At the end of June, approximately 85 island students, parents and donors gathered at the Samoset in Rockport to celebrate the award of $66,700 in scholarship support to 57 islanders who are pursuing their education after high school. The scholarships range in size from $250 (ten) to $5,000 (three). Twenty-one scholarships are for $1,000 or larger. To put this figure in context, the budget for the entire Island Institute in its first year was less than the amount awarded at the end of this school year.
At least 12 island students will attend one of the University of Maine campuses at Orono, Machias, Farmington or Southern Maine. Another eight will attend other Maine institutions including Bowdoin (two), Bates, Husson and Thomas College as well as University of New England and Maine Maritime Academy. Several islanders are headed for the far-flung campuses of Florida Southern (two), University of California at Berkeley and McGill in Montreal, Canada. Academically talented islanders will attend some of the nation’s top tier colleges at Middlebury, Brown, Smith, Boston College and Connecticut College. Three tech-savvy islanders received support to pursue degrees at Worcester Polytech, Rochester Institute of Technology and Wentworth Institute of Technology. Other island students will be attending programs as diverse as Pierre’s School of Cosmetology to the Rhode Island School of Design. Quite a set of accomplishments for islanders and the island schools that produced them!
Some people have questioned why the Island Institute, which is dedicated to helping sustain island communities, would invest in a scholarship program that encourages young people to leave their island communities, particularly when so many of them will never return. The answer does not fit in a sound bite. But the essential response is that an island community, like any other community or nation for that matter, will only be able to grow and thrive if it can attract young families who believe their children will be able to achieve whatever might be their full potential. This is, after all, a critical part of the American dream that applies equally to island communities and everywhere else.
The great Maine ornithologist, Bill Drury, used to compare island communities to the offshore gull colonies he closely observed over many decades. He noted that the most successful gulls in a colony, as measured by their reproductive success, generally commanded the high ground in a colony with the best view of the surrounding feeding areas. These “native” gulls returned year after year to their favorable nesting territories and were able to out-compete other birds. But around the margins of each colony, new gulls settled. Some left after a season or two, but others stayed and thrived and a few of these ultimately moved into the prime nesting territories on higher ground. A successful gull colony, Bill concluded, is thus a mix between “native” gulls and newcomers. Immigration balances emigration, in other words.
Scholarships are a means of providing continuity to an island community by attracting new settlers whose numbers hopefully exceed the losses of those who get an education off-island and never return. The alternative is a community that holds too tightly on to its children and risks slowly running out of steam — not like the Shakers, but through a lack of opportunities for its youth.
Awarding higher education scholarships as an investment in community sustainability is hardly a novel idea. But in the island context, it raises the question of whether we can do better. We know that virtually all of the 57 island scholars face a huge adjustment of leaving their island communities where the kind of support they have enjoyed for their entire lives has become almost second nature. While the percentage of island kids going on to college is extremely impressive, graduation rates are not nearly as high as they could be. The challenges island kids face on what can seem like an impersonal college campus are of a different order of magnitude than those faced by mainland students and are often depressingly difficult to overcome. Many return home before completing a degree.
We are thinking hard about the details of creating a mentoring program among older island students and incoming freshmen to focus on the critical transition from island to college. We are also thinking about the prospects for another transition process — from college back to island — closing the loop perhaps through some sort of island service, such as through the Island Fellows program. These are still thoughts on the fevered brow inspired by the tremendous admiration we have for the island students headed out to improve their skills and knowledge of what their unique lives have to offer the world. We’ll report back as we learn more from the next cohort of impressive islanders seeking their way amid the daunting challenges they face. q
Philip Conkling is president of the Island Institute.