It was a little hairy on the water that day in May 2014. The group of �ֲ���ý students led by Professor of Geology Dykstra “Dyk” Eusden ‘80 had set out in their kayaks from Southwest Harbor, bound for Baker Island via the Gut between Little and Great Cranberry islands.

The goal was to camp on at the Baker Island Lighthouse for five days, from May 7 through May 11, jaunting around to map the volcanics in and around the islands, a typical project for Eusden’s legendary Short Term course, “Geology of the Maine Coast by Sea Kayak.”

“But we ran into really challenging southeast winds that forced us to bivvy on Islesford,” aka Little Cranberry, Eusden recalls. Grace Kenney ‘16 remembers it as the “crash landing.” A few people sat on the beach to catch their breath after the hard work of getting there.

“We were all relieved,” remembers Graham Oxman ’15. Then came the adaptation to being blown off the path they’d planned. Which, in a way, fit right in with the course goals, to teach them not just about geology, but about weather, tides, navigation, group dynamics, and living in situations they’d likely never experienced before. 

In this situation, they needed to figure out an alternative plan for the night. A group, including Eusden and Ian Hillenbrand ’17, set out on a reconnaissance mission. Hillenbrand is from Ohio but had vacationed in Maine with his family, including trips to Little Cranberry because his father, Will Hillenbrand, a children’s book author and illustrator, had an artist friend there. “I said, ‘Hey, I know this guy,’” Hillenbrand remembers. And that was artist, author, and children’s book illustrator Ashley Bryan.

That spring Bryan was 90 years old and had already published many books, including the popular 2011 children’s book Beautiful Blackbird. The local elementary school on Little Cranberry had recently been named for him, but even in his adopted state of Maine he had not yet become quite so widely known as he would in the coming years. (In 2020, Maine Gov. Janet Mills proclaimed his birthday, July 13, “Ashley Frederick Bryan Day” in Maine). “I knew Ashley would probably know everyone, or at least put us in touch with someone we could talk to,” said Hillenbrand.

Kenney had never heard of Ashley Bryan, but she was game, even if she was still in a full wetsuit, including the booties. 

“I don’t even think we took those off,” Kenney says. But the artist welcomed the damp and disheveled �ֲ���ý group into his cottage-studio.

“There was like a layer of embarrassment that we were in our wetsuits,” Kenney remembers. She may even still have been wearing the sea kayaking skirt that keeps the inside of the kayak dry in rough waters. “And I remember being really nervous about not knocking things over. It was like being in a toy store, or a museum.”

But Bryan was unphased. After a quick visit, he recommended checking in with the proprietor of the general store. The �ֲ���ý group made a plan to return later that day, then walked to the general store, where the woman who ran it extended hospitality as well, offering to let them camp on a point of land looking out to sea. Little Cranberry would be their home for the next four days. 

In all, various members of the group made four trips to Bryan’s studio. In Hillenbrand’s photos, Noel Potter ‘17 has a huge grin on his face. Like most of the students, Potter had never heard of Bryan, but he went along anyway. “Mostly my motivation was just that I didn’t want to miss anything. I wanted to soak in the whole experience.”  

Potter wasn’t disappointed. And there was a lot to soak up in Bryan’s home and studio. “Every horizontal surface and most vertical surfaces had something of interest that was probably made by Ashley Bryan, and if not by him, probably made by a friend of his, that were beautiful. And  pretty much every single one had a great story behind it.” 

The visits were deeply moving to the students, so much so that this week, as they were wishing a happy birthday via group text to one of the friends they’d made during that Short Term, Jackie Ordemann ’15, it turned into an impromptu memorial for Ashley Bryan, who died Feb. 4. 

For Oxman, who went on to get a master’s in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) from Colorado School of Mines, Bryan’s jam-packed studio, an explosion of color and natural materials and projects underway, had a familiar feeling. His grandmother was an artist, and her studio was similarly both overflowing and carefully curated.

“You have tchotchkes everywhere,” Oxman says, items that speak to the artist as both inspiration and maybe, he says, “a reflection of ‘I see myself in this in some way.’”

“It was sort of like we stepped into his brain when we got there,” he adds. “And I got the strong impression that he had just the biggest heart and a childlike excitement to just share it with people.”

