they can’t seem to get going.”Father Jim asked a couple of friends and he and I with two other people met in his house onenight and talked it over. It seemed like there was a possibility that we could explore.

DG: Why a college?

LB: Basically we were trying to find another eco-nomic resource for the community. We felt weneeded stimulation to the economy of the areaon a twelve-month basis and not the hospitalitybusiness.

At that particular time, it was a little easier thanit had been in prior years, because the legislaturehad just passed a bill permitting the MaineDepartment of Education to grant an organizationthe right to use the word college in their namewithout going before the legislature. So, we wentdown to Augusta, the five of us: Father Jim, BobSmith, who worked in Augusta, Sonny Cough,who was a local businessman, Richard Lewis and I, and made a presentation that we’d like to start a college on Mount Desert Island.

When we came back, we had a corporationand the right to use the word college in ourname, but we had to have the location. Father Jimand myself went to Ellsworth one day to lunchwith Charlie Sawyer and Mike Garber who owneda certain portion of this campus. At the end ofthat luncheon, we had a five-year contract for one dollar a year to use this campus as a location.Within the five years we contracted to buy it.

So, when the Board of Education came fromAugusta in the spring of 1969, they visited this siteand gave us the right to use the word college inour name and gave us the go-ahead. I rememberone of the people saying that a college is a toughthing to get started. I said, “Yes it is, but I’ll tellyou one thing. You will not have to come and tellus we are not successful. If we recognize thatwe’re in an uphill battle, we’ll come and tell you.”Whether that convinced him to give us the ok, I don’t know, but we got the ok. We then had alocation and a name. With that we raised seedmoney, about $65,000.

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34 | COA

DG: And, so, at that time it was just a college, no mission or—

LB: We did choose the mission of ecology.

DG: What made you decide to have that focus?

LB: It just came out of the discussions that wehad at our board meetings. We felt we had tohave some connection to the ocean. We werethinking of marine biology, similar to the WoodsHole Oceanographic Institute.

DG: Did you always conceive of COA as being avery small college?

LB: A lot of those things never came up, earlyon. As I said, you have to accomplish somethingin order to get people to want to join you. Thenext thing we did is we hired a president.Somewhere, it was identified that there was aman from Harvard who was looking for a newposition: Ed Kaelber, of course. Father Jim and Ihad breakfast with him at the Bar Harbor Inn. I can almost remember the table. When he choseto come here, that was a big boost for our mov-ing forward, that was the about the fourth step of real major sequences.

DG: What was it that attracted you to EdKaelber?

LB: I think his philosophy and his ease of talkingand exploring a question. I don’t think that a per-son who had all the answers and was quick totake a position would have fit here. Ed was a per-fect fit. He’d been in business as well as educa-tion and had a lot of friends in and aroundHarvard, and that network proved very helpful.Many of his friends joined the board.

DG: You really seemed to have known exactlywhat COA needed, the open-endedness of it—

LB: Don’t try to read too much into that,because I don’t believe that is the case. It’s themany different people all coming together andwilling to work together that accomplished whatwe have. No one person developed all of theright ideas. I can’t think of a member of thisestablishment, whether it be faculty, or staff, or a member of the board, or a student that hasn’t in their own way left something here tobring us to where we are today. There’s over fourteen hundred students out there that havegraduated and they left part of themselves heretoo. And don’t ever take away the value of thefriends of Mount Desert Island. This collegecould not have happened without those friends,starting right off in the beginning with BettyThorndike and Charlie Tyson and Bob Blum andAmos Eno and on. The feeling for this locationand for a good idea is so strong and they havehelped so much. And they wouldn’t have helpedif we didn’t have a person like Ed Kaelber as thefirst president.

DG: So what is it that motivates your involve-ment in COA all these years?

LB: I’d like to leave the community as well off asit can be left after I move along. I love the place.And I like to see things happen. I feel that there’sa way to accomplish everything that needs to bedone, and there are other people that will help.This college is a perfect example.

The compositions on these pages came out of

the course Biology Through the Lens, taught by

Stephen Ressel, COA vertebrate biologist, and

Nancy Andrews, COA video and performance artist,

in the fall of 2005. In this project, students were asked

to look at the work created by German biologist and

artist, Ernst Haeckel, who published his Art Forms in

Nature in 1904. Haeckel’s one hundred plates in the

volume display the artistry of nature, the natural sci-

ence of art. “The primary purpose of my Art Forms

in Nature was aesthetic,” wrote Haeckel. “I wanted to

provide an entry, for a wider circle of people, into the

wonderful treasures of natural beauty hidden in the

depths of the sea, or only visible as a consequence

of small size, under the microscope. But I also wanted

to combine these aesthetic concerns with a scientific

goal: to open up a deeper insight into the wonderful

architecture of the unfamiliar organization of these

forms.”

In this project, as with the entire class, students

were challenged to meld art and science, to examine

how far, as scientists, they could enhance the aesthet-

ic quality of their work without compromising the

scientific or biological content of the organisms with

which they worked.

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haeckel projectTHE ARTISTRY OF NATURE, THE NATURAL SCIENCE OF ART

36 | COA

KeratinAriel Springfield ’06

I was attracted to the variety of forms that keratin can take in the natural world,and to the texture, reflective quality and the possibilities in the repetition of form.

Ariel Springfield ’06 studies visual arts and biology. Biology is her inspiration; thevisual arts are her chosen form of expression.

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EggsJamus Drury ’08

I chose eggs because I’ve always liked the different sizes, shapes and color patterns ofeggs, with their specific reasons for each. While I thought about placing them in back-grounds similar to where they would be found in the wild, I feel that here you can see theirunique differences and appreciate their patterns. Seabirds are on the bottom: guillemots,gulls, terns and petrels. Shorebirds are in the middle, with the loon in the center and twodifferent rail eggs (crow eggs are on the left). Arboreal birds are on top for the most part.There’s a bluebird, catbird, flycatcher, wren and oriole.

Jamus Drury ’08 grew up on Green’s Island near Vinalhaven. He has been studying scienceand ecology and hopes to return to Green’s while also becoming a field ecologist in thebird world.

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He didn’t mean to fall asleep, but the sun felt so

nice and warm on his face that Mike Merrill

thought he’d close his eyes for just a minute.

An air of inevitability hung about the family

farmstead. Although most of the acreage had been sold

off over the years to pay taxes, the core was still there—

the gabled house, Dutch barn, two hayfields and what

remained of the orchard. Every surviving tree seemed to be

missing a limb. Twisted trunks and gnarled branches cast

intertwining shadows across the ground, but the old man

didn’t notice.

Mike was a boy again, small and lithe as a cat, climbing

one of those trees. On a branch hanging high above him,

he spied an apple he wanted. Droplets of dew on the fruit’s

rosy skin reflected the morning sun. He had to have that

apple. It was perfect, and nothing less than perfection

would do. No worm holes. No bruises. Apples this perfect

could only be found in the tree, still growing.

John on Tractor, 2005 by Carolyn Snell ’06, 17” by 22”, oil on canvas.

This painting is part of my senior project entitled “Portraits of MaineFarmers: A Senior Project in Oil Paint.”Because I grew up on a farm in Buxton,Maine, the thrill of growing food andflowers is always with me. Through myexploration of human ecology, with afocus on writing and literature, art andpainting, I have come to further appreci-ate the sparkle of humanity that shinesin farmers. In this project, I attempt tocapture that humanity in farmers,whether in their fields or their livingrooms. John is my dad, and he is doingone of his favorite things—attentivelyunearthing russet potatoes.

fallingBy Becky Buyers-Basso ’81

S H O R T S T O R Y

40 | COA

Scrambling up the trunk to the branch belowthe one that held the apple, he grabbed hold ofanother branch for balance and began tiptoeingtowards it. Mike felt the branch sag under his feet,shaking loose ripe apples onto his sisters below.He let go of the upper branch and crouched downon one knee. The branch teetered, but Mike man-aged to keep his balance.

“Mamma, Mikey’s throwing apples at us!”Molly cried.

“Yeah, and one hit me on the forehead,”Martha whined.

“I didn’t mean to,” Mike protested.“Be careful, Mike, or I’ll have you down here

picking up drops with your sisters,” Mrs. Merrillscolded.

Cautiously, the boy moved forward andstretched his arm toward the apple. He couldn’tquite reach it. Just a little further and he’d have it.Loosening his grip on the upper branch, hecrouched and inched forward one more step, andthen there was a snap…

“Poppa?”Lila stepped through the screen

door onto the porch. A prettywoman with curly dark hair, she bal-anced a pudgy baby boy on one hipand held a dish of applesauce in herfree hand.

“Wish I could sleep sitting up,”Lila muttered.

Her father sat upright in a plastic lawn chair,arms folded tightly across his narrow chest, hisstubbly chin resting on the corduroy collar of hisjacket. His snores were audible over the sound ofthe breeze tearing leaves off the trees in theorchard.

“I brought you your dessert,” Lila announced.She set the dish in front of him and shifted her sononto the other hip.

… that sounded like a rifle shot. Mike felt his bodyweightless as the branch gave way. Still reaching,he lost sight of the apple on his way down. Heseemed to be falling forever, as in a dream, but the laws of gravity allow no exceptions. He hit theground with a thud that made his sisters screamand his mother come running, her beautiful facecontorted by fear.

Mike Merrill opened his eyes and found himselfgazing into the heart-shaped face and hazel eyes ofhis mother. Tears spilled from his eyes and rolleddown his cheek.

“I… I … almost had it ...” he began. “I wanted...”Lila tucked a stray curl into the kerchief she

wore around her head and pursed her lips. “Here’s your applesauce, Pop,” said. She spoke

louder than she needed to and the baby began tocry. “Hush now, Bobby,” she cooed, smoothing thetender curls on his head.

Her father appeared not to hear her. He was staring across the dooryard toward the orchard.Lila followed his gaze, noticing the trees’ lengthen-ing shadows. The sun would be setting soon. Awind raised goose bumps on her bare arms andshe hugged her whimpering son closer.

“It was all for you,” Mike burst out angrily. “Don’tyou know? I would have done anything for you…”

“Hush, Poppa,” Lila said, her voice rising again. “I used the Macs and put in lots of cinnamon and

sugar, the way Mom used to makeit.” She still got a lump in her throatwhen she spoke of her mother. “Theway Nana taught her.”

Jiggling the baby, Lila stood shiv-ering until her father took a spoon-ful of the applesauce. She could seehe liked it, though he’d never tell herso. She kissed the baby on his fore-head as he fussed and wriggled inher arms.

“It’s time for Bobby’s bath,” she said finally. “Doyou want to come inside? It’s getting chilly. Or Icould bring you a blanket …”

“I’m fine,” the old man snapped. Bobby stopped fussing and looked at his grand-

father with open-mouthed curiosity, drool spin-ning from his lower lip. The two stared at eachother for a long moment.

“I know what you want,” the old man croaked,holding up a spoonful of the applesauce with ashaky hand. The boy giggled and kicked eagerly.Lila took a step closer so he could maneuver hisgreedy lips around the offering, and then whiskedhim away.

“Come in when you get cold, Pop,” she calledover her shoulder.

“Mike felt his body

weightless as the branch

gave way.”

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Mike gobbled up the rest of the applesauce,then let the taste of it linger in his mouth. He imag-ined his wife Eliza in her apron standing at thestove, the steam from a pot of cooked apples curl-ing the stray hair around her temples and the napeof her neck, the rest pinned up in a bun. Her stronghands turned the food mill, pressing the hot messymixture of apple flesh, skins, seeds and cores intosomething delicious, filling the house with thearoma of autumn. Mike inhaled deeply andreached for his wife but she evaporated into acloud of steam.

“Don’t leave me!” he cried. Then he closed hiseyes, hoping to catch another glimpse of her.

Apples again. In this dream he was older, ateenager working in the orchard. His father wascollecting disability then, so it fell to his mother toinspect the crop. Mrs. Merrill walked by each rowof trees, pausing to peer down at the baskets offruit lined up waiting to be hauled away. She wasbusy. She was always busy, it seemed. She rarelysmiled, but when she did it was like the sun com-ing out after the rain. Her whole face lit up, makinghim feel that everything would be all right, even ifit wasn’t. Mike was trying to make her smile but shewouldn’t. He picked up an apple from a basket athis feet. But she rejected it because it was lopsided.He handed her another; it had a scab. On the thirdshe found a soft spot. On the fourth, a worm hole.The fifth, she said, was too small. He handed her ahundred apples but not one was good enough…

Upstairs, Lila was running the water for her son’sbath. Bobby was by her side, all bare, standingunsteadily on chubby legs, using the side of thetub to balance himself. She turned off the waterand slid him into the tub with his rubber ducky anda toy boat. He splashed and played as she washedhis hair.

The phone rang and Lila groaned. “Steve, thatbetter be you,” she muttered. She reached to pickup the baby but he slipped out of her soapy hands,falling hard on his bottom. He howled. Grabbing a towel, Lila wrapped Bobby in it, under protest,and carried him like a soggy football to the bed-room phone. Steve’s voice came on the answeringmachine.

“Hon, are you there? Lila?” She picked up thephone and punched a button to stop the feedbackin her ear.

“Where are you?” she demanded. Bobby wasstill crying.

“On my way home. There’s a blow-down block-ing the County Line Road.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Lila exhaled. “The wind came out of nowhere. I called the

sheriff’s office but I don’t want to wait for a crew tocome out. I’ve got my chainsaw in the truck so I’mgonna take a whack at it. Just knock off enoughbranches to get by.”

“How long will that take?”“Can’t say exactly.”“Okay, cut up the damn tree and get your butt

home. I need another able-bodied adult in thehouse.”

Storm clouds gathered over the Merrill farm andthe houses on the hillside hastening the twilight.The wind was shifting from the south to the north-east. It moved in great gusts, turning the leaves onthe maple inside out and making the orchard tremble. Mr. Merrill still dozed on the front porch,his worn corduroy jacket providing inadequateprotection. Cool, dank air found its way down hiscollar. He awoke with a stiff neck and numb legs.Alarmed by the darkness and the rising storm, he tried to stand but couldn’t. Leaning hard on theflimsy arms of the plastic chair, he muscled him-self up, then stamped his feet to get some feelingto return, inadvertently kicking the chair over.When he turned to pick it up, he lost his balance,tripped over the chair, bumped his head on therailing and then tumbled down the porch stepsinto the dooryard.

Upstairs in her bedroom Lila heard the noisecoming from the front porch and smiled. “Daddy’shome,” she cooed, as she wrestled Bobby into apair of one-piece pajamas. She smoothed the littlebit of hair on his head with her fingers, then kissedhim on the cheek. “Can you say Daddy?”

