Station on Great Duck Island where students conduct studies on Leach's storm petrels, guillemots, gulls, sparrows and other fields of natural history. The Edward McCormick Blair Research station on Mount Desert Rock is a center for the study of marine mammals and oceanographic issues.
== History ==
The College of the Atlantic was conceived by Mount Desert Island residents who wanted to stimulate the island's economy during the off-season, when revenue from tourism declined, by forming a year-round, four-year institution of higher education.
In 1968, Father James Gower, a Catholic priest and peace activist, and his former football teammate from Bar Harbor High School, businessman Les Brewer, conceived the idea for the College of the Atlantic. Brewer and Gower founded the school in 1969, when the school of human ecology was granted temporary approval on June 23, 1969, by the Maine State Board of Education. Three other Mount Desert residents helped establish the college: Bernard K. "Sonny" Cough, Richard Lewis …
