| Colby College | |
|---|---|
Seal of Colby College |
|
| Motto | Lux Mentis Scientia |
| Motto in English | Knowledge is the Light of the Mind |
| Established | 1813 |
| Type | Private |
| Endowment | $622 Million (June 30, 2011) |
| President | William D. "Bro" Adams |
| Academic staff | 171 full time and 48 part time |
| Undergraduates | 1,825 |
| Location | Waterville, Maine, USA |
| Campus | Rural |
| Athletics | 32 varsity teams, 11 club teams |
| Colors |
Royal Blue |
| Mascot | Mule |
| Website | colby.edu |
Colby College is a private liberal arts college with the main Mayflower Hill campus located on Mayflower Hill in Waterville, Maine. Founded in 1813, it is the 12th-oldest independent liberal arts college in the United States. Colby was the first all-male college in New England to accept female students, the first being Mary Caffrey Low, who was the valedictorian of the Class of 1875.[1]
Approximately 1,800 students from more than 60 countries are enrolled annually. The college offers 54 major fields of study and 30 minors. More than two thirds of Colby students participate in study abroad programs. Colby College competes in the NESCAC conference and is one of the "Little Ivies".
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On February 27, 1813, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts adopted a petition to establish the Maine Literary and Theological Institution, the 33rd chartered college in the United States.[2] The petition was led by Baptists who had come to the region for missionary work, and who wanted to train their own ministers, to end the reliance on England for providing men of learning. From 1816-1818, the new institution found a home in Waterville on 179 acres of land donated by citizens. In 1818, trustees assigned the institution to Rev. Jeremiah Chaplin, a Baptist theologian. Chaplin arrived in Waterville in the summer of 1818 with his family and seven students, including George Dana Boardman, the institution's first graduate. The were put up in a vacant Waterville home, and in that home the first classes were held.[2]
After Maine separated from Massachusetts in 1820, the first Maine legislature affirmed the Massachusetts charter for the institution, but made significant changes. Students could no longer be denied admission based on religion, the institution was prohibited from applying a religious test when selecting board members, and the trustees now had the authority to grant degrees. A turning point, the Maine Literary and Theological Institution was renamed Waterville College on February 5, 1821. In 1822, Elijah Parish Lovejoy, who would become a celebrated martyr to emancipation and to freedom of the press, graduates as valedictorian. In 1825, the theological department was discontinued.[3] In 1833, Rev. Rufus Babcock became Colby's second president, and students form the nation’s first college-based anti-slavery society.[4]
During the Civil War, many young men were called away from school to join the fight; from Waterville College, Richard C. Shannon, Henry C. Merriam, and Benjamin Butler. Twenty-seven Waterville College students perished in the war, and more than 100 men from the town. In the years following the war, as was the case at many American colleges, Waterville College was left with few students remaining to pay the bills and a depleted endowment. Waterville College was on the verge of closing.[2]
In 1864, a Boston merchant, prominent Baptist philanthropist, and Maine native Gardner Colby, attended Waterville College's commencement dinner, and unbeknownst to anyone in attendance except college president Jermiah Champlin, announced a matching $50,000 donation that would allow the college to remain open. On January 23, 1867, the college was renamed Colby University in gratitude.
Now on solid financial footing and just 16 months after The Battle of Appomattox Court House, trustees of the college voted to construct a library and chapel to honor the Colby men who died in the war, making Memorial Hall the first Civil War memorial erected on a college campus. The building began construction in the summer of 1867, and dedicated at commencement in 1869.[2] At commencement in 1871, The Lion of Lucerne, a sculpture by Martin Milmore, was added as the centerpiece of the building. The lion was brought to Miller Library from Memorial Hall in January 1962.[5]
In the fall of, 1871 Colby College was the first all-male college in New England to accept female students.[3] The national Sigma Kappa sorority was founded at Colby in 1874 by the college's first five female students.[6] One of the buildings is named after the first woman to attend, Mary Caffrey Low, who was the valedictorian of the Class of 1875.[1] In the fall 1896, Colby president Nathaniel Butler, Jr. '73, having come from the University of Chicago, renamed the "university" Colby College.
