COA Volume 3 | Number 2
SUMMER/FALL 2007
The College of the Atlantic Magazine
COA VISION
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
The 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 compassion, individuals construct meaningful lives for themselves, gain appreciation of the relationships among all forms of life, and safeguard the heritage of future generations.
COVER: Great Duck Island By Virve Hirsmaki ’09 Mixing untreated and dyed wool with found objects, Virve Hirsmaki spent the summer creating a 6-by-8-foot mural illustrating the ecology of Great Duck Island. Says Hirsmaki, “I have a longlived interest in the visual arts; at COA I have broadened my horizons to include the sciences. The constant search for phenomena and names by the scientific community furthers the aesthetic appreciation of life in all its forms, giving me the inspiration to conceptualize the world in greater depth and dimension. Art has shown me how to see these phenomena with the appreciation they deserve. The interdisciplinary nature of COA’s education allows me to combine different, complementary visions for a fuller and more complex view of the world.” Hirsmaki created this mural with the help of a Rothschild Grant given to faculty-student collaborative projects at COA. She worked with Dru Colbert and John Anderson.
BACK COVER: Katrina Zarate ’07 from her senior project, “En-Visioning Art, Theory, and Literature.” For her project, Katrina Zarate created a multimedia installation of distorted imagery within the Ethel H. Blum Gallery that transported the reader into the dark mysteries of dysfunctional vision and brought us through eye damage to new levels of sight and insight.
The transition from summer to autumn at College of the Atlantic is a passage from glory to promise. The flowers in our seaside gardens fade away, but we who work here all summer don’t even notice. For in the place of blossoms come such an array of students— sporting bright, clean faces and scruffy beards, coifed hair and black nail polish—shy and bold and confused and confident, sometimes all at the same time. There’s an eagerness and an intensity that COA’s first year students all share. Having entered a new world, they are ready to make it theirs. They are ready to grapple with this thing we call human ecology; to make sense of it—and ultimately, somehow, to make a life in it. In four short years—sometimes less—these students will be creating work that will be comparable to the work that is in this studentcentered issue of COA. The cover and story are by undergraduates; the art spread features a senior project, several students are featured in the news section. But can you even tell? Whether it is a passion for economic justice fueling an independent study that becomes ground-breaking legislation such as LD 1810, or whether it is a more personal quest for understanding the impact of distorted vision that becomes a gallery-full of poetry, theory, painting and sculpture combined into a mixed media installation, our students take their work seriously. Very seriously. Thirty-five years ago, the glory of the summer of 1972 turned into the promise of the first term of a brand-new college. It seems that the idea of basing a college education on democracy and freedom that seemed so radical back then—that still seems radical—really does work. Students step up to the responsibility. They take charge of their education, they take charge of their educational institution, and truly, they fly.
Donna Gold editor, COA
The College of the Atlantic Magazine Volume 3 | Number 2
EDITOR
Donna Gold
Greenest College ~ p. 3
COA Students Create Groundbreaking Legislation ~ p. 4 Notes from a Watson year ~ p. 6 Nikhit D’Sa returns from seeing life through the eyes of street children
The Dreier Scholarship: A Legacy of Spirit ~ p. 12 A donor profile of John and Isa Dreier
COA Alumna Heads for the National Stage ~ p. 14 Chellie Pingree ’79 vies for First District House seat
Sea Urchins: from Gilded Age to COA Campus Center ~ p. 22 In saving an historic building, COA preserves novelist’s memory
Catching the Wind ~ p. 32 Memoir excerpt by Scott Beebe ’09
EDITORIAL BOARD
John Anderson Sarah Barrett ’08 Richard J. Borden Milja Brecher-DeMuro Dru Colbert Naveed Davoodian ’10 Noreen Hogan ’91 Jennifer Hughes Linda Mejia ’09 Emma Rearick ’08 EDITORIAL CONSULTANT
Bill Carpenter ALUMNI CONSULTANTS
Jill Barlow-Kelley Milja Brecher-DeMuro DESIGN
Mahan Graphics, Bath, Maine PRINTING
JS McCarthy Printers, Augusta, Maine
:
Katrina Zarate “En-visioning Art, Theory and Literature” ~ p. 30
SUMMER/FALL 2007
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features
COA
COA ADMINISTRATION
TRUSTEES
David Hales President
Edward McC. Blair, Sr. Life Trustee
Kenneth Hill Academic Dean
William G. Foulke, Jr.
David H. Fischer Timothy Fuller ’03
John Anderson Associate Dean for Advanced Studies
departments COA Beat ........................................ p. 3 Class Notes ...................................... p. 42 Faculty & Community Notes........ p. 47 Annual Report ................................ p. 51 In Memoriam .................................. p. 63
Sarah Baker Dean of Admission
James M. Gower, Life Trustee George B. E. Hambleton Charles E. Hewett Sherry F. Huber
Lynn Boulger Dean of Development Andrew Griffiths Administrative Dean Sarah Luke Associate Dean for Student Life
John N. Kelly, Trustee Emeritus Philip B. Kunhardt III ’77 Susan Storey Lyman, Life Trustee Suzanne Folds McCullagh Sarah A. McDaniel ’93
Karen Waldron Associate Dean for Faculty
Stephen G. Milliken Philip S. J. Moriarty Phillis Anina Moriarty
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Elizabeth Nitze
Samuel M. Hamill, Jr. Chairman
Helen Porter Cathy L. Ramsdell ’78, Trustee Emeritus
Elizabeth D. Hodder Vice Chair
We Started from Square One ~ p. 38 Excerpts from an oral history interview with founding faculty member Bill Carpenter
Poetry by Craig Kesselheim ’76 ~ p. 40
Hamilton Robinson, Jr.
Casey Mallinckrodt Vice Chair
Henry D. Sharpe, Jr., Life Trustee
Ronald E. Beard Secretary
Clyde E. Shorey, Jr., Life Trustee
Leslie C. Brewer Treasurer
William N. Thorndike, Jr. Cody van Heerden
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Rebecca Hancock ’97 ~ p. 64 Merchant mariner
Honoring Ed Kaelber ~ p. 65
COA is published twice each year for the College of the Atlantic community. Please direct correspondence to: COA Magazine College of the Atlantic 105 Eden Street Bar Harbor, Maine 04609 Phone: (207) 288-5015 email: dgold@coa.edu
www.coa.edu This publication is printed on recycled paper. Chlorine free, acid free manufacturing process.
LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT
Are We Number One? he ranking of College of the Atlantic by Grist Magazine as the “greenest” college or university in the world has brought welcome recognition to our commitment to practice what we teach. And it has raised eyebrows around the world: “How can such a small school be ranked higher than larger and better known institutions?” I think the answer is instructive. When even a small school, with limited resources, takes responsibility for its actions, the influence can extend beyond the raw numbers of tons of greenhouse gases reduced or cubic feet of solid waste avoided. If College of the Atlantic can achieve NetZero greenhouse gas emissions, so can every family, business and college. The message sent by the fact that there is a list, and the excellent work by so many colleges that it highlights, is far more important than the rankings: the message is that higher education “gets it.” Success for any institution over the next several decades will be dependent upon a wholehearted commitment to sustainability. Not only is it the right thing to do, it is the only smart thing to do. For colleges, investments in energy efficiency, renewable energy and waste reduction now mean cost savings in the future. For us, that translates into lower tuition than we would otherwise face, and that is no small matter. Our core mission—the best education that we can possibly provide at a cost that our students and their families can afford—has not changed and it will not. To be the best college we can be, we must be the greenest college that we can be. To provide the best education we can, we must live the lessons we hope our students and communities will learn. So, are we the greenest college in the world? Not yet, I suspect. We have much to learn from others. But we are pretty darn good. And we are working to get better. Over the next year or so, we will invest the equivalent of three to five percent of our operating budget in conservation measures that will pay for themselves quickly and result in cost savings in the future. We will continue to share what we learn with business and families in our community. As president of a college dedicated to the study of human ecology, I would be disappointed if we weren’t on the cutting edge of commitment to a sustainable world. As an individual, a parent and grandparent, a citizen of the United States, and an inhabitant of this precious planet, I would be happier if a top-twenty list were impossible to compile because every institution had made a comparable commitment. That day is coming; a century from now, we will be right here, still studying the relationships among humans and the environment, and we will be sharing the challenge of providing higher education only with other colleges that have made the transition to sustainability.
T
David Hales 2 | COA
COA BEAT
Greenest College • Grist Magazine ranks COA #1 of all colleges and universities for greenness • US News & World Reports recognizes COA’s small classes and large international presence • Princeton Review celebrates COA’s accessibility, beauty, food and . . . • Campus Squeeze ranks COA among the most beautiful campuses in the nation Grist Magazine, the popular environmental online magazine, issued its first-ever list of top green colleges and universities in the world last August. College of the Atlantic heads that list. COA’s number one billing recognizes the college’s longstanding focus on sustainability, as well as its pledge of carbon neutrality last October. Says the article, COA’s efforts “kicked off quite a trend: Now more than 270 other U.S. colleges and universities . . . have pledged to do the same as part of the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment.” Of course, what Grist doesn’t note is that COA’s carbon-neutral effort emerges from a philosophy that has been part both of our curriculum and our physical plant since the beginning. Human ecologists are trained to recognize the impact of all their actions. From Grist to US News & World Report to the Princeton Review, August is “ratings season” for colleges. As in the past, COA has been recognized as being among the top five schools in the nation for small classes and an international student body, according to US News & World Report’s 2008 edition of America’s Best Colleges. With 94 percent of its classes under twenty students, COA ranks fifth in the nation for small classes. As COA prepares to open the school year with the largest
student body ever, 16 percent of those students will hail from outside the United States, making COA third in the nation for a global presence. Many of these students come to the college as part of the Davis United World College Scholars program, funded by Shelby and Gale Davis, which grants full college scholarships to outstanding international students at selected US colleges, COA among them. COA was also recognized in Princeton Review’s annual Best 366 Colleges, and earlier, in their America’s Best-Value Colleges. Not only are we one of the nation’s top schools, we’re also generous and a great value, says Princeton Review. In their latest rankings, COA is noted for encouraging discussions, accessible professors, good financial aid packages, acceptance of the gay community and delicious food. Meanwhile, both Princeton Review and the online magazine Campus Squeeze placed COA on the top-twenty list of most beautiful campuses: campussqueeze.com/static/20-Most-BeautifulColleges.html. www.grist.org/news/maindish/2007/08/10/colleges/
COA | 3
COA BEAT
On June 20, when Gov. Baldacci signed Maine’s first-in-the-nation Informed Growth Act, LD 1810, many a COA face glowed, believing that when a large retail store wants to come to town, it makes sense for the community to know what may happen, what kind of impact it will have on the local economy, on its services and on the environment. At COA, the community also knew the back story. They knew that the first draft of the legislation was written by Elsie Flemings ’07 as part of an independent study in community organizing she did the year before. They also knew that her friend and COA classmate Daphne Loring had been working to shepherd this bill through the Maine State Legislature since January when she took a job at the Maine Fair Trade Campaign (MFTC). Flemings’ independent study came from a desire to become more involved in community organizing, and to see how that related to public policy and legislative organizing. Working with MFTC members Maureen Drouin, northeast representative of the Sierra Club, and Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, as well as advisor Ken Cline, COA faculty member in law and policy, Flemings brainstormed possible legislative campaigns and wrote the early drafts of a bill requiring economic assessment for big-box stores. “One of the major tools lacking throughout this country,” says Flemings, “is a structured comprehensive look at the economic impacts of largescale retail stores.” Now Maine has LD 1810, the Informed Growth Act, requiring independent comprehensive impact studies for all proposed retail stores exceeding 75,000 square feet. These studies, which are funded by a fee assessed to the developer, analyze the store’s projected impact on such factors as jobs, wages, existing businesses, municipal services and the environment. Until now, most Maine municipalities did not have the legal right to refuse largescale projects based on economic or fiscal impacts. Now, if the project is likely to cause “undue adverse impact”—if the project’s negative 4 | COA
Photo courtesy of the Maine Fair Trade Campaign
Once Again, Maine Owes Groundbreaking Legislation To COA Students Independent study leads to first-in-the-nation “big box” bill
Daphne Loring (’07) with Gov. John Baldacci at the signing of the Informed Growth Act.
impacts are expected to outweigh the positive—it cannot be approved. This is a big deal. Within two weeks of Baldacci’s signing, even the Wall Street Journal took notice, carrying an article about the legislation. That her independent study would actually become groundbreaking law was a surprise to Flemings, who is currently working for Congressman Zack Space on Capitol Hill and will be returning to Maine this fall. But, says Loring, “the victory is testament to the power of broad-based coalitions. These stores affect all of us. That labor, environmental, small business and social justice groups united and rallied behind this bill is something the legislature could not ignore. Building these cross-sector alliances is central to our work at MFTC and I know Elsie highlighted this strategy early on.” Loring passionately believes in organizing for a more just and sustainable economy. She has a history in big-box issues, having done her senior project on community organizing and civic engagement, looking at community struggles around big-box-stores. Both she and Flemings worked with the Wise Planning group in Ellsworth to try to halt a Wal-Mart Supercenter. An official thanks has gone out to countless people who assisted in the campaign, among them
COA BEAT COA’s own Rep. Ted Koffman, director of government and community relations, a cosponsor of the bill. But a quiet nod must go to COA for nurturing students to do more than study the issues that concern them, to actually conceive of solutions— and then make them happen. It’s not the first time. In 1972, Bill Ginn ’74 had a dream about waste and recycling. He thought that by charging a deposit on beverage bottles, he could eliminate tons of
glass and plastic from the waste stream. As a student, he began lobbying for the bill, pursuing it after graduation until it became law in 1976. Says Loring, “I had the freedom at COA to do organizing while I went to school. Equally as important, COA encourages us all to examine the interconnectedness of systems and to collaborate with people who share a vision to work for positive change. This victory is simply an extension of that vision.”
end of term madness
By Naveed Davoodian ’10
s the spring term and the 2006–2007 academic year come to a close, students rush to complete extended homework, critical papers and final projects before week ten’s end. Over-stressed, under-rested and flying on caffeine, the last weeks of the year bring out the idiosyncrasies characteristic of the average COAer. The following documents one investigator’s journey into the end of term madness:
A
Transfer students Sam MillerMcDonald ’08 and Dan RuetersWard ’08 distract themselves from their studies.
Matt Maiorana ’10 happily decides to put himself out of the week ten misery by bludgeoning himself into unconsciousness.
Elizabeth Nappi ’08 spends her nights contemplating the phallogocentric writings of Jacques Lacan.
Casie Reed ’10, in sleep-deprived hallucination, attempts to distinguish between a delicious popsicle and her water sample for Don Cass’s environmental chemistry class.
Michael Griffith ’09 takes a time-out to design the new college logo. Brett Ciccotelli '09 strikes a pose....
COA | 5
COA BEAT
Notes from a Watson Year “Untold Stories, Unseen Lives: Life Through the Eyes of Street Children”
Photo courtesy of Nikhit D’Sa
By Nikhit D’Sa ’06
One of the students came to the Youth Wellness Center this morning with a swollen eye. Her left eye was bloated shut. I couldn’t even see her eyebrows. In the group session with her peers, she insisted that a bee had stung her, but later I found out that it was a token from a boyfriend’s beating the night before. I was stunned. I did not know what to say to her. She was so nonchalant, as if it were a normal everyday thing and I could not comprehend what it must be to live like that. I finally managed to mumble, “So did you hit him back?” She looked at me and smiled, “Of course.” For the last twelve months I have been on a Watson fellowship, collecting the stories and photographs of street children in Ireland, Fiji, Ghana and Jamaica. In this project, “Untold Stories, Unseen Lives: Life Through the Eyes of Street Children,” I worked through nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to get to know street children, spending months on the streets with the adolescents. Though I was surrounded by a wealth of information and an army of social workers, no one could prepare me for the challenges I would face. For example, the NGO I worked with in Spanish Town, Jamaica, ran an intervention pro6 | COA
Nikhit D’Sa ’07 with children from Jamaica during his Watson Fellowship year.
gram for at-risk youth who live on the street, have substance abuse problems or are deemed social misfits. I was in charge of a discussion group about issues that ranged from sexual intercourse and relationships to violence and drug abuse. I was exuberant: I could spend umpteen amounts of time talking to the adolescents at the youth center. While not all the students were street children, it was still a fascinating opportunity to learn about at-risk behavior in Jamaica. But after my first discussion group, I was left speechless by a class characterized by misbehavior, random outbursts of rage and snide comments about everything I did. I felt like I was in a Hollywood movie about a novice teacher thrown into a classroom of inner-city youth who go out of their way to make the teacher’s life hard. I even rented a few of these movies in the hope of getting some ideas. But no cheesy movie would help me deal with the problems that restricted me from actually knowing the students and conducting my research. Intimidated and frustrated, I had to come up with my own methods to connect with the youth.
COA BEAT I found my answer in the 2007 Cricket World Cup taking place in the Caribbean. I started posting scores and talking about players and teams; soon enough, some of the students started contributing, disagreeing with me. After the early exit of India (my home country) from the cup, the students had the upper hand, which proved to be the turning point. My country’s humiliation got them talking about why they, the West Indies, deserved to win. I took this opportunity to talk about the differences between my culture and theirs. Surprisingly, they thoroughly enjoyed this and started bringing in discussion topics like arranged marriages in India and the practice of voodoo in Jamaica. Gradually, I began talking about growing up in India and my second-hand experiences of what life on the streets was like. I also talked about my friends who have substance abuse issues. Knowing that ten thousand miles away there were youth who had the same problems got the adolescents to open up about their lives. Over the next few weeks, I heard some disturbing stories about child abuse but also shared games of table tennis and cricket. In retrospect, I did morph into one of the Hollywood movie characters in my own way. This ability to connect with the adolescents allowed me to leave Jamaica, and the Watson year, with some fascinating experiences that will keep me thinking as I head to a graduate degree in developmental psychology. Here is my favorite from my time in the Caribbean: “I love girls! I love the way they smell, the way they talk, the way they walk, the way they eat.” I looked at Andre. From the very first time I met him, I was struck by his energy and enthusiasm. He was always willing to go on adventures, talk about himself and crack jokes about his problem with drugs. Andre, sixteen, had a home in one of the ghettos around Kingston but had bouts of street life when he was in one of his drug binges or when his mother threw him out of their ramshackle home for stealing her day’s wages to score cocaine.
“What else do you love?” I asked after about an hour of this. Andre looked disappointed. I had stolen the high that comes from talking about girls. “Well...” he said in his thick Jamaican accent, “I love music—come, I’ll show you.” He bounced to his feet and ran down a side street lined with cardboard boxes. He stopped halfway up this narrow alley, raised his hands in a gesture of welcome and exclaimed, “Welcome to the home of Andre.” He moved aside a few clothes drying on the box and motioned for me to sit. He took a seat next to me and started rummaging in the plastic bag that held his possessions. Over the next few minutes he emptied his entire bag. In front of us stood a pile of junk that ranged from beer bottles and soda cans to a metal sheet, a canvas painting pulled taut over a bowl, and a genuine harmonica. “You ready?” he asked. For the next half hour, Andre jumped and bobbed and weaved and danced. He sang and whistled and beat boxes and played the harmonica. He rapped and tapped and jangled his way through song after song of his own Jamaican rap music. “Where did that come from?” I asked when he was finally done. He laughed, “Well, whenever my mom throws me outta the house I don’t have a TV to watch and so I need to make my own rap. You like them?” “Yeah!” I said truthfully. “Do you want to be a rap star?” “Yeah,” he said as he packed the instruments back in his bag. “One day you will be watching TV somewhere in the world and you will see me on MTV.” We started walking out of the alley. “So you write these songs because you want to be on TV and be famous and get lots of money?” I asked in a presumptuous tone. “No,” he said, “I write my rap to get the girls.” He laughed, “Have I told you I love girls?”
Nikhit D’Sa ’06 has just entered Columbia University’s Teachers College for an MA in developmental psychology, focusing on the psychological impacts of at-risk behavior among adolescents. His tuition will be covered by a highly competitive Jack Kent Cooke scholarship.
COA | 7
COA BEAT
From Red to Green: China’s New Revolution? COA professors attend Eco Summit in China dents) have been drawn into the center stage of an “China,” say College of the Atlantic professors event of this scale. At the front of the main assemRichard Borden and John Anderson, “is discoverbly hall, an expansive backdrop displayed an image ing ecology.“ of the ecological future, with SHE fourth on the When China opened its doors to the West in masthead. Human ecology is coming of age! 1972, ping-pong and pandas were the driving symbols. The new keys to China’s future are capitalism Anderson was a member of the summit’s interand it seems . . . ecology! As Beijing prepares for national scientific committee and presented “The the 2008 Olympics, it is refashioning itself as a Challenge of Landscape Sustainability in a world leader in both. Buildings and commerce Changing World.” Borden, executive director of have exploded. So has landscaping. Beijing wants SHE, chaired the “Education for Sustainability” to be a great new city; it also wants to be a green symposium, in which higher education models city. Roadsides are being lined with trees, parks are from Europe, Asia, North and South America and being sculpted in and around the towering new Australia were presented and discussed. building complexes. In the center of it all, Beijing A high point for COA’s delegation was a planwill have the largest urban forest in the world. ning round-table with the presidents and execuBorden and Anderson were tive directors of ESA, BES, the in China last May as delegates International Association of to the Fourth International Eco Ecology and other sponsoring Summit: Ecological Complexbodies. One-quarter of the ity and Sustainability. The conorganizations present deference, sponsored by the clared “human ecology” as Chinese Academy of Sciences, part of their mission; ESA is was led by Rusong Wang, curnow considering a Human rent president of the EcologiEcology Section within the Richard Borden (center) and John Anderson (right) cal Society of China and cham- greet Alpina Begossi of Brazil at the Fourth society—hopefully in time for pion of its eco-cities move- International Eco Summit: Ecological Complexity and the 2008 ESA meeting. ment; it was co-sponsored by Sustainability, held in Beijing, China. Begossi is curAt the end of the conferrent president of the Society of Human Ecology. thirty of the leading internaence, Borden was asked to tional ecological organizations, including the Ecoapply his expertise in environmental psychology logical Society of America (ESA), the British as part of team of ecologists and city planners Ecological Society (BES), the Scientific Committee evaluating ten ecological restoration sites in the on Problems of the Environment, the East Asian Mentougou district. This is a remote, rural part of Federation of Ecological Societies, and the InterBeijing, heavily mined for coal and limestone for national Association of City and Regional Planners. nearly a thousand years. The district’s 230,000 peoFor six days, more than 1,400 leading environple live with some 425 collapsed lime pits and mental scientists from seventy nations focused on nearly twice as many major cracks in the surface of the relationships among humans and their overall their land. For five years, China has been restoring impact on ecologies in a range of scales and setthe blight, turning old mines and limestone pits tings. The summit’s theme—sustainability— into parks, even reconstructing a river, all in the resonated with COA’s increasing emphasis on the hopes of making the region both attractive and relationships between human ecology and sustainaccessible. When the group returned to the ability. But this was the first time COA and SHE (of conference, each member gave reports via simulwhich Anderson and Borden are both past presitaneous translation to an assembly of district 8 | COA
COA BEAT commissioners, project leaders and television reporters. Borden, who had last visited China in 1994, was impressed. “I knew that China’s growth story was beginning to discover an environmental momentum,” he said. “But if China makes the right choices—if it sets high miles-per-gallon emissions standards for its automobiles, for instance—it could be world-changing. “Ecology is more than a science,” Borden adds. “It has to do with inspiration. People are not only moved by economics and science, there are social, aesthetic and spiritual values. Fixing a broken landscape is also re-humanizing it. The landscapes I visited in China are clear articulations of people getting deeper meaning from ecology and human ecology.” ~ John Anderson and Rich Borden
Rich Borden and John Anderson in the Forbidden City.
