Media Coverage

As Colby students began to return to campus, various media sources included Colby in roundups of the various schools welcoming students back. These outlets made note of Colby's process and testing protocol: Maine Public Portland Press Herald

Colby Head Tennis Coach Adam Reeb has been named College Coach of the Year by the United States Professional Tennis Association, New England Division. The honor was announced this week, recognizing Reeb’s accomplishments in his first two years at Colby, including national rankings for both men’s and women’s teams, and an All-America selection for Scott Altmeyer ’20.  “I think it shows just how far the programs have come,” said Reeb, who became Colby’s head tennis coach in 2018. “It’s a huge testament to the student athletes and their hard work and dedication.”

 Head Tennis Coach Adam Reeb with members of the nationally ranked women's team in 2019.

Both teams were nationally ranked (the women's squad had yet to compete but were coming off a national ranking in spring 2019) when COVID-19 canceled the spring season in March. Since then, the players have remained in communication and have trained individually and informally in preparation for the return to campus this month. Players have been using their time away from campus “to get better in any way they can,” Reeb said.  He credited his team captains for their leadership during a difficult time. “They’ve done a great job keeping the teams together and motivated and accountable to each other,” Reeb said.  Deflecting credit for the USPTA honor to his players, he said they welcomed him and Assistant Coach Mike Napoli and “have just gotten to work. We try to keep the standards really high, and they’ve bought in,” Reeb said.  Actual competition for this fall hasn’t been ruled in or out, but should that happen this fall or in the spring, he said players are excited to be back on campus with the new athletics and recreation center now open. The teams “are in a good spot where I think we’re excited and hungry and motivated,” he said, “and that’s what you want.” New recruits are already getting recognition, with the incoming men’s and women’s players recently ranked in the top 20 in Division III. “We’ve got a great mix of senior leadership and some good incoming student athletes as well, so it’s a good mix,” Reeb said. “I feel good coming in this fall, being able to hit the ground running. Even with everything going on, we’re coming in with a strong, unified front."

Jacqueline Terrassa, the new Carolyn Muzzy Director of the Colby College Museum of Art, conducted a Q&A with ArtNet News to discuss how she's been spending her time as she prepares to begin her position at Colby October 5. Part of her approach during her transitional period includes connecting with others: "I try to read and listen to people who offer well-researched information and ideas in order to grapple with our multiple, interlocking crises. Lots of people in the museum field are going through really tough times. Making space to hear what’s going on and to support my museum and art-world friends is important to me. I have been there and know how hard and isolating it can be," Terrassa said.

The swimming magazine SwimSwam took note of the completion of Colby's Olympic-sized pool, completed on time, and a part of the new athletics and recreation center on campus. "The news of the pool’s completion is great not only for Colby College, but for the sport of swimming in Maine as well," the magazine said. "With a new 50-meter pool, Colby now is home to the only Olympic-sized pool in the state of Maine."

New England Today published a lengthy article titled "Fighting for Survival | The Plight of Small New England Colleges" that holds up Colby's model of investing in Waterville as an example of reversing the trend of college towns struggling to survive. “It seemed obvious what we had to do,” President David Greene told New England Today. “We owed this to the city ... particularly when you live in a fairly small city, your fates are intertwined."

In a new report released from the Environment America Research & Policy Center, Colby tops the charts "for the most renewable heating, cooling, hot water and other non-electric energy produced per student," according to a press release by the organization. Colby has been carbon neutral since 2013 and was one of the first colleges in the nation to achieve carbon neutrality.

As Colby prepares to welcome back students to campus beginning Aug. 21, the Morning Sentinel wrote a comprehensive story about the health plans the College has put in place to keep both the campus and the Waterville communities safe. "Colby has invested $10 million in its college opening plan, which includes not only consistent and rigorous testing of all students, faculty and staff, but also a requirement that they wear face coverings, practice social distancing and isolate or quarantine when necessary," the Sentinel wrote. 

In a recent article in the Portland Press Herald Herb Wilson, the Leslie Brainerd Arey Professor of Biosciences, Emeritus, updates readers on fieldwork for the Maine Breeding Bird Atlas, a statewide project that now, at the end of the breeding season, has completed the third year of fieldwork in this five-year project. "The state has been divided up into nearly 5,000 blocks, each about nine square miles in area. About 1,000 of these blocks are designated as “priority blocks.” At a bare minimum, Atlas participants will devote 15-20 hours to each of these blocks to ensure thorough coverage of the state," Wilson writes. He goes on to compare bird populations since the fieldwork for the first atlas, from 1978 through 1983. "In the first atlas, tufted titmouse appeared in only 13 of the blocks, mostly in York and Cumberland Counties. What a difference 40 years makes. The current atlas shows titmice broadly nesting in the lower half of our state with breeding records as far north as Caratunk and Dover-Foxcroft."

An interactive art installation by Hannen (Hannah) Wolfe, assistant professor of computer science, and their collaborators has won the Best in Show - Art Gallery at SIGGRAPH 2020, the world’s leading computer graphics and interactive techniques conference. Their piece, Cacophonic Choir, "addresses the ways that sexual assault survivors' experiences are distorted by digital and mass media and its effect. The installation is composed of distributed agents in space that individually respond by becoming visually bright, semantically coherent, and sonically clear, revealing original testimonies of survivors," according to Business Wire, which covered the awards.  Click here to read an interview with Wolfe and their collaborators.

Colby was highlighted in a Wall Street Journal article on managing a potential virus outbreak. The story referenced how the College was “bringing students back with a comprehensive testing protocol” and that it had “set out plans for four color-coded levels of operation” impacting classrooms, dining halls, etc. if needed.