Colby Liberal Arts Symposium
CLAS
The Colby Liberal Arts Symposium (CLAS) brings the Colby community together each year to recognize and celebrate student scholarship.
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CLAS 2025
CLAS 2025 will take place on Thursday, May 1, 2025 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 2. (Friday classes that week are canceled.)
More information about CLAS 2025 will be forthcoming throughout Spring term. This page will be updated with schedule information as soon as it is finalized.
About
The Colby Liberal Arts Symposium (CLAS) is a celebration of student scholarship. Classes are canceled on Thursday (May 2) so that the full Colby community can participate. CLAS 2023 featured the work of over 600 separate Colby students, who presented over 400 separate projects. CLAS is among the largest, if not the largest, undergraduate research symposia 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.
CLAS by the numbers:
CLAS 2024:
- Over 600 separate students presenting
- 74 CLAS sessions (68 on Thursday, 6 Open CLAS)
- 451 projects
- 263 Oral Presentations
- 153 Posters
- 35 Open CLAS
- We have not yet found an undergraduate research symposium that has as many students or as many projects.
Schedule – CLAS 2025
NOTE: The CLAS 2025 schedule is currently being built. We will move this section to the top of this page when it is ready to be viewed.
SCHEDULE OF CLAS SESSIONS WITH PROJECTS–CLAS 2025:
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 on this schedule.)
Thursday CLAS 2025 (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 2025 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 Control + F. 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 2025–OVERVIEW:
The following links produce three 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. They are accurate as of April 20, 2023.