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  The Sciences' Big Bang
The student sitting in the new
Paul J. Schupf Scientific Computing Center on the top floor of the Keyes
Building has delayed supper for awhile. He's tapping on a keyboard, surrounded
by equipment that would make students at many major universities weep with
envy. Six Silicon Graphics workstations ring the room. On a far table a
gleaming Power Challenge desktop supercomputer quietly goes about its business.
The Silicon Graphics machines (SGI's to the cognoscenti) and the supercomputer
run rings around personal computers. They can do millions of calculations in
seconds, model molecules or multi-level maps, do quantum mechanical
calculations in atomic physics or show you how stars are formed. And they are
available for use by Colby students without the sign-up sheets and week-long
waiting periods endured by students elsewhere.
Professor of Chemistry Tom Shattuck meets a visitor at one of the SGI's. He
clicks his way deep into a program in computer-aided molecular design,
demonstrating how students and faculty use the machine to examine molecules in
a variety of ways. Shattuck explains that the software helps students develop
the "chemical intuition" that leads to breakthroughs, particularly in the
invention of new drugs. "We often teach students about molecules and how they
react to various substances, but we haven't been teaching students how to
decide which compounds to make in order to accomplish a task," he says. "Now we
can." He adds that Colby students are able to mine databases describing
compound activity and structure that are available almost solely to
pharmaceutical firms and chemical companies.
Shattuck is proud of the technology, purchased with gifts from trustee Paul
Schupf and the National Science Foundation, but he won't be sucked into an
ooo-and-ahh session about it. "These are the tools of chemistry," he says, "and
we're here to teach students to be chemists."
That bedrock belief--that of course Colby students must have the best
facilities, equipment and teaching--drives the College's Science Division.
Colby students are receiving among the finest science educations available
anywhere, thanks to a half-decade's effort by members of the division in
partnership with College administrators and staff and several donors.
Enrollments in mathematics are up 100 percent from five years ago; other
departments have enjoyed 40 percent or greater increases in majors. Biology,
with 200 majors, is now tied with English as the most sought-after program on
campus.
Science education is enjoying a resurgence across the country, but Colby has
been in the vanguard. When Robert McArthur was named dean of faculty in 1988 he
decided to concentrate much of his energy on the Science Division. He gathered
members of the various science departments and, with them, spent two and a half
years researching and writing the Plan for the Sciences, which was implemented
in January 1991. The three-phase plan called for revamping the curriculum to
focus on research by students at all levels, for adding to the physical space
in which science was taught and for upgrading to state-of-the-art equipment
across the board.
In the first phase, Colby hired a cadre of young faculty members in the
sciences and received several grants for equipment. A 1991 grant from the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the many that have followed, says F.
Russell Cole, chair of Colby's Biology Department and chair of the steering
committee that oversees the grant, "verified that the whole theme of the
curriculum--moving forward with hands-on opportunities for students, involving
them in research, changing the curriculum to prepare them to do their own
research and then letting them do it--has been absolutely the right direction
to go in."
Phase two is symbolized by the F.W. Olin Science Center, now rising next to
the Arey Building. The center not only will provide new space and
technologically advanced equipment for use in the biosciences, it will free
exisiting space for new uses by other departments in the division.
A $750,000 challenge grant from The Kresge Foundation of Troy, Mich.,
announced in November, bolsters the final portion of the plan. The grant
requires Colby to raise more than $1.8 million in new gifts by May 1, 1997
toward the completion of a $5-million project to renovate current buildings and
to endow future needs in the sciences. The renovations will include several new
laboratories, equipment and technologically advanced classrooms.
Other recent phase three grants include $750,000 from the Sherman
Fairchild Foundation, Inc. to help renovate and upgrade the science complex;
$250,000 from the W.M. Keck Foundation, Los Angeles, for a molecular and
cellular
biology research laboratory; and $50,000 for a cell and microbiology laboratory
from the Ira W. DeCamp Foundation, New York.
Execution of the Plan for the Sciences has been possible because of Colby's
propensity for teamwork--and hard work. On the administrative side,
President Bill Cotter and McArthur visit alumni donors, foundation officers and
other friends of the College to help secure major grants. Vice President for
Development and Alumni Relations Randy Helm, Corporate and Foundation Relations
Director Linda Goldstein and Associate Director Betsy Brown make visits, too,
and they craft written proposals in concert with members of the Science
Division, led by Cole, Shattuck, Chemistry Professor Brad Mundy, Biology
Professor David Firmage and Division Chair Jay Labov. Depending on the nature
of the grant proposal, that core group is expanded to include other faculty
members and administrators. Science faculty have devoted hundreds of hours to
various grant efforts, often giving up weekends, evenings and holidays to help
develop proposals while keeping up with their regular teaching duties and
research. And always, Cole says, the College's Physical Plant Department comes
through once the money has arrived and the project is underway.
"People on the outside don't realize that there are all these people
involved," Cole said. "They don't see the years of focused work. We developed a
plan for the sciences, published it and then went out and funded components of
it. We've had a great team."
Dramatic Improvement
Irving Suss didn't introduce theater to Colby, but during his 23-year tenure on
the faculty (1957-80) his name was synonymous with it. He was a teacher,
director and actor, and he sparked an interest in drama on Mayflower Hill that
has never waned.
Suss died in November 1993, and the College has learned that he left an
additional legacy to the art he loved--a $183,000 bequest to endow a performing
arts fund at Colby. Earnings from the Irving D. Suss Fund for the Performing
Arts will be used to bring to the campus visiting "prominent practitioners in
the field of performing arts, including such people as actors, dancers, motion
picture directors and scene designers."
Joylynn Wing, chair of the Performing Arts Department, said she and her
colleagues were "delighted" about the gift from Suss. "His generosity and
vision will surely enrich not only our program but the entire campus
community," she said.
And that will be fitting, since Suss did so much in his lifetime to instill a
broad enthusiasm for drama on the campus.
"Many of Suss's early productions, under the auspices of the student club
Powder & Wig, were in a miserable wood-framed former storage garage near the
tennis courts--aptly named the Little Theater," remembered Dean of the College
Earl Smith. The building burned down in 1968, but Suss was undaunted.
Thereafter, productions were staged in the orchestra rehearsal room or Given
Auditorium of the Bixler Center, in the Runnals Union gym, the unfinished loft
of Roberts Union, a dining hall or the downtown Opera House.
Six years before he retired, Suss, whose faculty assignment was one-quarter
performing arts and three-quarters English, saw the Runnals gym rechristened
Strider Theater. Two years later the Colby in London theater program was
established, and in 1984 performing arts was added to Colby's list of majors.
In a 1991 interview with Colby, Suss reflected on the program's progress
and showed he was aware of how much a bequest could mean to it.
"When I came here in 1957," he said, "part of my salary was two hundred
dollars for theater. We subsisted primarily on ticket sales. At one faculty
meeting I complained that there were twelve false chimneys on the buildings, at
two thousand dollars apiece, which represented my budget for two centuries."
Phone It In
One goal of the Campaign for Colby is to raise the percentage of alumni who
donate to the Alumni Fund, and the Office of Annual Giving has made it simple
to make a donation over the telephone. If you would like to contribute to the
fund and charge your gift to VISA, an American Express card or MasterCard, call
1-800-311-3678. For all other calls to the annual giving department dial
1-207-872-3186.
Mule Train
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