In 1920, Colby celebrated its centennial, marking not the date of the original charter, but the date of its charter from the new State of Maine in 1820. In June 1929, Franklin W. Johnson was appointed president of the college. Citing a recently released Maine Higher Education Survey Report, a cramped location between the river and the railroad tracks, an aging physical plant, and lack of dining facilities for men, amongst others, Johnson began a campaign to move the college to a more adequate location.[2] Franklin's campaign to raise funds for the move were complicated by the Great Depression, but ended up including a gift from the City of Waterville - in an effort to keep Colby from relocating to Augusta, Waterville deeded 600 acres (2.4 km2) on Mayflower Hill, near the outskirts of the city, to the college.[7]
In 1937, construction broke ground on Lorimer Chapel, the first building on the new campus Mayflower Hill campus. In 1951, the last class took place on the old campus in Coburn Hall. In 1983, Colby became the first College to assign each student an e-mail address upon matriculation.
In 1984, following an investigation of campus life commissioned by the Board of Trustees, a decision was made to withdraw recognition from Colby’s Greek system as it was seen to be "exclusionary by nature".[8] The day that fraternity and sorority decision was announced happened to fall on a Sunday and was known as "Bloody Sunday" by many on the campus at the time.[9]
In 2000, William D. Adams, a demonstrated advocate of liberal arts education, became the President of Colby.[10] Adams initiated the Plan for Colby, a strategic plan that detailed aspirations and directions for the institution. To support the effort, in 2002 he kicked off Reaching the World: A Campaign for Colby, the most ambitious capital campaign in Colby history. The campaign was concluded on June 30, 2010 and raised $376 million.[11]
| University rankings (overall) | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Forbes[12] | 20 |
| Liberal arts colleges | |
| U.S. News & World Report[13] | 21 |
| Washington Monthly[14] | 31 |
Students choose from courses in 54 major fields and have wide flexibility in designing independent study programs, electing special majors, and participating in internships and study-abroad programs.[15] Colby's most popular majors are Government, Economics, and Biology. Consequently, the three majors are also some of Colby's strongest. The Economics Department is the 6th most published of any liberal arts school.[16] The Government Department's faculty are cited in media outlets including the New York Times and Washington Post, and are called to testify on Capitol Hill on a regular basis. Colby emphasizes project-based learning,[17] while volunteer programs and service learning take many students into the surrounding community.
Major options include: African-American Studies, American Studies, Anthropology, Art, Biology, Chemistry, Chemistry-Biochemistry, five options in Classics, Computer Science, East Asian Studies, Economics, Economics-Mathematics, English, Environmental Studies (Policy), Environmental Studies (Science), French Studies, Geology, Geoscience, German Studies, Government, History, International Studies, Latin American Studies, Mathematics, Mathematical Sciences, 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. Majors combining Interdisciplinary Computation with Biology, Environmental Studies, or Theater and Dance were added in 2010.[18]
Colby is very successful in its placement of graduate students. Recent placements include Harvard, Yale, MIT, Columbia, Northwestern, Dartmouth, University of Chicago, Oxford, University of Pennsylvania and Stanford. Colby has a near 100% admit rate to medical school for students with above a 3.5 GPA and an overall placement of 75% to medical school.[19]
The academic year follows a 4–1–4 with two four-course semesters plus a Winter Term session in January. The Winter Term, often called "Jan-plan", allows students to enroll in one intensive course, pursue independent research, or complete an off-campus internship.
Colby has one of most popular study abroad programs among US colleges, with over two-thirds of students studying abroad for part of their college career. Colby has its own programs in Salamanca, Spain, Dijon, France, and St Petersburg, Russia and formerly operated programs with Bates and Bowdoin Colleges in London and Cape Town.[20] Colby also has exchange programs with Pomona and Howard University.
The Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement organizes Colby's engagement in the local community, the national stage, and throughout the world.[21] The Goldfarb Center organizes and awards the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award annually;[22] it also organizes the The Morton A. Brody Distinguished Judicial Service Award,[23] the William R. and Linda K. Cotter Debate Series, the Senator George J. Mitchell Distinguished International Lecture Series, and Colby's Visiting Fellows Program. The Oak Institute for International Human Rights at Colby is a Goldfarb Center program.[24] The center also organizes Colby's civic engagement programs: the Colby Volunteer Center[25] and Colby Cares about Kids.[26]
In 1975 Colby instituted its first outdoor orientation trip. The program, which has been expanded to include on-campus orientation and is called COOT2, now offers 52 trips in the fall semester and an ICED COOT program for those students who spend the first semester of their freshman year abroad. Destinations for fall trips include hiking trips at Acadia National Park, Mount Katahdin, and other locations around Maine; canoe trips on the Kennebec and Moose Rivers, along with other trips around the state. The various trips are designed to appeal to incoming students with a variety of interests and fitness levels and more "front country" trips have been added in recent years including service- and arts-oriented options.[27] The primary goals of COOT are to ease new students' transition into college and to introduce them to the Maine's cultural and natural resources. COOT leaders are chosen from upperclass students who apply for these positions and are expected to help the students both during and after the trip with the adjustment to campus life.[27]
Together with Bates College and Bowdoin College, Colby is one of three highly selective liberal arts colleges in Maine. In 2009, Colby was ranked the 9th best liberal arts college by Kiplinger,[28] ahead of Maine rivals Bowdoin and Bates, 20th best college/university by Forbes,[29] ranking it 3rd in the NESCAC, and 21st best liberal arts college in the U.S. News & World Report rankings. Colby was named one of the "25 New Elite Ivies" by the Kaplan College Guide. Colby was also named one of "25 New Ivies" by Newsweek.[30] Colby was named to the list of the top ten environmental programs by the 2010 Fiske Guide [31] and ranked 13th by the Sierra Club rankings of America's coolest schools.[32]
Colby's 714-acre campus is situated on Mayflower Hill overlooking the small city of Waterville, Maine, located along the Kennebec River Valley in Central Maine. Colby's campus buildings vary in age from the original Mayflower Hill construction in the 1930s, to newest Diamond Building completed in 2007. Most of Colby's buildings are designed in the Georgian Revival style of the original Mayflower Hill construction, but recent architectural additions have largely branched out.
Colby’s three libraries—Miller Library, the Bixler Art and Music Library, and the Olin Science Library—have a collection of more than 900,000 books, journals, microfilms, music scores, sound recordings, videos/DVDs, and manuscripts. They provide access to more than 100 electronic databases and more than 47,500 electronic journals. Computer labs, wireless networks, laptops, study areas, and a listening center are available for student use.[33][34]
The Colby College Museum of Art, founded in 1959 with the building of the Mayflower Hill Campus, is one of the largest art museums in Maine. Admission is free to the museum, which serves both as a teaching resource for Colby College and as an active cultural institution for the residents of Maine and visitors to the state. It is notable for an entire wing dedicated to works by American painter Alex Katz, a particularly strong collection of American art, and its major outdoor sculptures by Richard Serra and Sol LeWitt. The museum is part of the Bixler Art and Music Center, a building named in honor of President J. Seelye Bixler (1942–1960) in recognition of his visionary support for the arts at Colby.[35]
The Harold Alfond Athletic Center is the center of athletic life at Colby, and home to the Colby White Mules. In addition to athletic offices, it contains[36]:
Surrounding the Harold Alfond Athetlic Center:
In addition to the on-campus facilities, the White Mules also utilize:
Colby is a residential college and almost all students live on campus.[37] The dormitories vary in design and age; some are from the original Mayflower Hill construction, with the newest addition being the Alfond Senior Apartments. Room arrangements range from singles to quads and apartment suites.
All meals on campus including catered events are served by Colby Dining Services, which operates 4 dining establishments on Campus plus the Marchese Blue Light Pub. Cotter Union is the center of student life and programming, which houses the Pulver Pavilion, Pugh Center for Multicultural Affairs, Page Commons audtiorium, and the Student Post Office. Mary Low contains the Colby Outing Club and the Mary Low Coffee House for student performances, Roberts houses student offices for the Colby Echo and the radio station WMHB.[38]
In 2004 and 2005 Colby received press for a Student Government program offering beer and wine to of-age students in a dining hall.[39] For a nominal cost, students were able to consume up to two beverages during their meal on specific Beer and Wine nights held periodically throughout the year. The program was cut but has been revived several times in recent years with alcohol served at class dinners for seniors and a few other selected nights throughout the year.
The Colby Mules compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III New England Small College Athletic Conference, and the Colby-Bates-Bowdoin Consortium. There are 16 varsity teams for women, 15 for men, and one co-ed team. The official school colors are blue and gray. Approximately 1/3 of the student population participates in one or more of 32 intercollegiate varsity sports. Colby also offers club sports, and an intramural sports program called I-Play.
