External Posts

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. 

The Portland Press Herald did a feature story on Colby's young baseball team and how it's trying to duplicate last year's success. This past season, the Mules finished 29-12, with a 9-3 record in NESCAC play, and reached the NCAA Division III tournament for the first time in the program's history.

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."

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Alison Bates has coauthored a paper with former students Makaylah Cowan '22 (an environmental computation major) and Julia Cantor '23 (a biology major) that appeared in the journal Energy Research & Social Science. Based on a multi-year community-based participatory research project (CBPR) to examine energy injustices in a New England city led by Bates, the study, "Whose low-carbon future? Community perceptions and expectations on the renewable energy transition in a post-industrial city," explores the intersection of systemic marginalization of community members facing decarbonization policies. Building on community partnerships with NGOs, they worked closely with a previously defined “environmental justice” community to elicit the ways in which the energy transition is perceived to result in energy justice and injustice by energy system specialists and by community members. Findings suggest that community members in particular fear getting “priced out” of their community as energy system upgrades are implemented, and they also feel that systemic injustices such as racialized governance structures would be exacerbated. They also identify the ways that energy justice is conceptualized whereby community members identify co-benefits such as improved housing, lower pollution, and an opportunity for energy democracy as possible outcomes of the energy transition. 

A review by the Wall Street Journal of the exhibition Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery, which will open at the Colby Museum of Art this summer and was co-curated by Lunder Curator of American Art Sarah Humphreville, noted how "it's an oddly substantial exhibition—with a genuine keeper of a catalog—even though its contents are small."

The poetry journal Diode published two poems by Adrian Blevins, professor of English and creative writing. The poems are "Cool for You¹ Interrupted Cento" and "Poem Beginning with Two Lines Ending a Poem by Bob Hicok" appeared in the journal's volume 18 number 1 issue.

The Portland Press Herald reviewed the Colby Museum’s Radical Histories exhibition, featuring prints by Chicanx artists. On view through June 8, the review highlights how the collection reminds us of the role protest art plays in societal change.