Classes at Colby College resume on Wednesday, September 8, and students will find several construction projects completed over the summer.
The new $6.8 million Harold and Bibby Alfond Residence Complex, a residence hall that is unique in higher education, will house 107 seniors in apartment-style suites.
The Foss-Woodman dormitories underwent $6.4 million worth of renovations, part of a $44 million seven-year project to renovate all Colby residence and dining halls, except the Heights, by 2003.
The $1.6 million Lunder Wing added 9,000 square feet to the Colby Museum of Art and opened to the public in July.
The Lunder Wing and Alfond senior apartments both will be dedicated on October 2.

Colby welcomes Didier Kamundu, a 29-year-old human rights activist who fled from the Democratic Republic of Congo to protect his family and his own life. He is the second fellow of the Oak Institute for the Study of International Human Rights at Colby. A baker by trade, Kamundu founded a rural development and human-rights organization based in Goma, in the northern Congo. He will remain in residence through the fall semester.

This year's freshman class at Colby includes 490 men and women from across the country and around the world. Selected from more than 4,300 applicants, the class of 2003 includes three new Oak Scholars‹a political refugee from China and students from Zimbabwe and Denmark.

All but a two of the first-year students are participating in the Colby Outdoor Orientation Trip (COOT) program, taking trips and working on service projects around the state. The trips are designed to introduce students to an initial circle of friends and to give them opportunities to ask student trip leaders questions about life at Colby before the academic year gets underway.

With the beginning of Colby's academic year comes the resumption of arts and cultural activities including lectures, concerts and theater. Free lectures that are open to the public include a reading by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Gary Snyder at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, September 14, in Lovejoy 100 and "Deadly Persuasion: Advertising and Addiction," with Dr. Jean Kilbourne at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, September 15, in Cotter Union. The first concert in the Music at Colby series is a faculty recital at 3 p.m. on Sunday, September 12, in Lorimer Chapel. Ongoing exhibits at the Colby Museum of Art include "Narratives of African-American Art and Identity: The David C. Driskell Collection," "Echoes: The Art of David C. Driskell 1955-1997," American art from the permanent collection in the Lunder Wing and the art of Alex Katz.