The Colby experience, as shaped by the College’s mission and precepts and other College initiatives, is characterized by intellectual challenge, a strong sense of community and a friendly campus atmosphere, international perspectives, and efforts to understand and embrace diversity. Academics are the core of Colby. Excellence in undergraduate education is the College’s central mission, and the Colby experience is, first and foremost, about the life of the mind. Critical reasoning abilities, forged in classes and laboratories, are honed by questions, challenges, and discussion.
A distinctive campus atmosphere helps set Colby apart from other liberal arts colleges. Colby combines academic challenge with a rich student life that includes more than 120 student organizations and offers students countless leadership and volunteer opportunities. Colby is committed to fostering a fully inclusive community enriched by diverse students and teaching faculty.
Colby is recognized as a leader in internationalism—in its emphasis on study abroad programs, in the international diversity of the student body and faculty, and in the ways global issues permeate the curriculum. Colby prepares graduates to function in a global economy and to work effectively with people of diverse races, cultures, and backgrounds. Students from more than 65 countries comprise the student body, and two thirds of Colby students choose to study abroad for a semester, a year, or a January Program. Faculty members and students are engaged actively in national and international affairs directly from Mayflower Hill.
Colby graduates find their places at top Wall Street firms, the best medical schools and research universities, the finest law and business programs, in the arts, government service, social service, education, and nonprofit organizations. With their career possibilities virtually unlimited, Colby graduates leave prepared to contribute to their communities and to the world.
Colby is dedicated to the education of humane, thoughtful, and engaged persons prepared to respond to the challenges of an increasingly diverse and global society and to the issues of justice that arise therein. The College is committed to fostering a fully inclusive campus community, enriched by persons of different races, genders, ethnicities, nationalities, economic backgrounds, ages, abilities, sexual orientations, and spiritual values. We strive to confront and overcome actions and attitudes that discourage the widest possible range of participation in our community, and we seek to deepen our understanding of diversity in our daily relationships and in our dealings as an institution.
Colby’s long-range strategic plan, The Plan for Colby, includes initiatives designed to enhance the intellectual climate at the College; integrate students’ academic, residential, and social experiences; provide a richer array of social and cultural programs for all students; advance diversity; reduce the role of alcohol in social life; improve leadership development opportunities; and promote a safer and more secure campus environment for all students.
