All Star 1 Family Conference
Welcome to All Star I
2026: Sunday, July 5 to Sunday, July 12
Theme:
Wild Connections: What animals can teach us about being human
Chairs: Shelley Powsner and Steve Skrovan
Shelley Powsner and Steve Skrovan are long-standing members of the All-Star I community and are excited to chair this year’s conference. Shelley’s mother, Dana, visited Star as a child in the 1930s, then brought husband Henry and their three daughters, Kim, Shelley, and Laurie back to All Star I in the late ‘60s. They have been coming back more or less every year since. Shelley brought Steve to the island for the first time in 1980.
Speaker: Animal Behavioralist Dr. Jennifer Verdolin
Dr. Jennifer Verdolin, an animal behavioralist, educator, writer, adventurer, and wildlife conservationist. A former Fulbright scholar, Dr. Jen’s research concentrates on social behavior and applied conservation. She teaches courses on wildlife and human culture, animal behavior and conservation and is the creator and host of Wild Connection, a podcast focused on exploring and improving our lives by connecting with and understanding nature. She also has a YouTube channel where she creates engaging, fun, and informative videos.
An expert in animal behavior, Dr. Jen has authored over 25 scientific publications, published two books, Wild Connection: What Animal Courtship and Mating Tells Us About Human Relationships and Raised By Animals: The Surprising New Science of Animal Family Dynamics. Her work has been featured in the Washington Post, the BBC, NPR and National Geographic. Her latest work has taken her to southwestern Uganda to study the endangered mountain gorillas.
For her week on Star, Dr. Jen will talk about her varied research on gorillas, lemurs, owls, prairie dogs, and just about anything else one might have questions about, including our own cats and dogs.
All Star 1 is a family-friendly conference at which you may start your summer with a restorative and relaxing week full of intellectual, musical, and other thoughtful and artistic pursuits that promote personal growth and inclusive community, where families, couples and singles return year after year and where newcomers are warmly welcomed.
Your day at All Star 1 might start with morning meditation in the Summer House, a polar bear dip off the dock, or a cup of coffee on the Oceanic Hotel’s expansive porch. Your evening might end by attending (or even participating in) a show, chapel service, or late-night music. In between, you are served three nutritious family-style meals, and can attend a morning lecture, catch an afternoon talk-on-the-rocks or nap, commune with nature, complete your crafts or puzzles on the porch, create your masterpiece in the art barn, or rock on a chair or in a band (so bring your musical instruments, whether acoustic or electric!). While each day is full of scheduled and impromptu activities, what and how much you choose to do is entirely up to you.
All Star 1 parents and their children – from newborn Nestlings to Senior Teens – benefit from our Children’s Program which provides age-appropriate activities led by dedicated teachers from 9:30-11:30 AM and from 1:30-3:00 PM on most days. Age-based bedtimes between 8:00 PM and 11:00 PM are non-negotiable and hall monitoring during this entire interval is provided on the Oceanic and Atlantic corridors of the hotel’s second floor where infants, young children and their parents preferentially sleep. All this support allows parents to have a vacation with – and admittedly fleetingly from – their kids. Additional activities include the Children’s Talent Show, the much anticipated Great People Hunt, the Quadrathlon, and – for Junior Teens – a prolonged project building a raft together and paddling it to Smuttynose Island and back!
Please join us for a communal week of camaraderie, conversation, recreation, entertainment, laughter, learning, enlightenment, and discovery through cherished traditions and chance encounters that connect us to each other and to our spirit’s home.
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Star Island Sunset Camera