The value of higher education and COA
Challenges and opportunities
By María Lis Baiocchi ’07, Helena Shilomboleni ’09, Enrique Valencia Lopez ’11, Milena Renée Rodriguez ’14, Abigail Plummer MPhil ’16, Clément Moliner-Roy ’18, and Richard J. Borden Chair in Humanities Bonnie Tai
In anticipation of my retirement from COA this June, I invited recently graduated advisees, former students who have kept in touch, and those whose senior projects or graduate theses I advised to discuss together a number of questions that I thought would interest all of us and readers of COA Magazine. What follows is a synthesis of this discussion; nearly all of us contributed to the continued conversation through the collaborative revision process. As a group, the alumni spanned the years 2005 to 2018, and attended COA from Argentina, Namibia, Mexico, Nicaragua, the US, and Canada. Not all of these alumni focused their studies on education, although all had taken at least one course with me. Other areas of interest and expertise include anthropology, entrepreneurship, food systems, Indigenous studies, gender studies, and quantitative research methods. All of us share interests in education and social, economic, and environmental justice. Each of us speak from our own experiences and do not presume to speak for others—former, current, or future students. Finally, authors are listed according to year of graduation in chronological order; beyond my coordination and facilitation, we share authorship equally. Bonnie Tai
The value of higher education and one at COA
In responding to how higher education has impacted them, some described how different their lives would be had they not pursued postsecondary education. María Lis shared, “It has shaped my life in profound ways. My life would be completely different if I hadn’t had the opportunity to go to university.” Helena, who is teaching in a Canadian university, observed from her recent professional experience, “The learning that you get at university… is not so much the knowledge you get from your professors… You learn to work with other people, meet timelines, [gain or hone] communication skills.”
For María Lis, Milena, and Enrique, COA opened up interests they hadn’t considered pursuing through courses that influenced their path, including in Enrique’s case, the decision to pursue graduate studies:
The classes I took at COA were the first systematic introduction to specific issues that have influenced the way I approached a specific aspect… questions related to race, related to climate change, questions related to food systems. Some have become personal interests and some have influenced to some extent the type of research that I wanted to do—for example, the idea of what motivates people to believe certain information or not.
COA didn’t just “shape [Enrique’s] aspirations; actually it changed them.” The role that peers played cannot be underestimated. “Until I met several students, I didn’t think about going to graduate school. That made me wonder if that path was right for me and if I wanted to do the same,” he said.
María Lis’ preparation at COA also allowed for an easy transition to graduate school:
Given the training I got at COA, it was really seamless to go on to my master’s and doctoral degrees in terms of the demand of what was required of me as a scholar in training: taking ownership over my education, working independently. COA gave me so many tools.
Abby, Helena, María Lis, and Milena all spoke of the interdisciplinarity of a COA education as central to their learning. For Abby, it was difficult to find a graduate program that combined her interests in education and food systems while also allowing her to complete requirements toward teaching licensure; ultimately her thesis allowed her to work across areas of expertise as she developed and launched a farm-based summer learning program in collaboration with the former manager of COA Peggy Rockefeller Farm, C.J. Walke, former professor Molly Anderson in food systems, Jay Friedlander in entrepreneurship, in addition to Linda Fuller and Bonnie in education studies. Helena talked about the value of the “hands-on, applied work” that she was able to do in various countries supported by the Davis Scholarship before completing a PhD at University of Waterloo. Speaking of how this applied learning has influenced her university teaching approach today: “My assignments are very different, [for example] to write a grant proposal [to foster] deep learning… It’s not easy for university students to go to Tanzania so sometimes you have to bring that [place or perspective] to the classroom.” Referring to her time at COA, María Lis stated, “Interdisciplinarity was something that was ingrained in me at such a young age.” As a graduate student and now postdoc, she elaborated:
When I was completing my PhD in anthropology, I didn’t limit myself to working with faculty in my department. I also did a number of graduate certificates as part of my doctoral degree—in global studies, Latin American studies, gender, sexuality, and women’s studies, and cultural studies. My PhD studies, which focused on household work and household worker advocacy in the context of changes in labor law in Argentina, were super-interdisciplinary. The way I was taught to think at COA was a real asset; it made me a more flexible thinker.”
Abby valued specific skills honed from her COA education and how she has been able to teach these to her middle-school students:
Developing critical thinking skills and learning to look at things from multiple perspectives and respectfully debate them are skills that I’m trying to instill in my students as a teacher, and those are skills that COA develops in all of its students. That is a huge value of COA and higher education.
Her experience and study of democratic education at COA also influences what she tries to offer her students, including “the way that COA supports democratic education… to co-create their learning, to be able to give choice to what they learn, to feel valued and trusted.” As Helena also experienced and described above, courses outside of ed classes encouraged direct application in community contexts. Abby was able to develop a curriculum around sustainable energy and pilot it at a local elementary school while taking David Feldman’s Physics and Mathematics of Sustainable Energy. “Those chances to step into action are really powerful and important.” Other hands-on activities also offered opportunities to apply learning, such as “co-coordinating the farm-to-school program.” Critical exploration is an educational approach that Abby valued the opportunity to learn while at COA. Abby observed, “I’ve had students say, I like how you don’t tell us the answers and let us figure it out. If I hadn’t gone to COA and gone through the ed studies program, I don’t know that I would have been able to do that for kids; even at fifth grade, they are able to recognize that as unique to them, to their experience.”
