20th Anniversary Retreat: Exploring the Next Phase of Sustainability Education

June 18-20, 2024 (postponed until 2025)

Are you interested in meeting and working with colleagues throughout the six-college EcoLeague consortium? Are you interested in learning about and contributing to sustainability projects on your campus and beyond? If so, please join faculty and staff from your college and the other EcoLeague colleges at the consortium’s 20th anniversary retreat at College of the Atlantic (COA) in Bar Harbor, Maine from Tuesday-Thursday, June 18-20, 2024, and post-retreat stay in COA housing for a few summer days in coastal Maine. If you are interested in attending, reach out to your campus’s EcoLeague Chief Academic Officer/s for details:

  • Alaska Pacific University: Provost Hilton Hallock
  • College of the Atlantic: Provost Ken Hill
  • Dickinson College: Provost Renée Cramer or Associate Provost Neil Leary
  • New College of Florida: Provost Brad Thiessen
  • Northland College: Provost Alan Brew
  • Prescott College: Bill Prado or Peter Sherman

Retreat attendees will use our time together to imagine the next phase of sustainability education and sustainability operations and facilities management on the consortium’s various campuses and reflect on lessons learned from the first 20 years of EcoLeague’s existence.

The theme for the retreat is Exploring the Next Phase of Sustainability Education. We invite proposals for sessions on topics that connect to the retreat’s theme from faculty, staff, and administrators. For the first round of submissions, session proposals are requested by Sunday, November 19 at 11:59 pm. This call is your opportunity to help shape and contribute to the retreat program.

Call for Retreat Sessions: Submission Form

Bringing together faculty, administrators, and others involved in sustainability initiatives throughout the consortium, the retreat will take place over parts of three workweek days on Maine’s Mount Desert Island, allowing for local adventures during the retreat led by our COA colleagues to sites such as Acadia National Park. For a modest fee, participants will have the option of staying in COA housing through the weekend to use as a base from which to explore coastal Maine. The retreat will include interactive sessions in which participants will share perspectives, experiences, and pedagogies in selected areas of study and explore opportunities for collaborations across the EcoLeague member colleges for immersive learning programs, co-taught courses, faculty professional development, research and scholarship, campus and community sustainability initiatives, and support of student wellbeing, career exploration, recruitment, and retention. The specific session topics will be developed with input from potential attendees.

Financial support

Each EcoLeague member college will nominate faculty/staff members to attend this destination retreat. Partial financial support will be available for a limited number of faculty and staff members from the EcoLeague with additional support provided by your home EcoLeague institution.