“Da da da dadada,” Bobby babbled, making hismother smile.

Lila scooped him up, settled him on her hip andwalked to the top of the stairs.

“We’re up here, Steve,” she called. “C’mon up.You’ve got to hear this.”

The fall should have killed him, but it didn’t. Mr. Merrill rubbed his throbbing head and felt a lump already beginning to rise. He moved his legs and discovered they weren’t broken. Workingdeliberately, and breathing very hard, he rolledonto his hands and knees and pulled himself up.The strength of the wind nearly knocked him over again.

42 | COA

“Be careful!” he heard his mother warning him.The voice, high-pitched and urgent, came from thedirection of the orchard across the lane. He took afew steps toward the voice, leaning into the wind.

Lila hummed a little as she picked up wet towelsand toys in the bathroom, found the baby’s pacifi-er in their bedroom, rinsed it off and then headedto the nursery. It was time to put Bobby down forthe night.

“Steve?” she called again but received noanswer. What was that noise she had heard earlier?She went to a front window and looked into thedooryard. Steve’s truck was nowhere in sight butshe saw a man moving slowly toward the edge ofthe orchard.

Hurrying out of the room, Liladescended the narrow staircasetwo steps at a time, heedless ofBobby’s bobbling head. Sheswitched on the porch light, andthen burst through the frontdoor. Her father’s empty chair wasupside down on the steps.

“Poppa!” she screamed, buther voice was lost in the howling of the wind.

Frantic, Lila went back inside for a flashlight,cursing under her breath as she rummagedthrough drawers, flung open and slammed closetdoors. By the time she found a flashlight thatworked, the baby was crying again.

“Oh, Bobby, not now,” she begged, as shewrapped him in a quilt.

Outside clouds scudded across the sky, eclips-ing the rising moon. Lila directed the flashlighttoward the road and held her breath as she shinedthe light as far as it would reach in both directions.

Nothing, thank God, she thought. Lifting her light again, she moved the beam in an

arc from the dooryard, across the driveway to theedge of the orchard. She spotted her fathercrouched on a low branch of one of the craggy oldapple trees. She recognized that particular tree. Itwas lopsided, with one side completely shorn. Thatwas the tree, her mother had told her, where theaccident happened.

“Liza,” the old man said when he saw her com-ing towards him.

“Pop, it’s me, Lila,” she said, shining the light onher face. The wind gusted again, parting the cloudsmomentarily. Moonlight spilled around them cast-ing ghostly shadows.

“Only you know how hard I tried,” he continuedin a sorrowful voice Lila had never heard him usebefore. “All, all I wanted was to make Mammasmile. I couldn’t stop the branch from breaking.You never blamed me, Eliza, and I love you forthat.”

Lila squirmed as her father’s eyes followed theline of her neck down to her shoulders andbreasts. She pulled Bobby in close to her anddirected the light back onto her father.

Before she died, before shesurrendered to the cancer thatturned her body into an overripefruit, Eliza Merrill took her daugh-ter aside.

“Be kind to him, Lila, eventhough he doesn’t always deserveit,” she implored. “He’s carried agreat grief his whole life.”

Mrs. Merrill told her then whatshe hadn’t known before, what happened after thebranch snapped: how the noise of it made the girlsscream and how their screams startled their fatherwho was working the cider press at the time. Hecaught his arm in the conveyer belt and it got man-gled so badly he lost the use of it.

“Mike only broke his leg when he fell from thetree but his father’s accident broke his spirit. Hismother blamed Mike for everything bad that hap-pened, from that day on. And he never got thechance to tell her what he was after in that tree.”

“What was he after?” Lila asked, but her moth-er’s answer hadn’t made much sense to her, untilnow.

“Let me help you out of the tree, Pop.”

Becky Buyers-Basso ’81, took a second degree, in journal-ism, from Carleton University and forged a career at the inter-section of print journalism, philanthropy and college adminis-tration. She currently works as a reporter for the MountDesert Islander in Bar Harbor and enjoys creative writing inher spare time.

“He handed her a hundred applesbut not one wasgood enough…”

Spring Rain

Beards sprout in spring as the skin, dry from winter, opens to let in the rain.Head cocked back and chin up to the sky with a pride that makes the heavens shudder and all its cheap change drops on my cheap cheeks, for all it’s worth.Rooftop gutters take all the credit for catching the blues.Quiet down, I say to their silver platter up on high showered with praise.Go on, take your fill and piss the rest away.Leave holes of black mud for worms to die in.I’ve had enough of these clean machine-cut cookie dough houses.If this grass grows up, I’ll cut it down, smother my boots, I’ll cut it down:drop a blade and cackle and spit lawnmower-like.This green smell in the air won’t leave me alone:get off my face and out my shirt.I better go get my coat or drown out here and take you downwith me. Apology

I’ve eaten your apple steakwith no apologies but this onebefore me. I would trade myhurt for swollen plums but blood’s a sour, fickle thingthat doesn’t grow on trees.

There’s no wait in the shadybutcher’s shop. Always anotherdrop of neck juice from a foul unfeathered fleshy peach,gashed out of the sun and fallinginto the raw light.

There’s no said to say that won’tcome to you after I’m a rotten core; my weight dusted coaland shivering guilt. I’ll thank youfor giving away precious little.That chewed enough throat apple let slide to stomach. For what I owethe flesh parlour will be ripe picking

at the bone. Hogs head the herd senselessthrough the cotton fields. Woolcaught on barbed bushes. Henfeet in the face of your embrace.

ShamsherVirkpoetry

Shamsher Virk ’07 is from Victoria,Vancouver Island,British Columbia,Canada, third rockfrom sun, MilkyWay.

COA | 43

44 | COA

C L A S S N OT E S

After eighteen years, Bruce Bender ’76 has moved from Vermont to Santa Fe,New Mexico for a change of job, scenery, lifestyle and marital status. He is work-ing at the New Mexico Department of Transportation, running the planning div-ision: “The politics are even more amusing than they were in Vermont,” he says.

“Having a wonderful time working at the Maine Historical Society in Portland as photo curator and cataloger on the statewide history project, Maine MemoryNetwork,” writes Frances Pollitt ’77. fpollitt@mainehistory.org

Still flying for American Airlines, Steve Savage ’77 was recently appointed pro-gram director of Conscience International, bringing relief and medical suppliesto Sudan and Kashmir.

“I have a boat building business that has recently moved to a shop in view ofthe drawbridge in Mystic, Connecticut. We are currently replacing the deck on a 53-foot 1907 Herreshoff cutter for her hundredth birthday,” writes Rick Waters’77. rwmcnoank@aol.com

Sue Inches ’79 moved to the Maine State Planning Office as deputy director inJune 2004. “It’s been a whirlwind year and a half since I arrived, getting to knowa whole new group of people and a different set of issues. I have learned a lotabout trying to get things done in a political environment.”

“I finally moved back to Maine in 2000 with my family,” writes Barbara Boardman’80. “We live in an old place in Waldoboro, where our son, Damir, 8, has lots ofroom. Husband Chris is a painter.” Barbara works on architectural projects,home renovations and garden design. “COA still has a warm place in my heart—though I hardly recognize it! Wondering what has happened to Sally thatdrew the loons and went into training dogs, Peter with the long ponytail and the car that was too small, and Gandalf’s owner, Jan.” boardman@midcoast.com

Sajit Greene ’80 writes, “In August, I resigned from my position as a mentalhealth therapist with survivors of torture and I went on a spiritual quest to the West and Southwest. The highlight was my time on Mt. Shasta. Now I am back in Denver and offering my services as an astrologer and teacher of sacred dance. Visit: www.sajit.net or sajitgreene.blogspot.com.”

Anne Patterson ’80 is launching her kids into the world. Ben, 19, works with acomputer business in Searsport, Maine. Erin, 17, is planning on going to MaineMaritime Academy. Anne received a master’s degree in education in June 2004.Her business, The Learnwise Center, offers tutoring, consultation and familysupport for students at risk.

Charlie Hutchison ’81 just moved to the woods of Lexington, Massachusetts withhis wife Lucy, an acupuncturist and Oliver, 4, a poster kid of alternative healthcare. Charlie has been a progressive and Waldorf educator and currently runsNational Science Foundation-funded programs to develop informal scienceprojects from the Education Development Center, Inc. in Newton,Massachusetts. He’s happy to network on fatherhood, prostate cancer, informalscience education, how to get these liars out of government, and more.

Pam Cobb ’83 married Mark Henberger on May 14 in Harvard Square. With themare Julie Erb ’83, Pam’s daughter, Jai Ebonstarre, Pam’s father, Phil Cobb and Peter Wayne ’83 on the left; Steve Katona and Susan Lerner on the right.

COA ALUMNI SERVICES

Alumni: Stay in Touch! To update your contact inform-ation, share class notes in upcoming publications, tell us of changes in your job or life, find out about regional alumni events and for other alumni services, please contact Shawn Keeley of Alumni Relations at sakeeley@coa.edu.

COA | 45

“I live in Eugene, with my sweetie of fourteen years, Julie Trippe,” writes KerCleary ’84 (formerly Rachael Merker). A psychotherapist, offering a Buddhist-based approach to well-being, Ker found the Buddhist focus of her graduateschool, Naropa University, a bit like human ecology. “I specialize in inexplicabledegrees — human ecology, contemplative psychotherapy. A big shout to the oldRoach Ranch Deluxe gang, the Town Farm crew, and Off the Wall cohorts, NastyMusic and the Bad Manners.” ker@efn.org; contemplativepsychotherapy.com

Scott Durkee ’84 is a self-employed carpenter also working at the Andrew WillWinery on Vashon Island, Washington. His goals are to spend time with his children, Jeevon, 16, and Kerewyn, 10, and to enjoy the mountains. Scott alsopromotes renewable energies. His VW Jetta diesel runs on biodiesel. AfterKatrina, he loaded an old transit bus converted to run on vegetable oil with supplies and drove it to the Gulf Coast. “Each year I try to own a little less andwhen I do buy something, I consider it like voting. I never shop at Walmart!”

Sara Wendt ’85 has just released her fourth CD, Here’s Us, available atcdbaby.com. Besides being a singer-songwriter, Sara is a clinical hypnotherapistspecializing in sleep disorders, a meditation teacher and the director ofChakrasambara Buddhist Center in New York City.

“I am living on New Island, in the far western corner of the Falkland Islands,with my husband and children,” writes Kim Chater ’88. “It's a stunningly bea-utiful and remote place.” The Chaters take tourists on expedition cruise ships to see black-browed albatross, rockhopper, gentoo and Magellanic penguins,occasional Peale's dolphins and sei whales. “When not being a full-time mom, I pull out the dusty watercolor brushes and paint.” Despite the wild and windyclimate, they mostly live off the land with Jack, 4, and Rosie, 2. tony.kim@horizon.co.fk

Mike Kimball ’89 and Lori Gustafson ’87 have been living in Machiasport, Maine,since 2001. Mike is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University ofMaine Machias and Lori's a veterinary epidemiologist for the Department ofAgriculture in Eastport, having completed her Ph.D. in population medicine. Son Conor, is 9; Liam is 3. They live off the grid in a solar-powered home inMachiasport overlooking the East Machias and Machias rivers and love visitors.

“After getting my M.A. in marine affairs from the University of Rhode Island, I moved around the country working as a park ranger in environmental con-sulting and then in government jobs,” writes Rebekah Resnick Padgett ’91. “Forthe last five years, I have been working for the Washington State Department of Ecology, recently as a federal permit coordinator for coastal projects involvingin-water and wetland work. It’s great to be working in my field! My husbandJohn and I bought our first home here in Seattle and are fixing it up.”

Tim Case ’92 recently moved back to Maine with his wife Kim. They have reno-vated a home in Kittery Point with assistance from Ryan Higgins ’06. Tim contin-ues to enjoy nearly a decade with global planning and engineering consultingfirm, Parsons Brinckerhoff. In 2005 he became deputy chief technology officer,leading the firm’s geospatial, a.k.a. GIS, practice.

Darron Collins ’92, Karen, Maggie '23, and Molly '25 can't wait for the spring rainsto swell Washington's mighty Potomac and bring the river back to a rushing tor-rent, full of lively play spots for kayaking. Darron recently presented his paper,Who are the Q'eqchi'-Maya and what are they doing in my living room? to theAmerican Anthropological Association, exploring the public perception of theMaya through a quantitative analysis of Google search hits.

Angie DelVecchio ’92 writes, “I have been working as a family nurse practitionerin Bar Harbor for the past year. Chris and I were in central Maine, working inrural health care, but it is wonderful to be back on MDI! We are partiallyresponsible for the ever-overgrowing world population, Eliza is 5 and Samuel is almost 2. We have been traveling to Ecuador to do health care.”

C L A S S N OT E S

46 | COA

Clark Lawrence ’92 celebrated the ninth anniversary of the founding of ReadingRetreats in rural Italy. In 2003, he moved from a 17th century villa to the 14thcentury castle of Galeazza, north of Bologna. Living and working in a castle maynot be as great as it sounds; half of the castle is crumbling. “With acres of wood-land and gardens to renovate and maintain, it’s a challenge to keep things goingand growing,” Clark writes. Come visit! www.galeazza.com

“I now serve on the New England Grassroots Environmental Fund’s grant selection committee where I share an advocate’s perspective and help fundhundreds of great grassroots programs across the region,” writes Jeffrey Miller’92. Regional COA alumni involved with a grassroots organization should visitwww.grassrootsfund.org. This is his tenth year as executive director of theBicycle Coalition of Maine. Those interested in making their communities more bikable and walkable can call Jeffrey at 207-623-4511.

Gina Platt ’92 writes, “After graduating, I lived in Texas, Oregon and New YorkCity, where I worked as a custom color printer and photographer. In 2001, Ireturned to Maine, becoming a founding member of the nonprofit, member-supported Bakery Photographic Collective, www.bakeryphoto.com.” Gina has amaster's in American and New England Studies and is now the education coor-dinator at the University of Maine Museum of Art. Her photography was mostrecently shown at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art.

“Aloha from Hawaii. I got married last May and bought a home here in upcoun-try Maui,” writes Diana Papini Warren '92. “For the last three years, I have beendeveloping and coordinating The Maui Digital Bus project (www.digitalbus.org),a mobile science education program for K-12 schools, coming full circle andbecoming the human ecologist I was meant to be,” working with students andteachers in the wetlands, forests and coastlines of Maui facilitating hands-on,high-tech scientific investigations. She’d love to hear from COA alumni.

