Gap Year Association

Staff Training and Certification

Our faculty is comprised of award-winning professors, mentors, boat builders, artists, back-to-the landers and mindfulness practitioners.

PHILIP FRANCIS, PhD, Religion, Harvard University

Philip Francis, founder of Seguinland Institute, grew up on a boat yard in Georgetown, Maine. He learned to philosophize in that salty mix of lobstermen pragmatists and back to the lander idealists. After painting the bottom of many a boat, he took his questions on the road: to liberation theology base camps in Nicaragua, ashrams in India and monasteries in Greece. He settled down at Harvard Divinity School where he completed his doctoral work in religion. He completed a postdoc at Penn and professorships at Carleton College and Manhattan College before returning to his home state as Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at UMaine Farmington.

MEG LEMAY, PhD, English, Ohio State

For Meg LeMay, we learn best when we are unafraid of what we do not know. Indeed, Meg has learned the most from experiences that required her to embrace uncertainty. These include: poring over works in philosophy that felt beyond her grasp as a first-generation college student, stepping onto a plane to study abroad having never flown, moving outside of her comfort zone as a literary scholar to research zoology, taking a seat in a circle of bodhisattvas to meditate for the first time. If beginner’s mind and the vulnerability it engenders is the pathway to wisdom, Meg strives to walk it fully embodied. Her training in mindfulness informs her teaching style. Her students are emboldened to integrate their learning through bodies that live and breathe, to explore diverse perspectives and the landscape of their inner lives with equal rigor, and to find their feet so they may appreciate ideas that shake and remake their foundation. Meg taught English with a social justice focus at Ohio State University and Interdisciplinary Studies at Champlain College before returning to her Maine roots. She has taught yoga to women in recovery from addiction and co-runs a small farm with her Mother called Mindful Gardens.

LOREN FRANCIS, MFA, Stonecoast Writers Workshop, USM

Loren Francis is the in-house writer, musician, builder, boat captain and restorer-of-ancient-Airstreams at Seguinland Institute. His approach to all of these things has been honed by professional song-writing stints in Nashville and Stockholm, by sailing from Maine to almost Cuba, and by graduate studies at the University of Stockholm (literature) and at the University of Maine’s Stonecast Writer’s Workshop (MFA in creative writing). He has collaborated with Philip Francis, his brother, in developing the educational programming at Seguinland Institute, particularly writing workshops. He most recently taught the poetry component of a Seguinland Institute May term course for Manhattan College students: “Nature and the Good Life.” Poetry themes for the course included: Awe and Wonder, The Wild, Beauty and the Sublime, Silence, Solitude and the Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front.

MARSHA DUNN, MSW, Boston University

For the past 17-years Marsha has worked as a designer, graphic recorder, and facilitator of both deep, reflective conversations and strategic, action-oriented workshops. Central to her work is a commitment to listen and collaborate with her clients in order to deliver the best possible experience and outcomes. She has enjoyed working with organizations ranging from global companies to academic institutions, foundations, and local nonprofits.

In addition to her experience in the field, her perspective has been shaped by her undergraduate training in Art and Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, her Masters in Social Work training at Boston University, and her work as founder and designer of Seguin Tree Dwellings in Maine. In visual and design work and in facilitating dialogue, she seeks to integrate strategic and analytical thinking with a human and heartfelt approach.

JUSTIN PARK, PhD, Human Development, Lesley University

With an odd glimmer in his eye, Justin’s high school guidance counselor passed him a brochure for a mortician school. This was a test, as if to imply, “OK Mr. Soul Searcher...maybe your best option is to dress up dead bodies to look almost presentable.” An interesting challenge that was not lost on the young upstart. Justin set off on an unconventional learning journey to ask big questions and get his hands dirty. The next few decades found him catching on fire in steel plants, stirring vision as a wilderness guide, staring at the floor in Zen monasteries, and getting his world turned upside down as a social worker. Somewhere along the way he managed to cobble together degrees in Sustainability Education, Social Work and a doctorate in Adult Learning and Development. His interdisciplinary research has focused on: Transformative Learning, Wisdom Development, Flow States of Consciousness, Resilience, Moral Potency, Emotional Intelligence, and Mindfulness. Justin currently works as an ordained Zen Priest, Social Worker, and Human Developmentalist.