Only one student award is traditionally noted at Colby’s commencement ceremony—the Condon Medal. The coveted honor for engaged citizenship, chosen by the senior class, this year goes to a deeply involved senior whose four years at Colby have been marked by her passion for activism and civic engagement as well as her academic excellence. Adrienne...
Colby has awarded tenure to three of its accomplished faculty members who have demonstrated excellence in the classroom, in their scholarship, and in service to the College. Assistant professors Dean Allbritton (Spanish), David Angelini (biology), and Travis Reynolds (environmental studies) will be promoted to associate professor at the start of the 2018-19 academic year. “Earning...
Six geology students will present their research at the Geological Society of America’s Annual Meeting Oct. 22-25 in Seattle. The following students undertook their research at Colby and elsewhere through summer Research Experiences for Undergraduate (REU) programs. Alyson Churchill ’18, who participated in a summer REU program at Oregon State University, with a poster titled “Discharge...
Professor of History Paul Josephson wrote a blog post on Seeing the Woods, a blog for the Rachel Carson Center. Titled “The Need for Public Environmental History,” Josephson urges historians to “take a much more public voice in describing problems and setting the agenda, and engage a greater number and diversity of audiences through public environmental history.”...
Judy Stone, professor of biology and Dr. Charles C. and Pamela W. Leighton Research Fellow, has published an article in Biotropica, the journal of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation. The article, “Diversity of seeds captured by interception exceeds diversity of seeds deposited in traps,” was written with a team of six Colby students who...
Catherine Carey ’17 was recently awarded the Mazilu Engineering Research Fellowship from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth. Carey, from Seattle, Wash., is majoring in environmental science at Colby and spent her junior year at Dartmouth as part of Colby’s engineering dual-degree program. The fellowship will cover Carey’s research costs this summer and during the...
Assistant Professor of Biology Dave Angelini and Will Simmons ’17J collaborated to produce a paper on the effects of pesticides on bumblebees published in the March 21 Scientific Reports, which is affiliated with the prestigious journal Nature. In an effort to find physiological mechanics that link “the effect of increased pesticide use and the spread of disease,”...
Rebeca L. Hey-Colón, assistant professor of Spanish, will be one of six presenters at the April 6-7 Young Scholars Symposium, sponsored by the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Hey-Colón’s presentation, “The Serpentine River: Anzaldúa’s Spiritual Waters,” reflects her research that establishes connections between the Caribbean diaspora, Chicanx communities, and broader Latinx studies...
Associate Professor of English Adrian Blevins won the Two Sylvias Press Wilder Series Poetry Book Prize—a poetry contest for women over age 50—for her third book of poems, Appalachians Run Amok, which will be published in spring 2018. The Wilder Series Book Prize draws its inspiration from American author Laura Ingalls Wilder, who published her...
Adrianna Paliyenko, Charles A. Dana Professor of French, makes news again with a fellowship award from the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The visiting research fellowship for January 2018 will support her new book project, Passion and Its Discontents: Rethinking Louisa Siefert’s Body of Work, with archival research to be conducted at the Beinecke...
Mary Ellis Gibson, the newly arrived Arthur Jeremiah Roberts Professor of Literature and chair of the English Department, brings remarkable breadth and depth to Colby as a scholar of literature in English, including works by British, American, and Indian authors. Arriving last fall from the University of Glasgow, Gibson is excited about the desire in...
Melissa Glenn, associate professor of psychology, is a recipient of a 2017-18 James McKeen Cattell Fund Fellowship. For more than 50 years, the fund has provided support for the science and application of psychology. This award includes financial support to extend Glenn’s sabbatical from one semester to two. Her sabbatical activities will include collaborating with colleagues...
Best-selling novelist, leading academic, and nationally known advocate for civil rights Jennifer Finney Boylan has been appointed special advisor to the president, Colby President David A. Greene announced today. In this new role Boylan will organize a visiting-artist-in-residence program, develop internship opportunities for Colby students, consult with the president and senior leadership team on broadening...
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Denise Bruesewitz was selected to attend the Gordon Research Conference “Catchment Science: Interactions of Hydrology, Biology, and Geochemistry” in New Hampshire in June. Bruesewitz was awarded a $600 grant from the Gordon Research Conferences toward conference fees as part of a program to involve researchers from undergraduate institutions. She will...
Brendan Cosgrove ’14 had his honors thesis accepted for publication in the August 2015 issue of Agricultural and Resource Economics Review. Titled “The Economic Impact of Shale Gas Development: A Natural Experiment along the New York and Pennsylvania Border,” the article evaluates the economic impact of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) by using the border between Pennsylvania and New York...
Denise Bruesewitz, assistant professor of environmental studies, is the team leader on a collaborative study of algae in freshwater Maine lakes as part of a project titled “Understanding Cyanobacterial Blooms in Lakes: Plankton N Cycling and Detection of Cyanobacterial Blooms Across a Gradient of Lake Trophic State.” Bruesewitz and Colby are teaming up with Bigelow...
Felix Liang ’16, a government and East Asian studies major from Boston, Mass., will study Chinese at Peking University in Beijing this summer as a Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholar. He is also investigating possibilities for an internship while in Beijing. Liang was selected for the competitive Gilman Scholarship Program, which offers grants for U.S. citizen undergraduate students...
More than 650 students participated in the annual Colby Liberal Arts Symposium (CLAS). Perhaps more than the impressive numbers, the energy around the symposium tells the story. Christopher Abbott ’15 listing the disciplines applied to his investigation of small-scale grain growing and processing: anthropology as the framework; environmental science; botany and the biochemistry of malting; physics,...
Taylor Witkin ’14, who graduated last year with honors and distinction in environmental studies, had his senior honors thesis accepted for publication in the journal Fisheries Research. The article, “Opportunities and barriers for fisheries diversification: Consumer choice in New England,” is available online and will be published as part of the August 2015 volume. Coauthors...
Madeline Hunsicker ’15 is one of six undergraduate winners of the Eastern Sociological Society‘s Undergraduate Poster Session Award for her honors thesis in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. Her project, titled “Swipe: Affective and Experiential Implications of the First Sex Act,” was chosen from a pool of approximately 150 posters. She presented her poster at the annual...