Leo Vincent ’92 writes, “I live in Ithaca, NY with my wife Jenny Pickett, who I mar-ried in 2002. We had Nikhit D’Sa ’06 as a roommate during the fall, while he was completing an internship at Cornell.” Leo is getting a master’s of sciencein teaching for childhood education at the State University of New York,Cortland and is a graduate assistant for the childhood education department. “I enjoy being back in school and look forward to becoming an elementaryteacher. People coming to Ithaca or the Finger Lakes region should look us up.”

“I’m just finishing the third term of my master’s degree in Korean studies herein Seoul,” writes Cedar Bough Blomberg ’93. “At the end of January I’m speakingat a conference in Australia. When I finish my degree, my husband and I plan towalk from his hometown to Lhasa, about three months of solid walking.”

Jennifer Crandall ’93 continues as department head of the Compass Rose program of the Mount Desert Island High School. Conor and Nolan attendschool in Bar Harbor. Their dad, Kevin Crandall ’93, is working to bring biodieselto Mount Desert Island so the boys don’t have to breathe so much petroleumdiesel exhaust from school buses. Kevin is the owner of MDI BioFuel LLC, the island’s only licensed biodiesel distribution company dedicated to bringingcertified biodiesel to Down East Maine. Visit www.mdibiofuel.com.

Heather Martin-Zboray ’93 is executive director of the Hancock CountyDemocratic Committee, having run campaigns for the 2004 election and the county-wide effort of Maine Won’t Discriminate in 2005. Michael Martin-Zboray’95 enjoys his position as assistant principal at Conners-Emerson ElementarySchool in Bar Harbor. Heather and Mike live in Surry and welcome visitors.

“Staying warm in Majia is next to impossible,” writes Roy Doan ’94 from China.“It’s pretty cool and sunny when the sun is shining, but at night, it’s as cold andwindy as Embarrass, Minnesota. I’ll have my last oral exams after Christmas.After that we’ll have a three-day New Year. I took my students for a hike to theKan Jing Temple on the mountainous side of Yang-En University. There are smalltemples and shrines, awesomely beautiful.”

C L A S S N OT E S

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“The biggest event in my life at the moment is that I’m planning on graduatingwith my master’s in architecture this spring from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,” writes Anne Gustavson ’94. “After that, I hope to move to Seattlewhere my interests in sustainable design can thrive and I won’t have to dealwith snow. No marriage or kids, just happily living with my boyfriend of sevenyears, who has just completed his MFA in film.”

Matt Baskey ’95 writes, “I am in London running a website programming business. I’m at mbaskey@gmail.com.”

“The past few years have brought many changes to my life,” writes Michael Blair’95. “In 2003, I married Marnie Colarusso, bringing an additional son to my life.There’s Nicholas 11, Andrew, 10, and Tyler, 5. In 2004, Marnie and I started aninternet technology business, Blair Technologies, streamlining solutions forsmall business.” Having moved into a 250-year-old house in Richmond, NewHampshire, they work from home with space for boys and dogs to play.

“I just got engaged to Matt Ayers,” writes Elizabeth Rousek ’95. “The wedding will be in September at my mom’s house. We purchased some land in Dills-burg, Pennsylvania and plan to start building in April. I finished my first year as head gardener on an estate in Reading, very rewarding and challenging.”

Doug Sward ’96 is a physician in the emergency medicine residency program at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. He’s married, no kids.

In September Judy Books ’98 began working as a science educator at TheNewark Museum in Newark, New Jersey, teaching children from urban areas,leading tours of the museum's dynamic earth gallery and offering classes onrocks and minerals, insects, the immune system, the adaptations of plants andanimals and other topics. “Graduating from work as a naturalist to museum edu-cation has been an exciting change. I have made friends with people who areclose to my age and have found them to be good mentors.”

Katie Hester ’98 graduated as a naturopathic physician and family nurse practi-tioner and began working at Country Doctor Community Clinic in Seattle. Themission is, “to improve the health of our community by providing high quality,caring, culturally appropriate primary health care that addresses the needs ofpeople regardless of their ability to pay.” She and her partner Sarah were recent-ly in New Zealand for five weeks, followed by four weeks of medical Spanishimmersion in Guatemala.

Laura Imundo ’99 is recently engaged and planning a wedding for May on theland she shares with fiancé Kane and a four-month-old chocolate lab, Mya, onthe outskirts of Muncy, Pennsylvania. Laura works in a local high school withdevelopmentally-challenged teens. landk@chilitech.net

“I will be entering my last semester at Antioch New England in Keene, NewHampshire, a candidate for a master’s degree in environmental studies with aconcentration in environmental education,” writes Jaime Duval ’00. She complet-ed an internship at an organic farm in New Hampshire and continues to workdoing outreach education as a core group member.

Cerissa Desrosiers ’00 writes, “I live with my partner, Jessica, in southern NewHampshire. I am a doctoral student at Antioch New England studying clinicalpsychology. I work with at-risk boys at a therapeutic residential facility. I wouldlove to hear from other alums: cerissa_d@yahoo.com.”

Corinne Harpster ’00 is in her second year of naturopathic medical school atBastyr University in Washington State and working as a massage therapist.

Noah Sabur, son to Shawn Keeley ’00 and Sarah Cronin Keeley ’05 was bornAugust 18, 2005. Shawn continues his work as alumni coordinator at COA and Sarah is working as a stay-at-home mom.

C L A S S N OT E S

CAREER AND INTERNSHIP SERVICES

Alumni: We can help!

College of the Atlantic’s Office of Internships and Careers offers internship and job oppor-tunities on the college’s website:www.coa.edu/internships. Feel free to contact Jill Barlow-Kelley, director, at jbk@coa.edu or207-288-5015, ext. 236 for theseservices:

• Career Information and Guidance

• Graduate School Information• Job Search Skills • Resume Review • Relocation Guidance• Employment Websites• Mentoring of Current

Students and Other Alumni

48 | COA

On September 18, 2004, Wing Goodale, M.Phil ’01 and Marie Malin ’01 got married in Rockport, Maine. They live in Falmouth; Marie is communicationscoordinator at Maine Audubon, www.maineaudubon.org, and editor of its journal, Habitat. She was featured in the Portland Press Herald for leading MaineAudubon’s use of biofuel. Marie is on the board of Maine Interfaith Power andLight. A research biologist for the nonprofit BioDiversity Research Institute(www.briloon.org), Wing looks into mercury’s impact on birds. His work wasfeatured in The New York Times, Boston Globe and the Washington Post and herecently became a national fellow of the Explorers Club.

Pam Humphreys ’01 is currently assistant program manager for the supervisedadolescent living program of Child and Family Services of Newport County inNewport, Rhode Island. She’s also in her second year of the Ralph R. PapittoSchool of Law at Roger Williams University in Bristol. “It’s been exciting andchallenging, to say the least. Not much time for extra curriculars, but I still go to the YMCA regularly and go dancing whenever I can.”

“Before I moved to England, I worked in North Carolina for a nonprofit organi-zation monitoring a population of endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers,”writes Kendra Noyes Miller ’01. “I held the position for a year and a half and wasexposed to all sorts of complex human versus bird habitat issues. I also got toclimb pine trees and band days-old woodpecker nestlings! It was pretty neat.”

Writes Blaise Maccarrone ’01, “I am currently living in Oakland, California andworking for East Bay Habitat for Humanity, one of the only Habitat affiliates thathas made sustainable and green building part of their mission of buildinghomes in partnership with low-income families. It's great to be working with an organization that is proving that green building and environmental aware-ness is not just an option for the well-off. I have recently been joined by Amanda Witherell ’00, Jenn Atkinson ’03 and Chrystal Schreck ’03.”

Bori Kiss ’02 is about to sail around the world on the Maggie B, a 62-foot fusionschooner. Visit www.coveyisland.com, current projects, to see the ship and readupdates. Launching was January 3, 2006, with fireworks.

On September 10, 2005, Ardrianna French McLane ’02 and Shawn T. McLane weremarried at Moose Point State Park in Searsport, Maine overlooking PenobscotBay. They recently moved to Corpus Christi, Texas for Ardrianna’s job as a park ranger in interpretation and volunteer coordinator at Padre Island National Seashore, which has launched a huge Kemps Ridley Sea Turtle Recovery Program. They feel very lucky to have new jobs, new marriage and a new life.

Kerri Sands ’02 lives in Portland, Maine and is still working for CoastalEnterprises Institute. She has been promoted to program director of the Farms for the Future program.

“I am currently working on a master’s degree in culture, ecology and sustainablecommunity with an emphasis in activism and social change at New College ofCalifornia,” writes Chrystal Schreck ’03. “The program is an excellent follow-up tohuman ecology! I’m looking into possible intersections of ecofeminism andqueer theory—it’s exciting work! I live in San Francisco in a collective housewith seven others, and am finally feeling like I have a good community of support, maybe for the first time since COA. COA transplants, keep coming!”

A day away from a five-week residency to teach scuba diving off Belize, Fae J. Silverman ’03 writes, “This will be the first time I teach my senior pro-ject-designed communication diver course in international waters. When not working on that project, www.communicationfordivers.com, I’m working as asign language interpreter around Portland, Maine and writing guidelines forMaine interpreters working in education. I am now the chair of the Maine RIDEducational Interpreter Committee, still with Joel, still driving my ’96 green VW.”

Briana Duga ’04 is living in Atlanta, Georgia and attending chiropractic schoolwith her fiancé Seth. They will be getting married this summer in Maine.

C L A S S N OT E S

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“After working a carpentry job for several months I have temporarily retired andhave moved into a small cabin in the Catskill Mountains of New York, hibernat-ing for the winter,” writes Adam Czaplinski ’04. While installing a small solarpanel and building a woodworking shop, he is trying to live Edward Abbey’swork-only-six-months-a-year idea. Future plans possibly include graduateschool, internships, or starting a small grow-for-market farm. Organizing openmics, etc. are a given.

“I just got engaged to be married to Jeremy ‘Red’ Hefner, my boyfriend of fouryears” writes Julia Morgenstern ’04. “We’re planning a June wedding in a moun-taintop meadow with the reception in the backyard of our new home inVallecito, a tiny town of around 200 year-round residents, northeast of Durango,Colorado. While I miss the ocean terribly, Vallecito is on a big lake that strikinglyresembles Somes Sound, just with more snow! We’ve got a spare room andawesome camping space.”

A paper by biology professor John Anderson and his wife, Karen Anderson, “AnAnalysis of Band Returns of the American White Pelican, 1922 to 1981,” cameout in Waterbirds 28 (2005).

In January, 2006, John Cooper published a new quartet, A Box with FalseBottoms, with Dorn Publication, Inc. of Medfield Massachusetts. He also completed the music score for the final film in the trilogy created by COAfilm and performance art professor, Nancy Andrews, The Haunted Camera. In September of 2005, Cooper served as a judge for the Maine All-State Jazz auditions.

Dave Feldman spent a second summer teaching at the China Institute for theSanta Fe Institute. In 2006, he will serve as director of the China Institute. Visitwww.santafe.edu/education/indexCSSS.php. Additionally, in December,Feldman spoke at Bates College’s Olin Auditorium on “Racial Segregation inU.S. Cities: Using Computational Models to Understand the Gap betweenIndividual Preferences and Neighborhood Outcomes.” This was a reprise of atalk he gave at COA last spring.

COA zoologist Helen Hess and marine ecologist Chris Petersen attended theWestern Society of Naturalists meeting in California last November. Hess’swork discussed the results of research on the cleaning behavior of coral reeffishes conducted by the COA Tropical Marine Ecology class in Akumal,Mexico. Coauthors included Allison T. Fundis ’02 and Max Overstrom-Coleman’02. Both developed aspects of this research for their senior projects.Overstrom-Coleman, now in graduate school at Moss Landing Marine Lab in Santa Cruz, presented a paper on his thesis work on the effects of severestorms on kelp forest communities. Petersen’s presentation, supported by a National Science Foundation grant, outlined a collaborative project of eco-logical research on a local estuarine fish. Field assistants included MariannaBradley ’06, Yaniv Brandvain ’04, Jason Childers ’06, Erica Maltz ’06 and NinaTherkildsen ‘05. www.wsn-online.org/meeting.html

COA botanist Nishanta Rajakaruna ’94 was named visiting scientist at theInstitute of Fundamental Studies of Kandy, Sri Lanka for a period of threeyears. He also traveled to Auburn University in Alabama to give the Depart-ment of Biological Sciences Seminar Series. His talk was titled, “Plant-soil relations in the Lasthenia Californica Complex (Asteraceae): A Model forStudies in Evolutionary Ecology.” He has also presented two talks about plantson extreme soils. At the Humboldt Field Research Institute of Steuben, Maine,Rajakaruna spoke on, “Plants on Extreme Soils: Evolution to Remediation.”At the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka, the talk was titled, “Plants onExtreme Soils: A Model for Studies in Plant Evolution.” He gave a second talkat Peradeniya, this to the Postgraduate Institute of Science of the department

C L A S S N OT E S

FA C U LT Y N OT E S

50 | COA

of botany, on “Ecology of Metal Hyperaccumulation and the Emerging Field ofPhytoremediation.”

Professor Doreen Stabinsky was part of a panel discussing the movie, TheFuture of Food, a documentary about genetically altered plants on October 23at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Also present were filmmaker Deborah Koons Garcia and Frances Moore Lappé, author of Dietfor a Small Planet and Hope’s Edge.

This fall, professor Karen Waldron led a series of book discussions at the AbbeMuseum and Jessup Library in Bar Harbor for the Maine Humanities Council’s“Let’s Talk about It” book discussion series.

COA faculty, staff, students and alumni were responsible for ten abstracts atthe Marine Mammal Biennial in San Diego in December. Among them werestaff members Judy Allen, Alexandra Ertl, Rosemary Seton and Ann Zoidis, grad-uate students Kara Johnson and Christie Mahaffey, students Julianne Kearney ’06and Zack Klyver ’06, alumni Dan Danto, ’91, now also a senior researcher atAllied Whale, Bethany Holm ’03, Tora Johnson, M.Phil. ’03 and Jessica Sharman‘05, and COA biology professor Sean Todd.

Four COA undergraduates and one graduate student were invited to presentpapers at the Waterbird Society Meeting on Jekyll Island, Georgia lastOctober. These are April Boucher ’06, Jamus Drury ’08, Sadie Spruce ’07, SandraWalczyk ’06 and graduate student Sarah Boucher. Walczyk and Sarah Boucherhave been invited to present their work at the International OrnithologicalConference in Hamburg, Germany this August.

