COA celebrates 50th academic year

OPAL Architecture’s Tim Lock speaks at College of the Atlantic’s 50th convocation in September 2021.

By Rob Levin

Record enrollment, a new, 30,000-square-foot academic center, and a cadre of strong regional partners in attendance highlighted College of the Atlantic’s 50th convocation ceremony.

Scores gathered for the event in front of the new COA Davis Center for Human Ecology, an interdisciplinary, passive house facility with regionally sourced, mass timber construction, 350 solar panels, wood fiber insulation, and triple-insulated, bird-safe windows. Speakers included COA governance moderator Olivia Paruk ’24, architects Susan Rodriguez of Susan T Rodriguez | Architecture • Design and Tim Lock of OPAL, Craig Kesselheim ’76 of COA’s first incoming class, and COA President Darron Collins ’92.

The center includes a new teaching greenhouse, dedicated on Sept. 9 as the Congresswoman Chellie Pingree ’79 Greenhouse, with the Congresswoman on hand for the occasion.

“I’m so proud of my alma mater College of the Atlantic for remaining dedicated to ecology and innovation,” Pingree said. “For 50 years, COA has put Maine on the national map for positive climate action. Their new, beautiful Davis Center for Human Ecology will nurture growth and green learning for generations to come.”

COA’s 50th academic year began with the largest applicant pool in the college’s history, 536 applications for approximately 100 spaces. Fall 2021 marked the college’s highest fall enrollment to date, with 373 students from 49 countries and 40 states. That number leveled out to around 350 full-time-equivalent students over the course of the academic year, which is the school’s enrollment cap.

“The 50th class marks an impressive chapter in COA’s history,” said Paruk at the opening of the afternoon convocation ceremony. “This is a great time for introspection, where we can learn from our past, and continue to grow and enrich ourselves to help serve all current and future change makers without losing sight of the ideals we hold close to our hearts.”

The college has come a long way since its founding in 1969 and first enrollment in 1972, Kesselheim said in his alumnx address.

“As a prospective student, I came to a campus where there were no classes to visit, because the college hadn’t actually started yet. There were no students to mingle with or chat with or just get a vibe from. There were no faculty on campus, there was no cafeteria to sample, no dorms to peek in on,” Kesselheim said. “So, instead we talked to the founders of the college… who wanted this year-round institution to be part of Bar Harbor life, island life, and we talked about their dreams, and considered ourselves invited.”

The Davis Center for Human Ecology is COA’s first purpose-built academic building since the early 1990s. It was designed during a multi-year community process by Rodriguez in collaboration with OPAL, and built within COA’s rigorous discarded resources framework by Maine’s E.L. Shea Builders and Engineers.

“Our team has worked hard to design a building that could only be here. One that is derived from this unique intersection of the natural world and the study of human ecology,” Rodriguez said.