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FIVE RECEIVE TENURE
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Congratulations to five assistant professors who were granted tenure by the Board of Trustees in January. Lynn Hannum (biology), Jason M. Long (economics), Liam O'Brien (mathematics), Jason M. Opal (history), and Laura Saltz (art and American studies) will be promoted to associate professor with the 2009-10 year.
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INSIDECOLBY PROBES THE MAN
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"The Man, the Myth, the Bro" is the title of insideColby podcast 44. In January first-year student Eva Ludwig scheduled a meeting with President Bro Adams,
took along a digital recorder, and asked him questions that she and her
friends had to answer during college interviews. Eva's six-minute
interview roams from The Godfather to France and from BMR to Tom Waits.
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OPAL LEADS LIST
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Assistant Professor Jason Opal
(history) was named a Top Young Historian by the History News Network,
and he leads the list of 20 scholars so honored. "Studying history is
an ethical as well as intellectual journey," he wrote for the profile
at http://hnn.us/roundup/49.html.
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DISTINGUISHED LECTURER LEONARD
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Elizabeth Leonard
(history) was invited to participate in the Organization of American
Historians' Distinguished Lectureship Program. She will deliver one
lecture a year for three years. You may have seen her on the cover of
Central Maine Newspapers Women's Quarterly in an article about our Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program. If not, see http://centralmaine.mainetoday.com/flipbooks/WQflip09Winter/
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ENDOWMENT UPS AND DOWNS
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It's sobering to think that we will remember last year's 0.3-percent
increase in the value of Colby's endowment as the good old days, but
that's what moved us just north of $600 million for the official June
30, 2008, year-end value published in the Chronicle of Higher Education this month. Two years ago Colby was 130th in the Chronicle's list. Last year 126th. This year 123rd.
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GILKES IN IMPRESSIVE LINEUP
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Check out the impressive names of Black History Month speakers at
Michigan State's medical school: comedian and civil rights activist
Dick Gregory, speechwriter and legal counsel for Martin Luther King Jr.
Clarence B. Jones, and our very own Rev. Cheryl Townsend Gilkes
(sociology, African-American studies). Her Feb. 26 talk, "Yet With a
Steady Beat: The Gift of an Activist Womanhood," will be podcast by
MSU. Originally on part of the series, but a late cancellation, was
Rev. Joseph Lowery of inauguration fame. See http://news.msu.edu/story/5884/
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SULLIVAN ROCKS
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In January the Journal of Structural Geology gave its first-ever Student Author of the Year Award to Bill Sullivan
(geology) for a paper he completed in grad school and published in the
Feb. 2008 issue. Selected from approximately 50 student submissions,
the paper was praised for its "excellent, well-balanced
multidisciplinary approach" to "ambiguous, difficult to interpret
field-based data." The paper's title is "Significance of
transport-parallel strain variations in part of the Raft River shear
zone, Raft River Mountains, Utah, USA."
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MACHLIN, SCARLATTI, ALL THAT JAZZ
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Paul Machlin (music)
had a busy January. The Florida State University College of Music
invited him to lecture as a Curtis Mayes Orpheus Chair in Musicology.
On Jan. 12 Paul spoke on "Swing, Scarlatti, and Standards: Teddy
Wilson's 'China Boy' Recordings." Paul also was invited to lead a Jazz
Roundtable at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers/Newark
(University of New Jersey), where he focused on Wilson's swing piano
solo recordings. Both gigs feature prominent performers and scholars in
music and musicology.
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PRECIOUS METALS FOR MAG
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When the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) District I announced its communications awards for 2009, Colby magazine got two: a silver for best overall magazine and a bronze for best writing. Congratulate editor Gerry Boyle '78 and all the folks in Communications who are the magazine staff. (http://www.casei.org/commawards.html)
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JAN PLAN '09 IMAGES
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Those who want a sense of what goes on during Jan Plan can check out http://www.colby.edu/janplan,
which has links to more than a dozen sites representing class work,
independent study, and internships here and abroad. If you want to see
real-world Jan Plan display, visit the Bixler hallway and check out the
large camera obscura photos and other images that Gary Green
(art) and his students made. The big image used an entire room in Olin
as the box camera with a hole in the window shade as an aperture.
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NELSON'S SPIDER SPECIMENS
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Two spider specimens collected in 1986 by Bob Nelson (geology) are now enshrined in the Canadian National Collection of Arthropods in Ottawa as paratypes of a new species, Tapinotorquis yamaskensis, with Tapinotorquis
a previously undescribed genus. Bob found one of his specimens in a bag
of forest duff he picked up at the Brown Camp that Colby used to own in
Belgrade Lakes. The spiders are documented in a 2007 article by Nadine
Duperre and Pierre Paquin in Zootaxa.
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NEW FACES, NEW PLACES ON THE HILL
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Three new hires and three new titles are the news from Human Resources. Welcome Isabelle Smeall, new Anne Lunder Leland Fellow in Curatorial Practice at the museum; Paul Dube, custodian; and Joseph Roy, security dispatcher. Roger Blaisdell (PPD) was promoted to lead groundskeeper and Betsy Danner (college relations) to assistant director of the Colby Fund. Vickie LaCroix transferred from Media Resources to Student Financial Services.
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RECEIVE TRAVEL GRANTS
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Lisa Arellano,
American Culture Association/Popular Culture Association, New Orleans;
Rethinking Sex, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Philadelphia… Lisette Balabarca, Northwestern Modern Language Association, Boston… Otto Bretscher, Mathematical Association of America, Washington… Margaret Ericson, Music Library Association, Chicago… Gillian Frank, American Historical Association, New York… Russell Johnson, International Symposium on Plant Dormancy, Fargo… Toni Katz, American Library Association, Denver… Sarah Keller, Modernist Studies Association, Nashville… Martin Kelly, Visual Resources Association, Toronto… Margaret McFadden, American Culture Association, New Orleans; College Art Association, Los Angeles… Ed Mestieri, New England visits… Elisa Narin van Court, Medieval Association of the Pacific, Albuquerque… Keith Peterson, Conference on Women and Gender: EcoFeminism in a Transnational World, Storrs… Thane Pittman, Society of Personality and Social Psychology, Tampa… Marilyn Pukkila, Association of College and Research Libraries, Seattle… Maple Razsa, Association for the Study of Nationalities, New York… Kevin Rice, American Association for Cancer Research, Denver… Bruce Rueger, Geological Society of America, Northeastern Section, Portland, … Cyrus Shahan, Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, New Orleans… Dale Skrien, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, Chattanooga… Janet Lee Spurgeon, College Art Association, Los Angeles… Teresa Szeghi, Modern Language Association, San Francisco… Ankeney Weitz, International Colloquium on "The Non-Commercial Book in China," Paris.