Rich Borden Holds First Rachel Carson Chair Rachel Carson, biologist, ecologist, eloquent writer and public citizen, is often called the founder of the modern environmental movement. Surely, she is one of COA’s guiding spirits. In the summer that marked the centennial of her birth, COA announced the creation of the Rachel Carson Chair in Human Ecology. Rich Borden, who joined the faculty in 1979 and served as academic dean for twenty years, is the first holder of this chair, to be given to “an outstanding faculty member working in service to people and the environment who has made notable contributions to COA’s mission through excellence in teaching and scholarly creativity.” Says Ken Hill, COA’s academic dean, “Rachel Carson and Rich Borden are cut from the same cloth. They are highly articulate, broadly educated, passionate about the world, concerned about human influence and convinced that education is the key for meaningful change. These two idealists envision a beautiful and complex world. They know that there is not a quick fix to the multitude
of issues that face the planet—but both see working on these problems as a source for a meaningful life.” Borden studies the relationship between mind and nature. Having obtained a PhD in psychology from Kent State University, Borden took a postdoctoral fellowship in animal behavior and ecology from Ohio State University before hearing that a truly interdisciplinary college had formed that was focused on linking humans and the environment. Borden came East. In addition to serving as dean from 1984 until 2004, Borden is co-founder and past president of the Society for Human Ecology and continues to serve as its executive director. “Recognition and appreciation of Rachel Carson by COA is obviously fitting,” says Borden. “We all owe a great deal to her wisdom and courage. Her way of seeing the world, her concern for the environment and her approach to education were all spot on with the mission and practices of the college.” To assist with the $224,000 still needed to complete the funding goal for the Rachel Carson Chair in Human Ecology, call the Development Office at 207-288-5015. COA | 9
COA piloted a college class for advanced high school students this summer. The eleven students spent ten days traveling around four islands. With COA faculty members John Anderson, John Cooper, Sean Todd and Karen Waldron, and a host of helpers, students plunged deep into human ecology, studying navigation, taking bird censuses, determining the darkness of the night sky, viewing whales, discussing literature, playing keyboard, writing human ecology essays, even creating videos. Whew. The verdict? Human ecology rocks. Make it a longer session next time! Stay tuned: www.coa.edu/islandsthroughtime
File Photo
Islands Through Time
www.coa.edu/islandsthroughtime
Great Lakes of Africa Merit Scholarship Program Photo of Patrick Uwihoreye by Donna Gold
New scholarship offered to student from Africa’s Great Lakes District A little over a decade ago, Patrick Uwihoreye ’06 left his homeland of Rwanda. Trudging across the mountains by foot, eating what he could, the boy lost everything in what he recently described as “one of the most brutal ethnic conflicts of the last century.” On September 9, Uwihoreye returned to College of the Atlantic decked in a shirt and tie, an investment banker working for a top-tier New York City financial corporation. In a moving speech, Uwihoreye, who attended COA on a Davis United World College scholarship, told a group of UWC supporters that he has never yet returned to Rwanda. This fall, he does plan to visit, flying in by plane. In his hand will be a scholarship offer to his alma mater for another young person from his homeland. Samuel M. Hamill, Jr., chair of COA’s board of trustees, has announced that he will fund a full, four-year scholarship to COA each year for a person from the “Great Lakes” region of Africa—the countries of Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Kenya. The scholarship—which Hamill and Uwihoreye discussed extensively—is intended to leverage the college’s current Davis UWC Scholars Program, expanding internationalism at the college. Said Hamill, “It’s rewarding to see a recent COA graduate take the lead in arranging for another student to receive the same benefits that provided for his education and set his career path.” “It’s doubly rewarding to know that Mr. Uwihoreye’s initiative helps to fulfill the purpose of multiplying the benefits of the Davis United World College Scholars Program,” Hamill added. The Davis program funds scholarships at select US colleges for students attending a UWC (high schools offering the international baccalaureate in a dozen nations). COA currently has 46 students from the program, along with five additional international students not connected with the program. This year’s COA student body represents 39 nations. Speaking about the aromatic smells and the green mountains of his homeland, the young banker said he looked forward to sitting by a bonfire and sharing his experiences with his countryfolk when he returns to oversee the first round of applications. Echoing Hamill, Uwihoreye said of the Davis scholars program, that by bringing young people together from around the world, people come to know each other’s lives and share a sense of justice and a global sense of belonging. “It sounds like mission impossible, but with the work that the Davises have done, it is totally achievable.”
10 | COA
Inset of Kaitlin Palmer by Toby Hollis; humpback whale photo courtesy of Allied Whale
COA BEAT
Summer Songs Kaitlin Palmer ’07 analyzes the sounds of the humpback whale By Donna Gold
Every afternoon last spring, unearthly sounds came from Sean Todd’s office, across the hall from my own. Deep, bellowing sounds. Grunts— melodic ones. Haunting calls that sounded as if they came from the depths of the planet. In a sense, they did. These were humpback whale calls collected from the Gulf of Maine. Over and over again, Kaitlin Palmer ’07 would play back these calls, using specialized computer programs to identify and analyze the various sounds as part of her senior project, “Humpback Whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) Vocalizations in Gulf of Maine Summer Feeding Grounds.” The calls that Palmer listened to were captured by two acoustic monitors equipped with hydrophones, preamplifier, computer, disk drive, batteries, acoustic transponder and more, designed and supported by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and sunk a few meters off the ocean floor. For eleven weeks during the 2006 summer feeding season, the monitors recorded what they heard. As the whales left for their winter breeding grounds, the monitors were retrieved via an acoustic signal that severs an anchoring tether, causing the buoy to “pop up” to the surface for data retrieval—hence the name, “pop-up buoy.” Working closely with Todd and others at Allied Whale, Palmer determined a number of parameters to measure each call, including timing, fre-
quency and duration. The calls peaked around midnight with the fewest from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.— an interesting contrast to a 2005 study that found more vocalizations during the day than at night. Palmer also found that 34 percent of the total sample came from two days, July 14 and 15; these days also produced the highest diversity of calls—more than a thousand calls of twelve distinct types— including one quite suggestive of singing. So, what are these sounds about? Are the whales calling to each other, singing for pleasure, trying to flush out prey? Are they merely digestive? Or is there something entirely different going on? The answer may be a long way off, but Palmer’s senior project offers the beginning of a baseline repertoire for the North Atlantic humpback whale feeding-ground vocalizations. Palmer is continuing her work with the sounds in each of two locales during the summer of 2007, allowing her to approximate where it was produced. Combined with expanded observations, Palmer hopes that when she analyzes this summer’s collection, she’ll be able to connect location and behavior to the sounds. Come November, she’ll present her work at the Society for Marine Mammalogy’s Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals in South Africa, then begin applying to graduate school. COA | 11
DONOR PROFILE
THE DREIER SCHOLARSHIPS: A LEGACY OF SPIRIT By Donna Gold
Isa and John Dreier
Facing page: John and Isa, Fernald Point, c. 1975 acrylic on oil
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M
ention John Dreier’s name to any participant in COA’s early days and the response is, “John was a hero.” Dreier was one of COA’s first trustees, serving from 1973 to 1994, and as board chair from 1976 to 1978. But it was after the devastating fire of 1983 that John Dreier earned his special COA halo: he made sure that COA continued. Dreier was a diplomat who rose to being ambassador to the Organization of the American States before teaching at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. His wife, Louisa Cabot Richardson Dreier (called Isa), was a joyous painter and a founding student at Bennington College, entering in its first class of 1932. Upon Dreier’s retirement, the couple moved to an historic family home on Fernald Point, spending increasingly extended time in Maine. “Both of them loved young, interesting, bright people,” says son John Dreier. “They were very excited about people who had creative ideas, who were doing something out of the mainstream. And both loved nature.” The fit between the Dreiers and the college was so
strong that when the Dreier children—John, Susan and Alexander—sought to honor their parents after they died (John in 1994 and Isa in 1995), College of the Atlantic was the only choice. Still, the Dreier family didn’t know quite how they would make this memorial. They talked about a tree, a plaque, a bench. The aha moment came when Susan Dreier, who has a house on Mount Desert Island and stays connected to the college, attended a COA graduation. As honors were awarded in memory of teachers who had passed on, she realized that an annual scholarship could bestow their parents’ enthusiasm upon each new generation of students, while also genuinely helping out the college the Dreiers so loved. Ultimately, the family decided to offer two scholarships. The Isa Dreier Scholarship is given to a COA student who “embodies the spirit of joy in the arts.” The John C. Dreier scholarship is given to a junior “who has shown leadership in building community spirit both on campus and in the college’s surrounding communities.“ The minute he heard about the scholarship, recalls son Alexander Dreier, “I said, ’Absolutely.’ COA is a fabulous place and a wonderful institution. This gift honors my father’s deep connection, and I think the kind of place that it is was close to my mother’s soul as well.” The sense of rightness was underscored by the stories Susan Dreier hears when she visits COA. “They tell me that my father really ’got it.’ He embodied what COA was about.” Actually, the connection might possibly go the other way. Whether as a trustee, a teacher of international affairs or as a deep believer in the All College Meeting, John Dreier was a powerful listener. Says Kaelber, “He was just as interested in what an eighteen-year-old would say as a sixtyyear-old.” In this way, muses Kaelber, he may have
steered the college toward its essential democracy of listening to all—not just giving opinions. “His manner rubbed off on us at the college.” Then came the fire. Founding faculty member and former president Steve Katona remembers a meeting on the back porch of Turrets while the old Kaelber Hall still smouldered. John Dreier stood up, says Katona, “and without any hesitation, without any other sense or feeling, said, ’Of course we are going to continue.’ There was never any doubt in his mind. And if there was in any other minds, after that we never heard about it.” As John Dreier led by listening and challenging, Isa Dreier offered a model of genuine life engagement. “She was essential, sacrilegious, playful, artistic—very much a part of the same spirit,” says Susan Lerner, also an early faculty member. While John Dreier would come to school dressed in statesmanlike tweed, Lerner remembers Isa Dreier’s lavender suit and matching hat. “We would sit together at events, chuckling in the background. She had big warm, eyes that twinkled so magnificently, a sense of warmth and positive energy.” Her art, compiled in a catalog that is available in the COA library and through the Development Office, reflects Isa Dreier’s pleasure in nature and everyday life. Her paintings show John Dreier cutting wood, the family’s laundry on the line, her beloved gardens. Notes COA trustee and Susan Dreier’s childhood friend, Phyllis Anina Nitze Moriarty, now a specialist in medieval manuscript illumination, “She was ethereal, gifted as a painter, funny, clever, shy, and had a wonderful sense of color.” “COA brought out the best of them,” adds Moriarty, who holds a PhD in art history. “Her creative spirit could flourish here, and so could his. This scholarship was intended to remind students to hold on to their dreams.” COA | 13
COA Alumna Heads for the National Stage Chellie Pingree ’79 is on the move in Maine By Donnie Mullen ’97
t home in an old white farmhouse a stone’s throw from the ferry landing on Maine’s North Haven Island, Chellie Pingree ’79 serves pancakes to her daughters Hannah and Cecily over a black slate countertop that could be a century old. As she drinks coffee from a Ball jar, Pingree is playfully maternal with her grown daughters (son Asa lives in New York City), chatting about the wheat allergy that she and Hannah share, Cecily’s brood of turkeys, the day’s headlines—read aloud by Maine District 36 State Representative Hannah. They seem to genuinely enjoy each other’s company.
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Mainers will remember Pingree most recently for her determined, if unsuccessful, run against incumbent Senator Susan Collins in 2002— Pingree’s drive and her “of the people” message turned what most initially deemed a lost cause into one of the most watched Senate races in the nation. Previously, she was a popular state senator who held the District 21 seat from 1992 to 2000, rose to the rank of Senate Majority Leader, and was prevented from pursuing a fifth term by term limits. Over the last four years, she directed Common Cause, a non-partisan nonprofit based in Washington, DC, concerned with promoting a properly-run democracy. Currently, Pingree’s name has reemerged in Maine as she sets her sights on the representative seat for the First Congressional District. The current representative, Democrat Tom Allen, is stepping down to run against Senator Susan Collins.
Tools to promote change As a politician, Pingree draws upon the skills she learned from her thirty-five years of island life. Yet another considerable influence came from enrolling in a brand-new academic institution that championed student participation as a founding principle. COA, she says, gave her the tools necessary to promote change in the world. “In retrospect, I didn’t realize how interested I was in the process of democracy,” says Pingree. “COA fed interests that I didn’t know I had—that led to everything else.” In 1971, fresh out of high school, sixteenyear-old Rochelle “Chellie” Johnson (she changed her first name to Chellie in 2000) came to North Haven from Minnesota with a group of friends to visit her friend Charlie Pingree. She never left. Four years later, Charlie and Chellie married, and eventually had three children (they divorced in 1994). Having visited the college before it even started, Pingree applied to COA’s inaugural class, thinking she’d become a science teacher on the island. She wrote her application on the back of a sheet cut from a roll of sardine wrapper paper. Although Pingree was identified as a great match for the school, it was suggested that—as result of her early graduation from high school—she acquire some college credit before entering COA. She accepted the offer as a personal challenge. “That made me really want to go,” she laughs. She took English and science courses at the University of Southern Maine and was admitted to the college’s second class.
“In retrospect, I didn’t realize how interested I was in the process of democracy... COA fed interests that I didn’t know I had—that led to everything else.”
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File Photo
North Haven, Maine
While at COA, Pingree studied biochemistry, environmental law, plant science and business. She became botanist Fred Olday’s assistant in the greenhouse and later studied farming under the noted four-season organic farmer and former trustee, Eliot Coleman. As her interest in plants and how things grow flourished, her focus shifted from teacher to farmer. Meanwhile, she was an eager participant in the All College Meeting that governs the school. “We were always in some kind of debate,” recalls Pingree. Whether it was about what was allowable on campus or where students could live, she realized that when students spoke, the administration actually listened. “If we protested the president, he felt really bad,” she smiles. “I got this great fundamental education,” she adds. “My classes really did integrate into what became my life, which in many ways has been that of a generalist, interested in how decisions get made, in how systems work and in the process of governing.”
Farmer, entrepreneur, public servant Pingree returned to North Haven with the vision of becoming a farmer and was soon running an organic vegetable and dairy farm. After a few years, her enterprising spirit transformed the farm into a knitting company that would eventually blossom into North Island Designs. She employed local women to design and knit sweaters that were sold in an island-based shop. Sales quickly spread across the northeast. With an eye on increasing wages and employing more people, Pingree expanded the business by creating knitting kits and publishing pattern books for a national market. Pingree authored five of the books herself, colorfully lacing them with her essays of island life. She ran the business for twelve years and cites the experience as fostering her interest in economic development. 16 | COA
Inspired by the example of participatory governance at COA, Pingree started getting involved in the governance of her island home. She began speaking up at town meetings—everyone attended—then decided to get her feet wet with a run for tax assessor, a job no one else wanted. Over the years, she became a planning board member, school board chair and ambulance attendant. She founded the Arts and Enrichment Fund for the island school and helped to found the economic development nonprofit North Haven Development Corporation. Her interest in politics remained strictly local until one day in 1991 when she and teenage Hannah attended a political event in Portland that changed her path. The speaker was former Democratic Congresswoman Pat Schroeder of Colorado, who emphatically spoke about the shortage of good people in politics. Pingree thought of her school board work on North Haven, of how people with varying perspectives were able to produce good decisions. Just as she was considering this, a Democratic Party loyalist approached her, drumming up candidates for the upcoming season. How could she possibly run for office? She was going full steam with her business and raising a family. Yet something resonated.
Photo by Donnie Mullen
“Hannah,” she turned to her daughter, “what do you think?” “Mom, you should go for it!” was the reply. And that she did.
Mother and daughter politicians at home on North Haven. Hannah Pingree is in her third term as representative from Maine District 36. She is also Maine’s House Majority Leader.
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Maine Rx Pingree’s first campaign was as grassroots as they come. She knocked on five thousand doors during what she calls “that incredible political year.” Her opponent was well liked, but a debate foible on his part became a turning point. He labeled Pingree “Alice in Wonderland,” questioning the validity of North Haven’s economy, which resounded as laughable when held against Pingree’s successful North Island Designs. Word spread fast. When she returned home, supporters held up “Welcome to Wonderland” signs. Although Pingree hadn’t planned for a career in politics, her dogged nature, the genesis of her leadership voice at COA, years of involvement with the North Haven community and her knack for relating small-town Maine to larger issues, form a sequence that feels genuine, as if the sheer will of the universe set her into her role as a public servant. Now, having gained the skills and experience to be successful in a legislature, she feels obligated to continue the work. “I’m not interested in the title,” she says, “only in what I can do with the job.” In the Maine Senate, Pingree was best known for her attention to health care. In 2000, she worked tirelessly to pass Maine Rx, a groundbreaking bill that forced drug companies to negotiate prescription drug prices with the state. The pharmaceutical lobby challenged the law— arguing that a preauthorization clause could limit Medicaid patients’ access to drugs—and won an injunction that postponed the bill’s 18 | COA
implementation. An appeals court then reversed the injunction—a decision that was later upheld by the United States Supreme Court. Maine Rx also generated grumbling at the federal level. “The Department of Health and Human Services didn’t want to see states thinking creatively about how to expand Medicaid access,” recalls Pingree. Finally, in 2004, a revised version of the bill—Maine Rx Plus— was made available to an estimated 275,000 eligible residents. Pingree also helped organize bus trips to Canada so Mainers could buy prescription drugs for prices far lower than what was available instate, sometimes at a tenfold savings. She continues to be amazed that the United States is the only Western nation that doesn’t negotiate pricing with drug companies. “It’s like sitting on an airplane and you’re the only one paying full price,” she notes.
Standing for what she believes in Pingree has a knack for passing progressive legislation. In 1998, she championed a bill that forced corporations to make public any tax breaks or subsidies they received from the state. She later used the bill as a means to go after corporate tax shelters. This legislation and the Maine Rx law were both used as models by other states. “The democratic system is hungry for leadership,” says Pingree. If you “stand for what you believe in, people will be grateful that you stood for something”— even when your constituents don’t agree with you. Politicians have become known for their lack of backbone, she says, and she will have none of it. “Backbone usually means you have to stand up to somebody, even if it’s your own colleagues.” As a state senator, Pingree’s small town experience—where everyone plays a role in local government—stuck with her. “You have to be grounded somewhere when doing public office work,” says Pingree, who adds she always kept the thoughts of her neighbors in the back of her mind during her years in the legislature. It was her policy to explain her votes to constituents. They didn’t always agree with her, but she was often thanked for clarifying her reasoning, and she continued to hold her seat, though her district was 40 percent Republican, 40 percent Independent and 20 percent Democrat. For Pingree, dedication to her community is a recurring theme. Steve Katona, COA founding faculty member and former president, says that the same poise, confidence and leadership that has been Pingree’s signature as a politician was present when she was a student. “She is a paragon of how people should be involved in community,” he says. Katona recalls Pingree’s ability to engage with people who held
“It’s as if COA was the perfect college for me. It wasn’t just that they taught us this notion of human ecology and how everything is integrated, we were living it and actually had a way to effect change.”
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different perspectives than her own in a non-confrontational way. She genuinely wanted to learn something that she could incorporate into her own view. “I hope she runs for president,” he adds.
The call of public service Pingree says that she considered her legislative position as the closest thing to a calling she has ever experienced. She thrived on debate, on public speaking and on the regular contact with her constituents. It was difficult, requiring unconscionably long hours and a thick skin to deal with the requisite political fights and enemies, yet she still woke up excited to go to work every day. When term limits ended her service, she says she felt like she had been laid off. Pingree chose to work for Common Cause after the 2002 election because, “I wanted to stay in the political fight.” While at the helm, she was the public face for upholding a fair democratic system. Although she enjoyed the role and lauds the cause, ultimately she doesn’t want to run an organization, she wants to represent herself, and her constituents, as an elected official. Pingree’s vision for 2008 starts with the premise that Democrats will take back the White House and expand their majority in Congress. She sees Iraq and the environment as major issues. Opposed to the war from the beginning, she believes the United States’ international relations have to be restored and laments that the international community no longer considers the United States a moral authority. Our relationship with China, dependence on oil, food toxicity, climate change, farming, fisheries . . . her list goes on. “I’m very interested in state and local issues,” Pingree says, but she believes that the current political climate necessitates a national and international focus. Health care, she says, is like an eight-hundred-pound gorilla. “I’m tired of dancing around it. I don’t want it to distract us for another decade. It’s a non-debate. Just do it.” She’s comfortable supporting a single-payer system but noted that a majority of Congress will need to find common ground before headway is made. Yet Pingree is not afraid to push the issue. She cited the government’s current administration of Medicare—at a lower cost than private insurance—as proof that a wider-reaching health care plan could be federally overseen affordably. When held up against the war in Iraq, she says, the argument that we can’t afford national coverage is an obvious hypocrisy.
“You have to be grounded somewhere when doing public office work.”
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Creating policy is beyond smart ideas, it’s about garnering support from colleagues and the public, building buzz and following momentum. “There’s not one perfect formula for policy,” she notes, “it’s about persistence, strategy and being that nippy dog that won’t let go.” The successful passing of Maine Rx, she says, was connected to a story in the New York Times, saving the bill from a possible veto by the governor. “Knowledge is critical,” Pingree adds, “but understanding the process of change, getting along with others and working as an effective leader is paramount.” In 2008, it’s likely that the primary will be a more difficult race than the actual election. As result of the Maine Democrats not having a party boss, Tom Allen’s seat may bring as many as seven candidates. Only some 60,000 people will probably go to the polls, so the winner could be decided by a minimum of votes. But Pingree enjoys the constant conversation with voters that is the essence of campaigning. “I start in a good position. I have experience campaigning and raising money,” she says. “I’ve spent a lot of time in front of the media and my DC experience is a plus. I’ll work harder than anyone else.” Back on North Haven, Pingree stands to let out Willie, Hannah’s black lab, and continues talking. “It’s as if COA was the perfect college for me. It wasn’t just that they taught us this notion of human ecology and how everything is integrated, we were living it and actually had a way to effect change.” What she learned at COA continues to ring true: “I see the world as a system and we all play a role in that system.”