COA community members are deeply involved with the committee to launcha cooperative food market on Mount Desert Island. Professors Dave Feldmanand Davis Taylor have both joined the interim board of the MDI StorefrontCo-op, which comes out of the research Kati Freedman ’05 did for her seniorproject and the internship of Emily Weiss ’06 with Healthy Acadia, a support-ing organization of the co-op. Also involved are Shawn Keeley ’00, now thealumni coordinator and Matt Bachler ’08. Joining the board are Michael Boland’94 and Bob DeForrest ’94.

The New England Botanical Club’s journal, Rhodora 107 (October 2005),includes a survey of the flora of Acadia National Park conducted by the late COA botany professor Craig Greene. Additional authors are Linda Gregory ’89, Glen Mittelhauser ’91, and COA research associates Sally Rooney and Jill Weber.

COA graduates and students spanning four decades gathered for Thanks-giving at the Bar Harbor home of Noreen Hogan ’91 and COA botany pro-fessor Suzanne Morse. From left, Shamsher Virk ’07, Betts Swanton ’86, BrookeBrown Sarracino ’05, Noreen, Suzanne, Jose Perez Orozco ’09, and OmudiBonface ’09; in front, Barbara “Sass” Sassaman ’78 and Matt Gerald ’82.

Botany professor Dr. Nishanta Rajakaruna ’94 received a grant of $17,000 to research heavy metal-contaminated sites in Hancock County and the possibilities of phytoremediation, using plants to clean up heavy metals.Additionally, Andrew Thrall ’06 and Kathleen Tompkins ’08 received $2,500 eachfor supporting research. The grant comes from the Maine Space GrantConsortium, which receives its funds from the National Aeronautics andSpace Administration. Working with Rajakaruna will be Laura Briscoe ’07,Tanner Harris ’08, Pete Pavicevic ’07, and Nate Pope ’08.

FA C U LT Y N OT E S

COMMUNITY NOTES

CORRECTIONS: The correct spelling of former COA philosophy professor isRichard Slaton Davis.

COA | 51

R E M E M B E R I N G

JOSH JONES1982–2005

Josh Jones (’07) had twinkling eyes, a wry smileand a quick mind. He faced the new with curiosi-ty and delight and sought to make it his own. He touched many hearts with his quiet self-confidence, his love of life and his deep kind-ness. Josh died in a car accident in Arkansas.

~ Elmer Beal and AndrewCampbell

SAMUEL HAMILL1976–2005

Samuel Hamill, a COA student in 1995, the son ofSamuel Hamill, Jr., chairman of the COA board of trustees, died after a long struggle with heroinand other addictions. Sam had recently formedThe Sullivan Granite Company with two friends.Kind and generous, he loved and valued his fami-ly and many friends. His family hopes that hisdeath can help others understand the devastationcaused by alcohol and drug abuse and move peo-ple to support groups that mitigate their effects.

~ Sam Hamill(Contributions in Sam’smemory may be sent toThe MDI Alcohol and Drug Group, Inc.P.O. Box 616Southwest Harbor, ME 04679)

JESSE TUCKER 1973–2006

Jesse Tucker ’95 was a gentle boy with an infec-tious laugh who designed the building that isnow David Camp’s office and built the steps lead-ing to the Turrets garden. The dry streambed ofmoss-covered rocks in the Wild Gardens ofAcadia that looks like it’s been there forever washis creation. Jesse had a master’s in landscapearchitecture from Rhode Island School of Designand had won a national design competitionbefore dying in a car accident. Talented, kind andmuch loved, Jessie will be forever be in ourhearts and in the landscape.

~ Isabel Mancinelli (COA is planning a memorial in the Seaside Garden.)

DAVID McGIFFERT1926–2005

David Eliot McGiffert was a former seniorPentagon official, Washington lawyer and devot-ed birdwatcher. He was also a longtime friend ofthe college, a member of COA’s Council ofAdvisors, active on several trustee committees,and the son of founding trustee Rev. CushmanMcGiffert. At COA, David taught courses in lawand policy focused on Constitutional philosophyand the separation of powers. All who knewDavid will treasure memories of his wisdom,warmth, good humor and generous spirit.

~ Steven Katona (David’s family asked that giftsin his memory be sent toCollege of the Atlantic.)

52 | COA

Dear Friends,

Steve Katona will conclude his service as president of College of the Atlantic this year. Aninspiring member of our founding faculty, Steve played an important role in shaping the college’s ideals as well as its teaching in human ecology. As president, he has worked tire-lessly to ground the college on a solid institutional footing. The trustees are grateful to Steveand to his wife Susan Lerner for their total commitment to COA. Thanks to their work, we canview the future with confidence.

During the early weeks of January, the college interviewed the three prospective suc-cessor presidents that were recommended by a search committee, ably led by trusteeHamilton Robinson. This was an unusual opportunity for the college community to gatherfor extended discussions of our past, present and future. Students, alums, staff, faculty,trustees and friends came away with a renewed respect for each other and our respectiveroles in advancing the college’s mission.

To lead us in that venture, the trustees have appointed David F. Hales, who will takeoffice on July 1. David comes to the college with broad experience—in teaching and re-search at the University of Michigan, in governmental service at the state, national andinternational levels, and at non-profit organizations, most recently Worldwatch. He willlead the college as a teaching institution, and work to extend our presence on MountDesert Island, our collaborations with regional organizations and our service to the worldbeyond. We are fortunate to have him as our next president.

The college has gained momentum in other ways during the past year. We have estab-lished an endowment fund to improve faculty and staff salaries. We are planning and fund-ing new teaching programs with associated chairs in marine biology, green business lead-ership, government and policy, and farm and food systems. We are improving the appear-ance and function of the campus. We are in the final stages of design for a campus center,a residential project for fifty students—of which half will be international—and the restora-tion of Turrets, the historic centerpiece of our campus. Finally, we are preparing for reaccredidation by the New England Associations of Schools and Colleges in 2007.

It has been said that transitions can be times of unusual energy and creativity. That is soat College of the Atlantic today. Founding faculty member Bill Carpenter observed that ournew presidency commences “Chapter Two” in the history of the college. We will retain ourcore educational values and institutional commitment to the betterment of the planet andthe communities that surround us. But we will also be alive to new means of achieving ourmission and address it with new energy.

It has been a rare privilege to serve as chairman of the College of the Atlantic Board ofTrustees. We on the board thank you, our donors and friends, for your abiding faith in thetransformative role of higher education, in the betterment of communities nearby andacross the globe, and for your support of our distinctive institution.

With best wishes,

Samuel M. Hamill, Jr.Chair, Board of Trustees

annu

al r

epor

tL E T T E R F R O M T H E B O A R D

COA | 53

Those acquainted with College of the Atlantic know that students receive anexceptional education and are uncommonly challenged to become inde-pendent thinkers and leaders. However, tucked as we are at the edge of thenation, COA is too frequently known as one of the nation’s best-kept secretsin higher education.

COA has taken on this challenge, investing in admissions efforts tobecome more visible, investing in the academic program to become moreexpansive and investing in campus life to improve retention. In the2004–2005 fiscal year, these efforts have been rewarded. COA has exceededits goals for admissions, increasing the numbers of full-time students by 10percent. As a result, not only were we able to be more selective in our stu-dent body, but in 2005 our annual tuition and fees grew to $6.7 million fromthe 2003-2004 level of $6.2 million.

Like other small, independent colleges, COA is challenged by keeping annual revenuesin step with unavoidable operating increases, from escalating fuel prices to modest cost-of-living raises. Also common to many small, private colleges is the dilemma of controllingthe amount of student aid. This problem has been exacerbated by the recent economicdownturn. Our student aid, shown in the accompanying operating expenses, has twoapproximately equal components: aid to students from the college's unrestricted fundsand aid to United World College students from a restricted grant supported by the DavisUnited World College Scholars Program and the U.S. Committee for United World CollegeSchools, Inc. Total student aid amounts increased from $4 to $4.7 million over the last twoyears. While the Davis scholarships cover part of this rise, the college’s student aid expensestill grew by about $400,000, partially offsetting the gains we might have expected fromincreased enrollment.

COA is now addressing the need to manage net tuition. We believe that with the increas-es we see in application and retention rates, we will continue to see a growth in revenuefrom tuition and fees while limiting the growth rate of student aid.

The second biggest source of operating revenue, after net tuition, is the annual supportfrom donors to both the annual fund and our capacity development initiatives. We areheartened by the support shown for the college from our many generous donors, includ-ing trustees, alumni, corporations and other friends. With their support, we were able tobalance the operating budget in fiscal year 2005 while also increasing our net worth, includ-ing a growth of the endowment from $14.8 to 15.7 million.

As we all know, the current fiscal year, 2005–2006, will be one of many changes; bitter-sweet, perhaps, but also exciting. We look forward to new growth, new ideas and contin-ued striving toward excellence in our academic and financial performance.

Andrew GriffithsAdministrative Dean

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

54 | COA

Operating Revenues

Tuition and FeesContributions—annual fundContributions—restrictedInvestment and endowment incomeGovernment and other grantsStudent housing and diningSummer programsMuseum, Summer Field Studies & Blum GalleryResearch and projectsBeech Hill FarmOther Sources

Total Revenues

Operating Expenses

Instruction and student activitiesLibraryStudent housing and diningSummer programsMuseum, Summer Field Studies & Blum GalleryFinancial aidGeneral and administrationPayroll taxes and fringe benefitsDevelopmentBuildings and groundsInterestGrants, research and projectsBeech Hill Farm

Total expenditures

Excess Revenue (Expense)Transfers and capital expendituresNet operating surplus (loss)

Financial Operations Report

A N N UA L R E P O R T

$6,219,000$1,080,000$1,958,000

$366,000$633,000$684,000$360,000

$75,000$214,000$140,000

$72,000

$11,801,000

$2,262,000$223,000$553,000$247,000$220,000

$4,018,000$1,004,000$1,123,000

$928,000$479,000

$92,000$501,000$172,000

$11,823,000

($22,000)($147,000)($169,000)

$6,741,000$941,000

$2,534,000$473,000$806,000$713,000$432,000

$68,000$419,000$135,000

$79,000

$13,340,000

$2,269,000$207,000$512,000$274,000$159,000

$4,728,000$1,104,000$1,197,000$1,105,000

$530,000$98,000

$806,000$161,000

$13,150,000

$191,000($91,000)$100,000

FY 2003–2004 FY 2004–2005

COA | 55

It is with deep gratitude and appreci-ation that we acknowledge the gen-erosity of our alumni, trustees andfriends. This annual report recognizesall those who made gifts to Collegeof the Atlantic from July 1, 2004through June 30, 2005.

THE CHAMPLAIN SOCIETYThe Champlain Society honors individuals of vision and commit-ment who contribute $1,500 or more to the college’s Annual Fund.

FOUNDER $10,000 +Mr. Edward McC. Blair, Sr.Mrs. Charlotte BordeauxMr. William CareyMrs. Amos EnoMr. Samuel Hamill, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. Melville HodderMr. and Mrs. John N. KellyMrs. Marcia MacKinnonMs. Casey MallinckrodtMr. Jay McNally ’84Mr. and Mrs. Stephen MillikenMr. and Mrs. I. Wistar Morris III/The

Cotswold FoundationMr. and Mrs. Daniel PierceJames Dyke and Helen PorterMr. and Mrs. Hamilton Robinson, Jr.Dr. Walter RobinsonMr. and Mrs. Henry D. Sharpe, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. Clyde E. Shorey, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. W. P. StewartMr. and Mrs. Donald B. StrausMr. and Mrs. William Wister, Jr./

Margaret Dorrance StrawbridgeFoundation

PATHFINDER $5,000–$9,999Linda Shaw and Jeffrey BakkenMr. and Mrs. Robert BassMr. and Mrs. Leslie C. BrewerEstate of Mrs. Frederic CampMichele and Agnese Cestone

FoundationMr. and Mrs. F. Eugene Dixon, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. William Foulke, Jr.Mr. Louis GeraldMrs. Philip GeyelinMr. and Mrs. Edward Guthrie, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. Richard HabermannHon. and Mrs. Charles HeimboldMr. and Mrs. John Kemmerer IIIMr. and Mrs. Peter LoringGrant and Suzanne McCullaghMr. and Mrs. William V. P. NewlinLynn and Willy Osborn

David Rockefeller Fund, Inc.Dr. Richard RockefellerDr. and Mrs. Peter Sellers

DISCOVERER $2,000–$4,999Bar Harbor Bank & TrustHon. and Mrs. Robert BlakeMr. Charles ButtCadillac Mountain SportsTina and Philip DeNormandieEaton Vance ManagementMr. and Mrs. David H. FischerMr. and Mrs. James M. Garnett, Jr.Fr. James GowerMr. and Mrs. George B. E. HambletonMr. and Mrs. Horace Hildreth, Jr./

The Hildreth Family Fund of theMaine Community Foundation

Ms. Sherry HuberBarbara and Peter Hunt/

The Point Harbor Fund of theMaine Community Foundation

Ned and Sophia JohnstonMr. and Mrs. Robert KogodMrs. Louis MadeiraMr. David McGiffertMr. and Mrs. David MooreDr. Frank Moya/Frank Moya

Charitable Foundation, Inc.Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin NeilsonMr. and Mrs. C. W. Eliot Paine/

The Puffin Fund of the MaineCommunity Foundation

Mr. and Mrs. John P. ReevesMr. and Mrs. Robert ShaferMr. Winthrop ShortMr. Kenneth SimonRichard and Ann SullivanMr. and Mrs. William Thorndike, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth WegMs. Katherine Weinstock ’81Mr. John WilmerdingMr. David Witham

EXPLORER $1,500–$1,999Mr. and Mrs. O. Kelley Anderson, Jr.Mr. Ron BeardMr. and Mrs. James BlaineSusanna Porter and James Clark, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. Francis I.G. ColemanMr. and Mrs. Tristram Colket, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. Roderick CushmanMr. and Mrs. Shelby M.C. DavisDead River CompanyMr. and Mrs. George H. P. DwightMrs. John EmeryMr. and Mrs. Gordon EriksonThe FirstMr. David Fogg

