Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society James R. Fleming will be a guest of Linköping University, Sweden, in January and will present a seminar on “Climate Engineering: Barking Mad, WEIRD, and Male Dominated.” Fleming was part of a proposal-writing team that garnered more than 50 million SEK ($6 million USD) for the...
An extensive article on the Swedish meteorologist Carl-Gustaf Rossby by Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society James R. Fleming was published in the January 2017 issue of Physics Today. Fleming traces Rossby’s career from its start at the Bergen School of Meteorology through the establishment of Stockholm’s International Meteorological Institute and to his involvement in the International...
A seven-minute story on downtown Waterville revitalization efforts—and Colby’s leading role in the effort—aired on WCSH (Channel 6) Jan. 4. Host Rob Caldwell spent time with President David A. Greene and Mayor Nick Isgro on Main Street discussing the progress to date as well as plans for the future. Caldwell says, “there’s never been anything...
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Travis Reynolds and Janice Liang ’16 published an article in the journal Ecography illustrating how sacred natural sites can inform ecological theories on habitat fragmentation in developing countries. The research, conducted in collaboration with Assistant Professor of Biology Cathy Collins and other U.S. and Ethiopian partners, combines remote sensing data...
Ankeney Weitz, Ellerton M. and Edith K. Jette Professor of Art and co-curator of No Limits: Zao Wou-ki, is featured in a video showing the painting that inspired the exhibit currently on view at the Asia Society in New York. In the two-minute video, produced by the Asia Society, Weitz explains why the painting Traces dans la ville (Tracks of...
Professor of Art Véronique Plesch delivered a lecture via Skype titled “Words, Images, and Materiality in Early Performance” for students in the advanced studies in the materialities of literature Ph.D. program at the School of Arts and Humanities and the Centre for Portuguese Literature, University of Coimbra. Plesch’s Dec. 20 lecture is part of a seminar...
A New York Magazine interactive article highlights research by Associate Professor of Psychology Christopher Soto. The Dec. 21 article summarizes research by Soto and others investigating the “big five” personality traits: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and open-mindedness. It also asks readers to predict their own scores on these traits, then take a personality test developed...
As the winter solstice approached, TIME turned to scientists, including Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society James R. Fleming, to point out that “the idea of the first day of winter is more complicated than you may think.” Meteorological winter differs from astronomical winter because “the alignment of the Earth’s axis doesn’t line...
At a White House Hanukkah reception, Rabbi Rachel Isaacs delivered an invocation with President and Mrs. Obama on either side of her. The President introduced Isaacs and called out Colby and Waterville’s Beth Israel Congregation, where Isaacs is spiritual leader. Isaacs spoke of Hanukkah as a “festival that teaches us it is always darkest before the...
Opening a Tongolese restaurant has been a dream of Director of African Drumming Messan Jordan Benissan’s for years. A dinner that he and students Tristan Friedman ’17 and Theo Satloff ’19 prepared for the Wiscasset (Maine) Area Chamber of Commerce members Dec. 8 took the entrepreneur one step closer to achieving that dream. The dinner...
Making Refuge, the latest book by Catherine Besteman, Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Anthropology, was named one of the best books of 2016 by Foreign Affairs magazine. Subtitled Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine, the book chronicles Besteman’s coincidental reunion in Lewiston with Bantu refugees she had met as a doctoral student in Somalia in...
Ornithologist Herb Wilson, Leslie Brainerd Arey Professor of Biosciences, presented a talk “The Patterns of Maine’s Migratory Breeding Birds” as part of the University of New England Center for Global Humanities’ lecture series. In this Dec. 12 lecture, Wilson summarized findings from his 22-year citizen-science project that monitors the arrival of more than 100 bird species in Maine...
An unprecedented harmful algae bloom off the coast of New England this fall provided a unique opportunity for Colby students studying at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. Students in Bigelow’s semester-in-residence program conducting research along the Damariscotta River collected seawater samples during a large bloom of the harmful algae Pseudo-nitzschia, detected first near the Canadian...
An op-ed by Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Gail Carlson details an increase in many deadly and debilitating diseases that are linked to climate change. “Make no mistake about it: Climate change is deadly,” Carlson writes Dec. 10 in the Morning Sentinel. She cites research from the Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change and the U.S. Global...
Cal Mackenzie, Goldfarb Family Distinguished Professor of Government, emeritus, was quoted in a Wall Street Journal story about concerns over Donald Trump’s choice of generals for top posts in his administration. “Just categorizing them as generals is a disservice to them,” said Mackenzie, who has studied presidential transitions. More striking, perhaps, is the unfamiliarity Trump has with his cabinet...
“Asphyxiating the Silence in Your Neck of the Woods: On the Importance of Speech Tones” is the title of Associate Professor of English Adrian Blevin’s “Craft Tip of the Month” in the December poetry newsletter by Diane Lockward. “There are many methods and techniques for meaning more than you say,” Blevins offers, “but my favorite is...
Associate Professor of Global Studies Maple Razsa and Video Journalist Milton Guillén were awarded a Kindling Fund Grant from SPACE Gallery, in Portland, Maine, for their film The Maribor Uprisings: A Live Participatory Documentary. The grant will allow the filmmakers to work with a theater director and an activist facilitator to further develop the live experience of the film. The fund,...
The Portland Press Herald and the Morning Sentinel ran a story and photos about a student-led march on campus against hate and Trump’s immigration policy. More than 300 students marched across Miller Quad in solidarity and “called on people to stand up and take action against injustice, bigotry, hate and violence,” the Herald reported Dec. 1. “In being here today, we affirm...
Julie Millard, The Dr. Gerald and Myra Dorros Professor of Chemistry, has been named a fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Millard is one of 391 recently named fellows “whose efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications in service to society have distinguished them among their peers and...
A new essay by Associate Professor of English Adrian Blevins, titled “Late-Breaking Yew-Berry News from the Madman’s Love Shack,” appears in Vox Populi, a forum for the discussion of contemporary politics through poetry, prose, and video. This essay is part of a series of Blevins’s essays in Vox Populi. The essay also opens a new anthology—Best Creative Nonfiction...
