Community notes
Lynn Boulger (who is back as vice president for institutional advancement after retiring five years ago) and her husband hiked the Alta Via 1 in the Dolomites, after years of hearing Hank Schmelzer (see page 78 for Hank’s remembrance) and Cynthia Livingston raving about their time there. The AV1 completely kicked their butts—the hardest hike have ever done, some of which have included long distance treks in the Alps, Patagonia, Morocco, England, France, Portugal, Mallorca, Iceland, Turkey, and New Zealand. Lynn cried.
Partridge Chair in Food and Sustainable Agriculture Systems Kourtney Collum had an active sabbatical before assuming the role of provost and dean of faculty this summer. In March, she delivered a talk titled, “A Better World through Social Science,” at the Maine Science Festival 5-Minute Genius event, part of the annual multi-day science festival. The following month, she appeared on the Maine Science Podcast to discuss her research and teaching. In May, Kourtney and colleague Zach Soares ’00 gave the inaugural Bill Newlin Distinguished Faculty Lecture titled “Food that Harms, Food That Heals: Transforming Prison Food Systems,” profiling the podcast production course they co-taught in the winter. In June, she traveled to Mons, Belgium to attend the Society for Human Ecology Annual Meeting where she presented two papers. The following month, Kourtney delivered an invited lecture at the Mid Maine Global Forum, an event of the Linda Cotter Speakers Series at Colby College. The talk was titled, “Invisible Workers: Local Food Systems & Global Migration.” In July, Kourtney completed the Institute for Educational Management at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, an eight-day professional development program for chief academic officers. The experience was the highlight of my sabbatical. I built an exceptional network of colleagues from across the United States and the globe and left with tangible tools to support me in working strategically in my new role.
Annika Earley MPhil ’14 had work in three exhibitions she was pretty excited about in the fall of 2025. Her paintings were featured in Lonely Table at Gallery 263 in Cambridge, Massachusetts alongside Camryn Connolly and Julia Cheng. Annika also had some papier maché works in Chewed Paper at Working Loose in Blue Hill, Maine. Lastly, Annika had a piece in Works on Paper at Palladium/Athena Project in Brooklyn, New York, which closed on January 17. There was a great article about the show in Two Coats of Paint.
In the spring of 2025, Sharpe-McNally Chair of Green and Socially Responsible Business Jay Friedlander led a two-weekend entrepreneurial boot camp at Swarthmore College for their Center for Innovation and Leadership. In addition, Jay facilitated a series of workshops as part of the Island Institute’s Future of Fishing program and Ignite Presque Isle. Jay also went to Washington, DC where he participated in the AshokaU Changeleader Retreat, bringing together leading social entrepreneurship programs from around the world. Shortly after graduation, Jay, along with COA adjunct Ursula Hanson, trustee emeritus Jay McNally ’84, and Andreigha Kraemer ’26 attended the Society for Human Ecology Conference in Mons, Belgium where they presented “The Camino,” reflections on their fall 2025 course walking the 500-mile Camino Frances from St. Jean Pied-de-Port, France to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. After the conference, Jay and Ursula walked the first 100 miles of the Via Gebennensis. This camino starts in Geneva and traverses roughly 700 miles of Switzerland and France to the starting point of the Camino Frances. In the fall, Jay attended the Blue Economy Investment Summit and in March will again be returning to Swarthmore College to facilitate their student boot camp.
In November 2025, interdisciplinary art professor Anna Ialeggio opened a solo exhibition of new sculptural work in Tjaden Gallery at Cornell University. Entitled HOLE FOLDS, the exhibition was composed of images printed on silk as well as ceramic objects and audio pieces. It grew from several years of involvement/visitation at three sites of prairie and meadow rehabilitation, as well as a fellowship in the Ursula K Le Guin Archive. Anna also has a chapter in a new book with the unbelievably excellent title Unserious Ecocriticism: Humor, Play & Environmental Destruction in Art & Visual Culture (eds. Jessica Landau & Maria Lux, Michigan Publishing Services, 2026).
Su Yin Khor, director of the writing program and professor of writing and rhetoric, co-authored a peer-reviewed research article titled, “Building affiliation in the L2 classroom: The role of side sequences.” It was published in Classroom Discourse, a major international journal for scholars, researchers, and educators interested in classroom interactions and pedagogy. In March 2026, she presented at two conferences. She gave a presentation about COA’s writing program at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Cleveland, Ohio. She also presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics in Chicago, Illinois. The presentation was about second language literacy development. She and her partner Will spent the summer on MDI, enjoying gardening, hiking, fishing, and woodworking.
