This story and photo sent to us by Peter Meijer (S’05) is proof that our Island School alumni truly are located all over the world! Peter was traveling around southeast Asia during the holidays and just so happened to run into a fellow Spring 2005 classmate, Katie White. Katie is currently working for the World Wildlife Fund in Vientiane, Laos. The two got a chance to catch up while enjoying some fresh coconut drinks! Next time you run into a fellow Island School-er or plan a get together with them, be sure to take a picture and send it to alumni@islandschool.org!
Katie White and Peter Meijer, Spring 2005, in southeast Asia
The Ocean Exploration Trust is offering a number of internship and job opportunities that may be of interest to Island School alumni or other friends of The Island School, Cape Eleuthera Institute, and Deep Creek Middle School. Please see the descriptions below or visit the Ocean Exploration Trust’s website for more information.
NAUTILUS SCIENCE & ENGINEERING INTERNSHIP PROGRAM
Applications are now being accepted!
The Nautilus Exploration Program is seeking undergraduate and graduate students and early career scientists for at-sea internships in 2013. See this webpage for details and application materials: http://www.oceanexplorationtrust.org/opportunities
For more information please contact the appropriate Nautilus representatives listed in the application.
DEADLINE: Feb 1, 2013
LEAD OCEANOGRAPHIC DATA ENGINEER
Applications are now being accepted!
The Ocean Exploration Trust is seeking an oceanographic data systems engineer to support the Nautilus Exploration Program.
Applications will be posted at the beginning of January. We are undergoing some restructuring in our Education Department and apologize for the delay. Please see this website for details, starting in January:
Fall 2010 alum Will Overman recently conquered a huge feat. He hiked the entire, 2,200-mile Appalachian Trial, which runs from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine. Will and his father have been hiking together ever since Will was little and they have always wanted to hike the AT together. After Will graduated from high school, he deferred his first semester of college at University of Vermont to hike the AT. He figured that this was the best time to do it “before life got in the way.” Unfortunately life did get in the way for his father who couldn’t take all 5 months off from work, but Will’s dad did join him for the 100 Mile Wilderness and other various legs of the trip. We caught up with Will after he returned and he shared a few highlights of his journey:
Will and his dad
As for highlights, like my semester at IS, it’s really hard to pin down just one thing I loved more than others. My favorite part of the trail was meeting so many amazing people, and the abundance of kindness those people offered to me, a complete stranger. As for areas, the Whites of New Hampshire were like nothing I had ever seen. Maine was a pristine gem. Vermont lived up to it’s reputation as the Green State. But I have to say that Virginia was my favorite state, although, I am a bit biased because I’m a native. I summited Clingman’s Dome, the highest peak on the trail, the day Sandy hit, and that was pretty wild. She dropped so much snow in the Smokies that I couldn’t walk. The drifts were 4 to six feet. So that was a crazy time on the trail.
The AT was without a doubt one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and probably will ever do, but every step was worth it, all 5,000,000 of them. So many wonderful people, places, and experiences. A lot of laughs, tears, breakdowns, breakthroughs, and a solidified faith in people. I’m not sure I’ll ever figure out exactly what I got from hiking the trail, I never even really figured out why I did it, but I loved the hell out of, no matter how much it sucked sometimes, and I’m so glad I did it, and so glad to be home.
Congratulations, Will! And welcome home! If any other Island School alumni opted to defer their college acceptances for a semester or a year, let us know what you’re up to by emailing alumni@islandschool.org and you may get featured in our next alumni spotlight!
As a native Clevelander, I take great pride in anything Ohio so I was over the moon when I first heard about Rid-All Green Partnership Farm. Rid-All is an exceptional example of not only how Cleveland is making a difference with urban agriculture but also how experiences at The Island School can easily translate to “the real world.” The most direct connection is their closed aquaponics system with Tilapia–sound familiar??
On Saturday December 22, 2012 Island Schools alumni, parents and teacher conference attendees gathered in the cold and snow to tour the farm. Co-founders Randy McShepard and Damien Forshe gave us the history of the urban farm, its progress to today and showed us where all the magic happens. The key to their vision is establishing the farm as a center for education and modeling systems. They have also developed a number revenue streams to sustain the project and ensure it’s ability to thrive and continue influencing locally and nationally the urban farming movement. For more information on Rid-All please check out their website here.
Please enjoy the photos from our tour and we encourage you to visit this great place if you ever find yourself in Cleveland! I know this will be the first of many visits by The Island School family and thank you to all who joined us for our first visit!
The January 5th Island School reunion in Boston is coming up fast! We hope you can join us for this all-semester alumni and families gathering, which includes morning exercise, a lecture from CEI’s Edd Brooks and the New England Aquarium’s John Mandelman, as well as a plastics workshop from Fall 2012 alumni. Please make sure you RSVP to alumni@islandschool.org! See you then! Happy Holidays!
We love hearing from our alumni, especially when they fill us in on all the interesting things they are doing in their lives post-Island School! Dominique Keefe, alumna of Spring 2007, began working at a clean energy investment start-up in Montreal in July 2012 called Inerjys. As soon as the company’s current fundraising phase is complete, they will be investing in two asset classes–growth equity in clean energy technology companies, and project finance in infrastructure projects that actually use those technologies, globally. Dominique explains that the basic idea behind it is that “cleantech investing has been pretty fraught with poor returns and bankruptcies in the last decade, and so we’re taking a new approach that we hope will really facilitate the movement of renewable energy into the mainstream market. The purpose of the two asset classes is to give our growth equity portfolio companies revenues and references when they sell their product to a project we are investing in. This helps “de-risk” the technology and makes other investors comfortable with it, leading the way to more projects and deployments, etc.”
Although Dominique graduated from Barnard College with a degree in biology Continue reading →
Although it has been just over a week since the Fall 2012 students returned home from their semester The Island School, that did not stop a group of them from getting together for lunch in Boston this Saturday. Nine members of the F’12 semester from the greater Boston area met up in Harvard Square with Island School’s Cam Powel and Hannah Mauck to see some familiar faces and also have the opportunity to talk about all things Island School. Welcome back! We hope to see you all at the January 5th reunion! Make sure to RSVP by emailing alumni@islandschool.org.
Check out the press release in The Eleutheran about the first bio-gas stove in The Bahamas installed at The Island School!
The Island School and Cape Eleuthera Institute (CEI) are eager to celebrate the implementation of an innovative technology with the potential to revolutionize regional waste management, while enhancing energy independence and agricultural development. Last week, members of the facilities department teamed up with Island School students to install the first bio-gas burning stove in The Bahamas
Bio-gas is the usable energy created during the process of biodigestion, which processes organic waste into usable gas and nutrient rich fertilizer, uniquely addressing a number of local issues. With deep thanks to Derek Francis General Manager and Daron Lloyd, Sales Manager at Master Technicians in Nassau who donated the stove, Founder Chris Maxey proudly declared “Now we will literally be taking human waste and processing it into a safe and inexpensive form of energy that we can use to cook our food. And, we will be doing it all on-site, on our campus. What is more energy-independent than that?”
