THE GOOD LIFE May Term
Community-Building for the 21st Century:
Belonging, Creativity & Good Food for All
On-site in Maine: May 13 - June 1, 2024
One College Course | Up to 4 Credits | Transferable
Step away from the buzzing and blooming confusions of everyday life and hunker down on a 60-acre homestead peninsula in the coastal woodlands of Maine. You’ll be surrounded by a crew of fellow students who like you are setting aside time to connect to nature, cultivate mindfulness and clarify their vision of the good life.
The theme of May Term 2024 is Community-Building in the 21st Century: Belonging, Creativity & Good Food for All. While living in intentional community, we will explore the role of creativity and good food in building thriving, resilient communities. We’ll spend time with poet-farmers, artist-foragers, community-change-agents, and philosophers of belonging. We’ll get our hands dirty in the garden and the studio. Given the breakdown of community in the modern world - in light of the palpable desire for belonging - this program will be imbued with a sense of timelines and the work of hope. Along the way you’ll complete one college level course for up to 4 credits with award-winning professors who embody the spirit of experiential education.
Note: students who enroll in both our May Term and January Term programs are eligible to join our Good Life Bridge Semester Program.
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SPACIOUS REFLECTION: We create an environment in which students can think deeply about questions of the good life and begin to discern their own calling: “...the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet,” in the words of Frederick Buechner.
NATURE IMMERSION: We encourage students to connect to nature as a source of grounding, contemplation, insight and joy. Students live on campus here in the coastal woodlands of Maine. They learn to identify trees and plants, hike the preserves, and camp on the Maine Island Trail. Students slow down, sync up with nature and come to recognize their reciprocity with the earth.
INSPIRED ACADEMICS: Our programs are saturated with ideas to live by. We create a retreat-like setting, alive with creative thinking, good books and lively discussion. Our professors guide students through reflective exercises, facilitated conversations and immersive experiences in a non-ideological, non-dogmatic way. All courses at Seguinland Institute bear college credit through our affiliation with UMaine Farmington.
MINDFULNESS: We try to create a context in which students can cultivate the inner resources necessary for personal and community-oriented thriving. This includes daily mindfulness practice: the development of skills for calming and focusing the mind, knitting together fractured attention spans, and learning to sit with mystery.
CREATIVE ARTS: Creativity is the lifeblood of human thriving–for individuals and communities. Too many believe that creativity is the domain of the select few, “the artists”. We create space for all students to explore and expand their innate capacities for creative expression.
BACK TO THE LAND: Our campus is on the site of an old family homestead. In this spirit, we grow some of our own food and try “to live sanely and simply in a troubled world,” to quote Helen & Scott Nearing. We encourage students to grapple with the interconnections between the good life and the food life, as so many pressing issues of our time are food-related: climate change, health, inequality.
THE GOOD LIFE FOR ALL: Questions of the good life for one are inseparable from questions of the good life for all. We encourage our students to recognize that their own well-being is tied up with that of everyone else’s. We seek to instill in our students the skills to build strong and inclusive communities in the 21st Century.
May Term EXPERIENTIAL COURSE
Community Building for the 21st Century:
Belonging, Creativity & Good Food For All
Prof. Philip Francis, PhD & Prof. Marsha Dunn, MSW
4 College Credits in Art or Liberal Arts-Philosophy
- Course Credit via University of Maine Farmington-
This interdisciplinary, experiential course is rooted in the contemporary moment, in a season ripe for exploration of community-building and ways of belonging. Through the dual lens of art and food studies, we will explore the sources of community upbuilding and the nature of our desire for belonging. We will learn from poet-farmers, artist-foragers, community-change-agents and philosophers of belonging. We will get our hands dirty in the garden and in the art studio. Themes will include: immersive art, radical hospitality, farm-centered communities, food justice, utopianism and hope. The course will culminate in the creation of an immersive, participatory, celebratory and sumptuous art-food installation - a feast for the eyes and the belly.
