Faculty Accomplishments

Debra Spark, the Zacamy Professor of English, penned two recent pieces for her alma mater's alumni magazine. Her feature story, "The go-to guy for CEOs," profiles Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Yale's senior associate dean for leadership studies and Lester Crown Professor at the School of Management, who was the host and facilitator of the "150th, invitation-only CEO Summit, one of six annual leadership forums run by the Yale School of Management’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute," she wrote. The story includes a quote from Colby's Life Trustee Bob Diamond '73, former CEO of Barclays and current CEO of Atlas Merchant Capital. Diamond "has been to 30-plus summits and notes Sonnenfeld’s gift for 'creating a platform where people are comfortable saying what they believe as opposed to what they’re supposed to say.'" Spark also wrote a book review of How the Light Gets In by Yale alumnus Joyce Maynard ’75.

Debra Spark, the Zacamy Professor of English, wrote a review of the book Gabriële for Frenchly, a Francophile arts and culture news magazine. Written by sisters Claire and Anne Berest, Gabriële "describes the life of their long-lost great-grandmother," the mother of their maternal grandfather. "Before her marriage," Spark wrote, "Gabriële was a composer and later the intellectual sparring partner, not only of her husband, but of many other leading modernists, including Marcel Duchamp and Igor Stravinsky. But not only did the Berest sisters never meet their grandfather—he died by suicide before they were born—they never knew anyone from his branch of the family. With their new book, Gabriële, the sisters set themselves to the task of trying to discover who their great-grandmother was."

Herb Wilson, the Leslie Brainerd Arey Professor of Biosciences, Emeritus, has received the 2025 Award of Recognition from the Maine Chapter of the Wildlife Society. This award recognizes individuals, groups, organizations, businesses, and industries in Maine who have made noteworthy contributions to wildlife management or conservation, or to education of the public about wildlife. Wilson has been recognized for his long-standing contributions to the understanding and conservation of Maine’s wildlife through education and community science. Wilson, an ornithologist, writes a regular column for the Portland Press Herald on birds.

Associate Professor of Spanish Dean Allbritton is one of seven new members on Wiki Education's 2025 Humanities & Social Justice Advisory Committee. The multidisciplinary group will advise and collaborate on Wiki Education's ongoing work to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of historically underrepresented subjects and people. “My students light up when they realize their class work on invisibilized or silenced communities can have real-world impact,” said Allbritton, who is also director of the Center for the Arts and Humanities at Colby. “The knowledge that they are actively making space for others feels timely and important in a way that scholarly work often may not. I joined this committee because Wikipedia still has so much room to grow and so many opportunities still to make space in this world for those who have not yet been afforded it.” 

Associate Professor of Chemistry Greg Drozd will represent Colby on the U.S. Academic Alliance for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The USAA-IPCC is a newly established network of U.S. academic institutions, including Colby, registered as observers with the IPCC. Both observer organizations and governments may nominate experts for roles in IPCC reports. A central duty of the IPCC is to produce assessment reports on the status of the science of climate change to help guide government agencies in developing climate policy, IPCC reports are a major part of the information used for policy at COP meetings.

Debra Spark, the Zacamy Professor of English, appeared on the New Books Network podcast to discuss her writing and her novel Discipline (Four Way Books, 2024). "Discipline addresses teenagers whose lives are molded by thoughtless adults and women who struggle with loneliness or are taken advantage of by the unscrupulous. It’s a coming-of-age story, a mystery about an art theft, but this gorgeous novel is also about family, ambition, and suffering," according to New Books Network.

In March 2025, Assistant Professor of French Studies Flavien Falantin was awarded the prestigious Gold Medal of the Société d’Encouragement au Progrès (SEP) during a ceremony held in Paris. Founded in 1908 by the Lumière brothers, French President Albert Lebrun, and physicist Édouard Branly, the SEP serves as a uniquely French counterpart to the Nobel Prize. It is dedicated to supporting individuals who demonstrate significant potential and the drive to push boundaries even further. This honor was bestowed in recognition of Falantin’s outstanding contributions to French and Francophone studies. He received the medal alongside Claudie Haigneré, the first European woman in space and former French Minister for Research and Minister for European Affairs. 

Routledge has featured the book Developing High-Impact Course Design Institutes as a “Bestselling Book of 2025.” Coauthored by Carol Hurney, associate provost for teaching and learning, and Jordan Troisi, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, the book is a "critical resource [that] unpacks the inner workings of one of the most powerful mechanisms for improving teaching and learning in higher education: the course design institute," according to Routledge. This book, and others written by Hurney and Troisi, represent one of the ways the pair has been working to position Colby and the Center for Teaching and Learning at Colby in the global conversation about teaching and learning support. 

For the spring issue of the Maine Arts Journal, Professor of Art Véronique Plesch wrote the introduction for the issue's theme, "In Times Like These." She also wrote an essay for her "Art Historical Musings" column titled "Bearing Witness," in which she explains that as she reflects on the issue's theme, "some of the works of art I regularly engage with in my classes take on heightened resonance." Because of her scholarship on graffiti, Plesch was commissioned to write a reflection on a body of activist street art. Her piece is titled "Activist Cuckoo Nests."

Professor of Art Véronique Plesch was invited to participate in the session "Bearing Witness: Scratching the Surface of Italian Art" sponsored by the Italian Art Society at the Renaissance Society of America conference that took place in Boston March 20-22 , 2025. Her paper was titled "Renaissance Graffiti on Renaissance Works of Art: An Art Historical Litmus Test."