College

College of the Ferns is the local four-year school in Fern River. It split from the regional schools in the early 2000s when the bottom fell out of arts funding. The public school system collapsed shortly thereafter, but thanks to a plucky DIY ethic and willingness to evolve radically, College of the Ferns thrived.

The programs on offer lean heavily toward the mainstays of the local economy. Undergraduate students can major in the visual and performing arts, vernacular architecture, regenerative farming, appropriate technology, winemaking, music, and various humanities and sciences. Graduate programs are as diverse and strange as the rotating cast of advisors, professors and doctoral students that come through. The college is distinguished by it’s self-organized operation. Students and faculty cooperate to design the curriculum, handle admissions and administration, and determine salaries. Courses are not graded. Asami teaches pottery, Lena taught studio art for many years, and students and alumns include Luc, Ash, Janie, Em, Bri and Juro.

The campus was designed in the mid 1960s by the renowned but reclusive Fern River architect Laasonen (now deceased), and exhibits a cool modernism mixed with idiosyncratic local forms and materials. His original approach has proven fortunate, since the buildings can be maintained and modified using locally-available materials. The campus is tucked among groves of trees and ferns a few blocks from the river, and lies at the opposite end of the Promenade from the Fria. At the center sits a grassy hexagonal commons crossed by stone paths, which students fondly call the Sextangle.

There is no on-campus housing, but instead a longstanding tradition of local families hosting students. A student-run hostel on Citron Hill houses new students as they settle in.