Good Fit
See the September classroom edition of the Wall Street Journal and the article "The Perfect Fit: If You Want To Feel Comfortable With a College Try It On First." It says: " . . . Tim Smith, a sophomore at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, had just finished his freshman year. He loves Colby. It's his perfect fit. His college search was a first for the entire Smith family. He started with all options open, including Middlebury College, Tufts University, Bowdoin College, and Bates College. He toured campuses with his mom the summer before his senior year in high school. 'When you go on the (campus) tour you'll get that feeling.' Smith got that feeling at Colby. He's very happy with the personal attention and academic programs offered at this liberal-arts college of just less than 2,000."

Trust Cal
A December 7 All Things Considered story on Americans' post-9/11 trust in government tapped Cal Mackenzie (government), who doubts that trust will expand beyond law enforcement and security. "I think the fundamental tensions are still there. The gridlock is still there. While we have these sort-of islands of consensus right now, I think we'll find, in the long term, they're relatively small and they won't keep us from going back to what is normal here. And normal is a kind of government that most Americans are pretty unhappy with," he said.

Splitting Numbers Associate Professor of Economics Deb Barbezat added another element to her academic regalia in December--a black belt. Deb's been studying at teh Tao Martial Arts Center, a tae kwon do school in Hallowell, for six and a half years--"about the same amount of time it too to get my Ph.D.," she notes. One requirement was teaching, and economics doesn't count. So she helped teach kids at the Tao Center for the last three years. Her final test included everything for breaking boards to serving tea and sake the ceremonial way.

Caught in the Act
Charlie Conover (physics) is co-author of an article in the October Nature magazine that "opens an entirely new chapter in controlling the time structure of hard X-rays," according to a review in the same issue. In Conover's article, "Coherent control of pulsed X-ray beams," he and 10 colleagues describe an ultrafast switch that uses a germanium crystal to generate ultra-short X-ray pulses. Those bursts are quick enough to actually track molecular dynamics during chemical and biochemical reactions. More work will be required, but two reviewers from the Centre for Advanced Light Sources at the Vienna University of Technology in Austria say such switches "could become a key component in the X-ray toolbox for probing the structural dynamics of matter."

Brooks Rising
On November 6 Hollywood Reporter published its annual list of 35 promising Hollywood "executives on the rise," and first on the list is David Brooks'88. Brooks heads marketing for Miramax Films and has worked on campaigns for lots of high-profile films including Oscar-winners Shakespeare in Love and Life Is Beautiful, as well as The Shipping News, based on the novel by Annie Proulx '57.

Maine and Myanmar
It's hard to imagine two students who better represent Colby's local and global reach than this year's sophomore class Phi Beta Kappa Achievement Award recipients, so named for being the highest-ranking members of their class. Justin Juskewitch '04 comes to us from just up the road in Norridgewock and Win Mar Htay '04, an Oak Scholar, from Yangon, Myanmar. This year's PBK Achievement Awards for the top-ranking juniors went to Lisa DeKeukelaere '03 from Pleasant Valley, N.Y., and Brie Drummond '03 from Winterport, Maine.

Athens Oar Bust
"When Hilary Gehman '93 reached the dock after finishing fifth in the women's quadruple sculls at the 2000 Olympics in Australia, her first thoughts weren't towards retirement. They were towards the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece." So begins a three-page feature on Gehman in USRowing Magazine, including a paragraph about her rowing (and field hockey and skiing) experience at Colby. Colby's most successful rower, who won bronze at the World Championships this August, was honored at the Colby-Hume Center on Family Weekend, when a new women's racing scull was christened "The Hilary Gehman." On January 19 the men's scull "Doris Kearns Goodwin '64" will be christened in Boston.

Calling on Paul
When the September 21 Science magazine covered antiterrorism programs after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, it turned to Paul Josephson (history) to comment on biological and chemical threats. After the article cast doubts on the ability of labs to provide technical solutions, it quoted "science historian and nonproliferation expert at Colby College" Josephson saying, "Joint and multilateral programs are the only hope for nonproliferation."

Getting In May Get On
Julia Roberts's film company, Revolution Pictures, has optioned Professor Jennifer Finney Boylan's novel Getting In for the big screen. Revolution purchased rights for an 18-month period to develop a film based on the hilarious 1998 novel about the college search process. Boylan says that while she's not holding her breath, "it's good to have the novel on the front burner for film again." Earlier, Geena Davis and New Line Cinema let their option expire. No hard feelings, Boylan said: "In the last script I saw, they had basically changed the story into Something About Mary, only grosser."

Weird Pop
The September 21 Entertainment Weekly included a feature surveying the most popular pop culture on campuses, and Colby is one of 17 schools profiled under the headline "Pop Beta Kappa." Listed as hot at Colby in various categories were: Colby parent and former Colby professor Rick Russo (author), The Daily Show (TV fix), Trainspotting (cult video/DVD rental), Ishmael (must-read), theonion.com (Web site), WHOP (late-night munchie) and Nalgene bottles (weird campus trend). The magazine conducted an unscientific survey of students in August.

Prized Speaker
When Paul Greenwood (biology) lined up R. Timothy Hunt of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund to meet with biology students at the CBB-London Center, he knew he had a top-notch researcher for a guest speaker. Then, two days before the October 10 visit, the world learned that Hunt had won the Nobel Prize for Medicine. One of three researchers honored for their discoveries of key regulators of the cell cycle, Hunt showed up at the Bloomsbury Square CBB headquarters just the same and spent two hours with the student scientists. "It was excellent; the students loved it," Greenwood said.

It's All About Clarity
It was a great night at the Skowhegan Community Center December 3 when a dozen students in Russ Cole's Problems in Environmental Science seminar presented research on water quality in Lake George and Oaks Pond. Community interest ran high, and the quality of the presentation did, too. An audience of more than 70 listened attentively for almost two hours, asked good questions and got good answers. The ponds are both in good shape, but students recommend vigilance as well as some specific actions to keep the water clear. Service learning at its finest. And thorough coverage in the Waterville Sentinel and on Maine Public Radio.