Donnie Mullen (’97) is a freelance writer and photographer living in midcoast Maine. Additional photos courtesy of Chellie Pingree.
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sea u from Gilded Age gatherings to COA campus center by Donna Gold
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rchins “W
hat joy it used to be to escape from the ever-increasing stress and turmoil of our winter home to the seagirt island of Mount Desert, where we finally built a summer residence at Bar Harbor on the shores of Frenchman Bay, after many conferences with our architect, that fine artistic spirit, Mr. Arthur Rotch, of Boston! I called our picturesque cottage (which went on from year to year expanding with our needs) Sea Urchins, partly to justify the avowed intention of teaching our lads to know and live the water life of the island and also because in the spot where Mr. Rotch drove the stake for the corner-stone of our dwelling we dislodged a large cache of sea urchins’ shells, left there by birds who had flown with them from the shore forty feet away. – Mrs. Burton Harrison (1843-1920) Recollections Grave and Gray, 1911
And so, in 1886, was born Sea Urchins, known to generations of COA students as Ryles, after its previous owners, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Ryle, recent home to the campus pool table in the Rathskeller. Sea Urchins is now under reconstruction as Deering Common, COA’s new campus center. Photo courtesy of Raymond Strout
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”
Photo courtesy of Bar Harbor Historical Society
With its exceptional stone entrance nook, wood-paneled walls, lighthouse stairwell and stage-like porch overlooking Frenchman Bay, Sea Urchins carries a storied history of parties attended by, among many others, the magazine impresario Conde Nast, conductor Walter Damrosch and Damrosch’s father-in-law, neighbor James Blaine, a United States Senator and Secretary of State. And yet, it took unusual vision, and almost sleight-of-hand creativity, along with flexibility and will—COA hallmarks all—to preserve this historic Rotch and Tilden building from the wrecking ball.
11th-hour save COA needed housing; Sea Urchins, with stairs everywhere, doors leading literally nowhere, seven level changes and a spongelike stucco exterior that seeped up moisture and held it in, was too eccentric, too far from code, to be useable for dorms. With palpable sadness, at a 2004 All College Meeting, the community voted to let it be torn down, allowing new, environmentally sustainable housing to be built in its place. Fast forward three years to the week before the college was scheduled to bring the Kathryn W. Davis Student Residence Village to the Bar Harbor Planning Board. Groundbreaking for the housing complex and the associated razing of Sea Urchins, was already scheduled. It was late on a Sunday night; Millard Dority, COA’s director of buildings and grounds, was looking at the Sea Urchins floor plans in his home office. He placed the broad pages on his floor. Was it the late hour? The angle at which the plans lay? Too much coffee? Suddenly Dority saw something he never before noticed: By removing and relocating the 24 | COA
Sea Urchins 1900; photo courtesy of COA
Rathskeller wing (a temporary student lounge project he had been working on with former trustee John Rivers, who now serves as counsel to the president on architecture), a number of the level changes in Sea Urchins would just go away. The building could become accessible—maybe it could be saved. Dority then met with Sarah Luke, associate dean of student life, to see if she agreed that Sea Urchins might become the other key piece of COA’s campus plan, a longed-for campus center with a café, dedicated offices for counselors, medical practitioners and COA student life staff. She did. It could also hold music practice rooms, senior project space. The elegant, wood-paneled first floor rooms could become COA’s living room, a place for students, faculty and staff to gather at any hour of day or night. Dority brought the idea to COA president David Hales. Hales—a deep believer in historic preservation—brought it to the family that had already made a significant donation to the campus center, which was to have been located on the south lawn, between Kaelber Hall and Turrets. The family was delighted. They’d much rather use their money to preserve a historic building while also delivering a campus center for COA. The trustees, too, were pleased. On July 28, 2007, COA’s board of trustees voted to proceed with the creative re-use of Sea Urchins as Deering Common, slated to open September 2008, along with the new student housing. How breathlessly the first owner of the building, Constance Cary Harrison—better known as Mrs. Burton Harrison—would have written about this last-minute save, this triumph of creativity!
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Toby Hollis Photo
Socialite, southern belle and novelist Harrison was a novelist, socialite and southern belle best known for two striking acts, and her marriage. As a teen-aged girl, she sewed one of the first three Confederate flags raised in battle. Soon after the war was over, she married Col. Burton Harrison, the private secretary to Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. The second act came in 1883, when Harrison was a member of New York society, raising money for the Statue of Liberty. She convinced Emma Lazarus to contribute a poem to the fundraising efforts for the Statue of Liberty. Lazarus resisted. According to Harrison, “She declared she could think of nothing suitable, was mutinous and inclined to be sarcastic, when I reminded her of her visits to the Russian and other refugees at Ward’s Island, the newly arrived immigrants whose sad lot had so often excited her sympathy. At once her brow cleared, her eye lightened. She became gentle and tender in a moment, and, going away, soon after sent me ’The New Colossus’ ”—the poem that now graces Liberty’s pedestal. The complexities and contradictions within Harrison’s life are certainly apt for a college of human ecology, a college that considers all sides of an issue and examines all assumptions. Yes, Harrison was a staunch Confederate supporter—but her maternal grandfather, Thomas, the ninth Lord of Fairfax, was the first gentleman in Virginia to manumit his slaves. A devout follower of Emanuel Swedenborg, the 26 | COA
Toby Hollis Photo
Swedish philosopher, scientist and Christian mystic, Fairfax is said to have taught each of his freed slaves a trade. The self-sufficient ones were sent to Liberia at his expense. Her grandfather on her father’s side was a nephew of Thomas Jefferson who married Jefferson’s ward. And listen to what Harrison has to say about meeting Abraham Lincoln: “Budding secessionist although I was, I can distinctly remember that the power of Abraham Lincoln’s personality then impressed itself upon me for a lifetime. Everything faded out of sight beside the apparition of the new President, towering at the entrance of the Blue Room. He held back the crowd a minute, while my hand had a curious feeling of being engulfed in his enormous palm, clad in an ill-fitting white kid glove. He said something kind to his youthful visitor, and over his rugged face played a summer lightning smile. We passed on, and I saw him no more till he drove past our house in captured Richmond, in an ambulance, with his little son upon his knee.” Harrison’s lively descriptions illuminate more than two dozen books and a volume of her memoirs, Recollections Grave and Gray, set primarily in Richmond during the Civil War. In it, she speaks of the war from a young Confederate woman’s perspective. She talks of parties peopled by such Confederate luminaries as Gen. Robert E. Lee and President Jefferson Davis—which may be how the young Miss Cary met Davis’s secretary, the New Orleans native and recent Yale graduate, Burton Harrison. But she also mentions beginning to write serialized romances for local magazines, and the hours spent in makeshift hospitals caring for the wounded of this wrenching war. When the war ended, many a southerner moved away from the ruined South, among them Burton Harrison, who studied for the New York bar and then took Constance Cary as his bride. She was not a beautiful woman. A contemporary biographer wrote of her, “So little distinction is there in her personal appearance that the passer-by would not look a second time at the middle-aged woman in the simple attire, yet such is her mingled grace and charm of manner that to see and know is but to admire with ever-increasing appreciation.” Burton Harrison eventually became something of a hi-tech lawyer of his day: secretary and counsel of New York’s first Rapid Transit Commission, as well as counsel to the Western Union Telegraph Company and the New York Telephone Company. Meanwhile, his wife stepped into New York society, studying singing, immersing herself in amateur theatrical events, serving on various charitable boards and resuming the writing career she had begun during the war, always under the name Mrs. Burton Harrison.
Clear, sparkling dialogue Though her plots were often formulaic, even wooden, Harrison’s prose glows. A contemporary critic, Henry N. Snyder, writing in 1903, commented, “For clear, sparkling dialogue—the real talk of real persons— Mrs. Harrison is unsurpassed among writers who are now doing fiction work. Certainly no other American writer makes dialogue sustain so important a relation to the story.” And clearly she loved the woods and brooks around Mount Desert Island, featured in at least one short story, “Golden-Rod: An Idyll of Mount Desert” and the novel, Bar Harbor Days. The latter begins at Duck Brook: The place was a deep dell between two wooded hillsides covered with last year’s leaves, and decked with ferns and vines and berries of the summer just passed. COA | 27
Toby Hollis Photo
Through this hollow ran a glorious mountain brook, icecold and sparkling from its parent lake above. Starting high amid the hills, it had stolen away under clumps of lady’s-slippers, ferns, and pitcher-plants growing strong and tall to shelter its vagaries, and dashed headlong down the rocks. Here and there its waterfalls would hush their tumult in deep pools where trout lurked, and at midsummer boys rejoiced to plunge in for a swim. Thence, parting in a hundred wilful streamlets, it coursed towards the sea, between the mossy rocks that lined its bed, reuniting to laugh, to fret, to foam, to tinkle, until the great deep silenced it forever. Rotch, the architect of Sea Urchins, joined with George Tilden in 1880 to create the firm Rotch and Tilden, which also designed St. Saviour’s Episcopal Church, in downtown Bar Harbor. At one time, there were twenty-one Rotch and Tilden cottages in Bar Harbor. Today, only seven survive. The firm also designed many buildings used for educational purposes, including the Meteorological Observatory in Milton, Massachusetts, the Wellesley College Art Museum, and Jesup Hall at Williams College. The firm was known for using native materials in a picturesque, even romantic manner, and for the richly varied treatments given to the interiors. Burton Harrison died in 1904. His wife lived on until 1920. Sea Urchins was her favorite place to write, and it was there, in 1911, that she completed her memoirs. The family connection to the island dwindled, however. One son, Francis Burton Harrison, became governorgeneral of the Philippines. After Harrison died, Sea Urchins was sold to Parker Corning, a congressman from Albany, New York, who was also a founder of the Albany Felt Company and a principal of Ludholm Steel. In renovating Sea Urchins for his own use, he involved Beatrix Farrand, who not only made plans for gardens surrounding the cottage, but 28 | COA
ventured some architectural ideas as well. The last owners, the Ryles, deeded it to the college in 1975. Adapting the historic Sea Urchins into Deering Common will further COA’s tradition of reusing historic properties—and continue the cultural energy of plays and readings that so engaged the Harrisons.
Triumph of human ecology
Toby Hollis Photo
“It’s what human ecology is about—building the new, preserving the old,” said trustee emeritus Cathy Ramsdell ’78, when she heard of the plans to cancel what would have been a brand-new $8.6 million campus center, in favor of historic reconstruction of Sea Urchins. “For 2.4 million—a fraction of the cost of the original campus center—we can adaptively reuse this beautiful, historic building and have the facilities we need, right in the heart of the residential part of campus, and through it truly embrace history.” With the help of Bar Harbor architect (and former COA faculty member) Stewart Brecher and architectural designer Barbara Sassaman ’78, the creative reuse will preserve such endearing historic details of the original Sea Urchins as the bricked-in entrance, the hefty beams, broad fireplaces and massive windows. Salvaged wood paneling will finish off sections of the remaining structure. The staircase tower will form special, circular spaces on each floor. With an elevator, regulation staircases and additional entrances, the building will be fully accessible. But the centerpiece will be the ground-floor lounge, with its paneled walls and brick terrace overlooking Frenchman Bay, as elegant and storied a hangout as any college student could hope to have. And when students gather for the informal talent evenings known as open mics, they’ll be playing their flutes and guitars where Walter Damrosch once performed, alongside poets and actors who graced the salons of Paris and stages of New York City. Furthermore, Deering Common will showcase the latest in the adaptation of green technology to historic reuse. All windows will be triple-paned, except for those of historic importance, which will be double-paned. Two inches will be added to the interior of every exterior wall, thus accommodating six-and-a-half-inches of insulation to better conserve heat, which will come via hot water heated by wood pellets. All energy used in the building will be renewable. Wall finishes will have few or no volatile organic compounds. All the college lacks now is for Mrs. Burton Harrison to stitch the COA logo on a flag to fly from the roof of her beloved Sea Urchins, soon to be renamed Deering Common, a task she would probably have taken up with great energy and an accompanying story or two.
This article could not have been written without the help of Jane Hultberg, Trisha Cantwell-Keene and Ingrid Hill of COA’s Thorndike Library.
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katrinazarate
From her senior project, “En-Visioning Art, Theory, and Literature”
I
n the morning when she awoke she saw the infection float by as black dots. A gray-to-black curtain falling in her left eye that blocked out everything but her own body. This curtain was her retina and each day she watched it lower as if it were the end of a play, the play of her vision. Being forced to stare at the theater of her own body made the world outside her harder to understand. When others would try to speak to her, her vision got in the way. The curtain of her body continually distracted and muffled the sounds of those outside. All she could do was to watch the fluids rush in and the retina detach, to look inward as the acts unfolded and the curtain came down. She decided to paint her eyesight, not what she saw but how she saw it. Whatever painting resulted would be tinged with her body. –KZ
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“Katrina Zarate’s study of vision, memory and blindness became a mixed-media installation that filled the Ethel H. Blum Gallery to overflowing last spring with original paintings, prose-poems, and the mechanisms of distortion that reflected her own encounter with optical dysfunction and recovery. Her works took the viewer into the crossroads of time and theory that lie behind the distorting eye, bringing us through eye damage to new levels of sight and insight.” ~Bill Carpenter, Advisor and co-teacher with Dru Colbert of the Spring, 2007 COA class, “The Eye and the Poet,” where parts of Zarate’s project were presented and refined.
Details from Katrina Zarate’s senior project; mixed media: painting, sculpture, writing, distortion
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catching the wind I
always refer to wrestling season as the dark age. It occurs during winter when there is minimal light. I walk to school in the morning as the sun rises and leave wrestling practice well after the sun sets, so I would hardly ever feel the sunbeams grace my skin. Maybe on a weekend if there wasn’t a wrestling tournament, but even so I would usually stay cooped up at home like an angry, emaciated hermit. Being with others who could be happy with their full bellies just pissed me off even more. In the darkness I am possessed with turning my faucet on high and constantly draining my body, sucking myself clean. Before winter clouds settle I am a lean one hundred thirty pounds, almost every ounce of it skin, bone, guts and muscle. Less than a week and a half into season, I am one hundred three pounds, every ounce of it pale skeleton. Pale except for violet raccoon rings around my eyes, dark bruises and deep red scratches all across my starchy skin. I even cut weight while I sleep. Before collapsing into bed, I slide on a pair of long underwear. And then I pull another pair of long underwear over that along with a pair of cotton socks. To this base-layer of insulation I add three pairs of sweatpants and three sweatshirts, the outermost a hoodie. Tightly tucking all but the hoodie under four or five waistbands I finish with two pairs of woolen socks over the cotton, a winter hat on my head with hoodie tied over tight and knit gloves on my hands so the small bubble of my face is the only skin exposed. I position my bed in the direct flow of the heat vent, not so close that the mattress blocks the stream of warm air, but just close enough so the stream pours from the vent and drifts over to engulf my body on its swirling journey to the highest reaches of my room. I cocoon my padded self inside a heap of thick blankets over flannel and lie wondering if sleep will ever smother the flames. This is easy weight loss, I shrink overnight. But my dreams are brilliant orange and yellow, purely embers, coals and flames, as if gazing into a wood burning stove. I dream Hell, but that seems reality right now, night or day, sleep or awake. And Hell is so intense I fall to only the superficial layers of sleep….
By Scott Beebe ’09
Facing page: Reunion, detail 8 x 4 x 3 feet deep, mixed media From the series Mythological Stages By Jason Harrington ’96
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I wake in the morning wearing a saline tepid pond. The wad of wool and cotton has swelled between one pound and two, leeching some of the depleted waters from my body. I strip the layers of clothes all at once, which takes much effort since all the elastic bands team against my jelly muscles. I make for the shower to rinse the cellophane sensation of cold sweat and evaporated salts from my skin. Cool, clear water streams over my face and runs little rivulets over my parched, splitting lips. My swollen sandpaper tongue tries to deceive me, and as dehydrated as I am, it takes my full and active concentration to keep my lips locked, to keep from drinking the water. If I fade from that concentration for an instant, my lips will open to allow that soothing, divine liquid to slip inside. Cutting weight is mind over body, mind away, banished from body. I step out of the shower and attempt to open my floodgates. Pushing as hard as I can in that special delicate way, I feel a spurt of thick, deep yellow urine expel. Its passing burns. I try to make myself shit. I push and push and push, grunting like a pig trying to fit his rotund body through the little square door of a chicken coop. But like the childhood toy with different shapes and a hammer, you can’t force a circle through a square and you can’t shit unless you eat enough for your body to find extra stuff it doesn’t need. Right now I could eat cardboard and Styrofoam and my body would utilize every nutrient, every molecule. Over in my parents’ bathroom I step on the scale with conservative anticipation. 108. I have to lose five more pounds for tomorrow’s meet, suck back down to 103. This realization relieves my metabolism; five pounds is a moderate weight to drop in a day. Gathering my books for school and
all my wrestling gear, I bypass the kitchen. I can’t face the temptation. If I go in there I know I’ll take a swig of orange juice or shove a handful of gummy bears into my mouth and if I taste a taste, I won’t be able to stop until I have a few tastes more. I walk to school against hostile winds, saturated with snow, overburdened with my pack of hardcover texts and wrestling gear. Every two steps it seems the wind blows me back one. My boots slip in the inches of slush and I watch them intently, for if I look up I’ll get a face full of cold, wet snow and some will probably blow down the neck of my shirt too. It will lodge between my chest and shirt and the cold will drip down my belly as it melts. By the time I reach school, my skin is dripping melt water and my jacket, pants and bags might as well be of a snowman built by automobiles spinning their tires towards a collective heap. My homeroom is on the third floor. I drag each foot slowly and deliberately up each of the seventy-two steps. I count each one in my mind, every ascent. Each one tortures my burning thighs and calves. My muscles burn for water, but all I can give them is more lactic acid. At the summit, my back hunches over, my shoulders hanging a foot beyond my toes. I reach my locker and shrug my shoulders, simply allowing my bags to slip off and crash on the floor. My body is dead worn and it’s not even first period yet. Classes pass in a dizzy haze, my jaw hangs loosely open, my eyelids half shut and my mind forgets to blink regularly, so my eyes fog over and I see everything through a rain-covered windshield. When lunchtime rolls around I go to the library. I would become miserable watching hundreds of fat, chubby kids shoving their greedy
“Right now I could eat cardboard and Styrofoam and my body would utilize every nutrient, every molecule.”
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mouths full of sandwiches and pizza and tacos, potato chips and fries, cookies and candy, guzzling juice, milk, and soda. Everyone whose ribs aren’t so prominent you could play the bones like a xylophone and whose cheeks aren’t so cavernous a mouse might find them a cozy spot to nest if their head was tilted sideways, is a bloated walrus to me. As soon as the day’s final bell rings I prepare myself for the whistles of my coaches, dreaded whistles that make me run, sprawl, shoot, perform countless other surprises. In the locker room I strip down and check my weight. I drifted two pounds during the day, rather substantial I’d say. At one hundred six, if I lose three pounds during practice I can gain a pound tonight, drift that pound overnight, and be back down to one hundred three by morning for weigh-ins. I’ll have to wear sweats for practice to lose three pounds, which I’m not fond of because I’d rather be able to focus on my technique than a fiery inferno. I wear my hoodie even, so I can trap all the heat trying to escape from my head. Wrestling stresses every muscle and even tiny movements in my dehydrated, emaciated state require tremendous effort and inspiration. I fucking hate my coaches for every whistle they blow, commanding me like a bumblebee drone to take another shot or lift my partner clear off the mat up and down, up and down and so on. Every second during practice I am ready to lie down and die, but something inside urges me on, although I’m really pissed for having to do so. My partner is a good partner too, he makes it hard for me; he makes me try with all I have every time. He’s detestable. So I fly at him in a carefully designed fury. I drive him down on the mat and when he won’t let me turn him I punch
him in the ribs. I crossface his nose and grind my forearm into his cheek. After two and a half hellish hours on the mat we clean up and head to the hallways to run. After practice on the mat I can’t believe there is anything left in me to run, but my body moves despite my disbelieving mind. We run up the hall, up the stairs, down the hall above and down the stairs in a continuous loop. We usually run about twenty minutes. I run the hardest and lap everybody, the faster kids only once or twice and the fatter kids enough to lose count. When my coaches decide we have run enough, they stop us one by one and I am usually the first allowed to stop since I run the hardest. But today the coaches have a different idea. After fifteen minutes, Coach Bauer begins to run with us. He is fresh since he hasn’t been running, practicing, and most notably, he doesn’t starve and dehydrate himself. The game today is this: when we pass Coach Bauer, we’re allowed to stop running and are done for the day. One by one the other kids gradually catch up to him. They haven’t been running as hard as me, so they burst with the last of their energy and reach him. By now though, I’m so empty it’s hard for me to get near him. When I do almost reach him, he speeds up a little and makes some distance between us. I push hard with any remaining energy and will I no longer have and get close again, but he speeds up even more. This silly game continues for about five minutes. My vision blurs to black and back again, then back to black. With every bound I expect my knees to give way and my body collapse on the hard linoleum floor. I never realized my wrestling coach was pure evil until now. I hope he trips and smashes his face on the fucking floor. But he does-
“Every second during practice I am ready to lie down and die, but something inside urges me on, although I’m really pissed for having to do so.”