Hillenbrand, who completed a master’s degree in geology from the University of Massachusetts–Amherst and is now working as a research scientist for the United States Geological Survey, had known Bryan so long he didn’t remember the first time they’d met. Bryan and his father met when Will Hillenbrand was volunteering at a school in Cincinnati and Bryan was a visiting speaker, and Ian remembers that Bryan visited his elementary school. In a sense, he’d just always known Bryan. He was not surprised by the impression the artist left on his classmates during those visits in May 2014. 

Bryan was also deeply curious about what the �ֲ���ý students were doing, mapping the bedrock of the island (these students traveled with sketchbooks). The studio was filled with his stained glass made from sea glass he’d collected from nearby shores. This was exactly the kind of immersion in Maine ocean communities Eusden always hoped for in these trips. “I saw so much use of natural materials in Bryan’s art that it really connected to our trip and experiences,”  says Eusden, who is retiring this year as the Whitehouse Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences. 

While they visited, Bryan pulled out his marionettes, all handmade from found materials. “His ability to move them, making the characters come alive, was pretty incredible,” Eusden remembers.

“It was almost like conversational play,” Kenney says. 

Bryan told them about his own career arc, which had included teaching art at the Dalton School in New York (Oxman, a graduate, was excited by this connection), and about his experiences in World War II. It was eye opening for the group. “None of us have ever been drafted,” Oxman says. “I was sort of self-absorbed at that time in my life, but halfway through I remember thinking, ‘This man was trying to get into art school at a time when segregation was not that far in the rear view.’” 

Those visits felt all the more precious this week. Potter reflected on how he fell hard for Maine island communities on that trip, with their sense of joyous eccentricity and welcome, as embodied by Bryan, and feels fortunate to regularly encounter it through his work with Portland-based Rippleffect. At the outdoors youth program he leads sea kayaking trips, among other skills building adventures.

Kenney, who teaches at Slate School in North Haven, Conn., an environmentally-oriented elementary school, reflected on how it continued to resonate with her. For Christmas, she gave her mother a book of photographs of Bryan’s marionettes. And last year, after Kenney told the school librarian at Slate about how incredible it was to meet him, they added some of Bryan’s books to our school library. “It made me think about how that is one of the wonderful ways in which he can and will be remembered.”

After learning about the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art’s exhibition, Let’s Celebrate Ashley Bryan! in late 2020, Kenney was inspired to write to Bryan to thank him for his hospitality. The whole experience had been so meaningful, she said, and she wanted him to know. She didn’t know quite how to reach him (he was living with a niece in Texas during the pandemic) so she sent a letter to the Ashley Bryan Center. She was well aware that the man she’d met when she was a sophomore at �ֲ���ý was well into his 90s. “I remember telling myself, ‘You have to do this now, because who knows? You will be so angry with yourself if you miss this opportunity.’”

For Museum of Art director Daniel Mills, the story of the �ֲ���ý Short Term encounter with Bryan fits exactly with the man he knew. “I’m not surprised to hear this. Ashley was such a wonderful man, a bright light and generous soul who had such an impact on the many people he met.” The two spoke frequently during the development of the 2020–2021 Let’s Celebrate Ashley Bryan! exhibition in the museum. “Each call ended with an outpouring of Ashley’s love for me and the museum staff, and for the students at �ֲ���ý.”

A member of the �ֲ���ý faculty since 1988, Dykstra Eusden ’80 is the new Whitehouse Professor of Geology.

Given by the late David C. Whitehouse ’36 and Constance T. Whitehouse in honor of their families, this endowed chair celebrates freedom of expression and inquiry; respect for human dignity; and exceptional teaching, scholarship, and service.

Dyk Eusden explains what the appointment means to him:

As a �ֲ���ý student of the 1970s, I can’t remember ever thinking about who was or who wasn’t a named professor. However, I truly liked my professors, especially the geology faculty who would become my colleagues, the late Roy Farnsworth and John Creasy.

While at �ֲ���ý, what mattered most was playing Ultimate, cross-country skiing, taking geology classes, doing thesis, and enjoying friends. As a faculty member, I’ve begun to notice that the list of named professors includes some of �ֲ���ý’ finest and most dedicated faculty members: professors who have served their majors, colleagues, students, and the college very well.

