Of islands and institutions
How can a small liberal arts college remain small but seem so large at the same time? You make friends, share the work, and build alliances. COA has spent the last 50 years building alliances in and outside of Maine that benefit the entire COA and Mount Desert Island communities. We are small but we are not isolated. Since our founding, COA has hosted everything from the Maine Poets Festival to the International Conference of the Society for Human Ecology. Some COA students travel all over the world pursuing their educational goals while others take advantage of opportunities closer to home. The spirit of human ecology animates and connects all things at COA, and with each new incoming class the dynamic impact of new faces, new work, and new alliances grows exponentially.
Osakikamijima lies roughly at the center of the Seto Inland Sea.
Jay Friedlander, Sharpe-McNally Chair in Green and Socially Responsible Business, is impressed. “The number of parallels between Mount Desert Island (MDI) and Osakikamijima still amazes me... both are island communities that were traditionally natural-resources based and facing economic decline and depopulation. Like MDI 50 years ago, Osakikamijima is using education as a means to attract young people and revitalize their communities. They are seeking to build an educational model that embeds students in their community and seeks solutions to thorny problems.” Indeed, the COA students and professors who have gone to Osakikamijima have come away from the experience amazed by the similarities and excited about future collaborations.
The collaboration between COA and Osakikamijima began after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster revealed a fundamental flaw in the Japanese higher educational system. The siloed disciplines and isolated theoretical training exacerbated the crisis by hindering critical communications between engineers, policy makers, and others. As a result, educational reformers set about to create a new type of higher educational institution; one that was both interdisciplinary and focused on combining theory with practice.
The collaboration started off as a proof of concept for field-based education. The Human Ecology Lab and Island Odyssey (HELIO) was the initial edition of that idea. Students have been involved in every step of building out the process and have seen the highs and lows of the journey. The physical institution in Osakikamijima is still developing but its audacious goal has attracted students, faculty, and administrators from over a dozen institutions of higher education around the world. The first students in the HELIO program represented colleges such as Brown, Fordham, and Western Washington universities, Hamilton and Babson colleges, and Wilfrid Laurier and Dublin City universities. A total of eight students from COA and eight students from Japan were also included in the group. Since that initial program, more than 100 students, faculty, and administrators from over a dozen universities have participated in HELIO or visited Osakikamijima.
COA students & Ken Hill on a HELIO trip.
“We were tasked to dive deep into the community… talk with the locals, visit different sites, and generate ideas of what the ideal education model for the island would be,” former COA student Clément Moliner-Roy ’19 wrote on his blog after visiting Osakikamijima. The experience of working within the island community, he said, was inspiring and exciting. Many other COA students have also benefited from the alliance: Makiko Yoshida ’18 did an internship after HELIO at a multigenerational soy sauce factory; Maggie Hood ’22 worked to help Japanese students practice their English; and Abigail Barrows MPhil ’18 did microplastics research in the Sea of Japan. The program influenced Moliner-Roy so much he based his senior project on the experience and went on to study Ikigai (a Japanese concept referring to something that gives a person a sense of purpose, a reason for living).
“As COA was doing more HELIOs, the concept developed into the Setouch Global Academy (SGA), which created a physical educational institute that Japanese students and US colleges could benefit from,” says COA provost Ken Hill. “One facet of SGA is that it allows students in Japan to take intensive courses for a year… they then matriculate to COA as second-year students and stay until graduation. It’s like a higher education launching platform.” Japanese students benefit by coming to COA and COA has benefited by having the following wonderful group of students from Osakikamijima: Yoichiro Ashida ’20, Aoi Seto ’20, Sora Kawamoto ’24, and Kizuna Shintani ’24.
From working in fisheries and starting up sustainable businesses, to food systems and community resilience in recovering from disasters, the possibilities between SGA on Osakikamijima and COA on Mount Desert Island are enormous. “We are excited to see COA’s educational approach spread and grow,” notes Hill. “Partners like SGA make for a stronger overall curriculum and have the potential to develop into something truly exceptional.”
