On June 28, Antioch alumni, students, faculty, and friends spilled out of their cars and into the beautiful lands of the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock, New Hampshire. They were eager to join a special interpretive hike being led by Tom Wessels, Faculty Emeritus in the Environmental Studies Department based on Antioch’s New England Campus. The hike proved so popular that they had to schedule a second one so others could participate. And this was just one event out of many gatherings across two days of celebration that brought together alumni, faculty, staff, and friends to commemorate 50 years since the founding of Environmental Studies programming at Antioch University.
The celebration began the evening prior, on June 27, with a reception hosted at the home of Abigail Abrash Walton, a longtime faculty member and outgoing Chair of the Environmental Studies Department. Then the following day the main celebration took place on June 28 at the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock, NH. Alumni from each decade of the 50 years were represented. In total, 125 alumni, faculty, staff, and guests were in attendance, with some alumni traveling from as far as California. The celebration was the culmination of a year of events that honored the innovation and leadership of the Environmental Studies Department of the last 50 years, and looked to its next 50 years and beyond. (Read our Common Thread article about the year-long celebration.)
This two-day celebration set out to honor the department’s legacy, reflect on its impact, and envision its future. The festivities were thoughtfully planned to highlight the department’s history, its contributions to environmental leadership, and the strong sense of community that has defined it for half a century.
An Interpretive Hike With a Renowned Teacher
Wessels, who led the interpretive hike, is well-known in the field of environmental studies for his decades of work as a terrestrial ecologist and naturalist. He is known by his colleagues and students not only for his deep expertise in forest ecology, sustainability, and the interconnectedness of natural systems but also for his ability to read clues in forested landscapes, uncovering evidence of past human activities. For many, taking another hike with Wessels brought back memories of field work that had shaped their understand of the environment. “There was an interest and curiosity in the natural world as folks walked around with Tom, as if they were right back in a field class with him,” said Laura Andrews, Director of Institutional Advancement for Antioch’s New England campus. “It was obvious that even though many of the alumni do this work in their professional lives, they are still so curious!”
For Diana Duffy, an alum and member of the alumni committee, the enthusiasm for this hike was notable.“I was impressed, though not surprised,” she says, “that Tom Wessels drew so many fans and former students to the event.”
A Program Emphasizing Community Connections
After the interpretive hike, Environmental Studies faculty members Libby McCann, Meaghan Guckian, Jules Gibson, Michael Akresh, Rae Thiet, and Peter Palmiotto led cafe conversations.
McCann and Thiet’s conversation table included an activity where alumni were asked to share their Environmental Studies degree program and graduation year and to answer ‘magical questions.’ These questions included:
- What’s a path your life has taken because of your experiences at Antioch?
- What should Antioch Environmental Studies prioritize in our academic programming of students for the next 50 years?
- What is a memory from your time at Antioch that stands out?
- What is a pearl/nugget of wisdom you’ve treasured from your time at Antioch?
Participants were then encouraged to write their responses with colored markers on butcher paper.
Lunch also provided a significant moment of celebration. It was catered by the Monadnock Food Co-op, which has historical ties to the department, as its founding came out of an ES master’s project by alums Bonnie Hudspeth and Katie Stoner, both of whom attended the Celebration. (Read our recent story about the Co-op’s founding.) The lunch highlighted the department’s connection to community initiatives and continued leadership beyond the walls of academia.
Participants were free during lunch or throughout the day to walk through Babbitt Hall at the Harris Center, where there was a presentation of relevant portions from the recent exhibit “Antioch University in the Monadnock Region: Celebrating 60 Years of Service,” which was displayed earlier this year at the Historical Society of Cheshire County. This exhibit had been curated by longtime ES adjunct faculty member and alum Rowland Russell. (Read our story about that exhibit here.) The afternoon featured a reflective and often funny panel facilitated by Abrash Walton and featuring both current faculty and founding faculty members Mitchell Thomashow, Cindy Thomashow, Meade Cadot, and Tom Wessels. This conversation was titled, “Our Foundations and Our Future.” The panelists shared memories of the department’s formative years and discussion of the program’s future, with each of the first two generations of faculty introducing their next generation colleagues.
Even the detail of holding the event at the Harris Center was a way of honoring the Environmental Studies Department’s commitment to collaboration with community partners. The Harris Center was founded the same year as Antioch University’s New England campus and has long served as a key field study site for Environmental Studies students. The Harris Center historically housed students who stayed overnight for classes, and it has employed many of the program’s graduates. Meade Cadot, a retired faculty member from the ES department, joined the gathering and delighted attendees with stories about Antioch and his many years as Executive Director at the Harris Center.