The deep appreciation I have for being appointed to the Whitehouse Professorship is commingled with the somewhat weird sensation that the college selected me for this appointment.

By way of gratitude, I offer a promise: to keep taking �ֲ���ý students out into the field — traveling by plane, van, kayak, or on foot — to study folds, faults, schists, granites, gabbros, and the many other excellent rocks exposed in the mountains and coastlines, from Yellowstone to Yarmouth Island.

About Dyk Eusden

Dyk Eusden ’80 is an intrepid field scientist who brings his students into the world so they can see, discover, learn from, and record geologic history, whether on Maine coastal islands or in the U.S. West.

He is an expert on regional geologic history and ancient tectonics of the Appalachians, as well as active tectonics in the South Island of New Zealand. A past recipient of the Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching, he involves students as co-authors of papers, research posters, and mapping projects.

A leader in the sciences at �ֲ���ý, he has served as department chair, division chair, and most recently, as co-chair of the STEM Facilities Review Committee that has developed options to meet the needs of current science programs as well as anticipated program growth. In 2017, Eusden and the Department of Geology hosted the New England Intercollegiate Geological Conference.

Professor Emeritus of Geology John Creasy, whose appointment to the �ֲ���ý faculty in 1975 ushered in the thriving modern era for geology studies at �ֲ���ý, died June 21. He was 71 years old.

Creasy earned a B.S. with high distinction in geology from Colorado State University in 1967 and completed a Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1974. He taught briefly at Middlebury College before joining the �ֲ���ý faculty. He retired in 2014.

John Creasy marches in the academic procession at Commencement in 2012. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Creasy’s arrival at �ֲ���ý coincided with seismic shifts both at the college and in the discipline of geology. At �ֲ���ý, he was part of a major expansion of the faculty and an invigoration of the curriculum under President Hedley Reynolds. At the same time, Creasy’s coming of age as a geologist coincided with the field’s embrace of the revolutionary theory of plate tectonics, the idea that the earth’s crust is made of massive plates that can move around.

Against that backdrop, Creasy used the resources at hand, including �ֲ���ý’ relatively new Short Term option and the senior thesis program, to expand and deepen the geology major into today’s highly rigorous program, one emphasizing extensive fieldwork (a tradition fostered by his predecessor, Roy Farnsworth), intensive lab work, and a required two-semester thesis.

David Bailey ’81, professor of geosciences and chair of the department at Hamilton College, was one of Creasy’s early students, and he recalls how the 1973 oil crisis also contributed to making geology “an up-and-coming field of study.” The hiring of Creasy and another young geologist, Patricia Cashman (who would go on to a long career at the University of Nevada in Reno), added to the sense that suddenly, geology at �ֲ���ý was hip.

“My freshman year, I took a geo course on a whim,” recalls Professor of Geology Dykstra Eusden ’80. “Here was this young guy who was so into plate tectonics, which was brand-new. He just captivated me and a whole bunch of other kids.”

Eusden, who was hired by Creasy in 1988, recalls Creasy leading a special-topics course on plate tectonics that involved “reading the brand new peer reviewed papers.” It was more than a thrill, Eusden says, “trying to get our heads around this new global paradigm — it was awesome!”

Near Flagstaff, Arizona, in 2011, on his final Short Term trip to the U.S. Southwest, John Creasy poses next to examples of “volcaniclastic” rock, which has been moved or affected by wind, water, or similar action. (Photograph by Dykstra Eusden ’80)

For many geology students, the excitement of that youth movement — and Creasy’s high expectations as a professor — was felt during excursions far from �ֲ���ý that created, in some cases, lifelong bonds.

Bailey, for example, was a first-year when he took what would become Creasy’s signature course, a five-week Short Term trek to map the geology of the U.S. Southwest. Bailey thought the course would be a lark. Then he got into the van for the trip West.

“But it was so good for me, and I am where I am because of him.”

Driving upwards of 15 hours a day, the 20 students riding in two vans were expected to observe the passing terrain, all the way from Maine to Arizona, and make field notes. “At the end of every day, after dinner and doing dishes, we would have a quiz on the geology of the states we drove through,” Bailey says. “John ran the course like a boot camp in geology.”

