In 1968, Father James Gower, a Catholic priest and peace activist, and his former football teammate from Bar Harbor High School, businessman Les Brewer, conceived the idea for the College of the Atlantic. Brewer and Gower founded the school in 1969, when the school of human ecology was granted temporary approval on June 23, 1969, by the Maine State Board of Education. Three other Mount Desert residents helped establish the college: Bernard K. "Sonny" Cough, Richard Lewis and Robert Smith. Edward Kaelber, then assistant dean at Harvard Graduate School of Education, became the first president and was joined in 1970 by Melville P. Cote as assistant to the President and Director of Admissions and Student Affairs.