While some performing arts classes are held at The Drill Hall a couple of blocks away, many classes are held at the Center.

Each group of students has its stories: first-semester comparative government students sitting on the British throne (while Parliament was out of session) and later visiting the Scottish Parliament in its inaugural year; the literature group visiting the haunts of and exhibits of art works by the Bloomsbury Group; the art and architecture in London group both surrounded by and immersed in its topic; Rodman's international policy group bound for Brussels to visit NATO headquarters.

"All the teachers here use London as a laboratory," said Professor Jonathan Weiss, Colby's associate dean of faculty and director of off-campus study.

American undergraduates are studying abroad in record numbers–114,000 of them at last count, or enough to fill 65 colleges Colby's size. At Colby, the percentage of students overseas is among the highest in the nation, and more than 70 percent of Colby's graduates in the past six years studied abroad in 59 different countries. They returned more aware, mature, focused and confident and with a more global perspective, professors report. Living and studying in another culture often produces an epiphany; it awakens intellectual curiosity and a thirst for knowledge, and it instills in students both broad ideals and specific plans to make the world a better place.

Epiphanies and worldly experience notwithstanding, the study abroad business is not without pitfalls. International programs for college students have proliferated but without a comprehensive set of standards. Programs vary in the degree to which they are well planned and academically rigorous. Traditionally, some students have seen international study as a respite from the serious work required on campus–a chance to take a trip and earn credit.

Colby has taken international study very seriously, both in promoting it as a powerful part of the undergraduate experience and in ensuring that students aren't just off on a joyride. "We are very restrictive in terms of where we allow students to study; much more so than many of our peers," said Weiss, who has directed the Off-Campus Study Office since 1989. "A lot of programs simply don't meet our standards."

The challenge has been to strike a balance–to offer the benefits of immersion in a foreign culture without sacrificing the rigorous academic standards that Colby, Bates and Bowdoin faculties expect in their own courses. The three colleges decided to try to have their scones and eat them too. In January 1998, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded Colby, Bates and Bowdoin $850,000 to develop study-away programs together as a consortium.

The CBB-London Center and the CBB-Quito Center in Ecuador opened in the fall of 1999; another in Cape Town, South Africa, will open this coming fall. The centers are staffed in part by CBB faculty members, and their programs of study maintain academic standards consistent with the three Maine campuses. At Colby, the CBB centers are the only study-abroad programs whose grades count toward grade-point averages.

Each of the three colleges owns and operates one of the three centers. The college presidents decided that Colby would establish the CBB-London Center, Bates CBB-Quito and Bowdoin CBB-Cape Town. Colby moved from temporary quarters last fall to the permanent CBB-London Center on Bloomsbury Square starting in January. An open house and dedication of the London center was held in March.

Andrea Morris, administrative director of the center, who has been involved with foreign study programs in London for years, said students from other American programs in the city were envious of the facilities and programs at the CBB-London program. Might she call it the Cadillac of international study programs in London? "No, no. The Rolls Royce," she said.

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