And his students loved it. Tall and reserved in manner — the actor James Cromwell could be his doppelgänger — Creasy looked the part of the taskmaster. “We were in awe of him, but his intensity was contagious,” Bailey said. “There was so much respect for him: I wanted to work my butt off to impress John, to achieve for John.”

By 1981, Bailey’s senior year, Creasy had ramped up the department’s thesis program. “My thesis defense at �ֲ���ý was the hardest of my career,” he says. “John brought in a big-name Ph.D. as part of the examining committee, and they put me in my place. My master’s and Ph.D. defenses were love fests in comparison.

“But it was so good for me, and I am where I am because of him.”

A few years ago, several geo majors from that Short Term, joined by Creasy, enjoyed a mini-reunion at an alum’s camp on Sebago Lake. “The geology department was our home at �ֲ���ý, academically and socially,” Bailey says. “When you spend so much time in the lab and in the field together, you bond. That speaks to the power of the �ֲ���ý geology department.”

“His philosophy was to teach to your strength; he didn’t shoehorn us into one area. Thirty years later, I so appreciate that gift.”

Equally powerful was Creasy’s support of the junior faculty members in his department, and he helped them build teaching and research careers by giving them the freedom to follow their interests.

John Creasy poses with geology majors Saebyul Choe ’14 and Sula Watermulder ’14 during a mapping project in the Gilead Quad in western Maine. The two majors had given Creasy the matching blue bandana for the trip. (Photograph by Dykstra Eusden ’80)

“John gave us direction when we needed it, but also allowed us to explore and follow our passions,” Eusden said. “His philosophy was to teach to your strength; he didn’t shoehorn us into one area. Thirty years later, I so appreciate that gift.”

That open-minded approach extends to the department’s hiring practices, says his colleague Professor of Geology Beverly Johnson. When Johnson, whose expertise is in biogeochemistry and paleoclimatology, was hired, �ֲ���ý at the time was actually seeking a hydrogeologist. “But John had the openness to consider candidates like me with other abilities,” she says.

“He was a mentor and friend, almost like an older brother — a calming influence.”

As a young graduate student in the 1980s, Professor of Geology Mike Retelle had a one-year appointment to the geology faculty. His youth and energy showed; as a teacher and researcher, “I was all over the map,” he recalls.

Still, Creasy hired Retelle to a tenure-track position in 1987. “He must’ve known that I could direct that energy,” Retelle says with a shake of his head. “John hired people and let them do what they were best at. He let us rock and roll.”

John Creasy in 2004.

Importantly, adds Retelle, Creasy chose to serve as department chair for long stints in the 1990s, shouldering loads of administrative work as Retelle and Eusden were establishing themselves. “He protected us,” Retelle says. “For me, he was a mentor and friend, almost like an older brother — a calming influence. Every morning, we’d check in with each other. We’d run together. We’d talk about everything under the sun.”

As a researcher, Creasy’s work added to the knowledge of the geologic history of the White Mountains. As a doctoral student at Harvard under the legendary Marland Billings, he studied ancient volcano craters, known as calderas, within the White Mountains. Through field mapping and laboratory analyses, he identified two major periods of volcanic activity 100 to 200 million years ago, associated with the opening of the North Atlantic Ocean.

In 2014, Johnson delivered the traditional retirement tribute at the final faculty meeting of the year. In it, she praised Creasy for “promoting experiential learning and inquiry-based approaches to teaching way before it became popular. His de-emphasis of traditional lectures and emphasis on field-based, hands-on data collection, coupled with subsequent laboratory analysis and interpretation of the data, has influenced the way all of us teach in geology.”

In practice, Retelle recalls how Creasy “gently” taught him how to teach in the field, especially during Short Term. He recalls Creasy marching his group of Short Term students to the rim of a canyon, giving them a brief overview of the wide-open space before sending them down to map the features.

“We sat on the rim watching them move around,” Retelle recalls. “Even from a mile away, by how they moved around you could see the light bulbs go on when they figured something out.”

Professor of Geology Dyk Eusden ’80 has a key role in the new film documentary Beyond Granite: The Geology of Adventure.

Featuring gorgeous vistas in and around the White Mountain National Forest, the film takes viewers up, down and around various peaks, valleys, cliffs, riverbeds and ravine — visual evidence of the crushing geological natural forces that made what we see today.