Mr. William Foulke, Sr.Dr. and Mrs. James C. A. FuchsMr. and Mrs. Paul GrowaldMs. Mary HallMr. and Mrs. Robert HinckleyMr. and Mrs. William P.H. HoarMr. and Mrs. Edward Johnson IIIMr. and Mrs. Jack Kelley IIIKenduskeag FoundationMrs. Francis LewisMs. Pamela ManiceSarah ’93 and Jon McDanielMrs. Donald McLeanMr. and Mrs. Gerrish MillikenMr. and Mrs. A. Fenner MiltonMr. P. Andrews NixonMs. Sandra NowickiJim and Suzanne OwenMr. and Mrs. Stephen PaneykoMs. Judith PerkinsMr. and Mrs. Ferguson PetersMr. Michael PhillipsDr. and Mrs. Richard PiersonMrs. Dora RichardsonMrs. Walter Robinson, Jr.The Swan Agency/InsuranceMr. and Mrs. Christiaan van HeerdenMr. and Mrs. Rodman Ward, Jr.Douglas and Priscilla Williams

ALUMNI, BUSINESSES, PARENTS AND FRIENDSMs. Elfriede AbbeDr. and Mrs. Murray AbramskyAcadia Senior CollegeMrs. Janet Jordan AdditonDr. and Mrs. Peter AdlerMrs. J.H. Michael AgarMs. Beverly Agler ’81Ms. Heather Albert-Knopp ’99Ms. M. Bernadette Alie ’84David Zuk and Caroline AllenMr. William Allen ’87Mrs. Diane AndersonMr. J. AndersonMr. Peter Anderson ’81Mr. and Mrs. Schofield Andrews IIIMr. and Mrs. Stockton AndrewsMs. Genevieve Angle ’00L. Schellie ArchboldMrs. Grace ArnoldMs. Bethany Aronow ’83Ms. Evelyn AshfordMs. Jennifer L. Atkinson ’03Atwater Kent Foundation, Inc.Wendy Knickerbocker and

David Avery ’84Awards Signage & TrophiesMs. Amelia Grace Ayer ’98

A N N UA L R E P O R T

56 | COA

Ms. Jennifer Aylesworth ’94Louise and Steven BachlerMary Dohna ’80 and WellsBacon ’80Mr. Alan L. BakerBangor Letter ShopMs. Tenia Bannick ’86Bar Harbor Lobster BakesBar Harbor MotelMr. Steven BarkanMrs. Mary BarnesMr. and Mrs. Richard

BarnhartMr. and Mrs. Alfred BartonDevitto BastienMr. H. B. BeachMr. and Mrs. William

BeadlestonMr. and Mrs. Elmer Beal, Sr.Ms. Alana Beard ’03Ms. Emily M. BeckMr. Bruce Becque ’81Mr. and Mrs. Henry

Becton, Jr.Paul ’79 and Robin ’80

BeltraminiMr. Bruce Bender ’76Mr. and Mrs. William

Benjamin IIMr. Glen Berkowitz ’82Ms. Jericho Bicknell ’03Ms. Janet Biondi ’81Mr. and Mrs. Robert BirdMr. and Mrs. Edward

McC. Blair, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. Francis BlairMs. Susan Thomas BlaisdellMr. and Mrs. Peter

Blanchard IIIMs. Courtney

Blankenship ’94Ms. Jennifer Blansfield ’89Mr. Jerry Bley ’78Ms. Cedar Blomberg ’93Ms. Edith BlombergMr. Jonathan Bockian and

Ms. Sharon TeitelbaumMr. and Mrs. Richard

Boduch Hannah Fogg ’99 and

Ryan Boduch ’98Ms. Ann Bohrer ’95Ms. Sally Boisvert ’04Mr. Michael Boland ’94Ms. Pamela BoltonMs. Judith Elizabeth

Books ’98Ms. Joan Bossi

Mr. Catalino Botero de Green

Ms. Kathleen BowmanMs. Grace BoydMr. Dennis Bracale ’88Mr. Anselm Hitchcock

Bradford ’02Ms. Jessica Bradshaw ’03Ms. Virginia BrennanMs. Jennifer BridgersMs. Marion Fuller BrownMs. Dawn Cherie

Brownrout ’93Eugene and Chase BrunsMr. Jason Bryson-

Alderman ’91Ms. Carla Burnham ’84Ms. Lara Burns Laperle ’99Mr. and Mrs. Charles

Burton IIBecky ’81 and Skip ’83

Buyers-BassoMs. Nicole Monique

Cabana ’99Mr. Robert Cahill ’84Roc and Helen ’80 CaivanoMs. Julie Cameron ’78Ms. Mary CantwellMr. and Mrs. Oliver

Carley ’96Donna Gold and

William CarpenterMrs. Eleanor CaseyMr. and Mrs. Robert CawleyMr. Erin Chalmers ’00Ms. Marcia ChapmanPatricia and Samuel ChaseMs. Kim Cherry ’94Ms. Sophia ChiangMs. Taj Chibnik ’95Mr. Rohan Chitrakar ’04Mrs. Katherine Kaufer

ChristoffelMs. Cecily ClarkMs. Katherine Clark ’91Mr. and Mrs. P. Hamilton

ClarkMs. Patricia Clark ’86Ms. Sarah ClarkMrs. Sarah ClarkHannah S. Sistare and

Timothy B. ClarkMs. Ker Cleary ’84Mr. Paul CloughJames and Dorothy ClunanMs. Janis CoatesMs. Pamela Cobb ’83Mr. and Mrs. Philip Cobb

Ms. Sarah Louise Cochran, DVM ’78

Mr. and Mrs. Elliot CohenMs. Laura Felice Cohn ’88Ms. Barbara ColeMr. Francis Cole III ’81Mr. Timothy Cole ’88Mr. and Mrs. Douglas

ColemanMr. Darron Collins ’92Alexandra ’77 and

Garrett ’78 ConoverMs. Lisa Conway ’91Mr. John CooperMs. Sandra CooperIsabel Mancinelli and

Sam CoplonMr. Barclay CorbusMrs. Anne F. CoriDick Atlee and

Sarah CorsonMr. and Mrs. Melville CoteMs. Ellie CourtemancheSteve and Suzie CraseMr. Jared Crawford ’89Ms. Moira CreaserCriterion Theatres, Inc.Ms. Sally CrockMs. Carter CunninghamMr. Blair Foster Currier ’02Ms. Lisa Damtoft ’79Mr. John Allen DandyMr. and Mrs. William

DanielMs. Melissa Danskin ’94Mr. Adam Dau ’01Mr. Hans Ivory

Daubenberger ’03Mr. Andy Davis ’97Ms. Julia Davis ’03Ms. Norah DavisStan and Jane DavisMr. and Mrs. William DavisMs. Deanna DayMs. Holly Devaul ’84Ms. Catherine Devlin ’93Mrs. John DevlinMr. Scott Dickerson ’95Mr. and Mrs. S. Whitney

DickeyKelly Dickson, M.Phil. ’97

and George DicksonMs. Angela DiPerri ’01Mr. and Mrs. William

DohmenMs. Chiara Dolcino ’86Prof. and Mrs. Arthur DoleMr. Stephen Dolley

Janet Anker and Charles Donnelly

Ms. Becky Mendenhall Dorwart ’83

Mr. Cameron Hale Douglass ’02

Mr. and Mrs. Michael Downey

Mrs. William DruryMr. and Mrs. Edward

Du PontMs. Lucinda Nash DudleyMr. and Mrs. Wesley

DudleyMr. Larry DuffyMs. Jennifer Dupras ’02Mr. Peter DyerMr. and Mrs. William

Eacho IIIMs. Kimberly Eason ’95Mr. Thomas Eberhardt ’04Mr. and Mrs. Watha

Eddins, Jr.Mr. Joseph Edes ’83Mr. George Ehrhardt, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan

EhrlichMr. Jacob Eichenlaub ’99Mr. David Emerson ’81Ms. Carol EmmonsDr. Dianna and Mr. Ben

Emory/The Ocean LedgesFund of the MaineCommunity Foundation

Carol and Jackson EnoMrs. Bertha ErbMs. Julie Erb ’83Mrs. Sylvia ErhartMr. and Mrs. Spencer ErvinMs. Lynne Wommack

Espy ’93Dr. and Mrs. William EvansMr. Preston EverdellMr. Todd EwingMs. Lisa Farrar ’90Ms. Sally Faulkner ’96Dr. and Mrs. Richard FaustMr. and Mrs. Stephen FechoMs. Joan Feely ’79Mr. and Mrs. Samuel FeltonMr. William FentonThomas and Carroll FernaldMr. Thomas Fernald, Jr. ’91Mr. and Mrs. Russell FinnMs. Cynthia Jordan

Fisher ’80Mr. Thomas Fisher ’77Mr. and Mrs. William

M.G. Fletcher

A N N UA L R E P O R T

COA | 57

Mr. David Flynn ’85Mr. and Mrs. A. Irving

ForbesMs. Peggy ForsterDr. and Mrs. Richard FoxMrs. Ruth FraleyMr. Albert FranckeMr. and Mrs. W. West

Frazier IVMary Jo Brill and

Peter FreedmanMr. James Frick ’78Ms. Jessica Friedland ’96Mr. Bruce Friedman ’82Mr. Bernard FullerMs. Allison Fundis ’03Furbush-Roberts

Printing Co, Inc.Mr. David FurholmenMs. Carla GanielMr. and Mrs. Will GardinerMr. and Mrs. Jon GeigerMr. Kevin Geiger ’88Ms. Giuliana Gelke ’00Ms. Amy George ’98Ms. Susan GetzeMs. Anne GiardinaMs. Valerie Giles ’89Mr. Jackson Gillman ’78Mr. and Mrs. Alan

GladstoneMs. Allison Gladstone ’00Dr. and Mrs. Donald

GlotzerMs. Elizabeth Marie

Godfroy ’98Mr. Lyman GoffMr. Paul GolasMs. Jennifer GoldmanMrs. Laura Arm GoldsteinJill and Sheldon GoldthwaitMr. Ira Gooch ’03Mr. and Mrs. Robert

GoodmanMr. Walter GoodnowBruce Mazlish and

Neva GoodwinMs. Abigail Goodyear ’81Mr. Geoffrey GordonMs. Elizabeth GorerJonathan Gormley ’78 and

Nina Gormley ’78Mrs. Therese Goulet ’78Mr. and Mrs. John GowerMr. and Mrs. Philip

Grantham, Sr.Ms. Sarah Grasso ’01Ms. Sajit Wendy Greene ’80Ms. Linda Gregory ’89

Ms. Mary Griffin ’97Susan Dowling and

Andrew GriffithsMr. Joseph GrigasMs. Nikole Grimes ’96Robert GrosshandlerMr. and Mrs. Michael

GumpertMs. Elizabeth Gwinn ’01Dr. and Mrs. Joseph

HafkenschielMs. Barbara HaganMr. and Mrs. Theodore

HahnMr. Max HallMr. Christopher

Hamilton ’85Stephen Sternbach and

Lisa B. Hammer ’91Mr. and Mrs. John

Michael HancockMr. Matthew Hare ’84Mr. and Mrs. Gordon

HargravesMr. Judson HarmonMr. and Mrs. Henry HarrisMs. Marion Harris ’88Ms. Holly HartleyMs. Sonja Hartmann ’88Mrs. E. Louise HartwellAnn and John HassettMr. John HayMr. and Mrs. Larry HayesMs. Lois Hayes ’79Atsuko Watabe ’93 and

Bruce Hazam ’92Ms. Barbara HazardMs. Erin Heacock ’04Ms. Mary HeffernonMr. and Mrs. Jorgen

HeidemannJean and Lane HeimerMs. Mary Jane HelfrichMs. Suzanne Hellman ’82Ms. Lorraine Henning ’02Mr. Lars Henrikson ’89Ms. Patty HerklotzMs. Katherine Hester ’98Ms. Susan HesterDr. Jo Heth ’76Barbarina ’88 and

Aaron ’87 HeyerdahlMs. Tanya Higgins ’00Highbrook MotelMs. Susan Highley ’86Ms. Barbara HilliMr. and Mrs. Thomas

HinchcliffeMr. and Mrs. Robert Ho

Dr. and Mrs. John HocheMs. Jean Hoekwater ’80Ms. Margaret Hoffman ’97Dr. Kathleen Hogan ’81Mr. William Hohensee ’81Mr. and Mrs. David

HollenbeckMr. and Mrs. James HolleyBob ’79 and Lisa ’80 HolleyMs. Betsey HoltzmannHomewood BenefitsMrs. J. Brooks HopkinsMrs. Mark HopkinsHowe & CompanyMs. Jean HowellMr. and Mrs. Michael HuberMs. Norene HunterMr. and Mrs. Charles

HuntingtonMs. Evelyn Mae

Hurwich ’80Ms. Anna Hurwitz ’84Mr. Travis Hussey ’00Mr. and Mrs. Christopher

HutchinsMr. Charles Hutchison ’81Mr. Samuel HylerMs. Laura Ann Imundo ’99Mr. and Mrs. John Inch, Jr.Ms. Susan Inches ’79Mrs. R. Duane IselinMr. Orton Jackson, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. James JacobMr. John Jacob ’81Mr. Isaac Jacobs ’99Ms. Jamien Jacobs ’86Alison and Joplin James ’84Mr. Thomas Jamieson ’87Mr. William JanesMr. Peter Jeffery ’84Ms. Patricia JenningsMs. Catherine Johnson ’74Ms. Laura JohnsonMr. Bruce Jones ’81Ms. Leslie Jones ’91Ms. Constance JordanJordan-FernaldMr. and Mrs. H. Lee JuddAnn Sewall and Ed KaelberLaura Fisher and

Michael B. Kaiser ’85Mr. and Mrs. William KalesMr. and Mrs. David KaneMs. Esther Karkal ’83Ms. Jennifer Kastelic ’98Mr. and Mrs. Robert KatesSusan Lerner and

Steven KatonaMr. Michael Kattner ’95

Mr. John KeblerSarah ’05 and

Shawn ’00 KeeleyDr. James Kellam ’96Mr. Arthur KellerMr. and Mrs. James KelloggMs. Joanne Kemmerer ’02Mr. and Mrs. Edward

Lee KennedyMs. Ann Noel KesselheimDr. Craig Kesselheim ’76Lorraine Stratis and

Carl KetchumMr. and Mrs. Steven KielMr. and Mrs. Kyung KimMr. Peter Kim ’01Mr. and Mrs. Neil KingMargaret V. and

Robert KinneyMs. Amy Kitay ’81Ms. Barbara KnowlesMs. Aleda KoehnMr. and Mrs. Marvin KoenigMs. Anne KozakMrs. Franz KrausMr. Scott Kraus ’77Dr. and Mrs. Julius KrevansDavid and Rebecca KruegerMs. Cynthia Krum ’83Ms. Lee Kuck ’04Dr. and Mrs. Jeffrey KugelMargi and Philip

Kunhardt ’77Ms. Judith Lamb ’00Ms. Angela Lambert ’83Mr. David Lamon ’91Dr. Geoff Korn and

Dr. Lynda LaneFrank LangellaMr. and Mrs. Anthony A.

