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Nine a.m. on a Wednesday in September. Twenty-one first-year students assemble in a classroom off what students call "The Street" in Miller Library. Nervous chuckles and expectant glances. Professor Cedric Bryant enters. College has begun.

Bryant introduces himself. He asks if students have read The Great Gatsby. Many have. He says they must recall the second-to-last sentence. He recites it with care, the words held up to the class like a string of precious stones: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Bryant is serious to the point of gravity. What, he asks, did Fitzgerald mean to teach us about language with this sentence? "How does this sentence do what it does?"

There's an awkward silence, and then they're off. "Manipulation," a student answers. There's discussion of the word "equivocate" and a reference to irony. Bryant quotes Toni Morrison on the craft of writing: "The seams can't show. . . . The language can't sweat." And Emily Dickinson: "The world is not conclusion. . . ."

"I was really surprised at how intense it was today," said Aspen Foreman '05 of Delta, Colo., after class.

"I have to say it was great," said Stanislav Presolski '05 of Pleven, Bulgaria. "I was enchanted by the professor, the way he spoke."

» Read more about Professor Cedric Bryant's first day of class.

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A Teaching Museum

» Go to the Colby College Museum of Art site.
The Colby College Museum of Art owns an outstanding collection of American art from the early 1700s, including important early portraits by John Singleton Copley and Gilbert Stuart, American Impressionist art, and more than 400 works by Alex Katz. This is not your typical college museum. The Colby museum has more exhibition space than any other art museum in the state, and it offers students opportunities to view, study, and work hands-on with art treasures. Students prowl the storage rooms to select works for exhibition, serving as curators and preparators. In the Boston Globe, critic Christine Temin wrote, "As someone who attended a college where a semester spent unraveling the myths depicted by a Renaissance painting seen only in reproduction was considered an ideal use of your time, I envy students at colleges like Colby, who have the chance to experience great art in person, on a daily basis."

The Colby-Hume Center

Seven miles from campus, on the shore of Messalonskee Lake, Colby owns a 10-acre compound known as the Colby-Hume Center. The property, which has 450 feet of shoreline, includes a picnic area and a small beach. A spacious and well-equipped woodworking shop and a blacksmith's forge are maintained on the property. Jan Plan courses in woodworking and blacksmithing are offered at the center, and students can arrange access to the shops for instruction or to work on projects.

Crawford Art Studios

In the fall of 2001, the Crawford Art Studios opened for business. Construction of the two-story wing, which houses bright, new studios for sculpture and painting, caused a domino effect in the Bixler Art and Music Center. The former painting studio now serves art foundations classes; what was the foundations studio is now part of an expanded print-making studio; and there are spacious new darkrooms. Studio art majors are ecstatic.

Learning Language

» Go to the LRC site
Colby recognized that new technologies held great promise for teaching languages, and it joined a collaborative venture with Bates and Bowdoin colleges, backed by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, to put multimedia technology and the Internet to work for Colby students.

In Colby's Language Resource Center, students can record foreign television programs captured from satellite dishes, use a six-foot video screen to watch tapes or interactive classes, or participate in online instructional activities. Not only have these technologies made language acquisition easier and more fun, they also have helped to expand the range of languages offered at Colby.

Music Groups

Blue Lights (male a cappella)
Broadway Musical Revue
Colby College Chorale
Colby Eight (male a cappella)
Colbyettes (female a cappella)
Colby Handbell Ringers
Colby Jazz Band
Collegium Musicum (early music)
Colby Symphony Orchestra
Colby Wind Ensemble
Megalomaniacs (mixed a capella)
Lorimer Chapel Choir
Sirens (female a cappella)
Sounds of Gospel

Theater and Dance Groups

Broadway Musical Revue
Colby Comedy Group
Colby Dancers
Colby Dance Theater
Colby Improv
Playtime
Powder and Wig (drama)
Social Action Theater