Colby Liberal Arts Symposium

CLAS 2026 will take place on Thursday, April 30 from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. As per faculty vote, classes are canceled on Thursday in order to allow the whole Colby community participate in the celebration of student scholarship. Those Thursday classes will occur on Friday, May 1. (Friday classes this week are canceled.) 

The Colby Liberal Arts Symposium (CLAS) is a celebration of student scholarship. CLAS 2025 features the work of over 678 separate Colby students, who will present 498 separate projects. CLAS is the largest undergraduate research symposium of any liberal arts college in the country. 

CLAS was created (by faculty vote) in 2014 to extend the positive impact of its predecessor—the Colby Undergraduate Research Symposium (CURS). Following an extended pandemic pause (2020-22), CLAS relaunched in 2023 as one of Colby’s beloved annual traditions.

On Thursday, classes are canceled so faculty, staff, and students can attend CLAS. In addition to student posters and presentations, the day features a set of wild-card sessions with interdisciplinary topics and creative formats, the Phi Beta Kappa speech contest at noon, and a culminating event of PowerPoint Karaoke in which four Colby faculty members compete to deliver PowerPoint decks that they have never seen; their improvisational skills will be on full display.

As an extension of CLAS, the final two weeks of the term also include Open CLAS sessions during regular class times. Students will make classroom presentations that are open to the public.

SCHEDULE OF CLAS SESSIONS WITH PROJECTS–CLAS 2026:

The following schedule is comprehensive and dynamic, meaning that they include all the individual projects (and students) as well as the most recent changes that have been made inside the CLAS system. (You can search for a friend by using CTRL-F or CMND-F on this schedule.)

Thursday CLAS 2026  (Note: This schedule is organized with all the Poster Sessions first (in sequence by occurrence) and then all the Presentation sessions (in sequence by occurrence.)

Open CLAS 2026 Schedule  (Note: Open CLAS presentations or posters take place during the final two weeks of the term–often in regular classrooms at regular class times.) 

TO FIND A STUDENT:

If you are looking to find a particular student in the CLAS (or Open CLAS) schedule, you can open the relevant schedule above and then click CTRL + F (or CMND + F for Mac). This opens a search bar in which you can enter the student’s name–or project title–or department. The page will then take you to those items. If you are looking at the schedule on a mobile device, you can deploy the menu version of “Find on Page.”

SCHEDULE OF SESSIONS–CLAS 2026–OVERVIEW:

The following links produce two different views of the CLAS Schedule-at-a-Glance. These schedules simply present the different sessions (rather than the individual projects); also, these schedules are NOT dynamic. 

Session Schedule–Graphical (Times and Places)

CLAS Schedule–By Department

CLAS 2026:

• 680 separate students presenting
• 72 CLAS sessions (62 on Thursday, 10 Open CLAS)
• 550 projects
  • 262 Thursday Oral Presentations
  • 174 Thursday Posters
  • 105 Open CLAS Oral Presentations
  • 9 Open CLAS Posters
• CLAS is the largest undergraduate research symposium at a liberal arts college.