Faculty Accomplishments
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Sandy Maisel, the Goldfarb Family Distinguished Professor of American Government, wrote an op-ed for the Portland Press Herald's section "Maine Voices" titled "Ranked-choice presidential primaries would give boost to moderates," which ran March 2, the day before Super Tuesday. Even if Maine were to use ranked-choice voting in the primary, "interpreting voter true preferences when many candidates are running is more complex than simply declaring whoever gains a plurality of the votes as the winner," Maisel wrote. "The party is split," he concludes, "and when we look at the results in Maine, we should appreciate that a plurality for one candidate does not imply support from all party voters."
Sandy Maisel, the Goldfarb Family Distinguished Professor of American Government, wrote an op-ed for the Portland Press Herald's section "Maine Voices" titled "Ranked-choice presidential primaries would give boost to moderates," which ran March 2, the day before Super Tuesday. Even if Maine were to use ranked-choice voting in the primary, "interpreting voter true preferences when many candidates are running is more complex than simply declaring whoever gains a plurality of the votes as the winner," Maisel wrote. "The party is split," he concludes, "and when we look at the results in Maine, we should appreciate that a plurality for one candidate does not imply support from all party voters."
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson and Caroline Wren '20 coauthored the paper "Geographies of vulnerability: a research note on human system adaptations to climate change in the Caribbean" recently published in Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography. In reviewing the recent literature, the paper calls for more effective adaptation strategies that centre climate justice, primarily in the Caribbean.
A project by Chris Soto, associate professor of psychology, was selected to receive a commendation from the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science. Soto's project is titled Life Outcomes Of Personality Replication, which was published in the April 2019 issue of the journal Psychological Science. SIPS commendations recognize projects and products that promote the society's mission to improve methods and practices in psychological science.
Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies, presented a paper at the 2020 Eastern Sociological Society Annual Meeting, held Feb. 28 in Philadelphia. Gilkes's paper is titled "The Gift of W.E.B. Du Bois's The Gift of Black Folk: African Cultural Capital and the Making of America."
Loren McClenachan, the Elizabeth and Lee Ainslie Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, was coauthor on a recently published paper titled "Use of historical data to assess changes in the vulnerability of sharks" that appears in the journal Fisheries Research. McClenachan worked with the lead author, Ilse Martínez-Candelas, in 2019 when Martínez-Candelas was a visiting researcher at Colby. The research involved "a historical characterisation [that] was performed to define the most important periods for the shark fishery in Campeche, southern Gulf of Mexico, and a PSA [productivity and susceptibility analysis] was conducted to determine the vulnerability of the eleven most important commercial shark species in each three periods," the paper's abstract says.
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson coauthored the paper "Transformational Adaptation in Least Developed Countries: Does Expanded Stakeholder Participation Make a Difference?" recently published in the journal Sustainability. The paper uses qualitative statistics to examine whether stakeholder diversity leads to better adaptation planning outcomes at the national level in 50 least developed countries across the world. The authors found little evidence that it does.
Assistant Professor of Biology Suegene Noh has a new publication in the journal Ecology and Evolution titled "Wild Dictyostelium discoideum social amoebae show plastic responses to the presence of nonrelatives during multicellular development." Noh's research involved using "RNA‐sequencing and photographic time series analysis to detect possible conflict‐induced plastic differences between wild D. discoideum aggregates formed by single strains compared with mixed pairs of strains (chimeras)," according to the paper's abstract.
Professor of Art Véronique Plesch organized and chaired the session “Word and Image in the Studio Practice” at the 108th College Art Association Annual Conference that took place in Chicago Feb. 12–15. The session was sponsored by the International Association of Word and Image Studies. Plesch also presented a response to the three papers in the panel, one of which by John Tyson, Colby Class of 2004, who is currently assistant professor of modern and contemporary art at UMass Boston.
Luis Millones, Charles A. Dana Professor of Spanish, has joined the board of directors of the Maine Humanities Council. The Maine Humanities Council, a statewide nonprofit organization, uses the humanities—literature, history, philosophy, and culture—as a tool for positive change in Maine communities. The MHC programs and grants encourage critical thinking and conversations across social, economic, and cultural boundaries.