Research Scientist Ian Glasspool was quoted in Earth magazine in the February 2018 cover story titled “A Flammable Planet: Fire Finds its Place in Earth History.” Glasspool is quoted in a section about oxygen history. “Hypotheses have been proposed to correlate atmospheric oxygen fluctuations with mass extinction events and the evolution of various traits in animals, including gigantism in...
Catherine Besteman, the Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Anthropology, cowrote an op-ed titled “Where in the World Is the U.S. Military? Everywhere” that appeared Jan. 12 in U.S. News & World Report. The article includes a recently published map that shows “the U.S. is waging this war on terror in 76 countries – or more...
The Maine Sports Hall of Fame announced its 2018 class, which includes two Colbians: Reagan Carey ’01, a standout hockey player at Colby who became general manager of USA Hockey, and Carl Nelson, Colby’s former trainer and head trainer for the 1972 and 1976 Olympic games, the Lewiston Sun-Journal reports Jan. 11. Carey’s “work to grow the game...
James Fleming, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, was given a shout-out from renowned glaciologist Richard Alley at American Meteorological Society’s Presidential Forum during his keynote talk (time stamp 39 minutes) at the 98th AMS Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas.
Jack Cosgrove, Colby’s newly named head football coach, was formally introduced Jan. 8 and several media outlets came to meet the former University of Maine coach. “One day on this campus, you feel a vision and a set of aspirations and expectations that really complement the leadership here,” the Morning Sentinel reported Cosgrove as saying. “I...
Bruce Rueger, assistant professor of geology, was unanimously elected to the position of district chairman of Kennebec Valley Boy Scouts, Turner Publishing reports. Involved with scouting for more than 50 years, Rueger, an Eagle Scout, “has been recognized with the Vigil Honor in the Order of the Arrow, and bestowed the District Award of Merit...
A poem titled America Ain’t Easy by Associate Professor of English Adrian Blevins was posted for the CDC Poetry Project Jan. 8. The project posts poems using the “seven words forbidden in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention documents for 2018.” Blevins poem was inspired by “the Trump Administration’s very scary authoritarian bent.”
Trustee Sara Burns ’79 answered questions for NEWS CENTER Maine, WCSH-6, on lessons on leadership during a Q&A held during her final days as CEO of Central Maine Power, from which she retired at the end of 2017. One of her early lessons came during the 1998 ice storm in Maine when “one of the...
A paper published in Science Advances Sept. 6, 2017, by Loren McClenachan, the Elizabeth and Lee Ainslie Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, was referenced in a story published by The Guardian Dec. 27. The Guardian story, “How did half of the great Florida coral reef system disappear?” referenced McClenachan’s story, “Ghost reefs: Nautical charts document large spatial scale of coral...
Associate Professor of Psychology Christopher Soto was tapped for an article about personality tests in a FiveThirtyEight article titled “Most Personality Quizzes Are Junk Science. I Found One That Isn’t.” The Big Five “is a system that organizes personality around five broad clusters of traits: extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience,” the article states. Soto is referenced...
Assistant Professor of Biology David Angelini cowrote an article recently published online in Current Opinion in Insect Science. The article, “By land, air, and sea: hemipteran diversity through the genomic lens,” reviews the state of genomics research in true bugs (Hemiptera), the group of insects on which Angelini focuses his research. In the same issue, Angelini was guest...
Cal Mackenzie, Goldfarb Family Distinguished Professor of Government, emeritus, was quoted in a Dec. 30 Boston Globe article titled “In 2017, Trump dominated national discourse.” The article discusses the amount of news President Trump has generated in 2017. “I don’t think we’ve ever had a president make news like this president makes news,’’ Mackenzie was quoted saying. “He...
Two recent essays by Assistant Professor of English Aaron Hanlon appeared at the end of the month. “The Decline of Debate on College Campuses” appeared in the New Republic Dec. 28 and “Why Not Social Reading?” appeared in a Ploughshares blog Dec. 31.
Assistant Professor of Education Karen Kusiak was quoted on a Maine Public Maine Calling program discussing a proposal from the Maine Department of Education that would relax teaching certification standards to bring more teachers to Maine classrooms. Kusiak told Maine Public that teacher preparation is vital for education students to understand the ideas behind best teaching practices....
Associate Professor of Mathematics Scott Taylor reviewed a new textbook, From Groups to Geometry and Back (American Mathematical Society, 2017), for the Mathematical Association of America. “Readers will need a solid background in algebra and some form of topology or analysis,” he recommends. “All the needed definitions are included in the book, along with extremely helpful remarks to help...
An article in Reader’s Digest titled “Your Beauty Products Could Be Sabotaging Your Fertility—Here’s How” encourages readers to check a list of products containing PFCs (perfluorinated chemicals) that was compiled by Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Gail Carlson and her students, notably Sarah Hart ’10. The project emerged from Carlson’s course “The Environment and Human Health,” where...
Lydia Moland, associate professor of philosophy, has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the upcoming year. The grant will allow Moland to complete research on her book Hegel’s Aesthetics: The Art of Idealism, which she’s been working on during her sabbatical year. Moland previously was awarded a fellowship from the American Council of...
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Travis Reynolds coauthored a report that undertakes a “detailed literature review of the factors limiting private sector investment in global health R&D,” according to a Brookings Institute blog post on Dec. 4. Reynolds and his colleagues identified eight results to address barriers to private investment in R&D such as “policy and regulatory...
Professor of Government Dan Shea contributed an op-ed to the Portland Press Herald titled “Maine Voices: Partisan divide may benefit Moore, as it did Trump.” Shea notes that in the last 10 years, elections have become partisan and “straight-ticket voting, for example, has reached unprecedented levels.” Voters band together like teams without a shared sense of purpose,...
Herb Wilson, the Leslie Brainerd Arey Professor of Biosciences, wrote a birding column for the Portland Press Herald titled “Why do grebes eat their feathers?” Wilson starts off with a description of grebes, their characteristics and behaviors. He then cites a recent paper that “provides a definitive study of the functional significance of feather-eating in grebes,” which aids...