LaphamMr. Clark Lawrence ’92Mr. and Mrs. Donald

Lawson-StoppsDr. and Mrs. David LebwohlDr. and Mrs. Leung LeeMs. Alice Leeds ’76Mr. and Mrs. Edward

LeisenringMrs. Susan Shaw LeiterRandy Lessard and

Melissa Lessard-York ’90Dr. Eugene Lesser ’78Ms. Alice Levey ’81Dr. and Mrs. Jeffrey LevineMs. Nicole Libby ’04Mr. James LindenthalMs. JoEllen Lindenthal ’87

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Mr. and Mrs. K. Edward Lischick

Ms. Abigail Littlefield ’83Dr. John Long, Jr. ’86Ms. Maria Vanegas Long ’84Dr. and Mrs. Ralph

LongsworthLaura Casey ’01 and

Ben Lord ’99Mr. and Mrs. George LordMr. and Mrs. William Lord IIMrs. Oliver LowryMr. and Mrs. Lewis LukensMrs. Ronald Lyman, Jr.Ms. Mayo LynamRhea McKay and

Hugh MacArthur ’77Ms. Blaise Maccarrone ’01Machias Savings BankMr. James MacLeodMr. and Mrs. John

MacomberMrs. Henry MaculMrs. Constance MadeiraMs. Melinda Magleby ’00Michael Mahan GraphicsMiles Maiden ’86 and

Meg MaidenMaine Community

FoundationMs. Clementine Mallet ’03Karen and Henry MaloneMs. Carol Manahan ’77Ms. Margaret ManterMs. Susan Flynn

Maristany ’82Mrs. Elizabeth Hulbert

MarlerMr. Erik Hilson Martin ’98Mr. Robert MartinMs. Bobbi Martinez ’91Ms. Kathleen Massimini ’82Dr. Robert May ’81Ms. Jennifer Mazer ’93Mrs. Anne MazlishMr. Francis McAdoo, Jr.Mr. John Drury and

Ms. Lucy McCarthyMs. Leslie McConnell ’81Ms. Elizabeth J. McCormackMr. and Mrs. Charles

McCoy, Jr.Mrs. Gertrude McCueMs. Karen McDonaldMr. William McDowell ’80Mr. and Mrs. Clement

McGillicuddyMr. and Mrs. J. R. McGregorNancy and Philip McIntyre

Mr. Ian Scott McIsaac ’76SFC Lenorah McKeeMrs. Mary Goodyear McKeeMr. Donald K. McNeilMs. Gabrian McPhail ’97Mr. Clifton

McPherson III ’84Mrs. Fern McTigheMr. and Mrs. Robert MeadeMrs. Jean MessexMs. Pamela MeyerMr. Jeffrey Miller ’92Mr. and Mrs. Keith MillerMs. Kendra Noyes

Miller ’01Mr. J. Gregory Milne ’91Andrea Ried ’90 and

Jonathan Minott ’90Ms. Chandreyee Mitra ’01Mr. Frank MocejunasMs. Polly Molden ’00Mr. Peter Moon ’90Mr. and Mrs. Sung MoonMr. and Mrs. Daniel

MorgensternMr. and Mrs. G.

Marshall MoriartyMr. and Mrs. Phillip

S. J. MoriartyMrs. Lorraine MorongMr. Justin Nathaniel

Mortensen ’01Mr. Frederick Moss ’79Mr. and Mrs. John MoyerMs. Anne MulhollandMr. Stephen Mullane ’81Paul Munro ’82 and

Donna Munro ’82Mr. Dominic Muntanga ’04Dr. and Mrs. James MurphyMr. Sean MurphyMs. Barbara NalleyMr. Michael NardacciNational Park Tours &

Transport, Inc.Mr. and Mrs. John NewhallTammy McGrath ’97

and Philip Nicholas ’98Mr. and Mrs. Robert

NicholasMrs. A. Corkran NimickMrs. Marie NolfJames Lowry and

Merideth NorrisMr. and Mrs. David NoyesMrs. Elizabeth Higgins NullMs. Laura O’Brien ’93Ms. Hope Olmstead

Judd ’92 and Hannah Olshan

Mr. W. Kent OlsonMs. Whitney

Wing OppersdorffMs. Lisa Carpenter

Ouellette ’81Mr. Benoni Outerbridge ’84Amb. and Mrs. Henry

OwenMr. and Mrs. Jon PactorMs. Eerin Ockerse

Parente ’89Ms. Lindsay Parrie ’04Mr. and Mrs. Don ParsonDr. and Mrs. Lewis PatrieMs. Anne Patterson ’80Mr. Robert Patterson, Jr.Ms. Casey Greer Paul ’02Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth PaulMs. Sarah PaviaMr. and Mrs. Malcolm

PeabodyMrs. Sara Weeks PeabodyMs. Michelle Nicole

Peake ’99Mrs. John PearceMrs. Stephen PearsonMr. and Mrs. Robert

PenningtonMs. Margaret Pennock ’84Rabbi Shoshana Perry ’83Mr. Gordon PetersMs. Meghan Pew ’99Mr. Bruce Phillips ’78Mr. Andrew Pixley ’01Ms. Penelope PlaceDr. and Mrs. Antonio

PlanchartMs. Frances Pollitt ’77Mr. James Stewart PolshekMs. Jennifer Marie

Prediger ’00Mr. and Mrs. Ben

G. M. PriestMr. Charles ProvoncheeMr. and Mrs.

George PutnamQuarterdeck RestaurantMr. Gregory Rainoff ’81Dr. Nishanta Rajakaruna ’94Ms. Cathy Ramsdell ’78Randy Sprague Heating

& PlumbingMr. and Mrs. Raymond

RappaportMr. and Mrs. Dean ReadMr. and Mrs. Peter H.

Reckseit

Mr. and Mrs. Peter ReesMr. Morton ReichMs. Rebecca RenaudAnita and Doug ReppMr. Jason Rich ’96Ms. Emmie RickMs. Diane RieckJohn and Carol RiversMr. and Mrs. Owen RobertsDr. and Mrs. Gordon

RobinsonMr. Ethan Stanley

Rochmis ’98Drs. Paul and Ann RochmisMr. David Rockefeller, Jr.Dr. and Mrs. Steven

RockefellerHilda K. and

Thomas H. RoderickMs. Allison Rogers ’04Dr. Burt Adelman and

Ms. Lydia RogersRonald and Patricia RogersMr. Eric Francois Roos ’87Mr. and Mrs. Boykin RoseMr. and Mrs. Samuel

RosenfeldMs. Gail RosenkrantzMr. W. David

Rosenmiller ’84Ms. Volha Roshchanka ’04Dr. and Mrs. Stephen RossMr. and Mrs. Max RothalMr. and Mrs. Joseph

RothsteinMs. Elizabeth Rousek ’95Ms. Hope Rowan,

M.Phil. ’03Ms. Karen Roy ’77Mr. and Mrs. Peter

Rudolph RupununiMr. and Mrs. William

RussellMr. and Mrs. William

B. RussellMs. Archana Sahai ’91Ms. Kerri Sands ’02Ms. Blakeney Sanford ’02Mr. and Mrs. J.

Richard SanfordMr. Daniel Sangeap ’90Mrs. Walter Sargent IIIMs. Barbara Sassaman ’78David and Mary SavidgeMs. Margaret Scheid ’85Mr. and Mrs. Edwin

Schlossberg

A N N UA L R E P O R T

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Cynthia Livingston and Henry Schmelzer

Ms. Jessica Anita Schmidt ’98

Ms. Chrystal Schreck ’03Amy and Ryder Scott ’97Ms. Ellen Seh ’75Mr. James Senter ’85Mrs. Adele SerondeMr. and Mrs. Roland

SeymourMs. Rolanda Seymour ’00Sarah Gentry ’97 and

Matthew Sharp ’96Mr. Samuel ShawE.L. Shea, Inc.Mrs. Warner F. SheldonMr. Michael Shepard ’03Ms. Clare ShepleyMr. and Mrs. John Grace

ShetharDr. and Mrs. Dennis ShubertSiam Orchid

Restaurant, Inc.Mrs. Leonard SilkMr. H.T. Silsby IIMs. Fae Silverman ’03Mr. Grant Simmons, Jr.Mr. Mark Simonds ’81John and Fran SimsDr. and Mrs. Theodore R.

SizerMs. Susanne SlaytonMr. and Mrs. Stephen SmithMr. and Mrs. R. Charles

SnyderMs. Harriet SoaresMr. and Mrs. Philip

Soosloff, Jr.Southwest Food MartMr. Tim Spahr ’86Wendy and Leonard SpectorMrs. John SpencerMrs. Samuel SpencerMr. Michael Staggs ’97Ms. Laura Starr-

Houghton ’84Mr. and Mrs. Bruce StedmanMr. Edward W. P. Stern ’03Dr. Elizabeth Kellogg and

Dr. Peter StevensMr. Ralph StevensMr. J. Clark Stivers ’84Ms. Marion StockingMs. Kirsten Stockman ’91Mrs. John Frederick

StockwellMs. Dorie Stolley ’88Ms. Catherine Straka ’82

Carol and Sid StricklandMs. Susan StroudMs. Caren SturgesMrs. Robert SuminsbyMr. Stuart Dickey

Summer ’82Ms. Joan SwannMr. Gilbert SwardMs. Sally Swisher ’78Dr. Bonnie TaiMs. Jasmine Renee

Tanguay ’98Tapley PoolsMs. Tracey Anne Teuber ’98Mr. Poul TherkildsenMr. and Mrs. Joseph

Thomas IVMr. and Mrs. John ThorndikeMr. and Mrs. W. Nicholas

ThorndikeMs. Ellen Reid ThurmanTown & Country, RealtorsTown of MariavilleMs. J. Louise Tremblay ’91Mr. and Mrs. Charles TuckerMs. Elena Tuhy ’90Ms. Melita Peharda

Uljevic ’97Union Trust CompanyMs. Mary Long and

Mr. Dennis UnitesMr. and Mrs. David VailMr. C. Van DewaterMs. Katrina Van Dine ’82Ms. Claire Verdier ’80Dave ’89 and Beth ’91

VickeryMr. and Mrs. Dennis J.

ViechnickiMr. John VieleMs. Anne VioletteMr. and Mrs. Thomas

Volkmann ’90Mr. William Wade ’76Ms. Ann Staples WaldronDrs. Sherwood and

Anna Balas WaldronMs. Amanda Jane

Walker ’98Stacy Hankin and

Benjamin Walters ’81Ms. Hua Wang ’04Mr. Richard Waters ’77Mr. and Mrs. Douglas

WatsonPatrick Watson ’93 and

Alexis Watson ’93Ms. Joan WeberMs. Maria Weisenberg ’81

Mr. and Mrs. E. Sohier Welch

Ms. Alice WellmanEugene Dickey and

Pam Wellner ’84Ms. Karen Wennlund ’85Mr. David Wersan ’79Westside FloristMr. and Mrs. Harold

White IIIMr. and Mrs. Gordon

WhiteheadMrs. Joan WhitehillMs. Grace WhitmanMr. Cory WhitneyMs. Jacqueline WilliamsMr. Peter Williams ’93Mr. and Mrs. Raymond

WilliamsWilliams Family FoundationMs. Joannah WilmerdingMs. Nellie Wilson ’04Ms. Jane Winchell ’82Mr. Joshua Winer ’91Mr. David Winship ’77Ms. Betsy Wisch ’83Mr. Christopher Witt ’97Mr. and Mrs. Thomas WittMs. Susan Woehrlin ’80Dr. and Mrs. Otis D. WolfeWoodard & CurranMr. and Mrs. Harold

WoodfinMr. Jeffrey WoosterMs. Rachel Worthen ’01Prof. and Mrs. W. Howard

WrigginsRick and Wanda WrightMs. Cathleen WymanMs. Jingran XiaoMs. Sara Yasner ’95Mrs. Jane ZirnkiltonMs. Yazmin Zupa ’93Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Zych

GIFTS IN MEMORY

In memory of Emily Morison BeckMs. Emily M. Beck

In memory of Rebecca ClarkMr. Edward McC. Blair, Sr.Ms. Karen ClaussenMs. Sally CrockMr. Robert P. DworkinNational Marine Fisheries

Services

Ms. Patricia H. PfeifferSilver Lake Chapel

In memory of Clark Fitz-GeraldMark Eggleton and

Janet BerkelMr. Charles Bragg 2ndMr. George Bridge, Jr.Miss Dorothy BrownMrs. Anne F. CoriMr. Robert DickMs. Martha FergusonMrs. Jane FisherMr. David FlanaganDr. Sally HoopleMs. Sarah F. HudsonMs. Diane JonesMs. Elizabeth McCarthyMr. and Mrs. William

Mottola, Sr.R. Adm. Charles Rauch, Jr.,

USN (Ret)Mr. and Mrs. Thomas

SchrothMr. and Mrs. Lloyd SnappMrs. Madeline Stuckey

In memory of Philip GeyelinMrs. Eleanor CaseyMs. Cecily Clark

In memory of James R. HooperGeri Lambert and John AachFinger Lakes DDSO staffMr. and Mrs. James FortunoMr. and Mrs. Richard FoxElizabeth and James GrayMr. Andrew HawesHooper-Hamersley FamilyLawrence and Amy HuntleyMarcy and Scott Lazar

In memory of Dan KaneMr. and Mrs. David Kane

In memory of Dr. Edward J. Meade, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. Robert Meade

In memory of Valerie RoughMr. Peter Dyer

In memory of James Russell WigginsMs. Grace Boyd

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GIFTS IN HONOR

In honor of Marcia DworakMr. Glen Berkowitz ’82

In honor of Edward McC. Blair, Sr.Mr. Edward McC. Blair, Jr.

