As part of an assignment for her class the Environment and Human Health, Caroline Stoddard ’20 wrote a letter to the editor that was printed in the Bangor Daily News May 10. Titled “Phase out PFAS,” the letter (at the bottom of the page) encouraged readers to “urge their Maine lawmakers to pass LD 1433, a bill that...
Facsimile Cabinet of Women Origin Stories, an exhibition by Theaster Gates at the Colby College Museum of Art, was reviewed in the Boston Globe May 9. The exhibition includes cabinets holding “3,000 photographs and page mockups from Ebony and Jet through the years, specifically of women,” the Globe reports. “There’s something monumental about it: The cabinets emanate significance and...
The Los Angeles Times cited James R. Fleming, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, in an article titled “The real climate change controversy: Whether to engineer the planet in order to fix it.” The article is very loosely based on Fleming’s book, Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control.
In a Mainebiz article titled “Maine’s colleges and universities find new, innovative areas for growth,” Colby is highlighted for its investment in downtown Waterville. President David A. Greene told Mainebiz that “in order to remain relevant, Maine colleges must continue building open, collaborative relationships with their communities.” Of note were four projects Colby has undertaken downtown, including...
Students in the Humanities Lab “Life in Times of Extinction” published an op-ed in the Times Record titled “Brown Ash Endangerment and Indigenous Solutions.” Grace Neumiller ’21, Keller Leet-Otley ’19, and Tommaso Wagner ’19 wrote the letter for the class, taught by Chris Walker, the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Environmental Humanities, as part of their assignment to adopt and...
Professor of Psychology Martha Arterberry was profiled by the psychology journal Infant Behavior & Development, at which she serves as editor-in-chief. The profile shows how her path from undergraduate work at Pomona College, to an exchange program at Swarthmore College, to graduate work at the University of Minnesota kept her research focused on infant perception. Arterberry finds...
Neil Gross, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Sociology, reviewed Biased, a new book by Jennifer Eberhardt, in the Sunday New York Times. Gross called the book an “unexpectedly poignant overview of the research on cognitive biases and stereotypes, especially racial bias in criminal justice.”
Two Colby teams were named as “Meritorious Winner” at the 35th annual Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM) Competition organized by the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications (COMAP). This year, 14,108 teams from 17 countries and regions participated in the competition. Colby’s first team, consisting of Allen Ma ’21, Huan Bui ’21, and Schu He...
An essay by Assistant Professor of English Aaron Hanlon, titled “The University Is a Ticking Time Bomb” appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education April 19. The essay highlights the large number of adjunct professors at colleges and universities and what Hanlon calls “the cruelty of adjunctification,” where professors work year-to-year without the prospect of tenure. “We...
Colby’s annual spring day of service, Colby Cares Day, was covered in the Morning Sentinel April 20. The article, “Colby students lend a hand at Waterville area organizations for Colby Cares Day,” focused on just two of the numerous sites where Colby students lent a hand: the L.C. Bates Museum and the Waterville Public Library....
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Gail Carlson was in Augusta, Maine, April 17 testifying at the State House and urging “legislators to ban certain food-packaging that contain synthetic chemicals known as PFAS and phthalates,” Maine Public reported. Carlson and some of her students testified in favor of a new bill that would ban these chemicals...
Professor of Government Anthony Corrado, a campaign-finance expert, was quoted in an April 16 CNN article titled “2020 fundraising: Top takeaways from the first quarter.” The fact that only half of the 16 Democratic candidates running for president in 2020 have raised $3 million or less is “a sign that Democratic donors haven’t yet coalesced...
In the spring of 2015, Eric Roy ’04 said he got a tip from an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) retiree about high lead levels in the water in Flint, Mich. This was before the people of Flint fully understood what was in their water. And way before Flint became a public health crisis. A chemist...
Natasha Zelensky, associate professor of music, gave a multi-media presentation titled “Franco Memory Through Song” at the University of Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn Campus on April 11. Zelensky, an ethnomusicologist who studies the role of music in immigrant communities, discussed her project, undertaken with her students, “to collect and preserve some of Lewiston’s most unique—and treasured—Franco-American chanson,” the Lewiston...
Christopher Soto, associate professor of psychology, has published a paper in the journal Psychological Science addressing the replicability crisis in psychology. His paper, “How Replicable Are Links Between Personality Traits and Consequential Life Outcomes? The Life Outcomes of Personality Replication Project,” presents the findings of his project, which “provide grounds for cautious optimism about the personality–outcome...
Catherine Besteman, the Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Anthropology, conducted a Q&A for Books and Ideas, a project of the Collège de France. Yasmine Bouagga interviewed Besteman about her book Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine. Among the questions asked were “How can social service practices be reconciled with the customs and habits...
Assistant of Professor of Economics Yang Fan was an “expert” in a WalletHub piece on Mastercard credit cards. Fan provided answers to four questions, including “Should every person have at least one Mastercard credit card?” to which he responded, “Yes, it limits the risk that the vendor you are purchasing from does not accept your...
“The historical development of complex global trafficking networks for marine wildlife” is the title of the latest published paper by Loren McClenachan, the Elizabeth and Lee Ainslie Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies. The article, which McClenachan coauthored, appeared in the journal Science Advances and chronicles how the team “curated 150 years of tortoiseshell transactions and derived biologically...
Carrie LeVan, the Montgoris Family Assistant Professor of Government, wrote an op-ed titled “What Mainers really think of ranked-choice voting” in the March 12 Bangor Daily News in which she discusses the complexity of whether Mainers support the expansion of ranked-choice voting. “Because ranked-choice voting has become a partisan issue, simply asking Maine’s voters whether they want to expand it seems...
The Colby College Museum of Art is profiled in a March 12 New York Times piece titled “Raising the Cultural Bar on Campuses.” The profile mentions a new exhibit by Theaster Gates, Colby’s distinguished artist and director of artist initiatives. “While not typically top of mind as a go-to destination, college and university art museums have a common...
