Colby College

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Template:Expand {{Infobox_University |name = Colby College |image = Image:Colby College Seal.jpg |motto = Lux Mentis Scientia |established = 1813 |type = Private |president= William "Bro" Adams |city = Waterville |state = ME |country = USA |campus = Rural |undergrad = 1,821 |faculty = 158 full time and 39 part time |mascot = Mule |free_label = Athletics |free = 32 varsity teams, 6 club teams |website= www.colby.edu |}} Colby College, founded in 1813, is one of the United States of America's oldest independent liberal arts colleges. Its 714 acre (2.9 km²) campus is located on Mayflower Hill in Waterville, Maine. One thousand, eight hundred students from more than 60 countries attend the College. Colby offers 53 major fields of study, and uses project-based learning. Volunteer programs and service-learning take many students into the surrounding community. More than two thirds of Colby students participate in study-abroad programs.

Currently, Colby is in the midst of a major campus building program, including a building for the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement, and has created a new program in neuroscience.

With Bates College and Bowdoin College, Colby is one of three small liberal arts colleges in Maine. Colby College competes in NESCAC, an athletic conference of 11 Northeast NCAA Division 3 schools commonly referred to as the "Little Ivies."

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Academics

Colby is a well-regarded academic institution and is consistently ranked among the top 20 liberal arts colleges in the country by U.S. News & World Report. In 2006, Colby was ranked 20th.

Major options include: African-American Studies, American Studies, Anthropology, Art, Biology, Chemistry, Classics, Computer Science, East Asian Studies, Economics, English, Environmental Studies, Environmental Science, French Studies, Geology, Geoscience, German Studies, Government, History, International Studies, Latin American Studies, Mathematics, Music, Philosophy, Physics, Psychology, Religious Studies, Russian Language and Culture, Science, Technology, and Society, Sociology, Spanish, Theater and Dance, and Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Students may choose from some 500 courses in 53 major fields and have wide flexibility in designing independent study programs, electing special majors, and participating in internships and exchange programs. Historically, Colby has valued understanding of and concern for others, diversity of thought and culture, open access to campus groups and organizations, and personal and academic honesty.

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Libraries

Colby’s libraries—Miller Library, the Art and Music Library, and the Science Library—have a rich collection of more than 900,000 books, journals, microfilms, music scores, sound recordings, videos/DVDs, and manuscripts. They provide access to more than 100 Internet databases and more than 6,500 electronic journals. Computer labs, wireless networks, laptops, study areas, and a listening center are available for student use. Miller Library stands at the center of campus and houses the humanities and social science collections, the College archives, and Special Collections. Miller also contains a computer cluster and study areas that are open around the clock, and it is equipped with wireless Internet access. The Art and Music Library, in the Bixler Art and Music Center, features an extensive collection of art and music books, journals, sound recordings, music scores, a computer lab/listening center, and study spaces. Internet ports and wireless access are provided. The Science Library, in the F.W. Olin Science Center, houses books, journals, videos, and topographic maps that support programs in the natural sciences, computer science, and mathematics. Study areas with Internet access are available.

An open-stack system allows easy access to more than 900,000 items, and the online catalog and the library’s electronic indexes and Internet files are available on library workstations and computers campus-wide. The collection strongly supports all curriculum areas and contains more than 1,300 currently received print journals and another 8,500 electronic journals, many long runs of retrospective periodicals, and domestic and international daily newspapers. The Colby libraries are a repository for U.S. and Maine state documents.

As a member of both the Colby-Bates-Bowdoin consortium of libraries and Maine Info Net, Colby provides access to a merged catalogue of more than six million items and daily courier service from libraries in Maine. A new consortium, NExpress, comprising Colby, Bates, Bowdoin, Northeastern, Wellesley, and Williams, provides additional access to research materials. Reference librarians and interlibrary loan staff help researchers identify and obtain additional resources. Ten professional librarians provide research assistance to students, faculty, and outside researchers. Instruction in the use of the library and its research materials is offered throughout the curriculum, from an introduction in beginning English classes to in-depth subject searching using sophisticated tools in upper-level classes.

