Faculty Accomplishments

Photographs by Associate Professor of Art Gary Green are included in the show Faculty Photography II currently on view at Cove Street Arts in Portland, Maine. Fourteen black and white prints by Green are part of the exhibition that showcases faculty teaching photography at some of Maine's colleges and universities. "To see what’s next in fine art photography, look to those teaching the next generation of photographers," the gallery exhorts.

Paleobotanist Ian Glasspool, a research associate in the Department of Geology, was cited in the article "Artists join paleobotanists to bring ancient plants to life—and pique viewer interest" published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The article discusses the collaborative process between paleoartist Marlene Hill Donnelly and Glasspool. “Scientists and artists go backwards and forwards constantly, to try and work out what that final image is going to look like,” Glasspool said of the process.

A paper by Assistant Professor of Government Nicholas Jacobs was published in the journal The Forum. "Get Out of the Way: Joe Biden, the U.S. Congress, and Executive-Centered Partisanship During the President’s First Year in Office" discusses Biden's unmet campaign goal of unity.  "Far from transcending partisanship as promised," the authors write, "Biden has embraced the levers of presidential discretion and power inherent within the modern executive office to advance partisan objectives."

Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie is a coauthor on a new paper in the journal Ecology, "Plant and bird phenology and plant occurrence from 1851 to 2020 (non-continuous) in Thoreau's Concord, Massachusetts." Henry David Thoreau's 19th-century natural-history observations inspired generations of amateur and professional ecologists to record seasonal events (aka "phenology"): leaf out, flowering, migratory bird arrivals. Over the past two decades, Richard Primack's lab at Boston University has led this work, adding contemporary observations and modeling the impacts of climate change on plant and animal communities in Concord since Thoreau's time. The Primack lab's research with Thoreau datasets has led to groundbreaking ecological work, including McDonough MacKenzie's 2019 paper "Phenological mismatch with trees reduces wildflower carbon budgets," which received the 2020 Mercer Award from the Ecological Society of America (McDonough MacKenzie completed her Ph.D. with the Primack lab in 2017). Now, Primack and a group of lab alumni, including McDonough MacKenzie, present the complete Concord datasets, context on their historical ecological work, and interpretations of 19th-century methods. They hope this Ecology paper will encourage creative applications of these data by other scientists and provide tangible, memorable examples of the impacts of climate change in the Northeastern United States.

A new book by Alicia Ellis, Figuring the Female: Language and Identity in Franz Grillparzer’s Classical Dramas, was released by Lexington Books. In this innovative book, Ellis, associate professor of German, offers a compelling re-reading of three of Grillparzer’s plays through the lens of contemporary feminist theory.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Leeann Sullivan coauthored three new articles in Conservation Science and Practice that explore the social dimensions of wildlife governance in the United States. The first paper, for which she was the lead author, explores the need for governance reform as social values toward wildlife shift. The second and third, which she coauthored, explore leverage points for change within wildlife conservation, first at the system level and then at the level of agency culture. The articles were part of a special issue on organizational change within the field of wildlife conservation, which brought together social science researchers and agency leadership in the summer of 2020 to address questions about how agencies can respond to changing social dynamics.

Elizabeth Jabar, Colby's Lawry Family Dean of Civic Engagement and Community Partnerships, has joined the advisory council of the New England Foundation for the Arts. Jabar is a feminist printmaker who owns and operates Hinge Collaborative, a community arts initiative and printmaking studio in Waterville. At Colby, Jabar is "designing an innovative program in community-based learning and active citizenship." Previously she was chair of the Printmaking Program and associate dean at Maine College of Art.

Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor African-American Studies and Sociology, was a guest on an episode for the podcast Interfaith-ish. Gilkes was invited to discuss "why we're falling short of MLK's prophetic vision" following her most recent opinion piece for the Religion News Service.