In honor of George B.E. HambletonMr. William Carey

In honor of Susan LernerMr. and Mrs. Samuel Felton

In honor of Walter RobinsonMs. Emmie Rick

In honor of Steven KatonaMrs. John Spencer

MATCHING GIFTSAIG, Inc.Bank of AmericaBiogen Idec FoundationChubb CorporationDeutsche Bank Americas

FoundationFidelity FoundationFord Motor Company FundGE FoundationHewlett-Packard CompanyMARKEM CorporationMicrosoft Matching

Gifts ProgramPQ CorporationUnited TechnologiesVerizon Foundation

ADOPT-A-WHALEMs. Kathleen AdamsMs. Shirley AilesMs. Wanda AtomanukMs. Dawn BaglosNaimahn BahrinipourMs. Sandra BakerMs. Emily BaranyMr. Douglas BarrMs. Jennifer BayleyMs. Genevieve BenjaminMorgan BinswangerMs. Janie BlissTim Gutwald and

Nicole BohachMr. Bundy BoitMr. Tim Bourdeau

Mr. Christopher BradleyMs. Barbara BrewerMr. and Mrs. Leslie C.

BrewerMr. and Mrs. David

BrundageMrs. Elizabeth de Jesus

BuckleyMs. Karen ButlerworthCafe BluefishMs. Donna CampbellMs. Jessica CarrMs. Cheryl ChamberlainMs. Glenda ChilcoteMs. Sherry ChurchillMr. Jay CiteroniMs. Linda CoburnMr. and Mrs. Michael

CoffeyMs. Ginny ConklinMs. Priscilla ConnollyMs. Carmela ConteyMr. Robert CookMs. Marylouise CowanMr. and Mrs. James

CumminsMrs. Antonella DableVictor and Gloria

DanisavageMr.and Mrs. Edward DavilaMr. Peter DavisMr. and Mrs. John

DesharnaisMr. and Mrs. A.

Edward DragonJay and Gayle DruckerMs. Cheryl DuboisMs. Tamara DuffMs. Andrea DulinMs. Marie DunnShelby DuplessisKaren and Kevin DupreMs. Judy EdelsteinMs. Elizabeth EdwardsonMrs. Eunice EvansMs. Mary EvansMs. Traci FinchMr. George FitchMr. Douglas FoleyMs. Caroline ForbesMs. Brenda FraneyMr. and Mrs. Joseph

GillilandMrs. Jeanne GilpatrickMs. Margaret GlanvilleMr. Kevin GriffithMs. Karen HelmstetterMs. Barbara Hendry

Andrea and Richard Henriques

Walter and Emily HeritageMr. and Mrs. H.

Lawrence Hess, Jr.Mrs. Deborah HillyardMs. Alicia HodgkinMrs. D.M. HorstmannMs. Kimberly HuismanMs. Judith IngallsMs. Darith JamesMs. Cynthia JarsmaMr. and Mrs. Glenn JohnsonMr. and Mrs. Edward

KadlubekTodd and Elanna KaplanMr. and Mrs. David KaulenMs. Wendy KentMarcia and Edward

KobialkaMrs. Sherry KockMr. John KorenKerry KoskyKeith and Tiffany KotimkoMrs. Cheryl LeonardMs. Lisa LeshinskyMr. Anthony LevaMrs. Sharon LibbyMr. Robert LoreMrs. Suzanne LottesMs. Linn Monica LundMr. and Mrs. Douglas MaassErnest and Charlene MachiaMs. Bretta MaguireMs. Nora MaloneyMr. Ian MansfieldMs. Karen L. MartinMr. Michael MasonMrs. Cheryl McColloughMrs. Margaret McGregorMr. and Mrs. Robert

McMillanMs. Sheila MenairMs. Theresa MerchantMrs. Paula MillenMr. Eric MillerMs. Darlene MorrisMs. Barbara MoscovicsEugene and Theresa MurphyMr. and Mrs. Richard NagelMr. John J. O’FarrellMr. John OstmanMartha and David PaciniJunius PageMs. Beth PahlMs. Margaret PashleyMs. Michelle PerroMr. Richard PetronzioEmery Pickering

Ms. Martha PinckneyMs. Ann PortnowMs. Essie PowersMs. Christina PrineMr. and Mrs. Harry PursellMr. David QuentinWilliam and Dorene

RandallMs. Cheryl RedmonMs. Courtney ReynoldsMs. Elizabeth RheaumeMs. Ellen RhodesMs. Julie RocheMs. Catherine RogersJeanne and Earl RudmanMs. Erin RyanSafeground LandcareMr. and Mrs. Nathaniel

SaltonstallDr. Walter SannitaMrs. Christine ScheickMr. Dan SchlegelMs. Lois SeamonMs. Christina SelbyMrs. M SharrockMr. Bruce ShenitzMs. Joanne ShieldsMs. Janice SmithMr. James SniderMs. Linda SorterMrs. Maria SpaightMs. Cynthia SteeleMs. Julia StepanukMs. Marcia SternMs. Heather Callahan

StevensStevens High SchoolKimberly and Bruce

StockdaleDr. Bonnie TaiMs. Donna TempletonMichael and Deborah

ThomasSusan and Thomas TomsBetsy and Michael TrainorMs. Lori TurjaMs. Wendy E. TurnerMs. Cindie UmansMr. James UptonMr. Burton WagnerMr. Jeffrey WalshMs. Joyce WalterMs. Pat WeareMr. Arnold WeisenbergMr. and Mrs. William

WhitenerMrs. Susan WilliamsMs. Kristi WillisMs. Stacey Wills

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Ms. Cynthia WoodcockMr. David WorthingMs. Meg ZachwiejaMr. and Mrs. Donald

ZettlemoyerMr. Gordon Zwicker

ALLIED WHALE PROGRAMSAnonymousSarah and David BakerElinor Patterson Baker

Trust Fdn.Mr. Steven BarkanMrs. Leigh BeattyMs. Genevieve BenjaminMs. Carolyn BerzinisMr. Edward McC. Blair, Sr.Blue Hill Consolidated

SchoolJean and Will BoddyMs. Dianna BoisvertMr. Colin Capers ’95Michele and Agnese

Cestone FoundationMs. Sara ClarkeDick Atlee and

Sarah CorsonMs. Judith CoxMrs. Tatiana ErtlMs. Nickilynn EstologaMrs. Virginia FiessMr. Douglas FoleyMs. Cherie FordFuruno U.S.A., Inc.Mr. Walter GoodnowMrs. D.M. HorstmannMr. James HoughtonMs. Lana JohnsonMs. Laura JohnsonMs. Rosa Marie JohnsonSusan Lerner and

Steven KatonaMr. Christopher KlemtMs. Brenda LakeThe Lynam Insurance

AgencyNatalie Springuel, ’91 and

Richard MacDonaldMs. Robin Sue MacLeodMaine Coast Sea VegetablesKelly and Richard MaltzMr. and Mrs. William

McFarlandMrs. Pamela MedleyMr. PaperbackMs. H. Robin NaylorMs. Meagan NealMs. Darlene Nolin

Oracle CorporationCorey PapadopoliPioneer East/West

InternationalMs. Julia Dias ReidMs. Jennifer Schroth ’84Mrs. Lorie ScovinMs. Marie St. JohnMs. Sarah SteinbergMrs. Maureen SumnerSean and Carolyn ToddU.S. Department

of CommerceMs. Phoebe VanVleetTony and Mandie VictorMindy and John ViechnickiDr. John VisvaderMrs. Kelly WhitmoreWillis & Sons, Inc.

FRIENDS OF THE ARTSMrs. J.H. Michael AgarMr. J. AndersonMr. and Mrs. John AnthonyMrs. Grace ArnoldMary Dohna ’80 and

Wells Bacon ’80Mary Helen and

David BaldwinBar Harbor Garden ClubMr. and Mrs. William

BeadlestonMs. Katherine BellMr. Bruce Bender ’76Ms. Carolyn BerzinisMr. Edward McC. Blair, Sr.Mr. and Mrs. Peter

Blanchard IIIBlue Poppy Garden, LLCMr. Dennis Bracale ’88Ms. Joan S. BragdonMs. Virginia BrennanMr. and Mrs. Leslie C.

BrewerMs. Roberta BrushMs. Lorraine CannattaMs. Judith ChiaraMr. and Mrs. P.

Hamilton ClarkMrs. Sarah ClarkMr. and Mrs. Francis

I.G. ColemanMr. John CooperIsabel Mancinelli and

Sam CoplonMs. Ellie CourtemancheCriterion Theatres Inc.Ms. Barbara David

Mr. and Mrs. Shelby M.C. Davis

Mrs. John DevlinProf. and Mrs. Arthur DoleMs. Lucinda Nash DudleyMr. and Mrs. George H. P.

DwightDr. Dianna and

Mr. Ben EmoryDr. and Mrs. Arthur FactorMr. Daniel Farrenkopf ’93Mr. and Mrs. Samuel FeltonThomas and Carroll FernaldMs. Peggy ForsterMrs. Ruth FraleyMr. and Mrs. W. West

Frazier, IVDr. and Mrs. James C. A.

FuchsMrs. Robert GannMr. and Mrs. Robert

GoodmanDr. and Mrs. Robert GossartFr. James GowerMs. Barbara HaganMr. Samuel Hamill, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. Gordon

HargravesMr. Sturgis HaskinsMs. Lisa HeywardDr. and Mrs. John HocheMr. and Mrs. Melville

HodderMs. Betsey HoltzmannMs. Jennifer HughesMr. and Mrs. Christopher

HutchinsMrs. R. Duane IselinMs. Laura JohnsonMr. and Mrs. H. Lee JuddAnn Sewall and Ed KaelberMr. and Mrs. William KalesSteve and Ali KasselsMr. and Mrs. Robert KatesMr. Arthur KellerMr. and Mrs. John N. KellyMr. and Mrs. Steven KielMr. and Mrs. Kyung KimThe Kimball ShopMs. Barbara KnowlesMr. Thomas LeddyMr. and Mrs. Edward

LeisenringMr. and Mrs. Carl LittleMr. and Mrs. John LynchMrs. Marcia MacKinnonMaine Arts Commission

Friends of the Arts Fund of the Maine Community Foundation

Mr. and Mrs. John March ’76

Grant and Suzanne McCullagh

Mrs. Jean MessexMr. and Mrs. Keith MillerMr. and Mrs. Stephen

MillikenMr. and Mrs. A. Fenner

MiltonMr. and Mrs. Paul MonfredoMr. and Mrs. Daniel

MorgensternMr. and Mrs. G. Marshall

MoriartyMs. Anne MulhollandDr. and Mrs. David MyersMr. and Mrs. William V. P.

NewlinJim and Suzanne OwenA.C. Parsons LandscapingMr. Robert Patterson, Jr.Mrs. Sara Weeks PeabodyMrs. John PearceMr. and Mrs. Robert

PenningtonKim and Keating PepperMr. Stephen PetschekMr. and Mrs. Daniel PierceMr. and Mrs. Jay PierrepontJames Dyke and

Helen PorterMr. and Mrs. Hector

Prud’hommeMs. Shari RoopenianRooster Brother, Inc.Ms. Linn SageDr. and Mrs. Peter SellersMr. and Mrs. Henry D.

Sharpe, Jr.Mr. Samuel ShawMs.Clare ShepleyMr. and Mrs. Clyde

Shorey, Jr.Dr. and Mrs. Dennis ShubertMr. Kenneth SimonMr. and Mrs. Donald StrausDr. and Mrs. Sidney

StricklandThe Swan Agency/

InsuranceTerraCotta Stylish StuffMr. and Mrs. Joseph

Thomas IVMs. Mary Long and Mr.

Dennis Unites

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Mr. and Mrs. Christiaan van Heerden

Ms. Ann Staples WaldronMr. Wally WarrenMs. Joan WeberMr. and Mrs. Raymond

WilliamsMr. and Mrs. William

Wister, Jr./Margaret Dorrance Strawbridge Foundation

ANNUAL SCHOLARSHIPSMr. and Mrs. Douglas

ColemanDavis United World

Scholars ProgramDr. Margaret DulanyDr. and Mrs. Richard FoxLois M. Gauthier

Charitable TrustMr. and Mrs. Jon GeigerBruce Hazam ’92 and

Atsuko Watabe ’93The Agnes M. Lindsay TrustMrs. Elizabeth Hulbert

MarlerMr. Charles Merrill, Jr.Mr. Gordon PetersMs. Patricia PfeifferDr. Nishanta Rajakaruna ’94Alice Blum YoakumScholarship Fund of

the Maine Community Foundation

ENDOWMENT GIFTSGeri Lambert and John AachMs. Judith AllenJohn and Karen AndersonAllison Martin ’88 and

Elmer BealMark Eggleton and

Janet BerkelDavid and Marian BicksMr. Edward McC. Blair, Sr.Mr. Charles Bragg, 2ndMr. George Bridge, Jr.Miss Dorothy BrownMs. Karen ClaussenMs. Dianne ClendanielMr. Kenneth ClineMr. John CooperDick Atlee and

Sarah CorsonMs. Eve CoulsonMs. Sally CrockMr. Robert Dick

Mr. Robert DworkinMs. Martha FergusonFinger Lakes DDSO staffMrs. Jane FisherMr. David FlanaganMr. and Mrs. James FortunoMr. and Mrs. Richard FoxMr. and Mrs. Stephen

GeorgeMrs. Philip GeyelinElizabeth and James GrayMr. Andrew HawesHooper-Hamersley FamilyDr. Sally HoopleMs. Sarah F. HudsonLawrence and Amy HuntleyMr. Christopher JonesMs. Diane JonesDr. James Kellam ’96Ms. Anne KozakMarcy and Scott LazarMs. Isabel MancinelliMs. Pamela ManiceMs. Elizabeth McCarthyMr. and Mrs. Gerrish

MillikenMr. and Mrs. William

Mottola, Sr.National Marine Fisheries

ServicesMs. Patricia PfeifferMr. and Mrs. Eben PyneR. Adm. Charles Rauch, Jr.,

USN (Ret)Mr. Robert F. RothschildMr. and Mrs. Thomas

SchrothDr. and Mrs. Peter SellersSilver Lake ChapelLloyd and Suzanne SnappMrs. Madeline StuckeyDr. Davis TaylorRichard Hilliard and

Karen Waldron

NATURAL HISTORYMUSEUM & SUMMERPROGRAMMs. Dolores BagishMs. Tamara BannermanMs. Janet BloodMs. Diane BonseyKim and Brenda CartwrightMelissa and Frederick CookMrs. Alice DemeoMr. and Mrs. Frederic

