Media Coverage

Assistant Professor of Economics James Siodla contributed to the WalletHub piece "2020’s Fastest-Growing Cities in America." When asked about what key priority local authorities should know to grow their cities, Siodla answered, in part, "Academic research suggests that long-run city growth is driven by factors such as entrepreneurial activity, industrial diversity, and good local governance. One thing growing cities should encourage is local innovation through the steady formation of new businesses. Making it easier to start a new restaurant or bookstore downtown can go a long way to helping a city build up the type of urban character that attracts people." 

Colby's return to campus strategy, including rigorous COVID-19 testing, was the subject of a WABI-TV story that aired Oct. 9. “We talked with a lot of public health officials, a lot of scientists, researchers, and recognized that was the most important thing we could do to ensure our students would successfully be able to return," Dean of the College Karlene Burrell-McRae told WABI.

USA TODAY included Colby in its Oct. 8 opinion piece "Colleges can do right by students amid COVID-19, but it takes money, planning and backbone," saying that Colby's "strategies set an example for other schools and underscore the critical need for a public health-driven and resource-enabled response."  

Colby's approach to bringing its campus community together around common themes during the pandemic was noted in the Christian Science Monitor story "Can campus unity get small colleges past pandemic into the future?"  "When students at Colby College arrived on Mayflower Hill for coronavirus testing in mid-August, they got something in addition to a nasal swab: a blue bracelet with the words 'One Colby' on one side and 'Hold the Hill' on the other," the story reports.   

The Oct. 6 announcement of a $500-million investment from the Harold Alfond Foundation drew wide media attention, including in the Portland Press Herald, and those stories included Colby, The College is grateful for the foundation's remarkable generosity in supporting Colby athletics and Waterville’s downtown revitalization.  

An ABC News story on Maine's ranked-choice voting included quotes from Professor of Government Dan Shea. "We're starting to get comfortable with it," he told ABC News. "There are still some who are confused, but they have seen it in action and are getting comfortable." Still, there are political issues surrounding the issue. "Not unlike a lot of issues in the world, the partisan divisions have been strong with this," he said.

Professor of Government Dan Shea was tapped to comment on the Portland Press Herald article "Can Susan Collins survive Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party?" Among the questions the article asks is if Senator Collins has changed or if politics have changed. “I think she has been caught up in what scholars are calling affect partisanship or negative partisanship,” explained Shea. “That’s when we don’t simply disagree with the other side, but see the other side as a threat to the nation. That’s happening on both sides. There is less tolerance for those who shift between parties. Less room for the moderates.”

The painting Étude, by Elizabeth Nourse, is the subject of a Washington Post story titled "Side by side yet worlds apart" as part of the paper's "Great Works, In Focus" series. The painting "hangs in the wonderful Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine," the author writes in his introductory paragraph. 

Colby and its testing program are included in an Oct. 2 New York Times story titled "Colleges Learn How to Suppress Coronavirus: Extensive Testing" about colleges that are "beating the pandemic." President Greene told the reporter how frequent testing allowed a positive case to be caught early, and that contract tracing limited the spread. “It could have been 150 people, and we kept it to one person,” President Greene told the Times. 

An extensive story by USA TODAY details Colby's successful COVID-19 testing program and in-person education approach in its article "Colleges are exploding with COVID and have lax testing. One school is keeping cases down." Reporter Chris Quintana spent a day on Mayflower Hill talking with students and faculty about their experiences with testing and life on campus during the pandemic. "Its leaders bet the institution's testing, preparation, and location in a relative haven from the coronavirus would keep students safe, perhaps even safer than they would be at home. So far, they have been right," Quintana writes.