‘The Colby Holiday’
The annual Colby Liberal Arts Symposium is a joyful celebration of student scholarship
For one buzzing, energetic, dynamic, and fun day each spring, classes and other regularly scheduled activities on Mayflower Hill are pushed aside to make room for the Colby Liberal Arts Symposium, a celebration of student scholarship at the College.
During this year’s celebration on May 1, students, some dressed in their best business casual attire, rushed around campus to see friends and classmates present posters that showcased their studies. They crammed into crowded rooms in the Diamond Building to listen attentively and ask good questions as students made oral presentations of their senior capstone, honors theses, research, and other projects. There was poetry, fiction, computer coding, skits in Spanish, film, a speech competition, a mock trial, and the opportunity to laugh and cheer as professors competed in the often ridiculous and sometimes sublime game of PowerPoint Karaoke.
The symposium, known around campus as CLAS, is a big deal. According to Jim Sloat, senior associate provost and indefatigable cheerleader for and administrative force behind the event he believes functions as “the Colby holiday,” it is the largest undergraduate research symposium hosted by any liberal arts college. This year, 678 students presented 498 different projects.
“I would argue this is the most important day on the Colby academic calendar, full stop. This is the day when we put students’ work on show for each other,” Sloat said.
“Every school has something like CLAS, in some form or another, in the same way that every school has undergraduate research, in some form or another. What distinguishes Colby from all the other schools is that we were first in the game. We were on the frontier of both undergraduate research and in creating an event to celebrate and mark it.”
And celebrate they did.
‘One of my favorite days’
For the students, it’s a busy and memorable event that serves as an important marker of the school year. Giovanna Novi ’25, a double major in biology: neuroscience and psychology, spent the day “showing up for everybody” by zipping around to as many honors theses and poster presentations as she could.
“I always trick myself into thinking that because I don’t have classes, it’s going to be a slow day to catch up on work. But then I end up just running around campus all the time because my friends are doing such amazing things that I want to hear about,” she said. “It is one of my favorite days because it gives me the opportunity to learn about things that are way outside of my zone.”
Normally, she spends her time in the Biology and Psychology departments. But CLAS lets her roam around the breadth of research and learning that is found at Colby, something that she loves.
“CLAS is really a moment to show our support for each other’s academic endeavors,” she said. “I feel like we try our best to do that for friends on sports teams or when we’re participating in competitions, but most of our time is spent on academic stuff for class and research. So it’s really nice to have this day to get connected and celebrate each other’s achievements.”
‘An incredible amount of supportive energy’
Ellery Moore ’26 and Abbey Wolfe ’27 collaborated on a research project exploring carbon mineralization—a process where carbon dioxide reacts with calcium- and magnesium-rich minerals to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—and presented their findings during a bustling afternoon poster session in the Parker-Reed Room.
Both students are minoring in geology, and this project evolved from material they covered in a climate geology course about the interconnectedness of the atmosphere, biosphere, and other earth systems. In their collaborative research for their CLAS presentation, Moore focused on the scientific aspects of carbon mineralization, while Wolfe examined the economics.
It was Moore’s second time presenting at CLAS and the first for Wolfe, who was impressed with the level of interest among her peers.
“There is just an incredible amount of supportive energy,” Wolfe said, speaking loudly to be heard among the cacophony of voices in the crowded room. “Everyone is very excited to see what their peers have been doing in the classroom, and everyone who is presenting is excited to show off what they are doing.”
That was also true later in the afternoon in Ostrove Auditorium, where the College’s Mock Trial Team got to share their passion with their classmates by holding an hour-long mock trial. Cajabo Koczela ’27, who is double majoring in government and English, hopes to become a lawyer and loves being part of the team, which requires students to know about the law, be confident public speakers, and be able to act a role.
“It’s so cool to be able to show what we’re doing,” she said, adding that she values the opportunities that abound during the day. “It’s been really cool to actually see what my friends have spent so many hours on. I also feel like I’ve learned so much about random stuff. I just went to a presentation on public transit, and I learned so much. I appreciate that we have the whole day off to just explore whatever we’re interested in.”
