News of construction of Colby’s nine-acre solar farm, just underway, caught the attention of media outlets around the country. “Electrical work for the project will be done between now and August,” Kevin Bright, Colby’s sustainability coordinator, told the Portland Press Herald May 4,”and structures that hold the solar panels will be installed sometime after that.” WABI-TV...
Three Colby graduates—Blair Braverman ’11, Dan Opalacz ’10, and Sophie Sarkar ’11—were selected from more than 600 nominations for the Outdoor Industry Association’s inaugural Outdoor 30 Under 30 list. Selected from a panel of outdoor industry standouts, the list highlights future game changers who are challenging the status quo and driving the industry forward, according...
Colby has chosen Bon Appétit Management Co. as its new dining services provider, effective July 1, following a months-long selection process. The program proposed by Bon Appétit—an award-winning industry pioneer whose mission is “food service for a sustainable future”—emerged as the leader in the selection process for its focus on food quality, variety, local sourcing,...
When President David A. Greene presented the Condon Medal at the eighth annual Colby Student Awards Ceremony May 3, he prefaced the reveal by saying, “It’s like the Oscars. … Sometimes you get hints throughout the night.” The biggest surprise wasn’t that Bonnie Maldonado ’16 was the winner (Greene had already handed her four other...
Applied Music Associate Messan Jordan Benissan will be the commencement speaker at the Watershed School in Camden, Maine, June 11. Benissan, a master African drummer and teacher, was selected by the private secondary school as the overwhelming favorite of the senior class, according to head of school Will Galloway. Benissan previously worked with the Watershed student...
Three Colby seniors, winners of prestigious Fulbright grants for the coming year, will depart for Europe and Asia following graduation. Elizabeth Grun ’16 of Water Mill, N.Y.; Lynna Lei ’16 of San Francisco, Calif.; and William Qualey ’16 of Norridgewock, Maine, will spend the 2016-17 academic year as English teaching assistants in Germany, Taiwan, and...
Raffael Scheck, the Audrey Wade Hittinger Katz Professor of History, recently contributed a chapter to a book titled Colonial Soldiers in Europe, 1914-1945: Aliens in Uniform in Wartime Societies. Scheck’s chapter is titled “French Colonial Prisoners in Germany and France during World War II,” and it appears in a volume edited by H. J. Storm...
Dana Professor of Sociology Neil Gross told Inside Higher Ed that he’s not surprised by findings from a recent Pew Research Center study that shows people with graduate degrees have more liberal political views than those with just undergraduate degrees. “The evidence doesn’t show that exposure to higher education turns Republicans into Democrats,” Gross said...
Professor of Psychology Martha Arterberry’s new book, Development of Perception in Infancy: The Cradle of Knowledge Revisited (Oxford Press, 2016), presents infant perception research and places it in a philosophical context. The updated book, cowritten with Philip J. Kellman and originally published in 1998 (MIT), also discusses the perceptual underpinnings of social and cognitive development and its importance in...
A typical Wednesday morning class at Colby turned extraordinary April 20 when Maya Lin—renowned artist, architect, and environmental activist—joined the class Environmental Studies 118, Environment and Society, for a conversation with students. Lin spent two days on campus meeting with students and delivering the Miles and Katharine Culbertson Prentice Distinguished Lecture in a packed Lorimer...
A tradition connecting students and the community for 20 years, Colby Cares Day promises some new features in 2016. On Saturday, April 30, in addition to the teams of students working at nonprofit and municipal sites around central Maine, Colby athletic teams will conduct sports clinics for area youngsters at Waterville’s Head of Falls park....
Dana Professor of Sociology Neil Gross published an essay and review of the book Summoned: Identification and Religious Life in a Jewish Neighborhood by Iddo Tavory in the May issue of the influential journal of religion and public life First Things. Gross’s essay, titled “An Orthodox Island,” superimposes anecdotes from his own family on his...
Professor Adam Howard (education) was promoted from associate professor to full professor April 15 by the Colby College Board of Trustees. Howard’s scholarship focuses on issues of social class in education, more specifically the role of privilege in shaping educational access, opportunity, and students’ sense of self. He first taught at Colby in 2003 and...
Assistant Professor of Economics Sahan T. M. Dissanayake participated as a resource person for a workshop organized by the Council on Food, Agricultural, and Resource Economics (CFARE) on creating guiding principles for developing a national framework to quantify ecosystem service benefits. The workshop, held in Washington, D.C., focused on USDA programs and included policymakers, practitioners,...
In his April 17 ornithology column in the MaineToday newspapers, Arey Professor of Biosciences Herb Wilson wrote about the Bien edition of Audubon’s Birds of North America that is currently on view in the Colby Special Collections library. Apropos of the coming Earth Day, Wilson provides a eulogy for the extinct Carolina parakeet, which is...
An essay by Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society James Rodger Fleming about Carl Rossby and his early efforts to study weather using hydrogen balloons and radiosondes was published April 17 in the Boston Globe’s “Ideas” section. Under the headline “Oysters, beer, and a meteorological breakthrough” Fleming describes Rossby’s early efforts to study the...
From 9,833 applications—the largest and most competitive pool in its history—Colby has offered admission to 17.5 percent of applicants for the Class of 2020. The academic profile of Colby’s admitted students continues to improve. Average standardized test scores for this admitted group exceed 1420 combined on the critical reading and math sections of the SAT...
Maravilla Clemens ’16 and Alex Heisler ’16 won the Richard J. Borden Award for best conference paper after presenting their research, “Cultivating Conservation in the Lake Tana Basin: Implications of a New UNESCO Biosphere Reserve Model for Ecosystems and Livelihoods,” at the 2016 Society for Human Ecology Conference in Santa Ana, Calif., April 14. Their...
Professor of English Debra Spark offers an alternative way to view Calvin Trillin following the recent dust-up surrounding his poem about Chinese food in The New Yorker April 4. “Does Trillin’s poem mean he is a racist? No, of course not,” Spark writes in an April 8 Huffington Post essay. “Is he oblivious? Yes, indeedy,...
Humanity’s relationship with the natural world is the theme at a landmark conference that brought noted writers, scholars, performers, artists, public officials, and activists to Colby April 7-9. The conference, titled Community, Culture and Conservation, was part of a yearlong series of events exploring the intersection of communities and nature. It led off with a...
