College of the Atlantic

The campus started as a monastery. The majority of what is now College of the Atlantic was purchased for $1 from the Oblate Fathers of Mary Immaculate, which tells you something about what the founders were after — not prestige, not profit. James Gower, a Catholic priest and peace activist, and his former high school football teammate, businessman Les Brewer, conceived the idea in 1968 and founded the school the following year. Classes began in 1972 with 32 students.

The premise has always been singular: one degree, in human ecology, undergraduate and graduate. No departments. Every faculty member considers themselves a human ecologist first. Frenchman Bay and Acadia National Park are not backdrop — they're the lab. Two offshore lighthouses, Mount Desert Rock and Great Duck Island, were given to the college in 1998 and function as field research stations, one focused on marine mammals and oceanographic study, the other on seabirds and natural history.

In 2004, COA was the first campus to commit to running entirely on renewable energy. If that kind of institutional seriousness interests you, this is the real thing.