During a field trip to Cliff Island, Professor of Geology Dyk Eusden ’80 teaches students how to identify and measure different rock formations in order to create a map in ArcGIS, a mapping and spacial analysis tool. (Judson Peck ’11)

The film also shows people connecting with the mountains, whether by paddling, biking, hiking, skiing, or climbing.

“But what is it we are connecting to?” asks narrator Sarah Garlick, who is curating an opening March 25 at the Museum of the White Mountains of Plymouth State University.

“That’s the reason I became a geologist.”

This is where Eusden enters the film, as an expert who links the experiential with the geological. “Hiking and knowing the landscape, understanding how it formed — that’s the reason I became a geologist,” he says.

Eusden, co-author of , offers the viewer some nugget-sized insights into the region’s geologic history. He calls it a “four-part puzzle.”

Tectonic collisions, occurring about 400 million years ago, are the first part of the puzzle, Eusden says. As continental plates collided, the peaks of the Presidential Range rose high into the sky.

Beyond Granite: The Geology of Adventure

http://youtu.be/UDgcjquofFw

Then came the volcanic era, 180 to 200 million years ago, that led to volcanic features and igneous rocks like granite and syenite, great for rock climbing.

Dyk Eusden ’80 is co-author of The Geology of New Hampshire’s White Mountains.

Wild climate variations about a million years ago, including repeated periods of glaciation, created distinctive features like the Huntington and Tuckerman ravines.

And the present era is the fourth piece, where the focus is on climate change and the potential for more frequent and intense storm events, like Tropical Storm Irene, that will continue to change the terrain.

By the way, Eusden is not the only �ֲ���ý connection to the exhibition: seniors Josh Sturtevant of Freeport, Maine, and Cam Held of Honeoye Falls, N.Y., collected and provided rock samples for the exhibition. Both are honors thesis candidates whose projects involve geologic mapping of areas within the White Mountain National Forest.

A team-building game sends AESOP trip leaders sprinting toward other peoples' shoes. Below: the Shoe Confessions circle; in the third and fourth images, first-years and trip leaders prepare to begin their expeditions; and in the last picture, sailing on Montsweag Bay, near Wiscasset.

On a sunny lawn near the Benjamin Mays Center, 80 or so �ֲ���ý students are playing a game you might call Shoe Confessions.

The game works like musical chairs, except there’s no music and no chairs. Gathered in a big circle, the students aren’t wearing their shoes — instead, they’re standing behind them. One person in the center of the ring reveals to the group something personal. And then all the people who share that characteristic have to scamper across the circle to find somebody else’s shoes to stand behind.

Since there’s one fewer pair of shoes in the circle than there are students, the individual who can’t reach any footwear goes to the center of the ring for the next round of soul-baring.

This day’s confessions reveal, for instance, that only three students have been to India and only six spent the summer in Lewiston. But most of them love the ocean and quite a few have been summer camp counselors — fitting interests for a group that would, in a few days, be leading brand-new �ֲ���ý students on a variety of adventures in the Annual Entering Student Outdoor Program.

AESOP sends small groups of students hiking, camping, climbing, kayaking and canoeing across northern New England with the aim of helping the newbies make personal connections before classes start. This year’s 80 leaders, working in pairs, will bring more than 250 first-years to destinations from Isle au Haut to Baxter State Park to Vermont’s Long Trail.

“It’s a good way to introduce kids to �ֲ���ý before they really get to �ֲ���ý,” explains John Leavitt ’08, who is co-directing the 2007 program with Alida Ovrutsky ’08. “They meet individuals who are experienced with the school. Because, essentially, most first-years have very little experience with the school — they just know they want to go here.”

“AESOP gives you an instant social connection and an instant small group” of acquaintances, Ovrutsky adds.

The joys and challenges of the outdoors tend to forge group solidarity, Ovrutsky explains. “Even though a group might come from all diverse backgrounds, be interested in all different things, upon completing AESOP they have one thing in common: they completed this together.

“Whether it’s backpacking 35 miles on the Appalachian Trail or simply surviving four nights in the woods when you’ve never done it before, AESOP provides you with a sense of accomplishment and a sense of bonding that I don’t think a regular orientation would provide,” she says.