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n’t falter, he maintains his twisted game. By now he’s let everyone else catch up to him, even our fat kid. They all look on as I throw each foot ahead of me, death on my face and desperation in my flailing limbs. I’ve had enough. I search deep inside and discover a hidden reserve of anger that fuels my stamina and I speed up. I get close and my vision gives way as my body focuses its energy to my legs and arms. I finally catch him right before a turn, but there’s nothing left in me to stop my momentum. I weakly raise my arms in front of me and close my eyes to brace for impact. My weakened arms do nothing but contract like accordions as I collide with the wall. The anger flows through me into the wall as I crunch and land on the floor. “Yeah I’m fine.” I don’t know if I think it or say it, and if I do say it who knows if there is enough strength in my voice for him to hear me. We jog slowly back to the rest of the team, who all lean exhausted against the wall. As the coaches give their final spiel about the meet tomorrow, I keep my hood pulled tightly over my head and pace back and forth, bounce up and down, trying to keep my sweat going to lose as much weight as I can. I have a little more energy now that practice is over and I can finally go home. We go back to the locker room and I strip off my sweaty clothes and step on the scale. One hundred two. Fuck yes! I lost four pounds during practice and I will be able to consume a little more tonight than I had originally planned. At home I fix some pasta. My body desperately needs the carbohydrates for some energy for tomorrow’s meet. I drain it viciously, trying to shake every last drop of water from the noodles. Every drop will add more weight, and it’s weight that I won’t really feel as I eat—wasted weight—
consumption without pleasure. I eat a bowl of pasta with just enough sauce to sense the taste. The pasta is probably three or four tenths of a pound. Now I need some protein. I take the path of liquid since that is all my body really wants. A glass of milk is about another half pound. I cherish every sip, quenching my parched mouth. I feel the cold of the liquid drain down my throat and pass through the veins of my chest. I feel it inside, traveling its path all the way to my belly. It is so good I can’t help myself from drinking more. I drink a whole Gatorade and guilt by gluttony consumes me all the while. I’m still thirsty but I can’t indulge anymore. That Gatorade probably pushed my weight above the limit. I check my weight on my parents’ scale. One hundred five. I won’t drift two pounds overnight, especially when I’m so emaciated and sucked out. So I draw a hot bath, steaming hot. I turn a portable heater on high and shut the door, turning my bathroom into a sauna. I put on a winter hat and dip my toe in the water. It burns so bad. I slowly immerse myself in the hot soup; my body boils but after a minute it just turns to hot. I soon start dripping with sweat in the steamy room. Once again I lock my lips or my mouth will start drinking the hot sweat as it drips down my face. Every second in the bath is torture. My body just can’t take the heat any longer. I go to my room, lie in front of the open window and cover my body with icepacks as the winter windows blow over me. The cold carries my imagination to images of the icy deserts of Heaven. In the morning I immediately strip and check my weight on my parents’ scale. If I’m over, I’m going to have to run their treadmill before I leave for school. But I’m dead on. The walk to school will probably even get me slightly under—which is
“Once again I lock my lips or my mouth will start drinking the hot sweat as it drips down my face.”
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good because our school nurse does the morning weigh-ins and she doesn’t let us drop our boxers anymore if we’re a point or two over. That happened once with our two hundred fifteenpounder and by God she made sure it wouldn’t happen again. I get to school at least a half hour before homeroom starts and sit in the main hall across from the locked nurse’s office. She doesn’t usually arrive until right before first bell, but I’m definitely going to be here the minute she gets in. After the morning weigh-in, we receive a threepound allowance to gain during the day before the meet begins and I’m fiending for some of my lunch and some juice like a doper locked in prison. My feet shake at the ankles like a pair of maracas and I grind my teeth loud enough to hear five feet away. Soon almost the whole team lines both sides of the hall where the expensive and superaccurate wrestling scale waits, cord ready to be jammed into the socket. We all watch intently down the far end of the hall that leads from the teachers’ parking lot and as soon as she turns the corner we jump like wild dogs on a piece of bloody raw meat. She comes down the hall and a euphoria of anticipation surges through my body. That bath last night left me really dehydrated; I could practically peel my whole lips right off. The nurse comes towards us, but suddenly she turns into the main office, probably checking her mailbox, that numb inconsiderate woman. If she were as half-starved as us she wouldn’t even have the energy to get out of bed and make herself some food. One minute she’s in there, then two, three—who’s she fucking talking to? The nurse needs to realize her priorities. Every second my blood boils another degree. I want to bust in the office and crack her head against a desk. I’d
probably drink the blood straight from her wounded forehead, I’m so thirsty. She pops back out with a handful of envelopes and flyers and walks to the office door. When I hear the click of the unlocking, all the violent pressure building in my veins releases. We all crowd the door trying to get through first, getting stuck and squeezing through the corporal blockade one at a time. We all pile in the back room and get undressed. It isn’t easy, a pack of wrestlers untying ties, unbuttoning shirts and untying nice shoes—our dress for meet days. There’s not much room and everyone’s bumping into each other, hopping on one leg trying to pull off the other pant leg. We race each other to be in the front of the line to weigh in so we can get back and dig into our food, still in our underwear. If we all weren’t in so much of a hurry this would go much quicker. We walk in our boxers to where the scale is, pushing and budging each other out of the way trying to get closest to the scale. But no one really bothers me. I’m cutting the most weight so I stand right in front while the others fight for positioning behind me. We hear the nurse from the other room, “You guys ready for me in there?” “Yes!” Another moment passes and she enters timidly with her notebook. I step on the scale. 102.9. I made it by a few drops of water.
“My feet shake at the ankles like a pair of maracas and I grind my teeth loud enough to hear five feet away.”
Scott Beebe wrote this piece as part of a longer autobiography written in the Winter, 2007 “Autobiography” class taught by Bill Carpenter. Jason Harrington is a professor and filmmaker teaching film and video at Framingham State College. An earlier piece in this series is on display in the stairwell next to COA’s Ethel H. Blum Gallery. Harrington recently screened his latest film, The Tree With The Lights In It, at COA’s Earth Day Alumni Film Festival. It can viewed online at www.digifestival.net. Or visit his website, www.sophiaproductions.com.
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We Started from Square One Excerpts from an oral history with founding faculty member Bill Carpenter Interviewed by Donna Gold
barren, crops won’t grow—a real environmental wasteland and the mysterious answer to why it was happening was in the human heart—it was something that humans had done wrong." DG: And so eventually you were hired. . . . And that was for the 1971 pilot program? BC: Yes. I was co-teaching with Sam Eliot. We taught Literature and Ecology in the old library, which was essentially a sun porch. The students had just said their names and suddenly Ed Kaelber’s cat rushed in with a chipmunk in its jaws. I jumped up, released the chipmunk, batted the cat a few times and sat down again. Half the students said, "You shouldn’t have done that." And half of them said, "That was great." And that was the first discussion of human intervention in nature that I know of at the college, based on a real world experience.
Photo by Donna Gold
DG: I was wondering how the early faculty shaped the school, and how you learned to teach human ecology?
Bill Carpenter had a tenure-track position at the University of Chicago when he heard about COA. Intrigued, he joined the 1971 summer pilot program, then took a leave of absence from Chicago to become one of COA’s four founding faculty members. He never left. Donna Gold: How did you hear about COA? Bill Carpenter: I read about it in the Maine Times. In the summer of 1970, they announced that a college was being founded for human ecology. What a concept. And I already worried that it was going to be a science school, so I wrote and said, "I hope that along with ecology, you are thinking of the humanities and of literature and how important they are." The upshot of that was a visit from Ed and Pat Kaelber in Chicago. Ed said, "How in the world would you connect literature to ecology?" And I said, "I would begin with Oedipus Rex. Look at the opening: the women can’t have children, the cattle don’t give any offspring, the land is 38 | COA
BC: Ed had the idea that the education would stem not from a theoretical matrix like "liberal arts," but would arise from real world problems. He called it "the art of acquisition of knowledge." The big thing we did, I think, was without ceasing to be a liberal arts college, to open the liberal arts up for further evolution. Then, in the summer of 1972, before the doors opened, the first faculty members were paid to be on campus together and plan—Linda Swartz, Dan Kane, myself and Steve Katona—without any students at all. With the others that were around that summer—Ed, Mel Cote, Sam Eliot—we hammered out a curriculum, a plan of approach, an educational philosophy. DG: Where did you start? BC: We started from square one and examined every single element of a college’s educational structure as it was brought back in. We considered everything. We considered not having any scheduled classes; the college would be more like a platonic institute in which students and teachers would meet up with each other on spontaneous occasions. That was hotly debated but lost out— we were not averse to normalcy if it was useful. When the students arrived—and these were thirty-two very strong personalities and gifted
students—they took a look at what the faculty had done and the first thing they said was, "Let’s revisit everything!" So the actual shape of the college was really more of an amalgamation of what we had conceptually worked out as faculty the first summer, and what the students brought in during those first ACMs, because there were tumultuous and frequent ACMs in the beginning. One group of students actually wanted to get credit for living in their apartment. They felt that the human ecology of their home was such a big challenge that it was credit-worthy. We had a many an academic policy meeting on that, and we decided yes, that they could. DG: And how did the sense of democracy begin at COA, the sense of equality? Who started the concept of ACM? BC: That was actually laid down in the first summer. In order to keep the students on an equal basis, ACM would be one person, one vote. We also decided that we didn’t want a curriculum with separate disciplines or a faculty with departments. We construed human ecology to mean the overlying equality of all parts of the institution. We wanted to horizontalize, to wipe out the hierarchy structure of the traditional university. The committee structure was a great part of this. All those committees enabled everyone to be involved and have an effective voice. DG: It sounds like what you call the democracy of the college—the interdisciplinary, non-competitive, no-ranks nature of the college—was all within the concept of human ecology? BC: Yes, we thought we were inventing human ecology and it seemed to confer a sense of equality. The old, orthodox liberal arts curriculum was basically saying, "This is what knowledge is, these are the seven official branches of knowledge." We began all over again with problems in the real world. And we also had an over-arching, intellectual theme. I don’t think any other experimental college tried that. DG: Did you ever find it intellectually limiting to have human ecology as COA’s mission?
who writes a sonnet or composes a sonata realizes the liberation of form. I think what we had done without really knowing it was given form to education, which was really suffering in its formlessness. It could not handle the crises of the time, the environmental crisis, the Vietnam crisis. DG: So did you ever try to define human ecology? BC: We knew right from the beginning that it would be to our advantage not to have it defined, to leave an air of mystery in it. It gave us an unsolvable theoretical problem to organize our school around, which has lasted till now. May it never be solved. DG: There’s something extremely poetic about having a college defined by a concept that’s not defined. Did it demand a new kind of teaching? BC: I still think it does. It demands a teaching in which immediately the teachers have to surrender their customary authority. Since at the time nobody held a degree in human ecology, every single student was on the level of every teacher. None of us had been trained as human ecologists; the education we didn’t have was what every student would be getting. So they were in a position to critique us, and they did! Nobody knew any more human ecology than anyone else, student or teacher. We were really co-learning. And I’m happy to say each year, "I don’t know anything about human ecology, let’s start over." DG: At the time, you had taken a leave of absence from Chicago. What convinced you to stay? BC: My own first classes. They were a joyous change from the University of Chicago, where the students were very good; but COA students were unconstrained. The unique views that they brought and papers that they wrote really snowed me. The first winter, we had been reading Othello in one of my classes and a student wrote a paper showing that Othello and Iago—those eternal enemies—were two halves of the same person. This was an eighteen-year-old COA freshman, Fran Pollitt ’77. I’d never received a paper like that at the university. When I got this paper I said, "I’m staying here."
BC: Any artist knows that limitation and expansion are the same thing. The more you limit the form, the broader you can expand the content. Anybody COA | 39
poetry
craig kesselheim
’76
The day the lure of returning broke Craig Kesselheim ’76 lives with his family in Southwest Harbor and works on secondary education reform for the George Mitchell Institute in schools throughout the state. His wife, Beth Dilley, who teaches at Mount Desert Island High School, was diagnosed with leukemia in 2000 and is approaching her fifth year since receiving a stem cell transplant. Their daughter is in college in New York, and their son will graduate from high school in the spring of 2008.
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When I turned off the track that pierced the woods There was the forest itself. When I became still, crouched on a giving moss floor, stopped counting minutes, pulses, intervals the micro-moths on their business, the ants in their rigid trails, the impossible spruces only high as shoes, were all. When I stayed beyond the patience of body, the lure of returning, there was a meal of bones, tissues there was burrowing, egg-laying, feasting, fighting. It was no news at all. No hand, no lightness, no dream, no angel intervened and I was returned, pulled by the lure that pierced this sensible life.
We need to be out here We need to be out here You say on our walk Because we are animals You and I. Our bond has been the high cairns inukshuks, loons in arctic colors muskoxen (their woolen skirts wild in a tundra wind) the scrape of leaf on skin in deathfall the scared shouldering over mountain passes dangerous with skree, hail, wind Feeding our selves on water, cheese, each other. Naming, loving, knowing the world, then seeking other corners. Our dog knows this woods road Walk ahead, you say to me now Our dog runs up and back, crossing the space between us (Whom to shepherd?) Our separation lengthens Still the one road is our road I feel as the dog does Our bond This thing that has slowed you—this cancer would have taken an actual animal by now.
Purpose On my bicycle’s passage the old woman in her yard is all I see Not noting my own importance Inattentive to where my career may lead and what its swath define She has ventured far upheld on a pronged cane well off the paved walk There is a sycamore leaf Alone It fouls her pristine lawn. A mile on, briefcased and creased nearly home I see her yet The cane knocks the leaf The leaf skitches on its points catches and settles Her feet shuffle twice more This is what she is doing today.
But not you. My love. My wilderness partner. We need to be out here.
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C L A S S N OT E S
Josephine Todrank ’76 is back in Maine and will start a fellowship in the field of experimental psychology research for retraining in olfactory neuroscience. “I just found out that my grant proposal to study coding of complex social odors in mice will be funded by the National Institutes of Health,” she writes. Karen Roy ’77 has been involved in scientific research in New York State’s Adirondack Park for more than twenty years, first on the scientific staff of the Adirondack Park Agency and, for the past five years as a research scientist for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Adirondack Lakes Survey Corporation. Karen coauthored Acid Rain in the Adirondacks: A Research Summary in 2005. The photo shows Karen as she and program manager Jed Dukett (left) accept the 2006 Conservationist of the Year award for the Adirondack Lakes Survey Cooperation from Brian Houseal, Adirondack Council executive director, recognizing their many years of intensive and extensive acid rain research in the Adirondacks. Garret Conover’s ’78 first fiction book, Kristin’s Wilderness, was published in June, 2006. It received the Maine Library Association’s Lupine Award. Sajit Greene ’80 spent twelve days on the Colorado River rafting through the Grand Canyon. “It truly was a grand adventure. I returned to Denver feeling deeply inspired and revitalized.” Sajit continues to develop her practice as a professional astrologer. She also helps people create memorable wedding ceremonies. Frank Twohill ’80 works as a special public defender at the Bridgeport Criminal Court and does habeas corpus work for Connecticut prisoners. Recently, Frank has returned to juvenile law, which he loves, at the juvenile court in Waterford. As COA Alumni Association Governing Board member, he is committed to improving COA alumni affairs. The photo shows members of the board, Milja Brecher-DeMuro, COA alumni relations–development coordinator, Heather Martin-Zboray ’93, Frank Twohill ’80, Michael Boland ’94, Noreen Hogan ’91, Mike Staggs ’96, and Kerri Sands ’02. Frank occasionally writes his COA News, Views & Gossip column for the COA Tribe Yahoo group. Stop by: franktwohill@hotmail.com; 203-982-3099. Janet Biondi ’81 has been living in Mt. Shasta, California with her 14-year-old daughter, Tessa, operating Biondi Angling Art & Apparel, an art and t-shirt company using fish prints of trout species printed directly off of the fish in the tradition of the gyotaku Japanese printing technique. Janet also publishes limited-edition prints of wildlife and landscape pastels: www.biondiarts.com, and works for Cetos, collecting data on whales for the Navy sonar program on board the sailing vessel, Dariabar, out of Honolulu. Liz Cunningham ’82 and her husband Charlie hope to go back to Belize in December to fish, dive and visit the ruins at Tikal in Guatemala. They are enjoying living in Wildcat Canyon in Berkeley, California, getting out to the coast when they can. “Both of us have been busy with writing projects. My work on two children’s books is going well and I will have several drawings in an exhibit at the Oakland Museum later this year.” Pam (Cobb) Heuberger ’83 is the owner and director of the children’s Camp Runoia. “The camp business is great—we provide a safe summer place for a girl to unplug and connect with the great outdoors of Maine.” Pam and her husband just celebrated their second wedding anniversary with a ten-day sailing school course.
2008 EARTH DAY & ALUMNI WEEKEND
APRIL 18-20, 2008 Send us your art, photography, film & video work for the alumni exhibit and film festival. Musicians, find out about performance opportunities at the second annual COA-PaLooZa. Milja Brecher-DeMuro: MILJA@COA.EDU 207.288.2944 x268.
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Katrin (Hyman) Tchana ’83 is a clinical case manager providing individual and group therapy in New Hampshire. In 2006 she published the book Changing Woman and Her Sisters: Goddess Stories from Around the World, illustrated by her mother. Kirsten Backstrom ’84 is the director of Compass Points, offering spiritual direction and support to those coping with illness, loss or life transitions. She has recently started graduate school to strengthen this work. “I’ve lived a very quiet life with my partner, Holly, since my treatment for Hodgkin’s disease twelve years ago,” writes Kirsten. Chris Hamilton ’85 returned to his Whitefield, Maine farm last fall after two years in the Bahamas as the director of the Bahamas National Trust (see COA Summer 2005). He is now director of development at The LifeFlight Foundation, Maine’s emergency medical helicopter service.
Teny Bannick ’86 is volunteering for Green Energy Ohio, a chapter of the American Solar Energy Society, helping to prepare for its annual conference in Cleveland. Teny’s son, Remi, is now 28 and married. Her granddaughter, Brooke, just graduated from high school. Edward Monat III ’88 (see photo with Mike Staggs ’96) has started the League of Underwater Superheroes and, “is living happily with his five dogs, two cats, three horses, seventy-six chickens, one goat—and my wife too.” Lauren Gilson ’88 is in central Florida working with endangered avian species on a large section of federal land. “Despite development, Florida has an amazingly beautiful and diverse ecology, with many rare and sensitive organisms associated with ecological refugia along a ridge system.” Laura Cohn ’88 writes, “I still live just outside of Philadelphia with my husband, Bill, and my 9-year-old son, Daniel, teaching, painting, gardening and migrating back to Indonesia each year.” www.FromBalitoBala.com.
COA Alumni Relations
Alumni: Stay in Touch! Update your contact information,tell us of changes in your job or life or find out about regional alumni events and other alumni services: Milja Brecher-DeMuro Alumni Relations - Development Coordinator 288-2944 x 268
or mbrecher-demuro@coa.edu.
On May 6, 2007 Dorie Stolley ’88 gathered with family members and friends at the Norfolk Botanical Garden in Virginia for her wedding to Eric Walberg. Despite the brewing of tropical storm Andrea, a fun time was had by all. Miriama Broady (’88) and Gwyn Peterdi (’89) sang during the ceremony; Gwyn led circle dancing after the reception. In true COA fashion, the happy couple first laid eyes upon each other in the romantic setting of a meeting on fecal coliform in the local waters! From left to right, back row: Noreen Hogan ’91, Jiff Blansfield ’89 holding daughter Madelaine Blansfield, Miriama, Dorie, Eric, Elizabeth Laver Kacergis, Mike Kacergis ’91, Gwyn. Front Row: Ned Ormsby ’91 with his children, Charlie Hunt Ormsby and Jane Hunt Ormsby. Their mom, Aimee Hunt ’91, is not in the picture. David Vickery ’89 (married to Beth Vickery ’91), is painting full time and has launched the website dvickery.com. He is represented by Gallery 357 in Rockland, Maine. Libby Dean ’89 is finishing her thesis, “Communicating with Young Inuit Women About Environmental Contaminants, Food, and Health Issues in Nunatsiavut,” as part of her MA in environmental studies at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. Libby participated in the recent Society for Human Ecology conference at COA, winning an award for her poster on the same topic. In addition to her work with risk communication and the environment, Libby’s essay about the collision of shamanistic Inuit culture with Christianity at the time of contact will appear in the upcoming companion book for the film The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (by a predominantly Inuit team who made acclaimed film Atanarjuat: the Fast Runner). Linda Gregory ’89 is living in San Rafael, California where her husband, Jeff, is working as an open space ranger in Marin County. “I am a full-time mom to 3-year-old Matthew. In my spare time I am working on creating a pictorial field guide to the plants of Acadia National Park with Glen Mittelhauser ’89 and several other Maine colleagues.” In June, Linda returned to COA to see her stepdaughter, Menemsha Grey ’07, graduate. Last September at Gay Head Light on Martha’s Vineyard, Jeremy T. Norton ’91 married Vineyard resident Jane Belanger Norton. “Jane and I have decided to move back to the island. I have taken a position as treatment manager for a substance abuse program for offenders,” writes Jeremy. He has also resigned as host and producer of the "Night of the Living Dead" radio show on WFRD 99.3 FM, broadcasting out of Dartmouth College. Jeremy adds, “I came to Dartmouth in 1995 to enroll in the master of liberal studies program where I studied philosophy and ethics. My thesis was titled “Aristotle, Aquinas and their friend in Narcotics Anonymous.” jtnorton@mac.com At the Bar Harbor Whale Museum, Natalie Springuel ’91 presented “Images and Voices from the Gulf of Maine: Development, Fisheries and Issues along the Edge of the Gulf,” based on a five-month sea kayaking expedition from Cape Cod, Massachusetts to Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia, in which she highlighted the issues of the region: development, fisheries, coastal access and sustainable tourism.
Career & Internship Services Alumni: We can help! + Career Information and Guidance + Searchable Database + Graduate School Information + Job Search Skills + Resume Review + Relocation Guidance + Employment Websites Interested in providing an internship? Working with prospective students? Mentoring current students and other alumni? Contact Jill Barlow-Kelley, Director of Internships and Career Services, at jbk@coa.edu or 288-5015 ext. 236
Beth (Heidemann) Vickery ’91 (married to David Vickery ’89) is teaching at Cushing School in Cushing, Maine and volunteering for the Family Literacy Project and Listen UP Environmental Action Resources Group. “I’ve attended two high school graduations of my former kindergarten students. I’m also pretty busy parenting. My daughter attends the Riley School in Rockport and is a dedicated violin student and youth orchestra member.”
