Letter from the president
By Darron Collins ’92
Back out of all this now too much for us...
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.
—Robert Frost, Directive
College of the Atlantic is many things: a geography—acreage delineated on maps; an assemblage of infrastructure—buildings and sheds and the metal, glass, and wood that give them form and function; a legal entity—an institution with the authority to grant degrees based on collectively established norms. Yet, as we look back at our 50-year history and project our thoughts into the future, I feel most satisfied describing COA as a collection of some of the most driven, creative, and caring people the world has known. We are the students, staff, faculty, trustees, alumnx, parents, philanthropists, and partners who have walked these acres, who have been sheltered and nourished by this architecture, and who have wrestled with, and built, and benefited from the idea of human ecology.
And there are thousands of us. In these pages we celebrate the stories and the work of some in the hopes of painting an impression of us all. That work is one of watercolor, not hyperrealism. As any human ecologist worth their mettle would do, we don’t only relish the past, but sift critically through our stories with a methodical kaizen geared toward a better next 50 years.
I often find myself imagining being at an All College Meeting in the 1970s, surrounded by the Kaelbers and Carpenters and Katonas, by the Pingrees, Johnsons, and Hazards, building an institution to reverse the failing health of the planet. We have come so far, on so many fronts, and for this we can point gratefully to the ideas and actions of so many COA human ecologists who, across the past five decades, have worked to build a better world.
In the words of our founding president, Ed Kaelber:
Any college that is not constantly seeking new ways of doing things is only half alive. But the very fact that there has been the need to coin the phrase ”experimental college” is an indication that the structures and teaching methods of many colleges have become rigid and unresponsive to changing conditions in our society.
College of the Atlantic expects to be experimental in the best sense of the word. Above all, we will build into the structure of the college a mechanism that insists on continuing evaluation. Without self-criticism, rigor becomes empty form and compassion becomes merely sentiment. Education, as we see it, is possible only as this institution changes to reflect new knowledge and new techniques aimed at meeting the changing needs of man [sic] and his environment.
Here at COA, we have done that self-criticism and self-correction—and we continue to be experimental, even with 50 years of academics under our belts. Without jettisoning the kernels of brilliance and distinctiveness in our genetic code, our experimenting, evaluation, and self-criticism is carrying us through an institutional adolescence in many important ways.
Today, our version of human ecology is profoundly connected to the real world. I find a most powerful hope in this connectivity because we have successfully resisted the all-too-plausible future where connection homogenizes to an educational least-common denominator. I find hope because our people—those who make us who we are—have made wildly creative, wonderful homes and lives in a multitude of places, all while embracing and deriving inspiration from the world some of us once turned our backs on. That connectivity is what has provided, and what will continue to provide, the speed and creative power of experimentation we need in these times. Frost’s Directive was a foundational text at COA when students arrived in 1972. It continues to be foundational to me to know that our watering place feeds, and is fed by, a much larger aquifer.
Enjoy reading this special 50th academic year edition of COA Magazine with both a celebratory and critical eye on our past so that you—one of those foundational people I spoke of earlier—can continue to help strengthen our form and function.
Most importantly: thank you for being a part of this wonderful and wonderfully experimental college, Darron
