Installing solar panels on campus or composting — as many colleges already do — will not be enough to effect significant change, said Darron Collins, president and a graduate of the college. “In the grand scheme of things, it’s kind of a drop in the bucket,” he said.

“The way to scale it up is to get our students to really think differently about it and for them to make advances on renewable energies off campus and once they graduate,” he said.

Other academic institutions use project-based learning, and students at technical powerhouses like Stanford, M.I.T. and the California Institute of Technology are busy inventing new energy products and approaches. But few colleges have taken on climate change — and alternative energy as a solution — with as much fervor as the College of the Atlantic, weaving it into the school’s curriculum and operations.

A team of students in a class called the Physics and Mathematics of Sustainable Energy, for example, met last term with companies in Portland to determine if it would make economic sense to bring a large-scale anaerobic digester, an apparatus used to break down organic waste, to a dairy farm on Mount Desert Island.

And projects continue to move ahead from a program started last year that sent about a dozen students to Samso, a Danish island that produces more energy from renewable sources than it uses. That program, organized with the Island Institute in Rockland, Me., has already resulted in bulk purchases of energy-efficient lighting, heating products and energy upgrades for homes. There is also the potential installation of solar arrays on several Maine islands.