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Tim Case (’92) and his wife are back in Maine, having restored an old home in Kittery Point. For ten years, Tim has worked for PB, a global planning and engineering firm. He is senior associate, leading their GIS practice. Tim’s specialty is 3D modeling. He heads an international standards working group that enables new 3D tools such as Google Earth, CAD, and GIS to work together: www.opengeospatial.org. Mark Tully ’92 writes “After a thirteen-year run doing inner-city youth and community organizing in five cities, I’ve withdrawn back to Massachusetts where—thanks to advances in civil rights—my mother can finally nag me about getting married.” Mark is working with others to develop a rural queer sanctuary in southern Vermont and is seeking a domestic sanctuary for himself in the region. “Love to you all—may you thrive and swim in waters of peace.” On August 12, 2006, Diana Papini Warren ’92 welcomed her first daughter, Anela Rose Warren. Her name means Angel in Hawaiian. Eric Wolf ’93 is a storyteller. For a podcast go to www.ericwolf.org or www.storytellingwithchildren.com/podcast/storycast.xml Melissa Ossanna ’93 and her husband Peter welcomed their first child, Béla, in 2005. “I’ve been teleworking in medical communications for almost five years—the commute of twenty feet saves a lot of gas and time each day!” Melissa and Peter are building a house on Mount Desert Island that they hope to finish later this year. Michael Boland ’94 and Deirdre Swords became the proud parents of Zoe Anastasia Boland on August 24, 2006 in Bar Harbor. Geneva (Chase) Langley ’94 and her husband, Kevin, welcomed a baby daughter, Madeline Rose, on March 4, 2007. “She is such a joy!” writes Geneva. Tiffany (Wagner) Cozzolino ’94 moved to Westerly, Rhode Island in 1995 to attend graduate school at the University of Rhode Island, where she obtained an MA in secondary English education in 1998. She began teaching at Attleboro High School in Attleboro, Massachusetts, and has been teaching English at Stonington High School in Pawcatuck, Connecticut since 2000. Tiffany was married in 1998 to Westerly native Patrick Cozzolino. They have three children: Anna, 5, and twins Marco and Sofia, age 2. Jessica Friedland ’95 finished her residency in neurology at Emory University in Atlanta this June and is currently finishing her training with a one-year fellowship in clinical neurophysiology at Emory. “I was married last summer to a wonderful man named Josh who shares my love of hiking and the mountains. We are expecting a son in early October.” Former classmates, please write: jesspf32@yahoo.com Isaac ’96 and Suzanne ’95 Wagner moved to Brattleboro, Vermont to begin graduate school. Suzanne is still working for the State of Vermont as a vocational rehabilitation counselor. Isaac works as project coordinator for the low-income housing development of the Brattleboro Area Community Land Trust. “We both love our new jobs. The children are great, Hazel will begin kindergarten this fall.” Shelagh Harvard ’96 is working for Blue Marble Geographics, a GIS data conversion software company. She just purchased a home in Pittston, Maine and is “basking in the glow of homeownership.” Mike Staggs ’96 says, “In the past six months I’ve become a Dedimus Justice for the State of Maine, an Underwater Superhero, a certified rescue diver and COA Alumni Association president. Learn more about Mike’s adventures from this link: http://mdislander.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2786&It Chris Witt ’97 is an assistant professor of biology and curator of birds at the University of New Mexico’s Museum of Southwestern Biology. Traci Hickson ’98 is back in West Virginia working with the international nonprofit Future Generations. “I’m particularly excited about our newest initiative in China, the Green Long March. In partnership with forty-three universities, we are sponsoring relay teams of students to conduct ten marches covering the major ecological zones of China.” The opening ceremonies took place on July 7, 2007 at the Great Hall of the People. www.future.org and www.greenlongmarch.org.
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Ryan Boduch ’98 and Hannah Fogg ’99 bought a house in Richmond, Vermont. Hannah writes, “We spent a good deal of time last year putting three-foot wide flower gardens around our house and painting the entire inside of the house.” Laura (Imundo) Snyder ’99 and Kane Snyder became the proud parents of Kase Archer Snyder, born February 2, 2007 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. “He’s a fast grower, going from four pounds, nine ounces at birth (full term) to over ten pounds at seven weeks!” Kase joins Mya, the chocolate lab, who “keeps an ever watchful eye on him!” After working for an underwater construction company for five years, Ozlem Uz Tezer ’99 has moved back to Istanbul, Turkey. She married almost six years ago and is currently working for one of the biggest construction companies in Turkey. “I am working at the home office of the company, so no more moving around.” ozlemuztezer@yahoo.com Jessica Damon ’99 is working for a small environmental consultancy based in Newport News, Virginia, and also working on site at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. “Via Environmental Management Systems (EMS), I’m helping to achieve a greener way of doing business. James, my husband, is in the Army, working locally. It’s really nice to be living together again after he returned from Iraq.” Jessica and her husband have also built a cabin in Lubec, Maine—trying to go off the grid by installing solar and other energy sources. They are both completing their MA degrees at the University of Maryland, hers in environmental management. damonjessica@yahoo.com Jaime Duval ’00 and partner Rob Beranek are one year out of graduate school, celebrating life in Grand Teton National Park, working as faculty members in the graduate program at the Teton Science Schools in Kelly, Wyoming, where Jamie mentors graduate students through their teaching practicum. “Living, working and playing in this beautiful place has taught us many life lessons. We finally have our own garden and are continually amazed at the moose, bison, and deer that walk through our back yard!” Giulana Gelke ’00 began medical school last fall and loves it. “Clinic work is the best. Every time I go, I get interested in a new specialty.” She is getting married this coming December to Marcelo Centurion. “We are having two weddings! One in Cincinnati, Ohio and one in Uruguay with his family.” Anne Myers ’00 defended her master’s thesis and will be working for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. “I have taken up fly fishing and I am enjoying gardening, cycling, and cooking with veggies from the local farmer’s market.” Tanya Lee Higgins ’00 ran her first marathon last April and was married in June. She works as a project planner developing comprehensive planning and environmental review at Design, Community and Environment, a consulting firm primarily for public sector clients in Berkeley, California. Tori Lee Jackson ’00 and Michael French ’00 were married on September 10, 2005. Tori works with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension providing advice to agricultural producers regarding crop insurance. Shawn ’00 and Sarah ’05 Keeley write, “New house, new gardens, fresh veggies!” Son Noah turned two in August. Sarah continues her doula work and has a new job with the Northern Forest Alliance. Shawn continues his work with the Green Mountain Club. “We just read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and it has quickly become one of our favorite books. Still missing the Acadian coast but enjoying Vermont. Greetings to all! We think of you often with happiness in our hearts. Come visit us in Montpelier!” After six years of writing and editing for Maine Audubon, Marie Malin ’01 is back in school for a master’s of divinity at the Portland campus of the Bangor Theological Seminary. She also writes a monthly column on Maine nature for Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors online: www.maineboats.com/correspondents-voices-field. “If you told me even six months ago that I’d be going back to school to become a minister, I would have laughed out loud—but here I am!”
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Wing Goodale, MPhil ’01, is a senior research biologist and coastal bird program director at BioDiversity Research Institute in Gorham, Maine. He surveys birds on Maine islands, studies contaminants in birds, and sets up live Internet cameras on nesting eagles and ospreys. He serves on the Falmouth Shellfish and Conservation commissions and the Maine Board of Environmental Protection. Dena Adams ’01 just received her MA in museum studies from George Washington University and is currently at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History working on history for the museum’s music, sports, and entertainment division. Sarah Grasso ’01 married Penny Witherbee in September 2006 in Montauk, New York. They have purchased a home in Brattleboro, Vermont, where Penny is a police officer. Sarah is pursuing her MA in counseling psychology and clinical mental health at Antioch University in Keene, New Hampshire. “I will graduate in May. Dancing is still what moves me (ha, ha) and I have been teaching and performing at local dance schools, the Putney School and Marlboro College.” Kendra Noyes Miller ’01 is living in Suffolk, England with her husband, Jake, who is serving with the U.S. Air Force. Meanwhile, Kendra is working on her MBA with the University of Phoenix. They recently spent two weeks on a self-guided safari in Namibia as a belated honeymoon. “We enjoy living in Europe for its travel opportunities, but miss Maine and the Rockies!” Treenan Sturman ’02 married Elaine Grehl in September 2005 and is working as the education outreach coordinator at the Chicago Botanical Gardens. Drake (Windsor) ’03 and Finn ’02 Pillsbury welcomed Jacob Hawkes, their first child. Drake is pursuing a degree in interdisciplinary graduate studies and Finn a PhD in animal ecology. Edward Stern ’03 works temporarily for the Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development in Newfoundland as fisheries research coordinator. “I’m engaged to Valerie Maher of St. John’s, Newfoundland, and will officially become the father of her 11-year-old boy. When I can, I head downtown to beat on the dead goat (skin) with the fiddles and the pipes over a pint or three. My student visa expires this fall. If I fail to find full-time work in my field, I’ll probably head back to southeast Alaska to get a boat and become a full-time Alaskan fisherman. The rest of my Newfoundland family will come on out as well.” Volha Roschanka ’04 is working as a research analyst for Global Forest Watch Program at the World Resources Institute in Washington, DC. Allison Rogers Furbish ’04 married her longtime partner, Shawn Furbish, last March. “I ran off to South Carolina and eloped barefoot on the beach (the minister charges more if you make him wear shoes!).” They later celebrated their marriage with friends and family in New Hampshire. “We’re very much enjoying married life and just moved into our new home in Canaan, New Hampshire. Coyotes and owls sing us to sleep at night.” Allison is still working in media relations at King Arthur Flour. Lauren Gilhooley ’05 is teaching piano. Her daughter, Samara, was born July 9, 2006. “Samara was born peacefully at home under the watchful eye of two amazing midwives and fellow COA alum Sarah Keeley ’05 –best friend and doula extraordinaire!” Amanda Zych ’06 recently completed the Americorps program of the Student Conservation Association at Homestead National Monument of America. In spring she moved to Japan to teach English for a year at the Kakogawa Branch School of Aeon Amity Corporation. www.amity.co.jp/school/english/2820.html Jason Childers ’06 is now a field technician working for the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Project, “a thirty-year, eleven billion dollar project that will alter the hydrology regime in the ’glades back to what it was before several decades of farming and habitat degradation,” writes Jason. “I am teaching sailing and participating in as many races as I can in the Florida Keys and enjoying the sun while I prepare to attend Cornell University for graduate work this fall. I will be getting my master’s in teaching, specifically biology.”
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Corrections Two errors found their way into the notes sections of the Winter 2007 COA. At the SHE Conference, we misidentified a poster winner. It was Peter Jenkins. Housemates from the Kennebec Street House of 1981–1982 were understandably confused by the caption to their photo. The photo (which ran on page 45) was of Tim and Elizabeth Spahr ’86, Holly Devaul ’84 who works for the Digital Library for Earth System Education (www.dlese.org) and Jennifer Schroth ’84. And yes, Jon Ellsworth ’87 is an alum. (Marion Harris was not in the photo.) Alumni designated with a parenthesis around their dates did not graduate from COA.
FA C U LT Y N O T E S This spring, John Anderson, faculty member in biology, was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, where Charles Darwin first outlined his ideas on evolution. He also served on the science advisory committee for the Fourth Eco Summit in Beijing, China at which he presented a paper. He presented at the Association of Field Ornithologists in Boston and received a fellowship from L.L. Bean through the National Park Service for the project titled “Seabird Census and Census Protocol Development and Evaluation for Schoodic Island.” Additionally, Anderson gave a talk, “The Wonders of Seabirds,” during the Dorr Museum’s summer Sense of Wonder series and joined the editorial board of the Journal of Natural History Education. The Ima Plume Trilogy, by Nancy Andrews (see the last issue of COA, Winter 2007), faculty member in video and performing art, was featured at The Taiwan International Animation Festival in September. This festival showcases the best of Taiwanese and international animated films and draws a diverse audience of over 30,000 people each year. Richard Borden was chair of the “Education for Sustainability” symposium last May at the Eco Summit 2007 in Beijing, China. The four-hour, opening-day event involved ten presenters from seven countries, including the executive director of the Ecological Society of America and chair of the board of the Commonwealth Human Ecology Council. Borden’s presentation at the session was “When Science Meets the Heart: Education, Sustainability, and a Changing World.” He is also coauthor of “A River Runs Through It: College-Community Collaboration on Watershed-based Regional Planning and Education” with faculty member in law and policy, Ken Cline, Travis Hussey ’00, GIS lab director Gordon Longsworth ’91 and faculty member in planning and landscape architecture, Isabel Mancinelli. The article appeared in the summer 2007 issue of Human Ecology Review. Rich serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Human Ecology and the Human Ecology Review. Faculty member in chemistry, Don Cass, serves on the board of the Somes Meynell Wildlife Sanctuary and Acadia Senior College. He gave a presentation on climate science at COA’s Climate Summit in February. This summer he taught two weeks of environmental chemistry to middle and high school teachers as part of COA’s summer graduate program. Ken Cline, faculty member in law and policy, continues to serve as a judge for the Morris K. Udall national scholarship competition for the best environmental undergraduates in the country. He spent a sabbatical term in India, where he researched water quality and gave a presentation at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Human Ecology at the University of Rajasthan in Jaipur, as well as at the Mahindra United World College of India. He also attended the wedding of Sanjeev Shah ’04 and Rachael Rapacz ’04 in Nepal. Upon his return, he gave a presentation at COA’s Human Ecology Forum, “In Search of the Sacred: Travels in India.” Graupel: an opera of events, set on the iced-in Somes Pond last March, was created by Dru Colbert, faculty member in design and museum issues, with a cast of dozens from COA. The performance piece of small vignettes, iced-in sculptures and odd creatures, was witnessed by expansive crowds and featured in several newspapers.
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John Cooper, faculty member in music, served as artist in residence last spring at both Mattanawcook Academy in Lincoln, Maine, and George Stevens Academy, in Blue Hill, Maine. He is currently field-testing on COA students a jazz improvisation text he is creating in collaboration with Denis DiBlasio of Rowan University, former musical director for the Maynard Ferguson Band. As in 2006, Dave Feldman, faculty member in physics and math, served as co-director of the Complex Systems Summer School in Beijing, China, sponsored by the Santa Fe Institute in cooperation with The Institute of Theoretical Physics and Chinese Academy of Sciences. Feldman oversaw all aspects of the school, which was attended by fifty graduate students, half of whom were from China. He also presented a series of lectures titled, “Some Foundations in Complex Systems: Tools and Concepts, An Advanced Introduction.” In August, Feldman served on the faculty at the French Complex Systems Summer School in Paris. The school was sponsored by the Institut des System Complexes Paris Ile de France. Feldman gave a twelve-hour lecture series titled, “Some Foundational Tools and Concepts for Complex Systems: Entropy, Information, and Statistical Complexity.” The French summer school was attended by some thirty graduate students, mainly from Europe and South America. Faculty member in biology, Helen Hess, published “Scary Critters?” in Wavelength Magazine this spring. She serves on the board of the Mount Desert Island Water Quality Coalition, is a collaborator with Coastal Studies for Girls (www.coastalstudiesforgirls.org), presented on biomechanics and marine invertebrates at the Emerson School and offered classes in biomechanics at COA’s summer program for teachers. She also taught the Marine Adventures session for fifth and sixth graders in COA’s Summer Field Studies program and gave a talk, “The Wonders of Marine Invertebrates,” at the Dorr Museum’s summer Sense of Wonder series. Ken Hill, academic dean and faculty member in education and psychology, completed a two-week training at Harvard University’s Institute for Educational Management, a competitive program targeted for senior college administrators such as provosts, presidents and chief academic/financial officers. Ken’s class had one hundred participants from throughout the world, including Brown University, West Point Military Academy, Carleton College, Zayed University in the United Arab Emerates, and Edith Cowan University in Australia. In addition, Hill was asked to present on “College of the Atlantic’s Retention Efforts” to MELMAC during its May peer learning conference. Hill is vice president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Hancock County and on the board of Kid’s Corner. Faculty member in history, Todd Little-Siebold, and Christa Little-Siebold, along with older brother Pedro, welcome Pablo Antonio, born August 11, into the world. Todd recently wrote a review of Brent Meltz’ book, Ch’orti’-Maya Survival in Eastern Guatemala, to appear in The Americas. Isabel Mancinelli, faculty member in planning and landscape architecture, completed the Master Gardener’s Certification with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension and was elected to the board of the Beatrix Farrand Society in Bar Harbor. Mancinelli serves on the board of the MDI Center for Historic Landscapes and is also on the advisory board of the Maine Olmstead Alliance. She recently exhibited work at Shaw Gallery’s Local Artists Show. Chris Petersen, faculty member in biology, was invited to the symposium, “Fish out of Water: Testing the Adaptive Significance of Intertidal Spawning in the Estuarine Fish, Fundulus heteroclitus,” in honor of Bill McFarland at the Ecology, Ethology and Evolution of Fishes meeting in California. He was also part of the Maine Maritime Academy visiting lecture series, presenting the talk, “Fertilization in Marine Organisms.” In April, he chaired a session at the Maine Biological and Medical Sciences Symposium meeting at Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory. Peterson published the article, “Sexual Selection and Reproductive Success in Hermaphroditic Seabasses,” in the Journal of Integrative and Comparative Biology 46:439-448. He also conducted clam flat surveys for Bar Harbor and alewife surveys for the Somes-Meynell Wildlife Sanctuary, and assisted with Bar Harbor’s grant application for a seagrass transplantation project funded by the Gulf of Maine Council. Additionally, Chris reviews grants and manuscripts as associate editor of American Naturalist and reviews papers for half a dozen other organizations.
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Faculty member in botany, Nishanta Rajakaruna ’94 presented two posters at the Maine Space Grant Consortium annual meeting at the University of Southern Maine. One was “Plant Life On Metal-Enriched Soils In Maine: Involving Undergraduate Students In Ecological Research.” Coauthors were Tanner Harris ’06, Eve Dannenberg ’09, Nathaniel Pope ’07, Laura Briscoe ’07, Andrew Thrall ’07 and adjunct faculty member in botany, Fred Olday. The other was “Plant-Soil Relations on Serpentine Outcrops of Deer Isle, Maine in Northeastern United States” with Thrall, Pope, Dannenberg, Kathleen Tompkins ’08, Peter Pavicevic ’07 and Harris. Additionally, Rajakaruna, Harris and Olday presented “Lichens of a Periodotite Outcrop in Eastern North America: An Investigation into the Lichen-Serpentine Relation” at the Botany annual meeting in California. Rajakaruna has also reviewed manuscripts for nearly a dozen scholarly publications, and spoke at COA’s Human Ecology Forum on “Botanizing On Kooky Soils: Encounters With Plants With Mettle.” Steve Ressel, faculty member in biology, working collaboratively with professional conservator Ron Harvey of Tuckerbrook Conservation, recently completed a two-year project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services to preserve and protect the permanent exhibits and teaching collections of the George B. Dorr Museum of Natural History. This project culminated in an undergraduate course in collections care by Ressel and Harvey during Spring 2007 in which students addressed issues such as environmental monitoring, short- and long-term preservation strategies for existing collections and specimen identification and classification. The results of these class projects, in turn, were forwarded to IMLS in Washington, DC as part of a final report on project activities and future directions. Faculty member in education, Bonnie Tai, took Sam Drazin ’10 and Carly Imhoff ’10 to the annual meeting of the Maine Civil Rights Teams organized by the attorney general’s office. They led two workshops for three hundred Maine students called “What’s Fair,” that had been given to local school children at Conners-Emerson. Tai also completed a Passamaquoddy curriculum teachers’ workshop at the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor. In collaboration with Judith Cox, who directs COA’s education studies program, Tai ran SpringQuest, an experiential learning session for local children during April school vacation. Davis Taylor, faculty member in economics, spent the summer as an organic farm apprentice at Mandala Farm in Gouldsboro. Taylor became interested in local food production as part of his teaching and research in building local sustainable economies. The one-hundred-acre diversified farm is owned and operated by Genio Bertin ’97 and Sarah Faull ’98. Taylor’s farm chores ranged from hilling potatoes to castrating goats to selling products at local farmers markets. As the Women’s National Book Association award chair, Katharine Turok, adjunct faculty member in writing and literature, gave a talk and presented a book award to Perri Klass, professor of journalism and pediatrics, at the New York Society Library in New York City. Turok’s grant proposal for Downeast Audubon Education resulted in funds from the Maine Community Foundation for Hancock County school trips for students to attend natural history programs at COA’s George B. Dorr Museum and Ellsworth’s Birdsacre. Turok has also co-coordinated a series of oral history programs called "Way Back When," co-sponsored by the Bagaduce Watershed Association and the Wilson Museum in Castine. Faculty member in languages, Camille Vande Berg, was an international juror at the Institut de Formation Internationale, a business school associated with the University of Rouen. She was a member of a panel evaluating senior projects. Other jury members were business executives from Ireland and Germany, a business professor from South Korea, and the provost of a business school in Finland. Vande Berg also was an invited visitor to the Drake University Language Acquisition Program in Iowa. Karen Waldron co-presented “Collaborating on the Scholarly Essay” with Julia Gregory ’07 at a roundtable on faculty-student collaboration at the Northeast Modern Language Association annual conference in March, and again at the Popular Culture Association annual conference in April. She also developed and began implementation of a new book series for the Maine Humanities Council “Let’s Talk About It” program entitled “Refreshing the Whodunnit.”
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CO M M U N I T Y N OT E S
The efforts of Judy Allen, director of information services, and registrar David Baldwin resulted in a $134,000 grant from the Davis Educational Foundation to upgrade CAMS, the academic management software used by the registrar’s and financial aid offices. Among other improvements, the upgrade, CAMS Enterprise, includes integrated course management and online registration and grading. Allied Whale, with the help of director and COA faculty member Sean Todd, received its seventh Prescott Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Program award, for $97,800. Funds are used to pay for our stranding response activity, including salary for the stranding coordinator. COA will upgrade the response vehicle to a heavier grade diesel vehicle that can haul our boat and trailer systems more safely. Allied Whale also received a $50,000 grant from an anonymous foundation. Funds will support field research in the second year of a five-year study to quantify use of critical habitat by large whale species in the northern Gulf of Maine, as well as continued support for the North Atlantic Humpback Whale Catalog. David Baldwin, registrar, is a founding member of The Downeast Rail Heritage Preservation Trust, working on developing the Downeast Scenic Railroad, especially the Washington Junction/Ellsworth to Green Lake section of the Calais Branch Line to create a twenty-four-mile round trip excursion ride with exceptional views of wetland marshes, Little Rocky Pond and Green Lake, plus an occasional osprey or moose sighting. http://www.downeastscenicrail.org. COA students and alumni participated in Quarryography, a full-length dance complete with excavator at a Stonington quarry this August. Tawanda Chabikwa ’07 was a guest dancer. Also in the performance were former visiting student Scott Springer and current student Samantha Haskell. When teenagers connect to the waters off the coast of Maine, learning to fend for themselves and reach out to others, their college choice can be none other than College of the Atlantic—at least according to a new young adult novel, 68 Knots, written by Michael Evans, University of Indiana journalism professor. Donna Gold, director of public relations, completed a series of nine oral histories of Camden seniors, published as individual booklets for the Camden Public Library through a grant from MBNA. She also published two pamphlets based on oral histories conducted in Stockton Springs on a grant from the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation. Lynn Havsall, director of museum programs at the Dorr Museum, participated in shorebird banding on the International Heritage Site of Delaware Bay, where shorebirds feed enroute from South America to their Arctic breeding grounds. She worked with an international team coordinated by the State of Delaware and opened the way for COA students to join this international effort. Havsall also received a full scholarship from Bat Conservation International and a generous donation from a COA trustee to cover airfare to attend a Bat Conservation and Management Workshop at the American Museum of Natural History’s Southwestern Research Station in Portal, Arizona. The Dorr Museum will be working with Acadia National Park, COA students, Mount Desert Island schools and park neighbors to improve bat habitat. Jane Hultberg, Thorndike Library director, along with the entire COA community, sends deep thanks to former New York City drama critic Norman Nadel, now living part-time in Trenton, Maine, for the excellent collection of art books donated to the library. More than two hundred fine arts and photography books are now part of our collection, including a limited edition of Christo: Valley Curtain, Rifle, Colorado, a gorgeous largeformat edition of Ben Shahn’s work.