Games like Shoe Confessions speed the bonding. The trip leaders are learning it on this raucous August afternoon near Garcelon Field so they can play it with their first-years in the wild. The leaders will also be trained in wilderness skills and first aid, and their preparation culminates in a three-day, leaders-only shakedown expedition where they try out what they’ve learned.

AESOP showcases �ֲ���ý values in action. Tapping the College’s longtime emphasis on individual initiative and personal responsibility, AESOP has been organized solely by students for years, and students lead virtually all the trips. (In a typical exception, geology professor Dyk Eusden ’80 is applying his sea kayaking expertise as co-leader of the Isle Haut expedition this year.)

“That puts us up to a really high standard,” Ovrutsky says. “And that’s another thing that makes the program as strong as it is, because everyone takes it really seriously.”

In addition, says Ovrutsky, she and Leavitt have impressed upon trip leaders the importance of keeping in mind �ֲ���ý egalitarianism.

“We’ve been telling our leaders to remember, when they’re talking to their first-years about �ֲ���ý life, that everyone’s coming from a different background and that everyone’s interested in different parts of �ֲ���ý. So they’re catering their trips to every first-year at �ֲ���ý, not just one subset of people.”

AESOP’s roots reach back to the early 1980s, and the current name of the program was in use by 1990. Expeditions last three or four days and the groups typically number from six to 10 first-years, plus the co-leaders. The trips are rated for difficulty — for instance, a backpacking trek rated Level Five, the hardest category, will include at least one 10-mile day under full pack. Of the types of activities, sailing, surfing and base-camping trips tend to draw the most interest.

This year’s trips begin Aug. 28. The Long Trail in Vermont’s Green Mountains, the oldest long-distance hiking trail in America, is a new destination. Acadia National Park, Isle au Haut and the Presidential Range of the White Mountains are popular trips. “People all want to go to the Presidentials because it’s such a storied range,” Leavitt says.

But Leavitt’s own first-year AESOP experience was on the Level 5 Mahoosuc Notch trip, which he later led as a sophomore and which the program still offers. “I really enjoyed it,” he says. “I made some friends on that program that I’m still pretty close with today.”

“I was already fairly proficient in the outdoors,” he adds, “so basically I learned all about �ֲ���ý.”

A kayak paddle perches on a mound of new wetsuits in geologist Dyk Eusden’s office in Carnegie Science Hall. The paddle, just recently returned by a geology colleague who had borrowed it, is the least of Eusden’s concerns this late April morning.

Just a few days remain until Eusden and 11 students head out for a popular Short Term course exploring the rugged Maine coast by sea kayak, and there’s a problem. The Maine Guide hired for the trip, who’s Welsh, can’t get his green card for U.S. employment. So Eusden, a 1980 �ֲ���ý graduate and member of the �ֲ���ý faculty since 1988, must quickly interview and hire a new guide by phone. Despite the snafu, he’s nearly giddy: Short Term is his favorite time of year. “Short Term is fantastic, especially for geologists,” he says.

For the entire five-week Short Term, students enroll in just one of 83 available courses offered by 31 departments and programs. Students must complete only two Short Terms during their four years, so fewer students are on campus than during the fall or winter semesters. Around 1,250 students are in residence this May (including varsity athletes, who can stay on campus for what they call “Sport Term”), a number that’s about three-quarters the usual 1,700 students enrolled during the fall or winter.

“It’s a whole new campus,” says Associate Director of Admissions Virginia Harrison ’63. “Students see different people, and they make new friends.”

And they have fun. Since some courses meet just nine hours a week, visitors see lots of Frisbees being flung around the Quad and dorm furniture migrating outside. Terrace parties outside the Den become more frequent, and faculty, students, and staff enjoy weekly late-afternoon picnics on the Quad. Visits to nearby Range Pond are also traditional during Short Term.

Some Short Term courses, on the other hand, are so rigorous their nicknames are embedded in �ֲ���ý lingo. “Molecular and Cellular Biology,” required of all bio majors, meets every morning with labs two afternoons a week; it’s better-known as “Cell Hell.” The math department’s all-day, every-day course “Introduction to Abstraction” is nicknamed “Math Camp.”