“Seguinland isn't the average academic setting – it is the exceptional one. You'll read Wendell Berry waxing poetic about the wonders of sustainable agriculture, while planting seeds & tending to the on-site gardens. You'll read about Thoreau's adventures in the Maine wilderness as you spend time in that same wilderness (and perhaps even climb Katahdin!). You'll meditate, canoe, hike, introspect, laugh, dance, cook, forage, & share meals with one another on the transcendently picturesque Maine coast.”
-Garrett, Good Life Alum, May ‘21
May Term TRIPS & SPECIAL EVENTS
During the May Term, we will embark on a variety of adventures related to community, nature, art and food. Experiences will include: a boat trip to an ocean lighthouse and a hidden beach (see video above), visits to artist studios, art installations, cooperative farms, and public food forests. We’ll volunteer at a local organic farm that gives all its produce to people facing food insecurity. We’ll explore the creative process with artists who focus on public art and community building. Along the way, you’ll have the opportunity to engage with a range of fascinating guests and speakers: visiting artists, philosophers, musicians, foragers and more. And, of course, students will spend at least one night in a luxury treehouse with a wood fired cedar hot tub.
SAMPLE DAILY EXPERIENCE
Breakfast & Transition
Enjoy breakfast in your riverside cottage. Pack your day’s lunch. Cross the salt marsh via a wooden footbridge and arrive quietly at the Gathering Space, a classroom built up in the trees.
Mindfulness Practice
Participate in mindful practice customized to the day’s theme. Sessions may include contemplative forest walks, yoga, meditation, or centering breath.
Thematic Discussion
Engage the theme of the day (e.g. radical hospitality) through lectures, readings, writing exercises, and facilitated discussion.
Lunch
Eat, socialize, soak up your surroundings.
Experiential Learning
Dive further into the day’s theme through site visits, outdoor adventures and creative projects.
Open Time
Take time to read, journal, work on projects, exercise, rest, sit in solitude or socialize. Gathering space is designated as quiet space.
Dinner Preparations
Prepare dinner in the cookhouse: cooking, cleaning & “vibe crew” responsibilities rotate.
Communal Dinner
Gather for a family-style meal around one long table. Student-led games and spontaneous 80s dance parties may ensue.
Everyone I encountered quickly became beloved peers and teachers−fellow adventurers and friends. It’s hard to imagine where I’d be without this experience, the connections I formed through it, and all that I learned in Maine.
- Jacob, Alum May ‘21
FOOD LIFE
Our Approach
We relish the connections between the good life & the food life. We want you to feel healthy & nourished during your time here. We try to make every meal feel like the best of home cooking. We source some food from our own garden, and more from farmer’s markets, local farms & regular old grocery stores.
Collective Cooking & Dining
We want you to come away with more cooking skills than when you arrived. Everyone participates in preparing meals, most of which are prepared collectively in the cookhouse under the guidance of Katie, our “Good Food Facilitator”, and eaten family style at a long table. Some meals are prepped for you by guest chefs.
Highlights
A foraged feast led by an experienced forager and chef. Traditional Maine lobster bake. Guest chefs. Veggie & Vegan & GF & Kosher options.
COTTAGE LIFE
Riverside Accommodations:
During most of your time at Seguinland Institute you will stay in one of our small riverside cottages. Each cottage has a kitchen, bathroom(s), and a porch for river watching. Cottages have 1-3 bedrooms. Students stay in doubles or triples.
Treehouses:
Everyone gets a turn in a lux treehouse with river views and a wood-fired cedar hot tub up in the trees.
PROGRAM FEES
Tuition: $3750 (audit) | $4350 (4 credits)
Cost includes everything: tuition for college credits, room & board, gear & books, journals & marshmallows. Travel to/from Maine is NOT included. We can provide pick up at the airport in Portland & the train/bus station in Brunswick.
529 FUNDS:
Yes, families are usually able to use 529 funds to pay for at least a portion of our programs. Please inquire and consult with your financial advisor.
Scholarships:
We have need-based, merit-based & equity-based scholarships available. Please inquire.
“Live a three-dimensioned life. Plant Sequoias. Be like the fox making more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. ”