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annual report
FROM THE CHAIR OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES
On behalf of the Board of Trustees–indeed of the entire College of the Atlantic community–my heartfelt thanks goes to all of you who have so generously supported this institution in the past fiscal year, 2006-2007. “Philanthropy,” according to my dictionary, means “an effort to increase the well-being of humankind, as by charitable aid or donations.” Your support for COA fits that definition. Betterment of our local, regional and global communities is an institutional mission. We share this value with our students. We aspire to make the world a better place for nature and humankind. And we value our role as one of Mount Desert Island’s anchor institutions This year, contributions to our annual fund totaled $1.02 million. This crucial source of income made the COA experience accessible to qualified students who could not attend without financial assistance; it supported the salaries of our superb, hardworking faculty and staff; it was crucial to maintaining the buildings and grounds that constitute our campus, voted this year as one of the twenty most beautiful in America. The Annual Fund grants us a margin of excellence that other income sources cannot provide. In the past fiscal year, the college also received an impressive $7.27 million in capital gifts and pledges. These funds have supported such landmark projects as the Kathryn W. Davis Residential Village, providing on-campus living for fifty-one additional students; Deering Common, the renovation of an historic building as a campus center; a suite of landscape improvements that enhance the beauty and functionality of the campus; the Katona Chair in Marine Studies, and initiation of a special endowment fund intended to enhance faculty and staff compensation, provide for professional development and foster excellence in teaching and research. It was a fine year for College of the Atlantic. We particularly value your interest in the college and your financial support. Many thanks from the entire College of the Atlantic community. With best wishes,
Samuel M. Hamill, Jr. Trustee Chair
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FROM THE ADMINISTRATIVE DEAN
annual report FISC A L Y EA R 2007 was a very good year for the college from the financial perspective. The financial operations report on the following page shows that our total fund balance increased from $27.7 million to $32.3 million. Our endowment grew by almost 18 percent to $20.2 million due to both gifts and investment returns after allocations to the operating budget. The plant and equipment fund grew by over 15 percent to $12.7 million, largely due to capital gifts for our housing and campus improvement projects. The operating fund held steady at a deficit of $879 thousand. We were able to keep very close to our strategic objectives in the operating budget. Our revenues increased by almost 5 percent to $14.8 million, largely due to a modest increase in enrollment, resulting in an average of 290 students. From this we netted an 8 percent increase in our most important revenue source, tuition and fees, which represents more than half our total revenue. The annual fund fell short of its goal of $1.3 million, but we exceeded last year’s level while also receiving major support for our housing and campus capital projects, not reflected in the operating budget. Most of our other revenue line items showed modest growth, including Beech Hill Farm, whose revenues increased by 22 percent due to farm management initiatives, aided by some very good weather. On the expense side, we had an overall increase of 6 percent. Our largest expense line, student aid, rose by 9 percent primarily due to the larger enrollment. Like most institutions, we experienced increases in health insurance, causing a 12 percent rise in our payroll and fringe benefit expenses. We also had one-time expenses from last year’s presidential transition. This spring, we broke ground on the Kathryn W. Davis Student Residence Village. We are currently on budget and on schedule to open this fifty-onebed complex in September 2008. Our new housing will not only improve the campus experience for many students and relieve them of the ever-increasing challenge of finding housing in Bar Harbor, it will also have a positive impact on the operating budget. With related housing and dining fees, and additional room for summer programming, this new space will more than offset the carrying costs. It is also an important part of our recruitment strategic plan. Overall, we feel confident that we are meeting the financial milestones in our strategic plan, which calls for gradual increases in enrollment, controlled growth of student aid and continued growth in both annual giving and endowment revenue.
Andy Griffiths Administrative Dean
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A N N UA L R E P O RT
Financial Operations Report
(unaudited)
Operating Revenues Tuition and Fees Contributions-annual fund Contributions-restricted Investment and endowment income Government and other grants Student housing and dining Summer programs Research and projects Beech Hill Farm Other Total Revenues
FY 2005–2006
FY 2006–2007
7,580,000 1,037,000 2,136,000 547,000 799,000 782,000 543,000 467,000 137,000 115,000
8,233,000 1,080,000 1,796,000 767,000 601,000 760,000 511,000 767,000 167,000 141,000
14,143,000
14,823,000
2,811,000 465,000 454,000 2,921,000 2,444,000 1,177,000 1,291,000 932,000 586,000 184,000 819,000 145,000
2,974,000 467,000 417,000 3,183,000 2,340,000 1,239,000 1,443,000 952,000 684,000 198,000 1,019,000 163,000
14,229,000
15,079,000
(86,000) 86,000 -
(256,000) 256,000 -
(879,000) 10,800,000 17,495,000 267,000
(879,000) 12,700,000 20,177,000 267,000
27,683,000
32,265,000
Operating Expenses Instruction and student activity Student housing and dining Summer programs Financial aid-unrestricted Financial aid-restricted General administration Payroll taxes and fringe benefits Development and admissions Buildings and grounds Interest Grants, research and projects Beech Hill Farm Total Expenditures Excess Revenue (Expense) Transfer and Capital Expenditures Net Operating Surplus (loss) Fund Balances (end of year) Operating Plant and equipment Endowment Other Total Fund Balances
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A N N UA L R E P O RT THE CHAMPLAIN SOCIETY FOUNDER $10,000 + Mr. Edward McC. Blair Mr. and Mrs. Louis Cabot Mr. William Carey Estate of Amos and Alice Eno Mr. and Mrs. David Fischer Mr. Samuel Hamill, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Melville Hodder Ms. Sherry Huber Elizabeth and Peter Loring Mrs. Marcia MacKinnon Ms. Casey Mallinckrodt Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Milliken Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Pierce James Dyke and Helen Porter Mr. and Mrs. George Putnam Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton Robinson, Jr. Ms. Abby Rowe/ Rowe Family Foundation Dr. and Mrs. Peter Sellers Mr. and Mrs. Henry D. Sharpe, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. W. P. Stewart Mr. and Mrs. William Wister, Jr./ Margaret Dorrance Strawbridge Foundation PATHFINDER $5,000–$9,999 Mr. and Mrs. James Blaine Mr. and Mrs. Leslie C. Brewer/ ABL Fund of the Maine Community Foundation The Virginia Wellington Cabot Fdn. The Estate of Mrs. Frederic E. Camp Michele and Agnese Cestone Fdn. Mr. and Mrs. Paul Growald Barbara McLeod and David Hales Mr. and Mrs. John N. Kelly Mrs. Louis Madeira Mr. and Mrs. Philip S. J. Moriarty Mr. and Mrs. I. Wistar Morris III/ The Cotswold Foundation Mr. and Mrs. William V. P. Newlin Lynn and Willy Osborn Mr. and Mrs. C. W. Eliot Paine/ The Puffin Fund of the Maine Community Foundation Mr. and Mrs. John P. Reeves David Rockefeller, Sr. Mr. and Mrs. Clyde E. Shorey, Jr. Sweatt Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Jeptha Wade DISCOVERER $2,000–$4,999 Bar Harbor Bank & Trust Bar Harbor Whale Watch Peter Neill and Mary Barnes Mr. and Mrs. William E. Benjamin II/ William E. Benjamin II Fund of
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Annual Giving for fiscal year July 1, 2006 through June 30, 2007. With deep gratitude and appreciation we acknowledge the generosity of our alumni, trustees, staff, faculty and friends.
The Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties Mrs. Sigrid Berwind Mr. and Mrs. Peter P. Blanchard III Mr. Charles Butt Cadillac Mountain Sports Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman Mr. Francis I.G. Coleman Mrs. Bernard Cough, Jr. T. A. Cox Ms. Sally Crock Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dickey, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. William Dohmen Eaton Vance Management Mr. and Mrs. William G. Foulke, Jr. Fr. James M. Gower Mr. and Mrs. Richard Habermann Mr. and Mrs. George B. E. Hambleton Mr. and Mrs. Michael W. Huber Machias Savings Bank Mr. and Mrs. Grant G. McCullagh Mrs. John P. McGrath Laura Ellis and David Milliken Mr. and Mrs. Gerrish Milliken Mr. and Mrs. David E. Moore Mr. and Mrs. G. Marshall Moriarty Rev. Albert Neilson Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin R. Neilson Mrs. William Norris Ms. Sandra Nowicki Mr. and Mrs. Jay Pierrepont Dr. Richard G. Rockefeller Mr. and Mrs. Hartley Rogers Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop Short Southern Maine Wetlands Conservancy Mr. and Mrs. Donald B. Straus Swan Agency - Insurance Mr. and Mrs. William Thorndike, Jr. Ms. Katherine Weinstock ’81 Mr. Douglas Williams Mr. John Wilmerding Winky Foundation Mr. David J. Witham EXPLORER $1,500–$1,999 Linda Shaw and Jeffrey Bakken Mr. Ron Beard Dr. and Mrs. H. Keith Brodie Mr. and Mrs. Tom Chappell Susanna Porter and James Clark, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Tristram C. Colket, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Philip DeNormandie Mrs. F. Eugene Dixon, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. George H. P. Dwight Mrs. John J. Emery Dianna and Ben Emory/ Ocean Ledges Fund of the Maine Community Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Erikson/
Gordon Iver and Dorothy Brewer Erikson Fund of the Greater Worcester Community Foundation The First Drs. Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis and Merton Flemings Mr. and Mrs. Will Gardiner Dr. and Mrs. Philip Geier Ms. Susan M. Getze Mrs. Philip Geyelin Susan Dowling and Andrew Griffiths Mrs. Anne Stroud Hannum Richard Gordet and Sonja Johanson ’95 Mr. and Mrs. Edward C. Johnson III Steven K. Katona and Susan Lerner Mr. Arthur Keller Ms. Joanne S. Kemmerer ’02 Mr. and Mrs. Robert P. Kogod Mrs. Francis Lewis Ms. Katharine Gates McCoy Mrs. Donald G. McLean Mr. and Mrs. A. Fenner Milton Mr. and Mrs. Philip Moriarty Mr. and Mrs. Robert C. Nicholas III Ms. Judith S. Perkins Mr. and Mrs. Ferguson E. Peters Mrs. Eben W. Pyne Mr. and Mrs. John R. Robinson Mrs. Walter M. Robinson, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Peter R. Roy Mr. and Mrs. William M. Rudolf Mr. and Mrs. W. Tom Sawyer Mr. and Mrs. Richard Scott Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Shafer Mr. and Mrs. John Grace Shethar Mrs. Allan Stone Ms. Caren Sturges Mrs. Joseph B. Thomas IV Mr. and Mrs. W. Nicholas Thorndike Mr. and Mrs. William C. Trimble, Jr. Patrick and Mary Ann Tynan/ The Tynan Family Charitable Trust Jack Ledbetter and Helen Tyson Julia Merck and Hans P. Utsch Mr. and Mrs. Christiaan van Heerden Mr. and Mrs. Rodman Ward, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Weg Mr. and Mrs. Harold White III Ms. Christine Witham ANNUAL FUND GIFTS Mrs. James Abeles Mr. Christopher Aberle Dr. and Mrs. Murray Abramsky Acadia Senior College Ms. Heather Albert-Knopp ’99 Dr. Mary Elizabeth Alexander Mr. William Allen ’87 Ms. Judith Allen
A N N UA L R E P O RT Richard and Heather Ames Arnold and Peggy Amstutz Mrs. Diane Anderson Mr. John Anderson Ms. Karin Anderson, PhD (’84) Ms. Wendy Anderson (’80) Mr. and Mrs. Schofield Andrews III Mr. and Mrs. Stockton Andrews Timothea ’94 and Neal Antonucci ’95 Rev. and Mrs. Jonathan Appleyard Ms. Evelyn Ashford (’83) Ms. Jennifer Atkinson ’03 Atwater Kent Foundation, Inc. Wendy Knickerbocker and David Avery ’84 Ms. Lelania Prior Avila ’92 Ms. Jennifer Aylesworth ’94 Mr. Alan L. Baker Bangor Savings Bank Ms. Carrie Banks ’01 Bar Harbor Lobster Bakes Bar Harbor Motel Bar Harbor Savings & Loan Association Barbara Tennent and Steven Barkan Ms. Danuta Barnard Mr. and Mrs. Edward Barnes Mr. and Mrs. Richard Barnhart Ms. Patricia Barton Mr. and Mrs. Robert Bass Ms. Kate Baxter Mr. H. B. Beach Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Beal, Sr. Drs. Wesley and Terrie Beamer Mr. Bruce Becque ’81 Dr. and Mrs. Robert Beekman Kathleen Belfiglio Mr. Noel George Belli Mr. Bruce Bender ’76 Ms. Serra Joan Benson ’02 Dr. and Mrs. Gerald Berlin Jason Bernad, MD ’94 Mr. John Biderman ’77 Mr. and Mrs. David Billings Ms. Janet Biondi ’81 Mrs. Edward Birkenmeier Mr. and Mrs. Francis Blair Mr. Edward McC. Blair, Jr. Ms. Susan Thomas Blaisdell Hon. and Mrs. Robert Blake Mr. Jerry Bley
Mrs. Louise Blodget Ms. Edith Blomberg Mr. and Mrs. John Bloom Sharon Teitelbaum and Jonathan Bockian Ms. Sally Boisvert ’04 Rev. Paul Boothby ’88 Ms. Sarah Boucher, MPhil ’06 Tim Garrity and Lynn Boulger Ms. Frances Bowne Mr. Dennis Bracale ’88 Ms. Jessica Bradshaw ’03 Milja Brecher-DeMuro and Tony DeMuro Ms. Emilie Bregy Ms. Virginia Brennan Mr. Thomas Broussard Ms. Carla Burnham ’84 Mr. and Mrs. Charles Burton II Roc and Helen Caivano ’80 Ms. Julie Cameron ’78 Ms. Mary Cantwell Ms. Frances Carlin Ms. Liza Carter ’76 Ms. Jean Cass Mr. and Mrs. Robert Cawley Mr. Erin Chalmers ’00 Lucy Hull and E. Barton Chapin David Chiang Ms. Judith Chiara Mrs. Katherine Kaufer Christoffel Ms. Cecily Clark Ms. Katherine Clark ’91 Ms. Kim Clark Hannah S. Sistare and Timothy B. Clark Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Clendenin Mr. Kenneth Cline Mrs. George Cluett, Jr. Ms. Janis Coates Ms. Tammis Coffin ’87 Mr. and Mrs. E. Judson Cole Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Colson Mr. Douglas Coots ’83 Richard and Susan Corey Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Corkins Dick Atlee and Sarah Corson Dr. and Mrs. Melville Cote Mr. Donald Cowie Mr. Edward Crane, Jr. Mrs. Rose Cutler Ms. Lisa Damtoft ’79 Mr. John Allen Dandy (’84)
Mr. and Mrs. William Daniel Ms. Elizabeth Davis Ms. Julia Davis ’03 Ms. Livia Munck Davis ’88 Mr. and Mrs. Shelby M.C. Davis Stan and Jane Davis Ms. Rachel Deans Mrs. Charles Dennison Elisabeth Rendeiro and Steven Depaul Ms. Holly Devaul ’84 Janet Redfield and Scott Dickerson, MPhil ’95 Closey and Whit Dickey/ Hardy Hill Fund of the New Hampshire Charitable FoundationUpper Valley Region George and Kelly Dickson, MPhil ’97 Ms. Angela DiPerri ’01 Prof. and Mrs. Arthur Dole Janet Anker and Charles Donnelly Mr. Millard Dority Mr. and Mrs. John Dreier Mrs. William Drury Mr. and Mrs. E. Bradford Du Pont, Jr. Mr. Larry Duffy Ms. Michelle Catherine Dumont ’02 Mr. Scott Durkee ’84 Susan Taormina and Timothy Durrant Mr. and Mrs. William Eacho III/ Eacho Family Foundation Mr. Alden Eaton/Territa M. Eaton Trust Mr. and Mrs. Watha Eddins, Jr. Mr. Joseph Edes ’83 Wendy Rodger and Henry Elliott (’76) Ms. Carol Emmons Carol and Jackson Eno Ms. Julie Erb ’83 Mrs. Sylvia Erhart John and Therese Erianne Mr. and Mrs. Spencer Ervin Ms. Lynne Wommack Espy ’93 Mr. Richard Estes Ethos Marketing and Design Dr. and Mrs. William Evans Sarah and Preston Everdell
Dr. and Mrs. Richard Faust Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Felton Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Felton Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel Fenton Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Fernald Ms. Cynthia Jordan Fisher ’80 Kochis Fitz John and Marie Fitzgerald Mr. and Mrs. William M.G. Fletcher Mrs. Ruth Fraley Mr. and Mrs. W. West Frazier IV Mr. Bernard Fuller Diane Lokocz ’03 and Tim Fuller ’03 Ms. Allison Fundis ’03 Mr. David Furholmen Mr. Donald Gagner Galyn’s Galley Carla Ganiel and Garrett Curry Alma Boylan and Jennings Garnett Mr. and Mrs. Murray Gartner Ms. Lucretia Gatchell (’85) Mr. and Mrs. Jon Geiger Ms. Laurie Geiger Ms. Amy George ’98 Ms. Kirsten George Edelglass Mr. and Mrs. Stephen George Ms. Anne Giardina Mr. and Mrs. Alan Gladstone Ms. Jillian Glaeser Dr. and Mrs. Donald Glotzer Mr. Robert F. Goheen Mr. Paul Golas Donna Gold and Bill Carpenter Mrs. Laura Arm Goldstein Mr. and Mrs. John Good Marie Malin ’01 and Wing Goodale, MPhil ’01 Ms. Abigail Goodyear ’81 Ms. Elizabeth Gorer Dr. and Mrs. Robert Gossart Mr. and Mrs. John Gower Dr. and Mrs. Joseph Grant Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Gray Graycote Inn Linda Green and Claude Grazia Mrs. Bo Greene Ms. Katherine Griffin ’00 Ms. Mary Griffin ’97
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A N N UA L R E P O RT Mr. and Mrs. Michael Gumpert Mr. Max Hall Ms. Briana Hall-Harvey ’02 Stephen Sternbach and Lisa B. Hammer ’91 Ms. Rebecca Hancock ’97 Mr. Matthew Hare ’84 Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hargraves Mrs. Nancy Harris Mr. Tanner Brook Harris ’06 Ms. Sonja Hartmann ’88 Mr. and Mrs. John Hassett Mr. and Mrs. Larry Hayes Dr. and Mrs. Leonidas Hayes Ms. Lois Hayes ’79 Atsuko Watabe ’93 and Bruce Hazam ’92 Ms. Barbara Hazard Mike Zwirko ’01 and Erin Heacock ’04 Ms. Mary Heffernon Ms. Barbara Hendry Kate Russell Henry and Eric Henry (’76) Mr. Merton Henry Ms. Patty Herklotz Ms. Katherine Hester ’98 Charles and Jackie Hewett Highbrook Motel Ms. Barbara Hill Mr. and Mrs. David Hill Mr. James Hill Ms. Barbara Hilli Dr. and Mrs. Leonard Hirsh, Jr. Ms. Margaret Hoffman ’97 Dr. Kathleen Hogan ’81 Ms. Noreen Hogan ’91 Mr. and Mrs. David Hollenbeck Ms. Betsey Holtzmann Homewood Benefits Mrs. J. Brooks Hopkins Mr. and Mrs. John Houbolt Ms. Patricia Hubbard Mr. Reginald Hudson Ms. Sarah F. Hudson Ms. Jennifer Hughes Ms. Jane Hultberg Mr. and Mrs. Charles Huntington Ms. Evelyn Mae Hurwich ’80 Ms. Susan Inches ’79 Island Realty Ms. Jamien Jacobs ’86 Alison and Joplin James ’84 Mr. William Janes
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Mr. Nishad Jayasundara ’05 Mr. Peter Jeffery ’84 Ms. Catherine Johnson ’74 Mr. and Mrs. Harry M.K. Johnston Mr. and Mrs. William Jordan Jordan-Fernald Mr. and Mrs. H. Lee Judd/ Judd Charitable Fund Ann Sewall and Edward Kaelber Mr. and Mrs. William Kales Mr. and Mrs. Robert Kates Mr. Michael Kattner ’95 Sarah ’05 and Shawn Keeley ’00 Dr. James Kellam ’96 Jill and Bobby Kelley Mr. and Mrs. James Kellogg Mr. and Mrs. Richard Kelly Mr. and Mrs. Edward Lee Kennedy Mr. and Mrs. Moorehead Kennedy Kent-Lucas Foundation, Inc. Ms. Ann Noel Kesselheim (’81) Lorraine Stratis and Carl Ketchum Margaret V. and Robert Kinney/E. Robert and Margaret V. Kinney Fund of The Minneapolis Foundation Bethany and Zack Klyver (’90) Bruce Beaton and Lisa Knapp Ms. Barbara Knowles The Knowles Company Ms. Aleda Koehn Mr. and Mrs. S. Lee Kohrman/S. Lee & Margery S. Kohrman Philanthropic Fund of The Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Ms. Anne Kozak Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Kranzler Mrs. Franz Kraus Dr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Kugel Margi and Philip Kunhardt III ’77 Mrs. Philip Kunhardt, Jr. Mr. Ross La Haye Ms. Heather Lakey ’00 Ms. Judith Lamb ’00 Ms. Carrol Lange ’99
