About our cover
By Rob Levin
In the summer of 1971, 13 students and three faculty members embarked on the College of the Atlantic experimental pilot program. Their challenge was to test and evaluate what would become COA’s interdisciplinary, place-based approach. Working collaboratively, those students and faculty joined several staff members and trustees in raising and answering questions about the future direction of the college. Among that intrepid bunch were Diane Pierce-Williams and Jill Tabbutt-Henry. Their engaged work and spirit of open exploration helped prove COA as a concept, which, one year later, in the fall of 1972, would lead to the college’s first academic class.
DIANE PIERCE-WILLIAMS
As a member of the first entering class at another experimental, interdisciplinary institution, participating in the pilot program for the soon-to-open College of the Atlantic was the perfect summer job for me.
Although there was no degree or certification in the offing, we took our courses seriously. Each of us worked toward a final project, researching and presenting our notions of what could happen on Bar Island. As I recall, Jill was creative enough to propose an aquaculture facility. My own idea was much less visionary: that it should be a nature preserve.
Like at other residential colleges, much of our joy and growth came during extracurricular moments. There were the usual frisbee games, meetings, and late night discussions. Other aspects were more particular to that time and place such as watching the comings and goings of the Bluenose ferry, standing firewatch at night, or exploring the abandoned mansion next door.
There is something else I carry besides treasured remembrances of an idyllic summer in Bar Harbor. COA provided a certain intellectual infrastructure. My vocational pursuits have included positions as varied law professor, community volunteer, and librarian. All those roles had to do with how people interact with their environments, thus I have remained a proponent of human ecology during the half-century since I was first introduced to the concept. I deeply appreciate that COA continues to offer that framework to others.
JILL TABBUTT-HENRY
That summer at COA, 1971, quite simply, changed my life. It made me realize that education—at its best—is dynamic, evolving, and focused on the needs of the learners—and the world itself. It made me think about not only what I wanted to learn, but how I wanted to learn it. I went off to my first semester at another college after that, but it paled in comparison. I would soon return to COA to be part of the admissions staff, selecting the first year of students—including myself!—and staying for two years.
Some years later, I got bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the field of community health education. I was a family planning community educator, worked internationally as a curriculum developer and trainer in sexual and reproductive health counseling, and was a curriculum developer and trainer in long-term, home-based care.
I had learned at COA that I could find my path by holding education accountable to meeting my needs. I applied those same principles in all my curriculum development and training work—addressing the needs of the learners. I will always be grateful for the impact on my life of that summer program, with its small-but-stellar staff, and the tiny college that grew from it. They taught me self-worth, resilience, creativity, and to always question both the purpose and the impact of my actions on the world. What incredible gifts! What an incredible education!
