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Classroom to Island Initiative

Launched in 2024, the Classroom to Island (CTI) Initiative integrates our approach to place-based liberal arts learning, rooted in academics, labor, and self-governance, into credit-bearing courses of study at public, private, and community colleges across the country. Through these programs we expand our impact and access to a new vision of civic and environmental education for an age of climate change. â€‹

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We have run programs with Yale, Columbia, and Wesleyan Universities. Multiple programs are in the works for 2025-2026, to run on Penikese and Cuttyhunk Islands in Buzzards Bay and at sites on the Chesapeake Bay. 

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In a CTI program, the Institute works with faculty at partnering institutions to develop a course incorporating a 3-day to 1-week Gull Island immersive experience. During the experience, students take part in a version of the Buzzards Bay Term tailored to course goals, themes, and questions. On island, students plan and prepare their meals, set community ground rules, and conduct land-management projects while engaging in daily seminar. Self-governance often involves a student presentation department or university leadership on program outcomes with proposals for developing place-based learning opportunities on the home campus. By rooting learning in place, we aim to expand horizons of student civic engagement and responsibility, at a moment of profound transformations in our climate and systems of higher education.​

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If you are interested in exploring a partnership with the Gull Island Institute for your institution, please be in touch.

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As part of "Animate Landscapes", a course co-taught in Fall 2024 with Professor Justine Quijada, students at Wesleyan produced a multimedia website on the impact of their experience living, learning, and working on Penikese Island. Check it out!

danielle in garden.jpeg

“Being on Penikese Island allowed me to…wrestle with course themes in a way I could not have without experiencing such a remote and historically rich place for myself… [T]he three pillars of physical labor, self governance and academics proved incredibly valuable to the knowledge-making that took place on the island, not only of the land we were on, but of each other as professors and students.” 

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Danielle Ricketts

Yale University ‘26, 

Student in “Atmospheric Histories” Classroom to Island Program

“Working with the Gull Island Institute during this course was an incredible opportunity to explore the fundamental questions about how we ought to live... Even though we had only known each other for a few days, we quickly formed a sense of community, relying on one another for meals [and in] seminar. This sense of connection and understanding could only have come from immersing ourselves in a new environment together, rather than merely coexisting quietly in a classroom for a semester.”

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Ashley Young

Columbia University ‘26, Student in the 2024 “Sustainable Development Practicum”  Classroom to Island Program

2024 CTI Programs​

Spring 2024​​

  • Yale University - History of Science - "Atmospheric Histories"- Prof. Deborah Coen 

  • Columbia University - Climate School - "Sustainable Development Practicum: Sustainability and the Meaning of Place on Cuttyhunk Island" - Profs. Jason Smerdon and Sandra Goldmark

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Fall 2024

  • Wesleyan University - Bailey College of the Environment - "Animate Landscapes" - Prof. Justine Quijada​

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As the Initiative develops we will be posting information and stories documenting its impact on the landscape of higher education. 

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