In 2003 the college created a Student Programming Board (SPB) to produce social events on campus. This student-run organization sponsors 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 Wiz Khalifa, Jurassic 5, Citizen Cope, Blackalicious, Ben Folds, Ben Kweller, OK Go, Dane Cook, Talib Kweli, Matisyahu, State Radio, Lupe Fiasco, Blue Scholars, Guster, Common, Mates of State, CAKE, Bob Marley (comedian) and Naughty By Nature. In addition to SPBs programming, clubs on campus often put on all-school events.
Colby's student newspaper, The Colby Echo, has been published since 1877. The Colby Echo staff currently consists of 20 editors, who are responsible for assigning and writing articles, overseeing the production process and maintaining the Echo’s online presence. The Colby Echo editors also assign weekly articles to a team of 15 news staff writers. The Colby Echo is published every Wednesday that the College is in session, with 1,300 copies printed each week.
Inside Colby is a student publication that highlights student life by blogs, essays, photos, and videos.
WMHB 89.7 FM, is Colby's non-commercial College radio station, directed, managed, and staffed entirely by students. It has been on air since March 1949, and broadcasts new and diverse programming to Waterville, Winslow, Oakland, Fairfield and surrounding communities, and around the world on the Internet via its webcast.
The Colby Outing Club is the largest club on campus by participation. Colby also has a vibrant a cappella scene. There are six groups on campus: The Blue Lights (Men), The Colby Eight (Men), The Megalomaniacs (Co-ed), The Sirens (Female), The Colbyettes (Female), and EVE (Female). The Colby Woodsman's Team hosts the Mud Meet annually. The student run organization, Luzicare, has raised awareness and money for the malaria problem in the Republic of Sierra Leone, and the Iraqi Refugee Awareness Movement IRAM has raised awareness and money for the 4.4 million Iraqi refugees displaced during the Iraq War; this movement is first of its kind on a college campus.[40][41] Other clubs include the Colby Sailing Club, Colby Fencing Club, Ulitimate Frisbee Team, the Rugby Team, Colby Investment Club, Mock Trial, and many more.
Colby’s 1,800-plus students, evenly divided between men and women, come from virtually every state and more than 60 countries. Colby students are listed as 62-percent white, 18-percent unknown race, 14.5-percent ALANA (Asian American, Latino/a, African American, Native American), and 5.3-percent international (2009–10).[42] Colby's class of 2014 is the most diverse in its history, with 24% of its students being ALANA and 7% being international.[43]
Colby's was one of the five original schools to partner with the Shelby Davis Scholarship program for graduated from the United World Colleges, dramatically increasing the international student population.[44] Colby also participates in the Posse Foundation for multicultural scholars. In 2005, Colby was presented the Senator Paul Simon Award for Campus Internationalization.
Category:Colby College alumni
Alumni, now numbering more than 25,000, are represented in all 50 states and 75 foreign countries.[45] 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.
Category:Colby College faculty
In the Fall of 2009, Colby launched Green Colby[48] to highlight Colby's environmental policies (carbon footprint, conservation, student involvement etc.).[49] In this vein, the school has signed a number of official agreements to reduce its environmental impact, including the Governor’s Carbon Challenge and the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment.[50] [51] [52] All of the school's electricity comes from renewable sources[53] —hydro and biomass—with 10 percent of campus electricity provided by an on-campus cogeneration turbine.[50] The college has stated that all new buildings will comply with a minimum LEED silver standard, and renovated buildings will also include green features.[50] The dining halls make an effort to purchase local and organic foods, and the elimination of trays has saved 79,000 gallons of water and 50 tons of food waste annually.[50] Colby also has an ambitious composting program, which processes more than 100 tons of food and yard waste annually.[50] On the College Sustainability Report Card 2009 Colby earned a B; Colby's grade was brought down by its lack of endowment transparency and shareholder engagement.[54]
Colby has an Integrated Pest Management plan to regulate the use of pesticides, but this plan does not include a list of the chemicals used on turf, trees, or buildings.[55] There is very strong concern, expressed at the student government level, about the college's regular use of pesticides and herbicides to rid the campus of weeds.[56] Colby's own Environmental Studies Professors argue that these practices are detrimental to the health of people who come into contact with them.[57][58] Specifically, these pesticides and herbicides have been shown to damage reproductive systems in both female and male adults.[59]
Colby's alma mater is "Hail, Colby, Hail". The lyrics to the song were written by Karl R. Kennison from the class of 1906 and it is sung to the tune of "O Canada". In 1979, the second line was changed from "thy sons from far and near" to "thy people far and near."[60]
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