Driscoll IIIDr. Mary Dudzik

Ms. Hannah Webber and Mr. Greg Forrest

Matt and Andrea GerrishMs. Jillian GlaeserBruce Mazlish and

Neva GoodwinJonathan Gormley ’78 and

Nina Gormley ’78Ms. Kari GracelandMelisa Rowland and

Scott HenggelerBarbarina ’88 and

Aaron ’87 HeyerdahlPeter and Hope HillJames Broderick and

Karen JohnsonRacheal Wallace and

Douglas KiehmAnn Dorward and

Steven KingSarah and Matthew

McEachernDencie and Michael

McEnroeOcean Drive Motor CourtMs. Lynn OravMr. Paul Girdzis and Ms.Adrienne PaiewonskyTobin ’95 and Valerie

PeacockMr. and Mrs. John P. ReevesDavid Rockefeller Fund, Inc.Mr. and Mrs. William

Thorndike, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. Anthony

Uliano

2005 SENIOR CLASS GIFTSMs. Lauren Alnwick-

Pfund ’05Mr. Victor Amarilla ’05Mr. Mukhtar Amin ’04Sarah and David BakerMary Helen and

David BaldwinMs. Jill Barlow-KelleyMr. Rahvi BarnumAllison Martin ’88 and

Elmer BealMs. Carolyn BerzinisMs. Sarah Bockian ’05Ms. Sarah Boucher,

M.Phil. ’06Ms. Brooke Brown-

Saracino ’05Ms. Danielle Byrd ’05Dr. Andrew CampbellMr. Colin Capers ’95

Mr. Seth Carbonneau ’05Barbara and Vinson CarterDr. Donald CassMs. Diana Choksey ’05Ms. Dianne ClendanielMr. Kenneth ClineNancy Andrews and

Dru ColbertMr. Max Coolidge-

Gillmor ’05Mr. John CooperDr. Gray CoxMs. Hillah Orit Culman ’05Kelly Dickson, M.Phil. ’97

and George DicksonMr. Nathan DiGiovanni ’05Ms. Carrie Downing ’05Ms. Sarah Drummond ’05Doreen Stabinsky and

David FeldmanMs. Katie Anne

Freedman ’05Ms. Carla GanielMs. Kathryn Gilchrest ’05Ms. Lauren Gilhooley ’05Ms. Jacquelyn Gill ’05Ms. Rachael Elizabeth

GilmartinMs. Donna GoldSusan Dowling and

Andrew GriffithsMr. Henry Hall ’05Ms. Anne Harris ’05Ms. Lynn HavsallMs. Amber Hayes ’05Atsuko Watabe ’93 and

Bruce Hazam ’92Ingrid and Ken HillMs. Jen HughesMs. Jane HultbergMs. Ivy Huo ’05Mr. Eamonn Hutton ’05Mr. Nishad Jayasundara ’05Ms. Laura JohnsonMs. Jennifer Jones ’05Ms. Eduarta Kapinova ’05Susan Lerner and

Steven KatonaSarah ’05 and

Shawn ’00 KeeleyMr. Geoffrey Kuhrts ’05Mr. Aaron Lewis ’05Mr. Gordon Longsworth ’91Mr. Aramis Lucas Lopez ’05Ms. Daphne LoringMs. Sarah LukeNatalie Springuel ’91 and

Rich MacDonaldMr. Elijah Martin-Merrill ’05

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Mr. Wyatt MatthewsMs. Tshete Dawn

Mazula ’05Ms. Donna McFarlandMs. Amy MitchellMs. Terri MitchellMr. Ian Mohler ’05Ms. Anna MurphyMr. Eric Nagle ’05Ms. Darlene NolinMr. Adam Nordell ’05Ms. Aoife O’Brien ’05Ms. Sarah Patten ’05Mr. Andrew PetersonMr. Thomas Poirier ’05Mr. Benjamin J. T.

PolloniMr. Matthew ProtasMr. Ezra ProvostDr. Nishanta Rajakaruna ’94Ms. Julia Dias ReidMs. Anna Revchoun ’05Mr. Santiago Salinas ’05Ms. Mihaela Senek ’05Mr. Sanjeev Shah ’05Ms. Jessica Anne

Sharman ’05Ms. Shaya Shub-Durbin ’05Ms. Marie StiversJean and Bill SylviaDr. Bonnie TaiDr. Davis TaylorMr. Carter Tew Ms. Myra Mae TheriaultMs. Nina Therkildsen ’05Sean and Carolyn ToddTony and Mandie VictorMs. Erika WadeMr. John Wallace ’05Ms. Ashley Webster-

Miramant ’05Ms. Marjolaine

Whittlesey ’05Ms. Nilo

Wickramarachchi ’05

RESTRICTED GIFTSMr. and Mrs. Robert P.

Kogod

THORNDIKE LIBRARYMr. and Mrs. Jacob V.

Null ’93

GIFTS IN KINDAcadia RefrigerationAtlantic Oakes-by-the-SeaMr. George DrexelDr. and Mrs. Robert GossartMs. Casey Mallinckrodt

Mr. Edward Monat ’88Mr. and Mrs. Richard

Sullivan

TANGIBLE GIFTS AND GIFTS OF TIME ANDTALENTAcadia Zoo Ms. Barbara Andrus Ms. Carolyn Berzinis Nancy Manter and

Eduardo Bohorquez Mr. Dennis Bracale ’88 Ms. Emily Bracale ’90 Stewart and Melita Brecher Mr. Rohan Chitrakar ’04 Ms. Ariel Durrant ’06 Ms. Jamie Frank ’04 Philip and Amy Geier Stephen Lacker and

Nadine Gerdts Miss Eleanor Greenan Ms. Galen Guthrie ’97 Mr. Philip Hecksher Ms. Noreen Hogan ’91 Katie Homans and

Patterson SimsMr. Eamonn Hutton ’05Ms. June LaCombe Mr. Steve Lambert Mrs. Emy Leeser Ms. Andrea Lepcio ’79 Mr. Fred Olday Ms. Jessie Salsbury Mary Sherman and

Scott WillisMs. Cat Shwenk Mr. Gregory Stone ’82 Ms. Cait Unites ’03 Ms. Ann Staples Waldron Mr. and Mrs. Morgan

Dix Wheelock

FUNDS RECEIVED FORSPECIAL PROJECTSMr. Mukhtar Amin ’04Mr. and Mrs. Schofield

Andrews IIIBarbro Osher Pro Suecia

FoundationSara Faull and Genio

Bertin ’97Mr. Edward McC. Blair, Sr.Carnegie Corporation

of New YorkMr. Erin Chalmers ’00Ms. Rebecca Clark ’96Isabel Mancinelli and

Sam CoplonMs. Barbara Danielson

Dr. Dianna and Mr. Ben Emory

Elizabeth Ten Grotenhuis and Merton Flemings

Mr. and Mrs. William FoulkeFUTUREBOSTON, INC.Mr. and Mrs. James M.

GarnettMs. Kate Jahaza Gatski ’98Mr. Samuel Hamill, Jr.Healthy Acadia CoalitionMs. Katherine Hester ’98Mr. and Mrs. Melville

HodderMs. Lynn HorowitzMs. Sherry HuberMs. Jessika Ruth Hudson ’98

and Nathan Hudson ’00IBIS Consulting, Inc.Illinois State UniversityMs. Laura JohnsonMr. and Mrs. H. Lee JuddHenry Luce FoundationAnn LutherMaine Community

FoundationMaine Space Grant

ConsortiumMs. Casey MallinckrodtMr. and Mrs. Stephen

MillikenMount Desert IslandBiological LaboratoryMr. and Mrs. William V. P.

NewlinTammy McGrath ’97 and

Philip Nicholas ’98Ms. Andrea Perry ’95Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton

Robinson, Jr.

Ms. Amy Scott ’97 andRyder Scott ’97

Dr. and Mrs. Peter SellersMr. and Mrs. Henry D.

SharpeState of Maine Treasury

DepartmentMr. and Mrs. Donald B.

StrausMr. and Mrs. Richard

SullivanUniversity of British

ColumbiaUniversity of Maine Sea

Grant ProgramU.S. Department of

Education

Every effort has been madeto ensure accuracy inpreparing our donor list forthis annual report. If a mis-take has been made in theway you or your spouse orpartner is identified, or ifyour name was omittedfrom the donor list, we apologize.

With your help, we canensure that future donor lists report your names asyou prefer. Please notify the development office at207-288-5015, ext. 329 with any changes in the way your gifts should bereported.

A N N UA L R E P O R T

Help Make a Difference!COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC welcomes gifts of all kinds to support the work we are doing, educating students who make a difference on Mount Desert Island and in the world.

Please consider including the college in your annualgiving, or to ensure COA’s future, consider becoming partof our planned giving program.

Bequests, charitable gift annuities, charitable remindertrusts and other similar programs help the college whilealso offering you income tax benefits.

For more information, see www.coa.edu/html/givetocoa or call the Development Office at 207-288-5015.

64 | COA64 | COA

Amy Toensing ’93 photographed thestory, “Of Lynx and Men: Scenes from a Homecoming” for the January 2006issue of National Geographic. The arti-cle followed the trapping of lynx inCanada to be set free in Colorado in anattempt to restore the U.S. lynx pop-ulation. Having never done wildlife pho-

tography, Toensing says that she was chosen for thisstory because it was really about human impact on theanimal world—a perfect subject for a human ecologist.

COA: Do you think you see things differentlybecause you're a human ecologist?

AT: Definitely. To me, human ecology is aboutapproaching the world with the understanding of theimpact and influence we as humans have on every-thing, including how we look at the world. Really, weare very small in the grand scheme of things. As anartist and a photographer, I find myself constantlylooking at the human condition and trying to under-stand something about it.

COA: How did you start out?

AT: I photographed in high school. When I was atCOA, I did a semester at SALT Institute forDocumentary Studies. That's when I did a piece on thebroccoli pickers of Aroostook County. I loved it; I didn't think it was going to be a career, but after COA,I worked at my hometown paper and then I met NancyLee, the director of photography of the New YorkTimes. We were all at a workshop and on our way toan assignment when her car broke down. I knew howto jumpstart her car. She liked my pictures, but I thinkshe was more impressed by my survival skills andwanted me to work for her. So I went to work in the Washington bureau, getting a nose for the news until I decided to go to graduate school.

COA: What is your current project?

AT: I am on the way to work on a story on urbanparks for National Geographic about the future of green spaces in the face of population growth. I was just in India, doing a story about widows, part of a long-term project I’m working on for myself, on women living on the edge of society. For my own sanity, I try to find the time to work onpersonal projects.

A protective lynx mother defends her den from biologists hoping to handle her kittens long enough to implant microchip IDs soreseachers will know if the animals survive. Photo by Amy Toensing/National Geographic Magazine.

Scenes from a HomecomingBY AMY TOENSING ’93

COA | 65

To this day my fondest memory isof overturning rocks on a rainySunday after church, muddy tieaskew, soaked to the bone with agoofy grin on my six-year-old face.

I was always a nature-loving citykid. I'm not sure how it happened.It certainly wasn’t the result of myfastidious Danish mother, whodonned diamonds for breakfast. Itmay have been my father, althoughour weekends spent outside wereprobably more a consequence ofmy crowding his tiny Telegraph Hill apartment than anything else.Whatever the reason, I was kindledwith a curiosity about the naturalworld, one that transcended theaffinity most boys have for theweird and the novel.

As a teenager, this fascinationmetamorphosed into a passion forwilderness and found new purposein environmentalism. With an ado-lescent’s embryonic intellectualsophistication I sought to eschewthe urban landscape and focus on the wilderness,where nature was supposed to be. After all, wilder-ness was nature the way God intended it; the urbanforests and parks I had loved as a child were natureout of balance, a crumpled husk of the real thing.

So, I left the city kid behind and packed my bagsfor a tiny college on the Maine coast, a bright-eyednascent ecologist heading out to the wilderness tostudy ecology where it ought to be studied.

I soon realized that nature did not act like it wassupposed to. Coastal Maine had been inhabited formillennia, its “wild” islands managed for game, pas-ture, and settlement. Acadia National Park was actu-ally a fragmented amalgamation of parcels cobbledtogether by robber barons less than a century ago. Istarted to wonder: if humans are such an integralpart of nature in coastal Maine, what does that meanfor cities? Could nature really exist there too?

Upon graduation, human ecology degree in hand,circumstance landed me in the heart of Cincinnati. Ihad never spent time in a city reeling from decadesof white flight: block upon block of shattered win-dows and empty lots; huddled groups of young menon every street corner, eyes shrouded with bitternessand anger.

Guilt began to set in. Guilt for choosing a seem-ingly self-indulgent field like ecology when there are people in every city in America who don’t knowwhere their next meal is coming from, people who

have known destitution so longthey don’t dare hope for anythingbetter. And I was counting fish inthe Ohio River?

I began volunteering with a community garden organization. Itmade me happy to feel my hands inthe dirt again, to see the apprecia-tive smiles of curious neighborsand involve kids from the neigh-borhood. I loved seeing their faceswhen they put two and two togeth-er: “You mean, carrots grow under-ground?!”

One morning some of the kidsfound a garter snake slitheringthrough one of the gardens. Hear-ing shouts of “Eww, gross!” and “Kill it! Kill it!” I rushed over, gentlypicked up the snake and showedthem how the snake can “taste” theair and unhinge its jaw to eat.Repulsion yielded to fascination asthey all gingerly reached out totouch it. One volunteered to placeit back in the grass, and so I handed

it to him. He looked up at me with a goofy grin that Istill remember, and I smiled back.

As the snake slithered through the earth towardan old woman teaching her grandchildren to growtomatoes while butterflies flitted about, pollinatingvegetables and flowers while looking for nectar, I felta renewed sense of wonder and purpose. I began tosee that conservation and community can be insep-arable: urban green space providing physical andspiritual nourishment, the community providingstewardship and support for nature.

This is my passion. My purpose. What I have beenworking toward, consciously or not, since that rainySunday two decades ago. If I do nothing else with mylife, this nature-loving city kid would like to inspirejust a few more goofy grins before I go.

Finn Pillsbury ’02 is finishing an M.S. in Ecology andEvolutionary Biology at Iowa State University, where he hasbeen studying the ecology and conservation of amphibians inurban landscapes. He and his wife, Drake Windsor ’03, live inan old house with a big garden in the center of town.

Readers are encouraged to submit poetry, short stories,and human ecology essays to COA. Please send your workto dgold@coa.edu or Donna Gold, COA Magazine, 105 EdenStreet, Bar Harbor, Maine 04609.

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

Grinning in the Garden: A Human Ecological JourneyFINN PILLSBURY

Finn Pillsbury ’02 with Dorothy Darden,matriarch of the Over-the-Rhine People’sGarden of Cincinnati, Ohio. Photo credit:Drake Windsor ’03, from her senior project,“Over-the-Rhine: A Portrait of a Community.”

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