Colby is in the vanguard of colleges rolling out initiatives to address access and affordability. The College announced in January that it will eliminate loans from aid packages of students who need financial assistance as determined by the College, replacing those loans with grants, which do not have to be repaid. The new policy represents a commitment of $1.5 million per year, available thanks to recent growth in the endowment. The initiative elicited wide praise -- from supportive alumni and in the press, as in
this USA Today story.
Colby's announcement is online.
Andrea Nix Fine '91 caught the filmmaking bug as a senior in Professor
Phyllis Mannocchi's documentary film class. Her globetrotting career, which has already included years making documentaries for National Geographic, hit a new high this winter with a best documentary feature Academy Award nomination for
War/Dance, a film about child refugees in Uganda, co-directed by Fine and her husband, Sean Fine.
Early in his career
Earl Smith chronicled Colby as a purveyor of PR. Over more than four decades he has written about the institution as secretary of the corporation and dean of the College, as College historian and author of the 2006 history
Mayflower Hill, and recently as Colby's newest blogger. His latest entry responds to a post by fellow-blogger
Gerry Boyle '78, about wild things on campus, by recounting tales of students gone wild. It concludes with a request for readers to post remembrances of pranks past.
Check it out and weigh in.
When Arey Professor of Biology
Herb Wilson took his class to Flagstaff Lake for the culmination of the Winter Ecology Jan Plan, all 15 students built snow huts (called "quinzhees" by native peoples). All but one student spent the night in the huts, and two slept comfortably -- the one who stayed in the lodge and another who built a quinzhee small enough to stay warm with body heat. Check out the students'
YouTube video of one hut that was too big.
Less than a month after starting as Colby's new director of career services,
Roger Woolsey will be in California this month for two Colby Alumni Network career networking events. Woolsey arrived from Boston College, where he was a counselor in the communications department, responsible for career counseling, internships, academic advising, study abroad, and Web communications. "We're looking forward to working with Roger to improve collaboration between the Alumni and Career Services offices and to make the Colby Alumni Network better serve students and alums," said
Meg Bernier Boyd '81, director of alumni and donor relations. Woolsey has a master's from Emerson College. See more on his
professional page. See more about
career networking events online.
Colby admissions had another record-breaking year, with 4,835 applications for the Class of 2012 -- an increase of 3.3 percent over last year. Applications from Maine (11 percent of the pool) increased 49 percent, and there are 124 countries represented. Ninety-four legacies and 92 Colby siblings applied. Public (51 percent) and private (49 percent) school applicants were pretty much balanced. Early Decision applications totaled 454. The College is done waiting on the pool; now it is the applicants' turn. Decisions go out on or before May 15.
Men's basketball coach
Dick Whitmore and assistant
John "Swisher" Mitchell, who have coached together since 1970, were featured recently in the
Morning Sentinel. Former player
David Arsenault '76, now head coach of men's basketball at Grinnell, was quoted saying, "Whitmore had the propensity to talk a level a little higher than we could understand. Swisher was there to translate." But, he noted, "I can never remember him [Whitmore] singling out a single player in front of his peers. … He always talked about the team. He just did it the right way."
Read the full story.
Pulver Pavilion, the grand new addition to Cotter Union, is a huge success. A new bookstore will open in Cotter this summer. The Diamond Building was just certified as "green" by the U.S. Green Building Council. Meanwhile several other major construction projects are gearing up: two Roberts Row dorms -- Pierce and Perkins-Wilson (the former Phi Delta Theta and Zeta Psi houses) -- will see $4.7 million worth of renovations and additions this spring and summer; architects are being selected for a new science building on the Colby Green; and a master planner has been hired to evaluate the Colby College Museum of Art and its site for an addition that's about five years out. See
details on Colby construction online.
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