Honoring the Legacy of Ty Minton
In keeping with the department’s tradition of ringing bells to mark the start and end of each semester, and to honor the legacy and recent passing of Environmental Studies founder Ty Minton, the celebration ended with a ceremonial bell ringing. Minton, a beloved educator, was also an accomplished ceramacist, and in 1995 he gifted his sculpture “Gaia: Dance of the Cosmos” to Antioch. The sculpture’s many bells hung for decades in the entrance of the 40 Avon Street building in Keene, NH, and it will have a prominent new home in the updated Antioch New England campus.
Abrash Walton honored Minton’s memory by sharing a story about this very special and beloved art installation.Thomashow, who co-founded the department with Minton, shared a few words about him. He described Ty’s art installation of a series of hanging bells each to symbolize various parts of the history of the evolution of the universe as “an absolutely brilliant vision.” (You can watch an archival video of the bell-ringing tradition.) Thomashow went on to say, “What Ty manifested, I think, before any of us really understood its significance, but we intuited it, was the extraordinary importance of art in scientific and environmental communication.”
Then, as the crowd prepared to do the bell-ringing tradition again in Minton’s honor, Thomashow said, “If you can think about that deeper awareness of our own manifestation as stars and sunlight, I think that would make him, wherever he may be, very happy. So, let’s all ring these bells together, starting right now.” And with that he rang the overhead bell created by Minton as the audience rang small bells that had been gifted to them before the ceremony. (You can watch a recording of this moment in the celebration).
For Daniel Andrews, a current second-year student in the ES program with a concentration in Advocacy for Social Justice and Sustainability, this was the celebration’s most meaningful moment: “At the 50th celebration, one of these bells was rung with a ladle carved from applewood by my colleague–and now alumnus–Ryan Duggan. Sleigh bells were handed out by ES staff Suzanne Green and Amy Roy, and once Ty’s bell was rung, everyone in attendance began ringing their bells. It was a beautiful sound. I felt witness to time-honored traditions blending with new ones, in real time.”
Celebrating History and Building to Future
“Overall, the celebration embodied the spirit, continuity, and community that have defined the ES Department for the last 50 years,” says Suzanne Green, Director of Internships and Career Support for the ES Department, who played a key role in organizing the event. Diana Duffy, one of the alumni who helped organize the event, agrees. As she says, “While I finished my ES master’s 20+ years ago, the warmth, dedication, and commitment to environmental leadership and scholarship from current and previous faculty filled the room with an Antioch richness I haven’t experienced since graduation.”
For Daniel Andrews, the event was a coming-together of many generations of leaders—a lineage he is working to join. “There are some heavy-hitters and powerful forces of change in the ecosystem of Environmental Studies, and I feel proud to one day contribute to that legacy,” he says. “I left with a feeling of connectedness. We’re part of something bigger than ourselves.”
Event Results in New Scholarship Fund
Abrash Walton played a pivotal role in organizing the 50th anniversary celebration. She initiated the year-long celebration in July 2024 in her role as Environmental Studies Department Chair, and she appointed Suzanne Green to organize this event. As part of this work, she also tasked an alumni committee with framing a new scholarship initiative. The committee members were Cindy Thomashow, Diana Duffy, Yves Gakunde, Bonnie Hudspeth, and Rowland Russell, and they came together with Laura Andrews and Josh Jacobs from Antioch’s Office of Institutional Advancement to assist in fundraising efforts.
As a result of these efforts, the Environmental Studies Legacy and Impact Scholarship has now been established. It will support first-year master’s students. Antioch institutional advancement have raised $14,000 to date, which Abrash Walton has structured as $3,500 scholarships to students who demonstrate both merit and need.
Abrash Walton describes the scholarship as a way to ensure that passionate, capable students, regardless of financial circumstances, can pursue the education they need to make a difference. “The challenges we face today—from biodiversity loss to climate injustice—require bold, systems-level change,” she says. “With faculty expertise in advocacy, conservation biology, conservation psychology, sustainability, environmental education, and transformative leadership, our students leave Antioch prepared to lead.”
Reflecting on the culminating event that closed out a year of celebration, Abrash Walton says, “The Antioch ES 50th anniversary celebration at the Harris Center for Conservation Education exceeded our collective expectations. It was a great example of what Antioch ES does best: building community, with joy, humor, and connection with one another and the natural world.”