Challenges and opportunities facing COA
A challenge most felt that COA faces today is ensuring that graduates don’t feel that they must pursue graduate studies in order to be prepared to enter the workforce. As María Lis noted, “It’s the perfect environment for students to become excellent ethnographers or social science researchers more generally without going on to further studies, because it’s so small. Students in the natural sciences get training on how to write papers and how to publish to have a successful career without the need to go to graduate school, and the same could be done with students interested in social research.” However, not every student will have this kind of mentorship depending on their area of interest due to the small faculty and limited breadth.
Enrique noted a few related challenges and opportunities associated with preparation for academic work:
Keeping up to date with the new methods or the new fields in the social sciences and humanities might also be a little bit of a challenge because they move so fast and require strong connections with industry (e.g., machine learning, AI, the development of new materials). One of these challenges is to balance the goal of working with the community at the same time as creating these broader links with industries and organizations outside of Maine that can contribute and improve COA’s methodological [studies] in the curriculum. This is part of a challenge given the location of the school… I remember there was this strong emphasis on trying to work with farmers and fishermen and women. I think establishing and continuing these connections is crucial, but expanding them is also important.
As the only discussant who completed the teacher licensure program, Abby noted the education program as an exception: “Ed studies stands out in providing the certification program; if you follow that pathway, it can lead to direct employment” after graduation, should you decide to apply for school teaching jobs.
An alum who contributed written input noted the following:
Interconnected challenges like climate change, increasing polarization, pandemic recovery, threats to democracy, and growing socioeconomic disparities continue to amplify and complicate each other. COA, as an interdisciplinary island school with a high international presence and strong commitment to social and environmental justice, has a unique opportunity to be a leader in fostering students’ capacity to lead resilience-building efforts through these challenges across disciplines, arenas, and communities throughout their lives.
Part of a challenge I see is building leadership that can resist the forces of polarization and extremism. In a time where divisions are deepening, I think it’s really important to keep in mind the large-scale social cohesion and collaboration needed to address these crises. I think building the community’s capacity to bring together diverse perspectives and foster collaboration across opposing viewpoints will be essential in leading the way through these complex, interconnected crises.
COA, economic justice, and educational opportunity
In reflecting on the unique paths students often take at COA, Bonnie interjected that not every student can afford a “trial and error” approach to course selection.
María Lis brought our discussion to the question of “how education can be a stepping stone to upward social mobility.” She asserted, “A liberal arts education and preparation for the labor market are not mutually exclusive.” As she elaborated, COA can teach students to “study the issues, think critically, make connections in the real world, and also prepare them for the labor force.” Her suggestion is for COA “to incorporate a perspective of class and political economy into the kinds of training students acquire at the college.” As she noted, not all students can afford to earn an undergraduate, not to mention graduate, degree without going into debt. “I was lucky to have a Davis Scholarship, but most students at COA don’t have that privilege.”
Enrique reflected on some peers during his time at COA who were considering “whether COA was right for them, whether they were academically fit for the college,” and what resources COA provides to students who may be at risk of leaving. His reflection offered Bonnie the opportunity to share about the work of COA’s College Opportunity and Access program (COA2), researched and developed in 2018-2019 by the Student Persistence Working Group—a small group of faculty and several students. Enrique shared his own experiences with a peer mentoring program in graduate school and the possibilities these peer-to-peer interactions can act as bridges between domestic and international students, as well as first-year and continuing-year students. He also offered some provocative thoughts about further institutional research at COA:
I’m wondering if COA has conducted research on what factors contribute to improved labor market integration of their graduates… We know that there are other components of the college experience that also contribute to a successful job search; the quality of the internships, for example, and studying abroad.
Human ecology and education at COA
We wrapped up our discussion with some reflections on what role education studies play in a human ecology degree program. Milena expressed the importance of environmental sustainability and how her doctoral application builds on COA’s human ecology mission, particularly the “understanding of experiential education of children toward sustainable development” and the need for “more intersectional, experiential, and intergenerational climate education. Human ecology has certainly supported how to bring interdisciplinarity into understanding children’s experiences of education for climate justice. It’s very interconnected.” Clément shared about his experience, “I barely ever use the term human ecology, but everything I do falls under that umbrella… And the few times I tell people about my atypical degree in human ecology… it’s always received as a WOW!”
In speaking more directly about past and future faculty, María Lis shared the following:
Having feminist teachers, mentors, and role models like Bonnie Tai, Lucy Creevey, and Karen Waldron was so important, as was having an advisor and work-study supervisor like Bonnie who was very clear about boundaries and didn’t ignore the fact of the power differential between students and teachers. Incorporating a more capacious notion of justice that goes beyond environmental justice and that includes gender justice and racial justice has to be at the center of a COA education—not just in terms of what is taught in the classroom but also in terms of how teachers interact with students to create a truly equitable and inclusive learning environment and community.
Milena suggested, “Integrate decolonial thought from BIPOC scholars from all around the world into human ecology core courses, where there are great opportunities to spark discussions about the Native American Land Back movement and other environmental injustice issues that intersect important topics at COA.” She later added, “Bonnie's courses [including a water-themed core course section] and senior project supervision stimulated my interest in studying education and deepening into decolonial research, Indigenous water-based epistemologies, and contemplative practices. Fifteen years later, this and all the courses I took with Bonnie are still deeply present in my practice as an educator, community organizer, and early career scholar."
Clément closed our discussion with important directions and priorities in the future of COA:
My research in the field of higher education made me realize that we need to pluralize ways of being and ways of knowing. Thus, I think we could benefit from faculty who can open us to other ways of thinking, honoring Indigenous knowledge, feminist knowledge, nature-based, plant-based knowledge. We'd also gain from reflecting on how to create a democracy that’s not just about humans, but that truly accounts for other than human—plants, animals, and minerals. The human shouldn’t always be seen as coming before the ecology in human ecology.