Ms. Amanda LazrusCunningham ’02 Dr. and Mrs. David Lebwohl Kathryn Harmon and Rob Ledo ’91 Andrew Kimbrell and Kaiulani Lee Dr. and Mrs. Leung Lee Mr. and Mrs. Edward Leisenring Ms. Caroline Leonard ’01 Ms. Alice Levey ’81 Mr. Aaron Lewis ’05 Jessie Greenbaum ’89 and Phil Lichtenstein ’92 Mr. James Lindenthal Mr. and Mrs. Edward Lipkin Dr. John Long, Jr. ’86 Dr. and Mrs. Ralph Longsworth Mr. and Mrs. William Lord II Mrs. Susan Lyall Mrs. Ronald Lyman, Jr. Ms. Mayo Lynam Ms. Fleury Mackie Mr. James MacLeod Mrs. Constance Madeira Ms. Melinda Magleby ’00 Meg and Miles Maiden ’86 Maine Community Fdn. Ms. Deborah Mandsager Wunderman ’89 Ms. Pamela Manice Ms. Alice Mann Eduardo Bohorquez and Nancy Manter Ms. Nichole Marks (’83) Mrs. Elizabeth Hulbert Marler Mr. Robert Marshall ’87 Mr. Erik Hilson Martin ’98 Ms. Kathleen Massimini ’82 Adele Ursone and George Matteson Wyatt Matthews, MPhil ’07 Mrs. Anne Mazlish Jon and Sarah McDaniel ’93 Mr. and Mrs. Clement McGillicuddy/The Fiddlehead Fund Mr. Ian Scott McIsaac ’76 SFC Lenorah McKee Mr. Donald K. McNeil Mr. Clifton McPherson III ’84 Ms. Jeanne McPherson Ms. Carol Mead ’93 Mr. and Mrs. Robert Meade Ms. Rebecca Melius ’01
Ms. Terra Anna Merry ’98 Ms. Jessica Messere ’00 Mrs. Jean Messex Ms. Pamela Meyer Mr. and Mrs. Alan Miller, Jr. John McDonald and Donna Miller Mr. Jeffrey Miller ’92 Mr. and Mrs. Henry Millon Sen. and Mrs. George Mitchell Mr. Frank Mocejunas Edna Martin and Eddie Monat ’88 Mr. Peter Moon ’90 Adam McPherson ’00 and Chelsea Mooser ’00 Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Morgenstern Mrs. Lorraine Morong Mr. William Morris Morris Yachts, Incorporated Mr. and Mrs. Robert Morrison Mount Desert Symposiums Mr. and Mrs. John Moyer Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Mudrak Ms. Anne Mulholland Dr. Alice Murphy Dr. Victoria Murphy Ms. Bethany Murray ’03 Mr. and Mrs. Olin Eugene Myers, Jr. Ms. Barbara Nalley Mr. Michael Nardacci Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel Nash Mr. and Mrs. Robert Nathane, Jr. Mrs. Harry Neilson, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. William Neilson Mr. and Mrs. John Newhall Tammy McGrath ’97 and Philip Nicholas ’98 Mrs. A. Corkran Nimick Mrs. Marie Nolf Mr. and Mrs. David Noyes Ms. Kendra Noyes Miller ’01 Mrs. Elizabeth Higgins Null Ms. Hope Olmstead Hannah and Judd Olshan ’92 Ms. Whitney Wing Oppersdorff Mr. Benoni Outerbridge ’84 Mr. and Mrs. James Owen Ms. Beth Paris Mr. and Mrs. Donald Parrot Mr. Robert Patterson, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Paul
A N N UA L R E P O RT Mr. George Peabody Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm Peabody Mrs. Stephen Pearson Mr. and Mrs. Robert Pennington Ms. Anne Peterson Ms. Alexa Pezzano ’00 Ms. Susan Pierce Ms. Meghan Piercy ’91 Ms. Teresa Pijanowski Ms. Chellie Pingree ’79 Mr. Andrew Pixley ’01 Mr. Shiva Polefka ’01 Anne and Bruce Pomeroy Mr. and Mrs. Ben G. M. Priest Mr. Charles Provonchee Ms. Sheila Sonne Pulling Esther Pullman Mona and Louis Rabineau Dr. Nishanta Rajakaruna ’94 Ms. Cathy Ramsdell ’78 Ratke, Miller, Hagner & Co. Mr. and Mrs. Fred C. Rea Mr. and Mrs William Reiser Mr. and Mrs. John Rensenbrink Anita and John Repp Mr. Andrew Rice Ms. Emmie Rick Mr. and Mrs. John Rivers Mr. and Mrs. David Robbins Mr. Joshua Robbins Mr. and Mrs. Owen Roberts Dr. Jennifer Roberts ’94 Mr. C. W. Robinson, Jr. Dr. and Mrs. Gordon Robinson Drs. Paul and Ann Rochmis Mr. David Rockefeller, Jr. Ms. Sydney Roberts Rockefeller Ms. Allison Rogers Furbish ’04 Dr. Burt Adelman and Ms. Lydia Rogers Ronald and Patricia Rogers Mr. W. David Rosenmiller ’84 Ms. Volha Roshchanka ’04 Dr. and Mrs. Stephen Ross Mr. and Mrs. Max Rothal Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Rothstein Ms. Elizabeth Rousek Ayers ’95 Mr. and Mrs. William B. Russell Roger and Patricia Samuel Ms. Kerri Sands ’02 Mr. Daniel Sangeap ’90 Mr. Charles Savage
Mr. Coltere Savidge ’06 Mr. and Mrs. G. David Savidge Mr. and Mrs. John Schafer Ms. Margaret Scheid ’85 Mr. and Mrs. Fred Scheiner Mr. Noah Scher ’04 Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Schindler Mr. and Mrs. Hans Seeberger Ms. Ellen Seh ’75 Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Sellers Mr. and Mrs. Roland Seymour Ms. Peggy Irwin Shattuck E.L. Shea, Inc. Mrs. Margaret Sheldon Ms. Clare Shepley Mr. and Mrs. Donald Shire Dr. and Mrs. Dennis Shubert Mr. and Mrs. John Sienkiewicz Ms. Fae Silverman ’03/ Little Elf Fund Richard and Alexandra Simis ’90 Mr. Kenneth Simon Mr. Mark Simonds ’81 Mr. and Mrs. John Sims Dr. and Mrs. Theodore Sizer Mr. and Mrs. Wickham Skinner Ms. Susanne Slayton Mr. and Mrs. Fred Smalley Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Smith Ms. Harriet Soares Kay and Robert Soucy Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Spector Mrs. June Spencer Lynne and Michael Staggs ’97 Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Stedman Sheridan and Barbara Steele Ms. Lisa Stewart Stewart Brecher Architects Ms. Marie Stivers Ms. Marion Stocking Ms. Kirsten Stockman ’91 Mrs. John Frederick Stockwell Ms. Dorie Stolley ’88 Dr. and Mrs. Sidney Strickland Mr. and Mrs. Richard Sullivan Mrs. Robert Suminsby Mr. Stuart Dickey Summer ’82 Ms. Joan Swann Dr. Douglas Sward ’96 Mr. Gilbert Sward
Ms. Patricia Tanski Dr. Davis Taylor Ms. Katrin Hyman Tchana ’83 Ms. Karla Tegzes Mrs. Robert Thomas Mr. and Mrs. Widgery Thomas, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. John Thorndike Anais G Tomezsko ’04 and Noah Scher ’04 Dr. and Mrs. T. Michael Toole SR Tracy, Inc Ms. Elena Tuhy ’90 Mr. Frank Twohill ’80 Union Trust Company Mr. John Van Dewater Ms. Katrina Van Dusen Ms. Claire Verdier ’80 Ms. Anne Vernon Mr. and Mrs. Dennis J. Viechnicki John Viele (’81) Dr. Robert Vincent Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Volkmann ’90 Mr. William Wade ’76 Ms. Amanda Jane Walker ’98 Ms. Hua Wang ’04 Ms. Gretchen Warner Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Watson Mr. Michael Weber ’83 Ms. Lydia Ann Webster ’05 Mrs. Constance Weeks Ms. Maria Weisenberg ’81 Mr. and Mrs. E. Sohier Welch Bradford and Alice Wellman Mr. David Wersan ’79 Ms. Jane White Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Whitehead Ms. Joan Williams Mr. Peter Williams ’93 Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Williams Dawn Lamendola and Josh Winer ’91 Mrs. George Winship, Jr. Ms. Betsy Wisch ’83 Ms. Mary Witherbee Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Witt Ms. Anna Wlodarczyk ’04 Ms. Susan Woehrlin ’80 Ms. Katia Wolf ’92 Ms. Carolyn Wollen Woodard & Curran Richard Bullock and Carol Woolman
Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Wright Ms. Jingran Xiao (’89) Ms. Sara Yasner ’95 Mrs. Diana Young Mr. and Mrs. Louis Zawislak Mr. Fred Zerega Mrs. Jane Zirnkilton Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Zirnkilton GIFTS IN MEMORY > In memory of Peter G. Barton Ms. Patricia Barton > In memory of William H. Drury, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Robert G. Goelet Dr. James Kellam Mr. and Mrs. Jeptha Wade > In memory of Alice Partee Stewart Eno Mrs. James Abeles Mr. and Mrs. Stockton Andrews Ms. Danuta Barnard Mr. Noel George Belli Mrs. Louise Blodget Mr. and Mrs. John C. Bloom Ms. Frances Bowne Mr. and Mrs. Leslie C. Brewer Mrs. George Cluett, Jr. Mr. Francis I.G. Coleman Mr. Edward Crane, Jr. Ms. Sally Crock Mrs. Charles Dennison Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dickey, Jr. Carol and Jackson Eno Alma Boylan and Jennings Garnett Mr. and Mrs. Murray Gartner Mr. and Mrs. Robert Gilfillan Mr. Robert Goheen Mr. and Mrs. John M. Good Mr. Merton G. Henry Ms. Barbara Hill Mr. James S. Hill Mr. and Mrs. John Houbolt Ms. Anne M. Kozak Mr. and Mrs. Edward Leisenring Ms. Fleury Mackie Mr. and Mrs. Alan Miller, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Gerrish Milliken Mr. and Mrs. David Moore
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A N N UA L R E P O RT Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel Nash Mr. and Mrs. Donald G. Parrot Mrs. Stephen Pearson Mr. C. W. Robinson, Jr. Ms. Peggy Irwin Shattuck Mr. and Mrs. Donald T. Shire Mr. and Mrs. John Sienkiewicz Mrs. June Spencer Mr. and Mrs. W. P. Stewart Mr. and Mrs. Richard Sullivan Mrs. Robert Suminsby Mrs. Robert Thomas Mr. and Mrs. Widgery Thomas, Jr. Ms. Gretchen G. Warner Ms. Jane N. White Ms. Joan Williams Ms. Mary Witherbee Ms. Carolyn Wollen > In memory of William G. Foulke, Sr. Dr. Mary Elizabeth Alexander Mr. and Mrs. Robert Bass Ms. Kate Baxter Mr. and Mrs. David Billings Ms. Emilie Bregy T. A. Cox Mrs. Nancy Harris Mr. and Mrs. Harry M. K. Johnston Mr. Arthur Keller Bruce Beaton and Lisa Knapp Ms. Anne Kozak Mrs. Louis Madeira Mr. and Mrs. William V. P. Newlin Mrs. Stephen Pearson James Dyke and Helen Porter Ratke, Miller, Hagner & Co. Mr. and Mrs. David Robbins Mr. Charles Savage Mr. and Mrs. Robert Shafer Mr. and Mrs. Richard Sullivan Mr. and Mrs. William Wister, Jr./ Margaret Dorrance Strawbridge Foundation
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> In memory of Lois Gauthier Lois M. Gauthier Charitable Trust > In memory of Philip Geyelin Acadia Senior College Mr. Jeffrey Clark > In memory of Irving Gold Donna Gold and Bill Carpenter > In memory of Craig Greene John and Karen Anderson > In memory of Tom Hall Mrs. Oliver Lowry > In memory of Dr. Edward J. Meade, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Robert Meade > In memory of Robert Stafford Kidwell Mr. and Mrs. John Merrill > In memory of Joseph B. (Tommy) Thomas IV Mrs. Ruth Fraley Mrs. June Spencer > In memory of Mr. and Mrs. Amory Thorndike Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Schindler Mr. and Mrs. W. Nicholas Thorndike > In memory of Jesse Tucker ’95 for the Jesse Tucker Memorial Ms. Cedar Bough Saeji ’93 Mr. and Mrs. Winfield Brooks Coplon Associates Ms. Jennifer Del Regno ’95 Ms. Heather Dority ’96 Tobin and Valerie Peacock ’95 Toby Stephenson ’98 and Andrea Perry ’95 Ms. Elizabeth Rousek Ayers ’95 Ryan Ruggiero ’96 Ava Moskin ’95 and Bogart Salzberg ’96
Ms. Sara Yasner ’95 Ms. Margaret Youngs ’96
> In honor of Sarah Steinberg ’07 Ms. Alice Mann
GIFTS IN HONOR > In honor of Edward McC. Blair Mrs. Philip Geyelin Ms. Pamela Meyer Mr. Edward McC. Blair, Jr.
> In honor of Donald B. Straus for the Donald B. Straus Seminar Room Carolyn Gray and Gray Cox Dr. and Mrs. Stephen Ressel Dan Thomassen and Bonnie Tai Dr. Davis Taylor Susan Bennett and John Visvader
> In honor of Leslie C. Brewer Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Erikson > In honor of Sally (Morong) Chetwynd ’76 Mrs. Lorraine Morong > In honor of Kenneth S. Cline Drs. Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis and Merton Flemings > In honor of Kathryn W. Davis Mr. and Mrs. William Trimble, Jr. > In honor of William G. Foulke, Jr. Dr. and Mrs. Philip Geier > In honor of Rowen Gorman ’07 Mrs. Constance Weeks > In honor of George B.E. Hambleton Mr. William P. Carey > In honor of Laura Johnson Mr. Kenneth Cline > In honor of Daniel Pierce Mr. Peter Baldwin Freeman > In honor of Dr. Walter Robinson III Ms. Emmie Rick Mrs. Walter M. Robinson, Jr./ Margaret Ann & Walter Robinson Foundation > In honor of Henry D. Sharpe, Jr. Mr. Peter Baldwin Freeman
MATCHING GIFTS AXA Foundation Boeing Gift Matching Program Chubb Corporation Freeport-McMoRan Foundation GE Foundation John Hancock S. Lee & Margery S. Kohrman Philanthropic Fund of The Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland Microsoft Matching Gifts Program Morgan Stanley PJM Corporation United Technologies GIFTS TO THE KATHRYN W. DAVIS STUDENT RESIDENCE VILLAGE Mr. and Mrs. Robert M. Bass Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman Mr. and Mrs. Roderick H. Cushman Mrs. Kathryn W. Davis/ Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation Fr. James M. Gower Mr. and Mrs. George B. E. Hambleton Mr. Samuel Hamill, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. G. Bernard Hamilton Mr. and Mrs. Melville Hodder Ms. Sherry Huber Mr. and Mrs. John N. Kelly
A N N UA L R E P O RT Mr. and Mrs. Grant G. McCullagh Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Milliken Mr. and Mrs. G. Marshall Moriarty Mr. and Mrs. Philip S. J. Moriarty Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Neilson Mr. and Mrs. William V. P. Newlin Mr. and Mrs. Peter Nitze Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Pierce James Dyke and Helen Porter Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton Robinson, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Christiaan van Heerden INDIVIDUAL GIFTS FOR SPECIAL PROJECTS Mr. Ron Beard Ms. Cedar Bough Saeji ’93 Tony and Milja BrecherDeMuro Mr. and Mrs. Leslie Brewer Mr. and Mrs. Winfield Brooks Mr. Frederick Cabot Cathance River Education Alliance Christopher and Miriam Collins Coplon Associates Carolyn Gray and Gray Cox Chris Crowley Leah and Gary Davis Mr. and Mrs. Shelby M.C. Davis Mrs. Edwin Deans Mr. and Mrs. George Deans Ms. Jennifer Del Regno ’95 Ms. Heather Dority ’96 Mr. and Mrs. William G. Foulke, Jr. Diane Lokocz ’03 and Tim Fuller ’03 Garden Club of Mount Desert Fr. James Gower Kendall Guyette Mr. and Mrs. George B. E. Hambleton Mr. Samuel Hamill, Jr. Charles and Jackie Hewett Mr. and Mrs. Melville Hodder
Ms. Lynn Horowitz/ Rosengarten-Horowitz Fund Ms. Sherry Huber Dr. James Kellam ’96 Mr. and Mrs. John Kelly Margie and Philip Kunhardt III ’77 Mme. Christine Lavallee Mr. Jon Leahy Mr. and Mrs. Peter Loring Ms. Casey Mallinckrodt Jon and Sarah McDaniel ’93 Jennifer Reynolds and Jay McNally ’84 Mr. and Mrs. John Merrill Mr. and Mrs. Gerrish Milliken Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Milliken Mr. and Mrs. G. Marshall Moriarty Mr. and Mrs. Philip S. J. Moriarty Rev. Albert Neilson Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Neilson Mr. and Mrs. William V. P. Newlin O’Naturals Valerie (’98) and Tobin Peacock ’95 Toby Stephenson ’98 and Andrea Perry ’95 Mr. Andrew Peterson Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Pierce James Dyke and Helen Porter Ms. Cathy Ramsdell ’78 Mr. and Mrs. John Rensenbrink Dr. and Mrs. Stephen Ressel Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton Robinson, Jr. Dr. Walter Robinson Ms. Elizabeth Rousek Ayers ’95 Ava Moskin ’95 and Bogart Salzberg ’96 Mr. and Mrs. Donald Straus Dan Thomassen and Bonnie Tai Dr. Davis Taylor Mr. and Mrs. Christiaan van Heerden Susan Bennett and John Visvader Caroly Vogt Mr. and Mrs. Jeptha Wade
Chris Wasileski Mr. Rick Wilson Ms. Sara Yasner ’95 Ms. Margaret Youngs ’96 GRANTS RECEIVED FOR SPECIAL PROJECTS Acadia Partners for Science & Learning Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation Cabot Family Charitable Trust Cricket Foundation Cruise Industry Charitable Foundation Healthy Acadia Coalition Maine Space Grant Consortium Mark Woolman Horner Music Education Fund of the Maine Community Foundation MELMAC Education Fdn. Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory Quimby Family Foundation The Virginia Wellington Cabot Foundation The Woodcock P. Fdn. University of Maine Sea Grant Program US Dept. of Education ALLIED WHALE PROGRAMS Abercrombie & Kent, Inc. Rev. and Mrs. Jonathan Appleyard Bar Harbor Whale Watch Barbara Tennent and Steven Barkan Mr. Edward McC. Blair Michele and Agnese Cestone Foundation Mr. and Mrs. J. Staige Davis Mr. Walter Goodnow Marisla Foundation Penobscot Marine Museum Ms. Donna Seymour State of Maine Treasury Dept. US Dept. of Commerce FRIENDS OF THE ARTS Mr. and Mrs. Leslie C. Brewer Friends of the Arts Fund of the Maine Community
Foundation Mrs. Anne Mazlis Roger and Patricia Samuel Mr. and Mrs. Henry D. Sharpe, Jr. Ms. Elena Tuhy ’90 Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Williams Mr. John Wilmerding GEORGE B. DORR MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Ms. Madge Baker/Katharine Baker Charitable Lead Unitrust Mr. and Mrs. Leslie C. Brewer Mrs. Bernard Cough, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Felton Mr. and Mrs. John Gut Mr. and Mrs. Paul Haertel Ms. Alma Homola Institute of Museum and Library Services Downeast Chapter of Maine Audubon Society Mr. and Mrs. George Marcus Mrs. Anne Mazlish Jennifer Reynolds and Jay McNally ’84, Lily and Rose Besen-McNally, Dana and Michael Borge Mr. and Mrs. C. W. Eliot Paine Mr. and Mrs. George Putnam Ms. Clare Shepley The Swan Agency Insurance SUMMER PROGRAMS Ms. Tamara Bannerman Jennifer and Brian Booher Ms. Jennifer Bridgers Douglas and Kimberly Childs Manley and Karen Dolley Dr. David Painter and Dr. Mary Dudzik Mrs. John Emery Dr. Verity Frankel Mr. Matthew Gerald ’83 Kirsten and Stephen Henry Mr. and Mrs. Peter Hill Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Hyam Catherine and Timothy Jones Mr. James Kadin
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A N N UA L R E P O RT Dr. and Mrs. Mark Kandutsch Racheal Wallace and Douglas Kiehm Ann Dorward and Steven King Ms. Elizabeth Libby Ms. Martha McCluskey Paul Girdzis and Adrienne Paiewonsky Ms. Karen Pooler Ms. Caroline Pryor David Rockefeller Fund, Incorporated Martin and Rachael Sharp Joel Graber and Lindsay Shopland Ms. Lisa Stewart Mr. and Mrs. William Thorndike, Jr. Karin and Jonathan Warren Sarah and Michael Wilson THORNDIKE LIBRARY Ms. Patricia Barton The Camden Conference Mr. and Mrs. Jacob V. Null Dr. Karen E. Waldron UNION RIVER WATERSHED COALITION Southern Maine Wetlands Conservancy Mr. C.A.A. Storer Mr. Jeremy Strater US Gulf of Maine Assoc. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas L. Welch ENDOWMENT GIFTS Acadia Senior College John and Karen Anderson Mr. Jeffrey Clark Mr. Peter Baldwin Freeman Mr. and Mrs. Robert Goelet Mr. Samuel Hamill, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Melville Hodder Estate of David McGiffert Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Pierce Mr. and Mrs. Jeptha Wade STEVEN K. KATONA CHAIR IN MARINE STUDIES John and Karen Anderson Ms. Carolyn Berzinis Mr. Kenneth Cline Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Erikson
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Mr. and Mrs.A. Irving Forbes Ms. Nadine Gerdts ’76 Mr. and Mrs. Philip Grantham, Sr. Mr. Samuel Hamill, Jr. Ms. Katherine Hazard ’76 Charles and Jackie Hewett Mr. James Houghton Mr. and Mrs. Michael Huber Ms. Sherry Huber Ms. Jennifer Hughes Ms. Laura Johnson Jordan’s Restaurant Mr. David Katona Mr. John Kauffmann Shawn ’00 and Sarah Keeley ’05 Bethany and Zack Klyver (’90) Mr. Scott Kraus ’77 Jon and Sarah McDaniel ’93 Ms. Donna McFarland Jennifer Reynolds and Jay McNally ’84 Mr. and Mrs. Gerrish Milliken Mr. and Mrs. G. Marshall Moriarty Ms. Anna Murphy Newman’s Own, Inc. Mr. and Mrs. C. W. Eliot Paine Mr. Bruce Phillips ’78 Dr. and Mrs. Richard Pierson Thomas and Patricia Pinkham Ms. Cathy Ramsdell ’78 Cynthia Livingston and Henry Schmelzer Mr. and Mrs. Henry D. Sharpe, Jr. Jean and Bill Sylvia Ms. Elena Tuhy ’90 Mr. John Wilmerding Ms. Joanna Young SCHOLARSHIP GIFTS Mr. and Mrs. Shelby M. C. Davis Davis United World College Program Lois M. Gauthier Charitable Trust The Agnes M. Lindsay Trust Maine Community Foundation Mr. Charles E. Merrill, Jr.
Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward Alice Blum Yoakum Scholarship Fund of the Maine Community Foundation REBECCA CLARK ’96 MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP FUND Mr. Kenneth Cline Ms. Sally Crock Mrs. Philip Geyelin JOHN AND LOUISA DREIER SCHOLARSHIPS Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Dreier Mr. and Mrs. John Dreier Ms. Susan Dreier Mr. and Mrs. G. Marshall Moriarty EDWARD G. KAELBER SCHOLARSHIP FOR MAINE STUDENTS OF OUTSTANDING PROMISE Ms. Nevin Bengur William C. Bullock Jr. Family Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Edmund R. Davis Dead River Company Ms. Peggy Dulany William Ginn ’74 and June LaCombe Ms. Sherry Huber Steven K. Katona and Susan Lerner Mr. and Mrs. William L. Kraushaar Mr. and Mrs. John W. Payson Ellen Pope and Pat Welch Robert and Maurine Rothschild Fund Henry L.P. Schmelzer and Cynthia Livingston Mr. Richard J. Warren CAMPAIGN FOR EXCELLENCE AND SUSTAINABILITY Mr. and Mrs. John P. Reeves Mr. and Mrs. W. P. Stewart Mr. and Mrs. William Wister, Jr
ADOPT-A-WHALE Ms. Shirley Ailes Ms. Marianne Albergo Mr. Rick Alexander Ms. Cindy Allen Mr. Allen Baldwin Mr. and Mrs. Steven Barrows Mrs. Eleanor Bechtle Black Bear Graphics Ms. Karen A. Bringelsen Ms. Evelyn Burr Mrs. Rosanne Burrell Francisca Drexel and Tom Caliandro Mr. Mark Chimsky-Lustig Ms. Doris Combs Ms. Judith Conley Mr. John Conover Mr. Thomas Cook Dick Atlee and Sarah Corson James Bogrett and Sharon Crane Mr. and Mrs. James Curry Ms. Jenniffer Daparma Mrs. Rebecca Deangelis Thomas and Jill Deans Mrs. Karen Deterding Mr. and Mrs. A. Edward Dragon Ms. Karen Drake Ms. Tamara Duff Drs. Jeffrey and Linda Dunn Ms. Missy Eckstein Ms. Carin Edwards-Orr Dawn and Gerald Freeman Senior Judge Hilton Fuller Ms. Anne Gaddy Ms. Carla Ganiel Ms. Lois Gardner Mr. Matt Gaulin Prof Walter Gerolamo Dr. and Mrs. Donald Giulianti Mr. and Mrs. Neil Greenwald Ms. Allison Hale Harrison Middle School Andrea and Richard Henriques Mrs. Julie Indge Ms. Pam Jamieson Mr. and Mrs. Edward Johnson III Mrs. Robert Kanzler Terri and Matthew Kelsey Mr. and Mrs. Donald Kimmelman
A N N UA L R E P O RT Ms. Phyllis Kinzie Corey Kubat Ms. Barbara Lambach Ms. Jan Lanning Mr. Michael Lasser Ms. Brenda Leemann Ms. Carlene Lemay Cecily and Chelsie Lent Mrs. Virginia Leppanen Ronnie Lesser Mrs. Michele Levine Ms. Nan Lincoln Ms. Kathy-Jo Lonergan Mr. Edward Longville Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Maass Sunshine Marino Rohan Mario Pam Martin Ms. Carolyn Mason Cheryl McDonald Ms. Susan McGuiness Mr. Nathan McKnight Phyllis and Stan Minick Shawn Meyer Nabors Ms. Mary Olson Ellen and Michael Ornaf Ms. Kelly O’Sullivan Mrs. Janine Pariente Maple John Razsa Valerie and John Razsa Ms. Lois Rhea Karen and Fred Royer John and Nancy Sawin Mr. and Mrs. H. C. Schenkenberger Karen and Jack Skidmore Ms. Eva Soalt Ms. Sarah Solnick Ms. Joanne Sousa Ms. Marcia Stern Kelly Stock Elizabeth and Paul Sunde Ms. Heidi Tair Benjamin Tengwall Mr. Matt Tocknell Ms. Rosanne Tousignant Mr. Harry Tucci, Jr. Ms. Wendy E. Turner Ms. Kathy Venegas Mr. and Mrs. William Whitener Ms. Alesia Williams Meghan Williams, DVM Ms. Patricia Wooldridge Mr. John Wurdemann
GIFTS TO THE SENIOR CLASS Aleksandra Aljakna ’07 Sarah and David Baker Tony and Milja BrecherDeMuro Jonathan Busko ’07 Trisha Cantwell-Keene Colin Capers ’95 Barbara and Vinson Carter Kenneth Cline Melissa and Frederick Cook Carolyn Gray and Gray Cox John Deans ’07 Alexander Fletcher ’07 Cherie and Chad Ford Carla Ganiel Donna Gold Ms Anna Goldman ’07 Barbara McLeod and David Hales Kayla Hartwell ’07 Atsuko Watabe ’93 and Bruce Hazam ’92 Juan Pablo Hoffmaister ’07 Laura Johnson Jill and Bobby Kelley Mr. and Mrs. Ted Koffman Virginie Lavallee-Picard ’07 Sam Coplon and Isabel Mancinelli Donna McFarland Jamie McKown Amy Mitchell Anna Murphy Sean Murphy Benjamin Nimkin (’07) Elisheva Rubin ’07 Erin Soucy ’07 Darcy Allen Whitten (’07) GIFTS IN KIND Alternative Market Ardea Expeditions Atlantic Oakes-by-the-Sea Avena Botanicals Bakers Café Bar Harbor Inn Burning Tree Cadillac Mountain Sports China Joy William D. Craig Mrs. Rudolph DeHarak Green Store Havana’s Jordan’s Restaurant Landvest, Incorporated Maine Mycological Association
McKay’s Public House Norman Nadel North Woods Ways Reel Pizza Mr. and Mrs. Fred Scheiner Dr. and Mrs. Peter H. Sellers Sherman’s Book Store Stone Soup Summer Festival of the Arts SustainUs Wallace Tent Carol Woolman and Richard Bullock YWCA MDI GIFTS OF TIME AND TALENT Carrie Banks ’01and Mrs. Philip Banks Michael Blair ’95 Michael Boland ’94 and Dierdre Swords Colin Capers ’95 Tony DeMuro Cerissa Desrosiers ’00 Kelly Dickson, MPhil ’97 Alexander Fletcher ’07 Tim Fuller ’03 Jon Geiger Matt Gerald }83 Mary Harney ’96 Peter Heller ’85 Dianne Helprin Susan Hersey Noreen Hogan ’91 Eamonn Hutton ’05 Shawn Keeley ’00 Donna LaLiberte Heather Martin-Zboray ’93 Morning Glory Bakery Barbara Neilly Tammy Packie ’97 Dina Petrillo-Herz ’89 Adam Rabasca Allison Rogers Furbish ’04 Kerri Sands ’02 Fae Silverman ’03 Lynne and Michael Staggs ’97 Brian Stan/Morris Yachts of Trenton Frank Twohill ’80 Melita Westerlund Matthew Young ’93 SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR ALUMNI DONORS Beverly Agler ’81 Heather Albert-Knopp ’99 Aleksandra Aljakna ’07
William Allen ’87 Karin Anderson, PhD (’84) Peter Anderson ’81 Wendy Anderson (’80) Timothea ’94 and Neal Antonucci ’95 Evelyn Ashford (’83) Jennifer Atkinson ’03 Wendy Knickerbocker and David Avery ’84 Lelania Prior Avila ’92 Jennifer Aylesworth ’94 Carrie Banks ’01 Bruce Becque ’81 Bruce Bender ’76 Ms Serra Joan Benson ’02 Jason Bernad, MD ’94 John Biderman ’77 Janet Biondi ’81 Jerry Bley (’78) Sally Boisvert ’04 Pamela Bolton ’79 Rev. Paul Boothby ’88 Sarah Boucher, MPhil ’06 Cedar Bough Saeji ’93 Dennis Bracale ’88 Jessica Bradshaw ’03 Carla Burnham ’84 Jonathan Busko ’07 Skip ’83 and Rebecca Buyers-Basso ’81 Roc and Helen Caivano ’80 Julie Cameron ’78 Colin Capers ’95 Liza Carter ’76 Erin Chalmers ’00 Katherine Clark ’91 Tammis Coffin ’87 Douglas Coots ’83 Lisa Damtoft ’79 John Allen Dandy (’84) Julia Davis ’03 Livia Munck Davis ’88 John Deans ’07 Jennifer Del Regno ’95 Holly Devaul ’84 Janet Redfield and Scott Dickerson, MPhil, ’95 George and Kelly Dickson, MPhil ’97 Angela DiPerri ’01 Heather Dority ’96 Michelle Catherine Dumont ’02 Scott Durkee ’84 Alden Eaton (SP) Joseph Edes ’83 Wendy Rodger and Henry Elliott (’76)
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A N N UA L R E P O RT Julie Erb ’83 Lynne Wommack Espy ’93 Cynthia Jordan Fisher ’80 Alexander Fletcher ’07 Diane Lokocz ’03 and Timothy Fuller ’03 Allison Fundis ’03 Lucretia Gatchell (’85) Laurie Geiger (SpP) Amy George ’98 Kirsten George Edelglass (’95) Matthew Gerald ’83 Nadine Gerdts ’76 William Ginn ’74 and June LaCombe Ms Anna Goldman ’07 Mrs. Laura Arm Goldstein (SpP) Marie Malin ’01 and Morgan Wing Goodale, MPhil ’01 Abigail Goodyear ’81 Mrs. Therese Goulet ’78 Katherine Elizabeth Griffin ’00 Mary Griffin ’97 Joseph Grigas (SP) Mr. and Mrs. Michael Gumpert (SP) Briana Hall-Harvey ’02 Stephen Sternbach and Lisa Hammer ’91 M. Rebecca Hancock ’97 Matthew Hare ’84 Marion Harris ’88 Tanner Brook Harris ’06 Sonja Hartmann ’88 Kayla Hartwell ’07 Lois Hayes ’79 Atsuko Watabe ’93 and Bruce Hazam ’92 Katherine Hazard ’76 Michael Zwirko ’01 and Erin Heacock ’04 Kate Russell Henry and Eric Henry (’76) Katherine Hester ’98 Barbara Hilli (SP) Juan Pablo Hoffmaister ’07 Margaret Hoffman ’97 Dr. Kathleen Hogan ’81 Noreen Hogan ’91 Jean Howell (SP) Evelyn Mae Hurwich ’80 Susan Inches ’79 Jamien Jacobs ’86 Alison and Joplin James ’84 William Janes (SpP) Nishad Jayasundara ’05
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Peter Jeffery ’84 Richard Gordet and Sonja Johanson ’95 Catherine Johnson ’74 Michael Kattner ’95 Sarah ’05 and Shawn Keeley ’00 Dr. James Kellam ’96 Joanne Kemmerer ’02 Ann Noel Kesselheim (’81) Bethany and Zack Klyver (’90) Aleda Koehn (SpP) Scott Kraus ’77 Margi and Philip Kunhardt III ’77 Heather Lakey ’00 Judith Lamb ’00 Carrol Lange ’99 Virginie Lavallee-Picard ’07 Amanda LazrusCunningham ’02 Kathryn Harmon ’94 and Robert Ledo ’91 Caroline Leonard ’01 Alice Levey ’81 Aaron Lewis ’05 Dr. John Long, Jr. ’86 Mayo Lynam (SpP) Melinda Magleby ’00 Meg and Miles Maiden ’86 Carol Manahan ’77 Deborah Mandsager Wunderman ’89 Pamela Manice (SP) Nichole Marks (’83) Robert Marshall ’87 Erik Hilson Martin ’98 Kathleen Massimini ’82 Wyatt Matthews, MPhil ’07 Dr. Robert May ’81 Jon and Sarah McDaniel ’93 Ian Scott McIsaac ’76 Jennifer Reynolds and Jay McNally ’84 Donald K. McNeil (SP) Clifton McPherson III ’84 Jeanne McPherson (SpP) Carol Mead ’93 Rebecca Melius ’01 Terra Anna Merry ’98 Jessica Messere ’00 Mr. and Mrs. Olin Eugene Myers, Jr. (VS, ’80) Jeffrey Miller ’92 Edna Martin and Edward Monat III ’88 Peter Moon ’90
Adam McPherson ’00 and Chelsea Mooser ’00 Bethany Murray ’03 Michael Nardacci (SP) Tammy McGrath ’97 and Philip Nicholas ’98 Benjamin Nimkin (’07) Kendra Noyes Miller ’01 Carol ’93 and Jacob Null ’93 Judd and Hannah Olshan ’92 Benoni Outerbridge ’84 Valerie (’98) and Tobin Peacock ’95 Toby Stephenson ’98 and Andrea Perry ’95 Alexa Pezzano ’00 Bruce Phillips ’78 Meghan Piercy ’91 Teresa Pijanowski (SpP) Chellie Pingree ’79 Andrew Pixley ’01 Shiva Polefka ’01 Dr. Nishanta Rajakaruna ’94 Cathy Ramsdell ’78 Dr. Jennifer Roberts ’94 Allison Rogers Furbish ’04 W. David Rosenmiller ’84 Volha Roshchanka ’04 Elizabeth Rousek Ayers ’95 Abby Rowe (VS, ’96) Elisheva Rubin ’07 Ava Moskin ’95 and Bogart Salzberg ’96 Kerri Sands ’02 Daniel Sangeap ’90 Coltere Savidge ’06 Margaret Scheid ’85 Noah Scher ’04 Ellen Seh ’75 Fae Silverman ’03 Richard ’88 and Alexandra Simis ’90 Mark Simonds ’81 Erin Soucy ’07 Lynne and Michael Staggs ’97 Kirsten Stockman ’91 Dorie Stolley ’88 Stuart Dickey Summer ’82
Dr. Douglas Sward ’96 Katrin Hyman Tchana ’83 Noah Scher ’04 and Anais Tomezsko ’04 Elena Tuhy ’90 Frank Twohill ’80 Claire Verdier ’80 John Viele (’81) Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Volkmann ’90 William Wade ’76 Amanda Jane Walker ’98 Hua Wang ’04 Michael Weber ’83 Lydia Ann Webster ’05 Katherine Weinstock ’81 Maria Weisenberg ’81 David Wersan ’79 Peter Williams ’93 Dawn Lamendola and Joshua Winer ’91 Betsy Wisch ’83 Anna Wlodarczyk ’04 Susan Woehrlin ’80 Jingran Xiao (’89) Sara Yasner ’95 Margaret Youngs ’96 Fred Zerega (SpP) SP=Summer Program SpP=Special Program VS=Visiting Student Graduation dates in parenthesis refer to non-grads.
Every effort has been made to ensure accuracy in preparing our donor list. If a mistake has been made in the way you or your family is identified, or if your name was omitted, we apologize. To ensure that future donor lists report your names as you prefer, please notify the Development Office at 207-288-5015, ext. 329 with any changes.
Help Make a Difference! COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC welcomes gifts of all kinds to support our work of educating students to make a difference throughout the world. Please consider including the college in your annual giving. Equally as important, to ensure COA’s future, consider becoming part of our planned giving program. Bequests, charitable gift annuities, charitable reminder trusts and other similar programs help the college while also offering you income tax benefits. Visit www.coa.edu/html/givetocoa or call the Development Office at 207-288-5015.
COA IN MEMORIAM
Brooke Astor
Albert “Al” Stork
March 30, 1902–August 13, 2007, COA supporter
July 18, 1928–February 21, 2007 COA’s first head of buildings and grounds
Brooke Astor was a great friend to COA. Among her many gifts to the college, she helped to make our new George B. Dorr Museum of Natural History a reality. We are delighted to think that she remembered COA when making out her will, and especially that she thought to help Maine students come to the college. Brooke Astor cuts the ribbon at the opening of the new George B. Dorr Museum of Natural History in 2001.
Bernard “Sonny” Cough July 12, 1927–March 24, 2007, Trustee 1970 to 1971 Sonny, Les Brewer and Father Jim Gower were old friends. When the idea of starting COA came about, Sonny came on board as one of the founding trustees. He was a respected local businessman, which meant a lot as we were seeking to gain community acceptance for COA. ~ Ed Kaelber
William G. Foulke, Sr. Nov. 20, 1912–March 30th, 2007, Trustee 1985 to 1990
Bill Foulke Sr., with his daughterin-law Wendy Foulke, granddaughter Leah Henzler and Bill Foulke, Jr., current trustee.
Bill was a very unusual person, a true Renaissance man. The only time he missed a trustee meeting was when the Shakespeare Society of Philadelphia held a special event for his birthday. Bill was dedicated in a quiet way and a gentleman in a real sense, a person who cared about all people. A person of that quality has an impact on many people, including his family–the Sellers, Newlins and Foulkes–who have since become involved in the college. Beyond that, Bill handled the business of auditing with aplomb–no fuss or bother. ~ Lou Rabineau
Big Al: straight, plumb, level and true–he touched my life in a way that gave it meaning and purpose at a time when I need both. I have yet to meet another human with his talent and drive. For COA, he was the right man at the right time; he transformed the old Kaelber Hall from a summer cottage to a functioning institutional building. He taught me so much. I think of him often. ~ Millard Dority, Director of Campus Planning, Buildings, and Public Safety
Donald B. Straus June 28, 1916–September 3, 2007, Trustee 1974 to 2007 Don Straus was a Human Ecologist. He worried about the fate of the planet and the people on it long before that was stylish. He was always working on ways to bring people together, to get people talking with each other and recognizing common goals. Don loved students, and we were all his students. He had enormous energy and insight. Most of all, Don loved COA. If he had one major flaw, it was that he saw the distant future much better than the immediate present. Don saw what we could become: a Light among the Nations. I have spent twenty years running to try to catch up with him, but again and again I find that when I reach a spot I see his footprints in the sand before me and realize once again “Gosh, Don was right.” ~ John Anderson
Don Straus was one of the most welcoming people to me in my first year at COA. Whether attending a dinner at his house or working closely with him on the Governance Initiative Liaison Committee. He lived in the world of ideas and loved conversation and debate; he had a spark that made intergenerational dialogue work. He believed in a new way of thinking and making decisions and an educational framework that would bring about necessary change. ~ Nathaniel Keller ’04
Don Straus’ courage, the intensity of his curiosity and intellect—and his constant delight in the world around him, shaped the college. As a sailor, it was fitting that his last day was one of strong winds, bright sun and intense promise. ~ Donna Gold
Photos courtesy of Rebecca Hancock
merchant mariner When Rebecca Hancock ’97 goes to work, it’s for sixty days at a time. Her office? The pilothouse of a thousandfoot freighter, the M/V Stewart J. Cort. If it’s headed through the locks, she might stand forward, reporting to the captain as to how close the sides of the ship—the length of three football fields—is getting to the lock walls. And if it’s unloading its four cargo holds while she’s on watch, she’s in charge of the deck operations. Hancock is second mate, third in command, on a ship that plies America’s Midwestern waters. There are twentytwo other souls aboard. The only other woman works in the galley.
Rebecca Hancock ’97
Q. How did you come to be a merchant mariner? A. I did an internship as an environmental educator on the Hudson River sloop Clearwater in Poughkeepsie, where I grew up, and worked on the eightyfive-foot Bay Lady in Bar Harbor. I remember seeing my first carrier when I was working at the USS Arizona memorial in Hawaii. It was a moment of awe. It did something to me and I had to pursue that feeling. After one of the captains of the Bay Lady went to the Great Lakes Maritime Academy in Traverse City, Michigan, I applied and got in. Q. What are you carrying? A. We load about 52,000 tons of taconite—iron ore pellets—in Superior, Wisconsin and take it through St. Mary’s River, down Lake Michigan to Burns Harbor, Indiana, close to Chicago. 64 | COA
Q. What’s it like to be a woman officer? A. Most of the guys I work with treat me more like a sister, with a certain level of teasing and good-natured insults. It’s one of the things I enjoy most—helps me to keep my sarcastic wit well-sharpened. Once I established that I am willing to do any of the work the guys do within my job description and everyone realizes that I’m one of the crew, there are very few problems.
Q. Do you feel you use your degree in Human Ecology? A. Human Ecology is part of the way that I look at things. I credit the way I was taught with how I can examine everything that I come into contact with. Out here, I’m tearing down the boundaries between the outside walls and myself. I’m subject to whatever Mother Nature chooses to throw out. If we’re going through the Soo Locks in blowing snow, it can get to be pretty frigging miserable. But eventually my watch and overtime ends and I can take a hot shower and daydream about the money I just made while cursing my impending frostbite. Looking out over water as smooth as glass, I realize that I’m a part of things. If I’m lucky, I’ll catch a glimpse of the aurora borealis over Lake Superior. It is in these moments that our existence is given meaning.
Honoring Ed Kaelber Reprinted from the Bangor Daily News editorial pages July 13, 2007 tarting this fall, a succession of promising Maine students will benefit from a new scholarship program named for the founding president of both the College of the Atlantic and the Maine Community Foundation. Friends of Ed Kaelber gathered Thursday afternoon, July 12, to pay their respects to Mr. Kaelber and hear details of the Edward G. Kaelber Scholarship for Maine Students of Outstanding Promise. Each year, one incoming freshman student at the College of the Atlantic “who has demonstrated a high degree of achievement in academic and community work” will be selected for support up to $7,500. “Graduated support” is planned for each scholarship winner through his or her four years of study. A partnership of the college and the foundation is endowing the new scholarship to “provide opportunities for Maine students who possess the potential for the kind of bold commitment and leadership Ed Kaelber personifies and who will use their skills and talents to bring about change in their communities in equally significant ways.” The Community Foundation will hold and manage the scholarship fund. The initial goal is one million dollars, and additional gifts and grants are expected. Mr. Kaelber was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, and grew up on Long Island. He graduated from Harvard and attended Harvard Business School. He first visited Maine in the early 1950s, when he was running a lumber business in New York. He came to Maine to buy lumber and liked what he saw. Many years later, after serving as associate dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, he was intrigued by plans to create a new college in Bar Harbor. He helped develop the College of the Atlantic and its core course of “human ecology” and became its first president. He was an avid sailor, cruising the Maine coast on his original Friendship sloop, the Amos Swan and helped Ralph Stanley, the Southwest Harbor builder of boats, organize his boatyard company. At the age of 83, what does he do to occupy himself these days? He says, “Nothing but playing, reading, gossiping, arguing and entertaining” with his wife, Ann Sewall, at their home in Bar Harbor. But he is always ready to take on short-term projects, and the college and the foundation both continue to make use of his wisdom and skills.
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Photograph by Noreen Hogan ’91.
Courtesy of the Bangor Daily News.
Readers are encouraged to submit poetry, short stories, and human ecology essays to COA. Please send your work to dgold@coa.edu or Donna Gold, COA Magazine, 105 Eden Street, Bar Harbor, Maine 04609.
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