External Posts

Visiting Assistant Professor of History Virginia Olmsted McGraw has been awarded the Robert C. Tucker/Stephen F. Cohen Dissertation Prize for her dissertation, “Soviet by Design: Fashion, Consumption, and International Competition during Late Socialism, 1948-1982." This prize is given to an "outstanding English-language doctoral dissertation in Soviet or Post-Soviet politics and history in the tradition practiced by Robert C. Tucker and Stephen F. Cohen," according to its website.

Mainebiz and the Portland Press Herald covered the announcement of the George G. Petrikas Financial Aid Fund, which will provide financial aid for area students attending Colby. “Increasing access for talented students from Maine, particularly those from our local communities, is extremely important to the College,” said Matt Proto, Colby's vice president and chief institutional advancement officer.

Inside Higher Ed covered the announcement of the Haynesville Project, which will award six newly tenured Colby professors $100,000. Alicia E. Ellis, associate professor of German and one of the six grantees, said the funding will be a “game changer when it comes to the depth of our research and how we bring students into that.”

The Morning Sentinel discussed the impacts of the pandemic on the job market for graduating seniors and spoke with Lisa Noble about changes DavisConnects has seen. “What has changed is that employers in those fields are being more aggressive about building relationships with students now,” Noble said.

A series of stories and briefs on Colby’s Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for Courage in Journalism were published by a wide range of media outlets. Highlights included an announcement in the Washington Post as well as a shout-out in the New York Times newsletter “The Morning.”

The Wall Street Journal published an important review of the Colby Museum’s exhibition on painter Bob Thompson. One of the few major retrospectives on the artist, the critique noted that the “survey of the painter’s work at the Colby College Museum of Art is a colorful exploration of his singular creativity.”

Colby was well represented in a New York Times article on the current job market for students. The story highlighted how Trevaughn Wright-Reynolds ’22 has already accepted a job offer and included commentary from Lisa Noble, Colby’s director of employer partnerships and emerging pathways, who noted that “the current market is great for employment."

Adam Howard, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Education, wrote the chapter titled "Intrinsic Aspects of Privilege" in the recently published book Anti-Oppressive Education in "Elite" Schools: Promising Practices and Cautionary Tales From the Field. In the chapter, Howard offers a definition of class privilege as a form of identity and makes a case for why we need to focus on the intrinsic aspects of privilege, using examples from his own teaching.

Assistant Professor of Geology Bess Koffman has been awarded a $16,700 grant by the Outreach Program of the North Pacific Research Board (NPRB) to support the development and teaching of a week-long science course, Volcanoes and the Ocean Ecosystem, for 4th- and 5th-grade students. "Following two iterations of teaching the course to Pribilof Islands students (Bering Sea, Alaska), we will revise the lessons with student and teacher feedback and make the course materials available on the Canvas learning management system for broader use throughout Aleutian Islands, Shumagin Islands, and Alaska Peninsula schools," she explained. This project expands upon the work supported by a separate NPRB research grant to Koffman and Bigelow scientists Catherine Mitchell, Benjamin Twining, and Karen Stamieszkin.

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Eric Aaron is the senior co-chair of the third annual Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence conference, held next February in Vancouver. As co-chair, Aaron reviews applicants and puts together programming for the conference. The AAAI's mission is to advance the tools, techniques, and overall state of artificial intelligence with a focus on admitting minority and under-represented students into the program. Colby is the only small liberal arts undergraduate institution to have a representative on the conference committee.