College of the Atlantic

College of the Atlantic (COA), founded in 1969, is a private, liberal-arts college located in Bar Harbor on Mount Desert Island, Maine, United States. It awards bachelors and masters (M.Phil.) degrees solely in the field of human ecology, an interdisciplinary approach to learning. Focus areas include arts and design, environmental sciences, humanities, international studies, sustainable food systems, and socially responsible business. The college is small, with approximately 364 students and a full-time faculty of 35, and 15 part-time faculty. Tenets of the pedagogy include field-based or applied learning; small, seminar-style classes; student-directed projects; community involvement; and interdisciplinary learning. COA has a strong commitment to the environment and was the first college to be carbon neutral and one of the first to divest fossil fuel holdings from its endowment. The college appears on most of the top "green school" lists. The campus consists of 37 acres on Frenchman Bay, two organic farms, two off-shore island research stations, and a 100-acre protected area. The farms, Beech Hill Farm and Peggy Rockefeller Farms, are living laboratories for classes and student research. Peggy Rockefeller Farms includes livestock, crops, orchards. Beech Hill Farm provides produce. Both supply the award-winning dining hall with organic produce, eggs, and meat. The off-shore island properties include the Alice Eno Field Research Station on Great Duck Island where students conduct studies on Leach's storm petrels, guillemots, gulls, sparrows and other fields of natural history. The Edward McCormick Blair Research station on Mount Desert Rock is a center for the study of marine mammals and oceanographic issues.