In October, red leaves floating to the ground are about the only sound at Tyler Forks Community Forest, located thirty minutes south of campus. The 590-acre forest was purchased by Landmark Conservancy in 2019 and has become an additional outdoor classroom and recreational area for students and the general public. In the last two years,…
On a sunny, summer Monday afternoon, Dr. Alissa Hulstrand, assistant professor of biology and affiliated faculty of the Burke Center, ate lunch at Maslowski Beach while keeping her eyes on the seagulls nearby. She was waiting for one of them to defecate so she could swoop in for the poop. One did but she realized…
On our day off between class sessions this March, I took myself on a bookstore tour of Bayfield County. I promised myself I wasn’t going to spend any more money on books; I was only going to look. So, as I walked out of Honest Dog Books with a thick compilation of Mary Oliver poetry,…
If Halee’s life were a book, it would be magical realism—one filled with dragons to slay, charming characters, and chance encounters gripped with meaning. Halee Kirkwood ’15, who uses the pronouns they/them/theirs, is an adjunct professor at Hamline University, editor of the literary journal Runestone, teacher at the Loft Literary Center, a poet and writer,…
On September 1, 2021, Todd Rothe ’10 and Jamie Tucker ’16 pulled on leather gloves, hooked up a trailer to a truck, and began collecting garbage bins of food scraps, coffee grounds, and paper products to haul to a farm field to begin the composting process. “We’re turning organic waste into soil, and we can…
In 2018, flooding over Father’s Day weekend carved a hole through a major highway in far northwestern Wisconsin, disrupting travel for months and sending three times the amount of sediment that flows each year into one Lake Superior bay. Now, a project aims to slow the flow of runoff as the region faces more frequent, intense storms…
The College invited Russ Feingold, Wisconsin’s former US Senator and current president of the American Constitution Society as its speaker for Constitution Day, a September 17 federal observance recognizing the adoption of the US Constitution and those who have become US citizens by birth or naturalization. “Anyone who knows me knows your part of the…
Joel Glickman, emeritus professor of music at Northland College, has written his first children’s book, the delightfully playful Marisol the Parasol: A Bumbershoot Romance. Joel lives on Ellis Avenue—a few blocks from the College—with his wife, Susan, where he can often be found playing banjo on his front stoop. He is a musician, prolific poet,…
Sierra has again named Northland College a “cool school” in its annual top-100 list of sustainable colleges and universities. Northland College ranked seventy-third out of 328 participating schools—and remains at the top in Wisconsin and in the Midwest. While each institution on Sierra’s list “demonstrates a deep commitment to addressing climate change, protecting the natural…
More than one hundred and fifty people attended a groundwater-focused panel discussion, “Aversion to Diversion: Groundwater, Bottled Water, and the Great Lakes Compact,” at the Big Top Chautauqua on September 27, 2021. Organized by the Mary Griggs Burke Center for Freshwater Innovation, Director Peter Annin moderated a discussion with leading Wisconsin water experts Todd Ambs,…
