Greta Wells ’11, a geology and French studies double major, has been awarded a Fulbright-NSF Arctic Research grant to study in Iceland this year. Wells is pursuing a Ph.D. in geography at the University of Texas at Austin. Her dissertation project investigates a series of glacial lake outburst floods (jökulhlaups) that drained from the Kjölur region in Iceland at...
Herb Wilson, the Leslie Brainerd Arey Professor of Biosciences, is in the news this week. Two reports of his January birding trip to Mexico were published: in the Portland Press Herald and in Yucatán Ex-Pat Life. Both articles recount a particularly successful day birding at Rio Lagartos, a “well-known birding hot-spot” on the Yucatán Peninsula. “Altogether we saw 83 species...
Is it climate change or global warming? James Fleming, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, was quoted in a March 3 Angle News article that dissects how the two terms came to be. Fleming talked of Svante Arrhenius, “the first scientist to calculate the impact that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had on temperature,” he told Angle News. “The...
The journal Nature has published an article by Robert Gastaldo, the Whipple-Coddington Professor of Geology, in its News and Views section. The March 1 article, “Ancient plants escaped the end-Permian mass extinction,” details what two papers (one by Fielding et al., the other by Nowak et al.) “reveal about what happened to terrestrial plants during the end-Permian crisis,” Gastaldo writes. Written for a general...
An article by Professor of Education Lyn Mikel Brown and Jenny Flaumenhaft ’19 was published in Phi Delta Kappan Feb. 25. Titled “Student-empowered curricular change,” the article details their work using an initiative called TREE—Transforming Rural Experience in Education—at Maine’s Seabrook Elementary School. TREE uses a bottom-up approach and recognizes that empowerment is key to student success. At...
Decor Maine published the essay “Our Maine Ruinlust” by Adrian Blevins, associate professor of English, that chronicles two homes Blevins refurbished in her 15 years in Maine. The essay mainly focuses on her second home in East Winthrop, a house with beauty that eases her, a “huge house that the original owners unironically named ‘Olympus’ [that] also...
A Physics Today artcle titled “When condensed-matter physics became king” includes two Colby connections. Its author, Joseph Martin, was a faculty fellow in Science, Technology, and Society 2013-14. While at Colby, he became familiar with the Bern Porter Collection in the Special Collections Department. Porter, a 1932 Colby graduate, drew a Map of Physics in 1939, which...
Sandy Maisel, the Goldfarb Family Distinguished Professor of American Government, was quoted in the Feb. 17 Portland Press Herald article “Maine governor looks ahead after turbulent LePage era” that compares the style of Maine’s Governor Janet Mills to her predecessor, “viewed by critics as a blabbermouth and bully systematically shifted the course of state government to the right...
Biddy Mason Speaks Up, a new book by Arisa White, assistant professor of English, was the focus of the Feb. 8 New York Times “California Today” article “Meet Biddy Mason, a Black Woman Who Helped Build Los Angeles.” The Times reporter was curious about why White decided to write about Biddy Mason and alternative ways of portraying historical figures. “A...
James Fleming, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, was quoted in a Feb. 8 CNN piece titled “Cli-fi (climate fiction) on the big screen changes minds about real climate change.” Climate change fiction genre—cli-fi—”seems to help people believe in actual climate change, even when Hollywood’s version of the science is a bit...
Professor of Education Adam Howard’s article “Making Class: Children’s Perceptions of Social Class Through Illustration” was published by Teachers College Record and was the topic of discussion on TCR’s “The Voice” Jan. 23. Howard cowrote the article with his former student Karlyn Adler ’11, now a lead kindergarten teacher at The School at Columbia University, and Katy...
Professor of Education Adam Howard was interviewed Jan. 28 by Askia Muhammad on WPFW’s “Monday Morning QB” show. Howard discussed his research on what lessons students at elite schools are taught about themselves and others, focused particularly on all-boy schools. Listen to the interview starting about 28 minutes into the show. WPFW-FM Pacifica is a Washington, D.C.,...
Professor of Education Adam Howard conducted a Q&A with Vox regarding the confrontation between a Native elder and Kentucky teenager Nick Sandmann. There has been “increasingly contentious public conversation around the episode,” Vox wrote, and Howard says we may be missing the point. “The student’s behavior was the embodiment of privilege,” Howard told Vox, “and nothing that came after...
Dan Shea, professor of government, wrote an opinion piece in the Portland Press Herald titled “Can average citizens rise to the occasion in response to Mueller’s findings?” The Jan. 18 piece questions if average citizens are still able to see their role as fundamental in a democracy, or if they’re swayed by partisan identification. “Can we break...
The FiveThirtyEight data journalism site recently featured an interactive personality test developed by Associate Professor of Psychology Christopher Soto and collaborator Oliver John. The test, known as the BFI-2, measures the Big Five personality traits: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, negative emotionality, and open-mindedness. The FiveThirtyEight feature shows how your personality compares with the average American adult. You can take the test and see...
“Bugs in our Backyard,” a citizen science project by Associate Professor of Biology Dave Angelini and Biology Research Technician Josh Steele, was named one of the Top 18 projects for 2018 on the CitSci aggregator site SciStarter. The project encourages K-12 students to take surveys of bugs in their backyards, schoolyards, and neighborhoods; the surveys are...
Damon Mayrl, assistant professor of sociology, was awarded a Project Grant for Researchers grant from the Louisville Institute for his project titled “A Changing Wall: Local Religious Leaders and Church-State Interaction in a New Era.” Mayrl and his co-researchers plan to interview 150 religious leaders across the country “to document the changing landscape of church-state relations...
The article “Science and Culture: Journal entries, maps, and photos help ecologists reconstruct ecosystems of the past” recently posted by PNAS, includes the work of Loren McClenachan, the Elizabeth and Lee Ainslie Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies. The article mentions her 2017 study, in which “her team used 18th-century British nautical charts to estimate changes...
Garry Mitchell, deemed “an excellent painter,” was included in a Portland Press Herald art review about Maine’s 2018 arts scene. Mitchell, associate professor of art, topped the list for what reviewer Daniel Kany called “his elegant and poignant show at Speedwell Projects.” The show “was a lesson in how to begin to take on political subjects,”...
An article by Aaron Hanlon, associate professor of English, was published in the Chronicle of Higher Education Dec. 7. Titled “Lies About the Humanities—and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them,” Hanlon outlines four categories of what he says are “bad theories about the humanities,” including “the humanities are ‘noncognitive’ and humanities professors push left-wing ideas on students.”...
