Research Symposium Sets Another Record

Eleven years into the Colby Undergraduate Research Symposium and participation continues to rise. This year saw a record number of student authors and coauthors—395 mentored by 78 different faculty members, according to symposium organizers. At symposium-associated sessions—presentations of research as part of a class—305 authors and coauthors presented 219 projects. In total almost 700 students, or nearly 40 percent of the student body, participated this year.

As always, topics spanned the departments and all divisions of the College. Many students used Maine as their lab, looking at issues of energy efficiency and bacteria in frogs, for example, and others looked farther afield at topics like health care in the Dominican Republic and erotic art in France. Poster presentations ranged from analysis of asthma in the United States and China to Mozart’s aria Non Piu Andrai.