Colby will conduct the second test of its emergency siren on Tuesday, May 13, between 1 and 3 p.m. The test will include loud tones and a voice message that may be audible within two miles of Colby. Tragic school shootings have prompted colleges and universities nationwide to reassess and bolster emergency response plans. Adding the siren broadens Colby's ability to alert students, faculty, visitors and the Colby community of a potential life-threatening emergency.
Colby was featured prominently in an NBC Nightly News segment about the Davis United World College Scholars program and benefactor Shelby Davis. The story, broadcast Friday, May 9, featured Davis and Qiamuddin Amiry '09, one of more than 165 Davis UWC scholars who attend or have graduated from Colby. Click here to watch the segment. Extended interviews are available here.
The women's lacrosse team enters the Sweet 16 in the NCAA Division III national tournament Saturday after winning the NESCAC championship May 4, having first-year coach Karen MacCrate Henning named NESCAC Coach of the Year, and placing four players (including NESCAC Player of the Year Kate Sheridan '09) on the all-conference team. The Mules (13-5), ranked ninth in the nation, play fourth-ranked Hamilton in a regional semifinal Saturday at 11:30 a.m. at Hamilton. Coverage of the team's march to the nationals is online.
Students in this year's American Dreams documentary film course spent the semester getting to know their subjects, conducting interviews, and editing short films on diverse topics. Some of the films look at law enforcement in Waterville, contradancing, drag-queen entertainers, and human trafficking in Maine. In past years one student film became a promotional piece for Maine Handicapped Skiing, another served as a memorial to a fallen soldier in Iraq, and some were accepted for the Maine International Film Festival.
After a come-from-behind-victory over Middlebury in the semifinals Saturday, women's lacrosse won the program's first-ever NESCAC championship with a 14-12 win over Trinity College Sunday. Now the Mules (12-5) take on Eastern Connecticut (11-6) at Colby's Bill Alfond Field on Wednesday in the first round of the NCAA national tournament. See a photo with the tournament trophy and full coverage online.
The Society of Professional Journalists recently recognized insideColby for excellence in student journalism. InsideColby magazine and the Web site, insidecolby.com, each received second-place awards in Region 1, which spans Maine to Pennsylvania. More than 20 Colby students are involved in the project, which began in April of 2007.
The Colby College Museum of Art recently launched its new Web site, adding features for visitors and those who can't see the collections in person. Among the highlights: scores of images from the permanent collection, including many from the renowned Lunder Collection, and an education section with resources for K-12 teachers and for Colby students and faculty. Check it out.
Two senior curators from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum are visiting Colby this week and took time to be interviewed for WCSH-6's "207." The show is scheduled to air May 7. In the meantime opportunities exist to see one of them, Roger Launius, live on campus. He will deliver the Undergraduate Research Symposium keynote address tonight and speak about his new book, Robots and Humans in Spaceflight, on Thursday at 2:30 p.m. in Miller Library.
A program run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency named Colby conference champion for use of green electricity. Beyond topping other NESCAC schools, Colby has the highest percentage use of green electricity of any college or university in the national competition. All of Colby's purchased electricity comes from renewable sources, the College has a co-generation turbine on campus, and it buys Renewable Energy Credits as well. Read more.
Colby recently was reaccredited by the New England Association of Schools & Colleges with its next comprehensive evaluation scheduled for 2017. A notice from NEAS&C praised a qualified, dedicated faculty and staff; bright, energetic students; comprehensive strategic planning; high-quality academic programs; and a willingness to confront challenges. "Colby College seems well positioned to acheive the goals it has established for itself," the report said.
The prestigious Fulbright Program was established in 1946 to promote mutual understanding between U.S. citizens and people from other countries. This year four current students or recent Colby grads received Fulbright grants to spend next year abroad: Hannah Coleman '08 will teach in Colombia, William Fong '08 will teach in Taiwan, Gretchen Markiewicz '08 will teach in Bavaria, and Danielle Preiss '07 has a research grant in Nepal. In addition Chris Hoffman '07, Chris Shelley '08, and Melanie Ungar '08 will all teach in Austria in a separate program administered by the organization that runs the Fulbrights.
"Extra weight on your back can ruin your knees, feet and neck, but most of all it can ultimately crush your spirit." That's one line in an eight-page article published by Bayley Lawrence '08J in Backpacking Light magazine about her solo through-hike of the entire Appalachian Trail. The piece began as a project in Professor Michael Burke's feature-writing course. Despite moments of despair, Lawrence's spirit ultimately soared.
Colby will receive $1 million from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to improve undergraduate science education by bolstering support to students, especially those in traditionally underrepresented groups. Among many initiatives, the grant will support a six-week summer program for students between high school and college, the hiring of two postdoctoral fellows, and work with local fourth- and fifth-grade students in the sciences.
From local to global, Colby students are celebrating Earth Day with events all week that include a Johnson Pond cleanup, a recycled art contest, and a clothing swap, a lecture about effective environmental policy, screenings of the BBC program Planet Earth in the student union, and more. A list of activities planned is online.
A program that embeds anthropologists with American military forces in Iraq goes too far, says Catherine Besteman (anthropology) and others in the discipline. Critics say the Human Terrain System program requires anthropologists to violate their code of ethics, which says they will not cause harm to come to subjects they study. Colby magazine covers the controversy.
Colby's Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement has won a $246,612 Knight Foundation grant to improve news literacy among liberal arts students. The grant creates the Visiting Lovejoy Journalists-in-Residence Program, a multimedia digital resource center, and allows for a Jan Plan course on news literacy each of the next three years and summer internships for three students interested in journalism.
Recognizing that Colby's comprehensive fee pays only part of the cost of running the College, students on the Senior Pledge Committee have designated April 17 as Tuition Runs Out, Philanthropy Begins Day. The comprehensive fee covers 74 percent of the cost a Colby education. With three quarters of the year over, organizers are highlighting the fact that all students receive a "silent scholarship" for the other 26 percent from donations and other sources. The event was organized to recognize the 12,000 alumni and parents who give to the Colby Fund.
Anthropology Professor Catherine Besteman worked in Somalia in the late 1980s and has been reunited with some of the people she knew there who are now refugees in Maine. She published an op-ed, "Somalia a Victim of American Failures" in the April 15 Portland Press Herald. In it she traces a history of U.S. involvement in Somalia over the past two decades and suggests actions she thinks our elected officials should take.
With events on campus and off, the Knock on Wood Guitarfest returns to Waterville April 18-19, with workshops and concerts featuring varied techniques and genres by an array of master musicians. This is the fourth annual edition, all with Colby as one of the sponsors, and this year Colby artist-in-residence and sarod virtuoso Aditya Verma joins the lineup.
Escar Kusema '09 won a third-place award for a neuroscience poster at the New England Science Symposium at Harvard University April 6, and Aynara Chavez-Munoz '08 received an honorable mention. The competition involved hundreds of graduate and undergraduate projects. Kusema's poster is titled "Cellular mechanisms of melatonin-induced and calmodulin-inhibited neurite growth in crustacean x-organ cells." Chavez-Munoz's is "Mifeprisone reduces HPA-axis responsivity and increases neuronal activation in prefrontal cortex following acute stress." Both will be presented in the upcoming Colby Undergraduate Research Symposium.