Though Short Term has spawned some of the most adventurous �ֲ���ý courses, when inaugurated 35 years ago it was hardly a teaching-driven innovation and hardly the gift to cabin-fevered �ֲ���ýies it’s considered today. In 1965, with Baby Boomers hitting U.S. colleges, �ֲ���ý floated the idea of a three-year course of study. Adding a shorter semester in May and June would move more students more quickly through the College. (The College course catalog suggested that taking a course in May and June was wiser than the alternative, a traditional May-September vacation, which was deemed “a considerable waste of time.”)

The three-year option was a bust. But students and faculty loved Short Term. What began as an extension of the �ֲ���ý ethos of hard work became an unexpected, and at that time rare, opportunity for faculty to try out new courses and teaching strategies. During three five-day kayaking and camping excursions to Maine’s isolated coastal islands, Eusden and his students will map the varying bedrock geology around Casco Bay, Penobscot Bay, and Mount Desert Island. “I really enjoy being outdoors, getting out of this cubicle,” Eusden says in his office.

“It’s great to have your students for five weeks, all to yourself,” he adds. “In the kayaking course, they tend to form a cohesive group, learning more than just geology. They learn how to live with each other, how to cook each other’s food, how to set up campgrounds, and how to kayak and deal with adverse weather and ocean conditions.”

Indeed, the call of the kayak drew Jesse Minor ’02 of Wilmington, N.C., to �ֲ���ý four years ago. Now completing a geology major, he says courses like Eusden’s sea kayaking Short Term “were very helpful in terms of readiness for thesis research.” He adds, “I grew up sea kayaking, and courses like this differentiated �ֲ���ý” from its peers. “It’s also great to see different parts of Maine, to camp out, and be outdoors for a week at a time.”

“They get to see the Maine coast at a time when there’s nobody around,” Eusden says. “It’s beautiful, and birds are migrating and seals are being born. It’s way more than geology. It’s a lesson in life.”

Six Short Term courses offer significant domestic or overseas travel, and many others, like Curtis Bohlen’s environmental studies course addressing the restoration plan for a marsh in Scarborough, Maine, involve day trips. Students pay up to $3,500 for travel-abroad courses, and �ֲ���ý financial grant and loan aid is available.

In the history department, for example, assistant professor Lillian Guerra spent much of the break week between winter semester and Short Term on the phone untangling red tape for her Short Term course, the “Development and Legacies of Slavery in Cuba.” Days before she and 10 students were to fly from Portland to Montreal and then to Cuba, Guerra visited a local bank to wire the group’s travel money to Cuba. There, the bank gave Guerra bad news: the post-Sept. 11 Patriot Act makes it much riskier to wire funds to Cuba because the federal government will not guarantee the funds’ availability.

Typical, thought Guerra: never mind that �ֲ���ý has a travel license, issued by the U.S. Treasury Department, for educational travel to Cuba and that more than 55,000 students travel to the island nation every year. “The �ֲ���ý students have a great sense of humor about it, in part because it so accurately reflects the illogic of the U.S. approach to Cuba — as a pariah — when the rest of the world treats it like a normal state,” Guerra says. Rather than having their travel money safely waiting in Cuba, Guerra had to find a way to ship cash to Cuba.

“We’re studying the way the Cuban economy, culture, and systems of belief about race and gender developed around the system of slavery in the 19th century,” she adds. Yet current events can’t help but inform the past. A simple incident like not being able to wire money, she says, “becomes a lesson in itself why you should study any economic system, because it becomes the basis for every aspect of life.”

Even the many campus-based courses reach out beyond Campus Avenue and College Street. For example, Elizabeth Eames, associate professor of anthropology, reworked her service-learning Short Term course so her students could help Lewiston-Auburn social service agencies prepare for the predicted arrival of 1,000 Somali refugees from Atlanta.

The fans of Short Term aren’t limited to the faculty and students. For the �ֲ���ý admissions office, whose job it is to differentiate �ֲ���ý from dozens of other top-ranked liberal arts colleges, Short Term is a broad canvas on which to paint the most tantalizing possibilities of college life. Says Virginia Harrison with a sly smile: “Our standard line in admissions is, ‘When spring comes to Maine, it’s wonderful to have just one course.'”