Isidora Muñoz Segovia ’22
This picture was taken during my first term at COA in one of my favorite classes, Ecology: Natural History, with Steve Ressel. The class went on a field trip to Borestone Mountain and spent a night camping by the river as we immersed ourselves in the ecology of the site. I had a hard time choosing only one picture because there are so many treasurable moments at COA. I was able to gain first-hand knowledge about Maine’s ecology through the course. This grounded me with a sense of place and was exactly the type of experiential class I was looking for when I applied to COA.
By Isidora Muñoz Segovia ’22
There were many things that attracted me to COA when I applied. I was looking at schools in Europe and not really considering the US as a potential home for four years of my life. However, right when I thought I had made up my mind to study in Ireland, COA came into the picture. It was the small college, tight-knit community, and nature-oriented education that mesmerized me. This was not what I thought the US could offer in terms of colleges.
I think one of the biggest factors that attracted me to COA was its location and the degree in human ecology. I knew I needed a lot of greenery close to me, and Acadia National Park seemed like a real-life dream. Human ecology looked like the perfect combination of everything I was interested in, mostly because it allowed me to create my own focus. The problem was, right when I realized COA was perfect, I also realized I wanted to take a year off to gain real-world experience. After getting accepted to the college, I asked to defer for a year and COA agreed. It could not have worked out more perfectly; in my gap year I gained many skills I would find myself using as a student at COA.
Gardens & Greenhouses: Theory/Practice of Organic Gardening
This was an amazing class because it was the perfect mixture of hands-on experience that I was so eager to get from COA, a super interesting syllabus, and a really great class dynamic, which was so important during the first pandemic term. One of the coolest things about this course, taught by Suzanne Morse, was that, due to the nature of being remote, each one of us had completely different climates we were using to grow our orchards. My parents were really excited about me redesigning our garden into a beautiful edible green space!
Introduction to Forestry
Introduction to Forestry was taught by Hale Morrell ’12 and, similar to Gardens and Greenhouses, it was a great mixture of hands-on experience and more traditional class time. This class truly opened my eyes to an area that I don’t often think about when considering climate change and sustainability. Forest management is such an important topic that you don’t usually learn about in school, unless you are very interested in it. I really enjoyed the special guests—professionals in the field from Maine and around the world. In particular, I really enjoyed our class with Matheus Couto who works with Brazil’s UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Couto gave a fascinating talk about agroforestry, reforestation, eucalyptus, and GMOs in Brazil.
Nutritional Anthropology
Before coming to COA I knew I wanted to focus on something related to environmental politics, Indigenous knowledge, and climate change. Throughout my time at COA, I have learned that a way to combine all of these passions is through the study of food systems. Nutritional Anthropology taught me so much about human history, how we relate to our food, how evolution reflects our society’s eating habits, and how intertwined that is with our culture and identity. This class made me even more interested in the science behind the chemical reactions of different foods. I really enjoyed how Kourtney Collum taught this class because I felt that by the end of the term I had learned so much and I was eager to continue learning more.