Miller Library’s special collections of first editions and manuscripts have achieved international recognition. The Edwin Arlington Robinson Memorial Room, named for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Maine poet, contains his books, manuscripts, letters, and memorabilia. Colby’s Thomas Hardy Collection is one of the most extensive in the country. Other authors represented in the Robinson Room include A.E. Housman, Sarah Orne Jewett, Kenneth Roberts, Henry James, Willa Cather, John Masefield, William Dean Howells, and Thomas Mann.

The John and Catherine Healy Memorial Room contains the James Augustine Healy Collection of Modern Irish Literature, with inscribed copies, manuscripts, and holograph letters of William Butler Yeats, Sean O’Casey, James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, and others. The Healy Collection has 7,000 primary and critical sources representing the Irish Literary Renaissance, 1880-1940. The Alfred King Chapman Room houses the College archives, which hold more than 4,000 manuscript files pertaining to Colby alumni, faculty, and staff dating from 1813 to the present. The archives include an extensive collection of books by Colby graduates and faculty members.

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Fraternities

In 1984, following an investigation of campus life commissioned by the Board of Trustees, a decision was made to withdraw recognition from Colby’s fraternities as they were seen to be "exclusionary by nature". The fraternity decision opened up housing throughout the campus to all students on an equal basis, and it created opportunities for students to play a significant role in governance at Colby. Student-faculty collaboration has long been an important part of the culture, and programs to enhance those relationships were instituted.

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Student Body

Today Colby’s 1,800 students, evenly divided between men and women, come from virtually every state and about 70 foreign countries. In 2005 Colby was presented the Senator Paul Simon Award for Campus Internationalization. The College is a leader in environmental awareness and has won environmental awards for its commitment to sustainable practices on campus, including an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Environmental Merit Award for 2003 and two Maine Governor’s Awards for Environmental Excellence, in 2002 and 2004.

Alumni, now numbering more than 23,000, are represented in all 50 states and 75 foreign countries. Alumni remain engaged with the College through alumni programs, affinity groups, and a directory and related services online, all offered by the Office of Alumni Relations.

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Student Life on Campus

The students of Colby have only half-jokingly been described as a group that "works hard, plays hard, and spends the rest of the time recovering". While studies do take up a significant portion of the student's time, the college has made a great effort to encourage free events on campus, specifically through the creation in 2003 of a Student Programming Board (SPB). This student-run organization sponsers multiple programs every week ranging from dances to special lectures to bingo nights to large scale live performances. In the past, SPB has brought such acts as Ben Folds, Dane Cook, and Matisyahu. In addition to SPBs programming, numerous clubs on campus will often put on all school events.

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Historical timeline

  • 1813—the Massachusetts Legislature grants a charter to the Maine Literary and Theological Institution
  • 1818—Rev. Jeremiah Chaplin is selected by the Board of Trustees as the College's first president, classes are first taught in Chaplin's home starting in the fall
  • 1821—the Maine Legislature empowers the Institution to grant degrees and its name is changed to Waterville College
  • 1822—George Dana Boardman becomes Colby's first graduate
  • 1832—planting of the Boardman Willows
  • 1833—Rev. Rufus Babcock becomes Colby's second president
  • 1867—name of the college changed to Colby College to honor its benefactor Gardner Colby
  • 1869—dedication of Memorial Hall, the first Civil War memorial erected on a college campus, to honor Colby men who died in the war
  • 1874—Sigma Kappa Sorority is founded by Colby's first five female students
  • 1875—Mary Caffrey Low becomes Colby's first female graduate, she was the valedictorian of her class
  • 1923—the White Mule becomes Colby's mascot as the result of an editorial written by Joseph Coburn Smith in the student newspaper, The Echo
  • 1937—groundbreaking for the new campus located on Mayflower Hill
  • 1951—the last class takes place on the old campus in Coburn Hall


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Famous alumni

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Points of interest

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Further reading

  • Fotiades, Anestes. Colby College 1813-1963: A Venture of Faith (1994)
  • Marriner, Ernest Cummings. The History of Colby College (1962)
  • Marriner, Ernest Cummings. The Man of Mayflower Hill: A Biography of Franklin W. Johnson (1967)
  • Marriner, Ernest Cummings. The Strider Years (1980)
  • Soule, Bertha Louise. Colby's Roman, Julian Daniel Taylor (1938)
  • Soule, Bertha Louise. Colby's President Roberts (1943)
  • Whittemore, Edwin Carey. The History of Colby College (1927)
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External links

Template:NESCAC

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