Elizabeth Battles Newlin Chair in Botany Susan Letcher spent her fall sabbatical on MDI, hiking, writing, and analyzing data for forthcoming papers. She was excited to be back in the classroom this winter. Outside of COA, she works on the weekends as music director at Somesville Union Meeting House. In her spare time, she is trying to figure out how to grow saffron in Maine without it just becoming expensive vole food.
In March 2025, COA Allied Whale Director of Photo-Identification Research Tanya Lubansky won the Pilot Gig 2025 Snow Row Race while six months pregnant. That July, she and her husband, Chris Tremblay ’03, welcomed their daughter, Alice Hope Tremblay, joining big brother Otis Sky. In October 2025, Tanya and Delphine Demaisy ’26 traveled to Tadoussac, Canada, to represent the North Atlantic Humpback Whale Catalog at the Humpback Whale World Congress. Both presented findings from new research projects aimed at improving our understanding of humpback whales in Maine waters and across the broader North Atlantic basin.
In March 2025, Amy Morley was elected to the Select Board for the Town of Lamoine, near Mount Desert Island. She decided to run after years of community organizing and civic involvement. Her work on the Select Board involves land use, municipal policy, financial oversight, and community planning, with particular attention to transparent governance, citizen engagement, local housing challenges, and the practice of democracy at the community level. Serving in local government has deepened Amy’s understanding of how institutions function under pressure and reinforced the importance of listening carefully, building trust, and stewarding shared resources—values that closely align with her role in philanthropy at COA. Amy is grateful for the opportunity to contribute to her town and to bring those experiences back into her work and conversations on campus.
As a Fulbright Specialist, Charles Eliot Chair in Ecological Planning, Policy, and Design Brook Muller spent January 2026 in Cairo, Egypt, continuing his work with Megawra-Built Environment Collective on developing urban green spaces in the al-Khalifa neighborhood within the Historic Cairo UNESCO world heritage site. A key component of the Athar Lina initiative, these transformative interventions combine urban design, water reclamation, urban agriculture (including food forests and hydroponics), ethnographic research, heritage conservation, and community development. Brook also presented a paper, “Regrowth Architecture: Design in Solidarity with Life,” at the 18th Conference of the International Society for Ecological Economics and at the 11th International Degrowth Conference, “Building Socially Just Postgrowth Futures,” in Oslo, Norway in June 2025. The paper serves as the basis of a chapter in his current book project Regrowth Architecture, currently under review by the University of Texas Press. Brook would like to give a shout out to Léo Charbonneau ’27 who is currently serving as an intern with Athar Lina, doing fantastic work, and learning Arabic to boot.
In November 2025, Thorndike Library Co-Director Catherine Preston-Schreck was the deputy moderator of elections for the Town of Bar Harbor, marking her 10th year as an election clerk. She also expanded her library skills as a substitute librarian for three public libraries on MDI (Southwest Harbor, Somesville, and Bar Harbor), while continuing to volunteer in the library at the Hancock County Jail. In the summer, Catherine had the good fortune to visit libraries in correctional facilities in Maine, and in October, along with two COA community members, spent a day at Maine State Prison participating in a shared read and day-long discussion of The Giver by Lois Lowry. Prior to this, Catherine enjoyed two trips to Europe, including a stop in Mons, Belgium where she attended the Society for Human Ecology Conference and had a fabulous time with COA staff, students, and very fun human ecologists from all over the world. In her journeys, Catherine was sure to check out the local libraries. Some of her favorites were in the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Iceland (the Reykjavick public library is very COA in spirit).
Kim M. Wentworth Chair in Environmental Studies Brittany Slabach ’09; William H. Drury, Jr. Chair in Ecology/Natural History John Anderson; and alums Ellie Jackson ’25, Maggie Denison ’25, and Bik Wheeler ’09 had a field note published in the journal Northeastern Naturalist entitled, “Caught Red Handed: Cannibalism in Jumping Mice?” The note records a behavior previously undocumented in jumping mice in the wild! Brittany would also like to give a shoutout to Adrian Boeye ’26, who recently had a manuscript accepted for publication in the journal Royal Society Open Science on his work investigating the biomechanics of Tyrannosaurus rex. In January 2026, Adrian presented a talk entitled, “Approximate SLIP Model Reveals Bird-Like Running in Tyrannosaurus,” at the Society for Comparative and Integrative Biology conference in Portland, Oregon.
Sean Todd guiding in Antarctica with a humpback whale, photo by John Shedwick
Steven K. Katona Chair in Marine Studies Sean Todd became certified in polar bear guiding earlier this year and spent much of the summer working as a guide in the Kimberly, Northern Territories of Australia, collecting images of humpback whale tails for Allied Whale’s Southern Ocean Catalog aboard Seabourn Pursuit. He returned to Pursuit in late November to work further as a polar guide and onboard resident scientist helping to coordinate their citizen science whale tail program, crossing the Antarctic Circle in December.
