When Assistant Professor of Economics
Philip Brown was in China with his Jan Plan class, he took the students to meet
Time magazine's Shanghai bureau chief,
Hannah Beech '95. She was working on a story about uprisings in China's countryside, and Brown happens to be an expert on rural China, so he weighed in. Describing unrest over corruption in the provinces, Brown was quoted saying farmers "had been told that reform was coming, so they were patient. But now they see that the reforms don't go far enough, and they think, 'This is what we've been waiting for?'"
The story is online.
"Kudos to the Career Office for this program," wrote Randy Wilmot '84 after playing host to Alex Chin '09 for a job shadow experience at William Rawn Associates, Architects Inc. A Jan Plan course titled The Career Experience took first- and second-year students to Boston to explore careers on site, and many alums participated as hosts for student job shadowing. "It was awe-inspiring to see a freshman student seeking out alums so early in his Colby career," said Wilmot, who has won National and Boston Society of Architects AIA honor awards for design and a U.S. Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) architecture award.
Spring Break is on the minds of students, but not all are planning to while away their week on a beach. Five members of the Colby Christian Fellowship plus two alums are going to Camden, N.J., to volunteer for Urban Promise, which runs a Christian school for impoverished families, an after-school program, and programs for high-school dropouts. AmeriCorps*VISTA is taking eight students to Baltimore to help build and renovate houses with the Chesapeake Area Habitat for Humanity. And in a slightly more indulgent vein, the Outing Club has five adventure trips planned, from climbing in Red Rock Canyon, Nevada, and Canyonlands National Park, Utah, to exploring the Florida Keys and skiing on the Gaspe Peninsula in Quebec.
A nugget from Class of '93 correspondent Kirsta Stein for an upcoming Colby magazine reports that when Cristen Coleman '93 was on her honeymoon on Kauai, she and her husband were quite surprised when, on a remote hiking trail, they ran into classmate Sarah Burditt '93 and her husband. "Sarah was also on her honeymoon," Coleman wrote, "and we discovered we'd gotten married the same day! We hadn't seen each other in over 10 years!"
This year's alumni award winners will be honored during Reunion Weekend at a Friday-night dinner on June 9 in Wadsworth Gymnasium of the Harold Alfond Athletic Center. The Distinguished Alumna Award goes to Jeanette Benn Anderson '61; the Ernest C. Marriner Distinguished Service Award goes to Peter H. Lunder '56 and Paula C. Lunder; and the Charles W. Bassett Faculty Award goes to Richard J. "Pete" Moss, the John J. and Cornelia V. Gibson Professor of History, Emeritus. Colby Brick Awards will go to Hope Palmer Bramhall '56, David C. Sortor '56, Rosemary Crouthamel Sortor '56, A. Francis Finizio '66, Paul M. Edmunds Jr. '71, Jane Hight Edmunds '71, James W. Bourne '81, Laura Littlefield Bourne '81, H. Alan Hume, and Dorothy Hume. For more information on the awards, or to nominate an alum for an award, see www.colby.edu/alumni/volunteer/awards.
An article about relationships between faculties and boards of trustees in the February 24 Chronicle of Higher Education held up Colby as a model for communication and cooperation. "At Colby College, a small liberal-arts college in Maine, professors and trustees meet both formally and informally," the article said. "There are cocktail hours, lunches during trustee weekends, and an annual faculty-trustee dinner that honors retiring faculty members. Two professors serve as members of the board." The article is online by subscription only. To request a copy, e-mail alumni@colby.edu.
Sports action and honors abound as winter teams wrap up this month and spring seasons get underway. Most notably, Abbi Lathrop '07 earned Colby's first national skiing title Wednesday, winning the Div. 1 giant slalom crown. Top women's squash players Stacy Petro '08 and Emilie Slack '06 played at the National Individual Squash Championships at Amherst March 3 and 4. Both the women's and men's ice hockey coaches, David Venditti and Jim Tortorella respectively, were named NESCAC Coaches of the Year after taking their teams to the NESCAC tournaments. Men's basketball center Drew Cohen '07 was NESCAC Defensive Player of the Year. Skiing, track, and women's swimming nationals are being held this week. Lacrosse and tennis begin their seasons Saturday.
The Supreme Court's ruling on March 6 affirming that colleges receiving federal funds must permit military recruiters on their campuses means nothing more than business as usual for Colby. Recruiters occasionally set up a table in the Cotter Union lobby. Colby does have a long-standing policy that students and faculty may petition for the recruiting organization to hold a public discussion of its policies and practices—a College policy approved by trustees following protests over CIA recruiting on campus in the late 1980s.
Colby's $235-million capital campaign is over halfway to its goal. The Reaching the World campaign was announced publicly last October after several years in the quiet phase, and February 28 figures showed $117.6 million raised in cash and commitments. The campaign, which runs through 2010, is designed to build Colby's endowment, particularly for need-based financial aid, to support the academic program, and to build new facilities. For information about Reaching the World, visit www.colby.edu/campaign.