Research that stems from real life
Earlier in the day, in Room 141 in the Diamond Building, before a hushed overflow audience that included his parents, Caleb Horsch ’25 gave a 10-minute oral presentation of his honors project examining spending in college athletics relative to gender. He spent much of his senior year working on his paper, “Fair Play? Gender Equity, Title IX, and Resource Allocation in College Athletics.” The opportunity to present his research was gratifying and satisfying, and it was accompanied by “a real sense of accomplishment,” said Horsch, an economics and global studies double major.
His research, which he hopes to refine and publish, suggests there is little gender equity in expenditures in college sports, particularly at the Division I level, and schools lack sufficient incentives to achieve equity for a variety of reasons.
He hopes to work in college athletics after graduating from Colby, and he sees a leadership role for economists in the industry. “I am a little bit shocked at the lack of research on this particular topic, and I think economists are in a really good position to lead with more research into college athletics generally and gender equity specifically,” he said.
In addition to his parents, who traveled from California to witness the presentation in person, Horsch had the support of his peers, including several teammates from the Alpine skiing team.
“It’s been quite a lot of work. I started this project last April, so it has taken more than a year,” he said after his presentation, clutching flowers that a friend had given him. “You’re on your own, you’re really grinding, and then you get the opportunity to come out and share it.”
With his presentation behind him and feeling a wave of relief, he was eager to support his friends just as they had supported him. “It’s a really special day,” he said of CLAS. “I have been coming to CLAS for three years, and being able to see students present all their research was a great motivator for me. They were so into the things they were presenting, and so for me to know there was a possibility to pursue a project for so long and then get the opportunity to share it with the Colby community was significant.”
‘It was a joy’
Ben Kaden ’25, a government major, looked exhilarated and a bit relieved after making a half-hour presentation and answering questions about his honors project, “When Choice Disappears: Voter Cynicism in the Absence of Competition.”
“I had a great experience today. I was nervous going in, but I had a good time,” he said outside the Diamond classroom where he and other government majors had spent most of the afternoon.
He was with his parents, Jonathan and Susan Kaden, who came from Chicago to be present for their son’s honors project presentation. The Kadens were impressed by what they saw from all the students’ work.
“The extent of the academic improvement and confidence from each of the students and their enthusiasm for what they were presenting, and the skill with which they answered really thoughtful questions was terrific,” Jonathan Kaden said. “It was a joy for us to be there.”
In his presentation, Sebastien Romain ’26, a sociology major, confidently discussed “Beyond the Game: Colby Athletes’ Perspectives on Hollywood Films,” his advanced research project in sociology. For the project, Romain, a member of the football team, interviewed student athletes from many teams about the movies they watch and whether they use movies as motivation in their sports. The project included a literature review, interviews, and surveys.
After the presentation and the question-and-answer period that followed, Romain said that he had a good CLAS experience.
“It felt great because it was a project I enjoyed,” he said. “I got to bring my athlete side and my student side and put them into one presentation.”
For faculty members, who spend the day sitting and listening to students rather than in their accustomed places lecturing and leading discussions, CLAS is special.
“It’s always a fun day to just walk around campus and have all this excitement surrounding student research and have nothing else on the calendar,” said Christel Kesler, associate professor of sociology. “I think there’s this fun energy. And it’s so great for us, both students and faculty, to get to see what’s happening in some other corners of the College and to engage with students that we don’t normally see in our classrooms.”
Finding ways to make a ‘real difference’
The community crowded into the Page Commons Room for two special events: the David H. Mills Memorial Student Speech Contest, also known as the Phi Beta Kappa Student Speech Contest, and at the end of the day, the popular faculty PowerPoint Karaoke competition, which was won by Arisa White, associate professor of English (creative writing).
In the speech contest, the six students who participated were asked to write a short speech that addressed the question of what they see as the biggest threat facing the liberal arts today, and what should be done to meet it. The audience chose Aubrey Costello ’27, a government major, as the winner.
In his speech, Abdullah Shazad ’25, a double major in mathematics and computer science, spoke to some of the issues of our current moment, including the lawsuit that Harvard University has waged against the federal government after the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in research funding.
“The biggest threat to the liberal arts today isn’t AI. It isn’t low salaries. It isn’t even the budget cuts, though they’re really urgent. It’s amnesia. It’s forgetting why we’re here in the first place,” he said. “The liberal arts teach us to be human. And in a world increasingly automated, optimized, and digitized, that might be the most revolutionary skill of all. Remember that fascism doesn’t begin with jackboots and fire; it begins with intellectual laziness. So let’s be revolutionaries.”
