By Stephen Collins '74

Davis United World College Scholars Ana Prokic '04 of Yugoslavia and Peter Rushkov '04 of Bulgaria in the Mary Low Coffeehouse.

Colby's Class of 2004, 470 strong and more international than any of its predecessors, set a new record before school even opened this year–it was the first class to get 100 percent participation in the Colby Outdoor Orientation Trips (COOT) program. President Bro Adams expanded to 471 the number of new Colby recruits exploring Maine and getting to know one another when he joined COOT trips for kayaking on the Kennebec River, hiking on the Appalachian Trail and theater exercises at a camp on Messalonskee Lake.

The Class of '04 represents 37 states and 28 countries, and its members were selected from among 3,907 applicants. Twenty-six of the new students were high school valedictorians and another 10 were salutatorians. Twenty-two are the son or daughter of a Colby graduate (or two).

Addressing the matriculation convocation, Dean of Admissions Parker J. Beverage's biggest applause line was: "One of you is named Colby, and none of you is named Bates or Bowdoin." (Colby Scroath '04 is from Ohio.)

Helping to make this group the most international of freshman classes are 11 Davis United World College (UWC) scholars–freshmen who completed two years in one of the UWC system's international secondary schools and then won scholarships through a program announced last spring by Colby trustee Andrew Davis '85 and his family. The inaugural group of Davis UWC scholars at Colby (there are others at Princeton, Middlebury, Wellesley and College of the Atlantic) come from Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Jordan, Sudan, Macedonia, Zimbabwe, Yugoslavia, Argentina, Bulgaria, Latvia and Lithuania.

Seven of them graduated from the Red Cross Nordic UWC in Norway. No other secondary school, abroad or stateside, sent more members of the Class of '04, though Lexington (Mass.) High School was a close second, sending six, Beverage said.

Charles Data is from the Sudan but lived in Uganda, his mother's native country, for a decade before attending Red Cross Nordic UWC. Like the other UWC grads he earned an International Baccalaureate (IB) degree but found that the only university in Uganda that recognizes the IB is a medical school. Since he's interested in economics rather than medicine, Data applied to Colby before the Davis UWC scholarships were announced.

Ana Prokic from Belgrade, Yugoslavia, left her home to attend Armand Hammer UWC in New Mexico. Her plan was to "finish high school in the United States, get good grades, attend university and become a lawyer," she said. She cited the example of an acquaintance in Belgrade, who was trained as a dentist but had to spend seven years driving a bus, as one of the things that motivated her to study abroad.

The former UWC students arrived at Colby after spending two years of study, conducted in English, at one of the 10 UWC schools. Reflecting on her first two weeks getting acclimated to Colby, Prokic said, "We're at a big advantage; we've been away from home for two years already. My roommate is only from Connecticut but it's her first time away from home." And, she said, her roommate told her that an early bout of homesickness was put in perspective when the roommate considered what international students experience, leaving home for a year or more on another continent and in another culture.