During the course of the last year I have been meeting with the presidents of five other colleges and universities. Moving from East to West, we are:

College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine
Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont
Antioch University in Yellow Springs, Ohio
Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin
Prescott College in Prescott, Arizona
And, of course, Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage, Alaska

We had begun meeting some years before because we had a lot in common. We were all small, all with strong programs in Environmental Science, Environmental Studies, Marine Biology, Outdoor Studies, and similar programs.

However, this is not all that we have in common: we all have a desire to educate students to become shakers and movers, helping to change the world for the better. We all believe in small classes and individual attention to students. We all have a broad liberal arts and rigorous professional preparation curriculum that goes beyond environmental programs.

Talking about our common issues gradually moved toward talk of collaboration, and the result is the Eco League. What we have agreed upon is this: a student at any one of our institutions may take one semester in the sophomore year and one semester in the junior year at any of the other Eco League institutions.

By joining together we seek to counteract a problem we all deal with: educationally, small is beautiful, but small can also be limiting. By joining together we hope to get the best of both worlds for our students: consistent personal attention in small classes combined with diverse opportunities for travel to different parts of the earth, exposure to different kinds of thinking, different faculty, and all the broadening experiences that prepare students for today's global society.

The process has begun. In the next month 24,000 CDs explaining the Eco League will go to prospective students across the United States. About ten APU students have signed up to do an "Eco League Semester" next fall, and we are hearing from students from our sister institutions who want to come to Alaska. The experiment has begun, and as with a journey into unknown territory, we are all excited to see where it will lead us.

For more information on the Eco League at APU, you may visit the APU website at: www.alaskapacific.edu and click on Eco League.