They gathered on the wharf at Port Clyde and motored out to the islands, and soon the artist Jamie Wyeth showed up in his boat, joining them. His late parents, Andrew and Betsy Wyeth, had purchased the islands decades before and developed them into a model of coastal conservation, maritime sustainability, and artistic ingenuity. Over several hours, Wyeth showed them around the island landscape, opening the buildings, traversing the terrain, and sharing a meal. Later that day, he hosted them at his home in Tenants Harbor.

Members of the Colby group had barely settled in for their return drive to campus when the president declared his intentions.

KALIMPONG, India

For several weeks in January, 14 Colby students and their professors joined the river’s flow almost every morning as they made their way a few miles from the peaceful farm where they stayed to the bustling streets of the market town below. The community, located less than 100 miles from a high mountain pass that connects India to Lhasa, Tibet, served as an important gateway for trade between those nations during the first half of the 20th century.

“I love that the College is clearly embracing research in the space of artificial intelligence and has dedicated resources and funds to do that,” said Ferrillo, who will join the faculty this fall as an assistant professor of government specializing in AI. “I wanted both of those things, as well as an excellent intellectual community. Having all of them in one place is amazing. The promise of the Davis Institute for AI is that I can do all of these things with institutional support, amazing guest speakers, and timely, interesting events. I am excited to collaborate with everyone there.”

With the addition of Ferrillo, the Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence has hired four professors since its inception in 2021 with funds from an endowment provided by the Davis family and trustee of its charitable foundation, Andrew Davis ’85, LL.D. ’15. Ferrillo will join Tahiya Chowdhury from computer science, who was the first postdoctoral fellow at Davis AI and will become an assistant professor in July; Alejandra Ortiz, assistant professor of environmental studies; and Ben Baker, assistant professor of philosophy.

The professors represent all four academic divisions at Colby—Social Sciences, Humanities, Natural Sciences, and Interdisciplinary Studies—satisfying a key goal of the Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence to provide new pathways for faculty to research, create, and apply machine learning across disciplines.

“Each of these faculty members is deeply interdisciplinary, and each covers some of the most important issues facing us today—climate change, the role of AI in our collective governance and social lives, the basic understanding of human cognition, and the application of AI across everything,” said Amanda Stent, founding director of the Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

In addition to the four professors hired with the Davis AI endowment, several other Colby faculty members also work with the institute, including current, former, and future faculty fellows Veronica Romero ’09, assistant professor of psychology; Hong Zhang, professor of East Asian studies; Dale Kocevski, associate professor of physics and astronomy; Sonya Donaldson, assistant professor of African-American studies, José Martínez, assistant professor of music, and Kara Kugelmeyer, faculty librarian. In total, 22 percent of Colby faculty are involved with the institute in one way or another, Stent said.

In addition, a rotating cadre of postdoctoral fellows play key roles in helping students and faculty with their research.

BENTONVILLE, ARK.

Through Lunder Institute @, a new initiative by the Lunder Institute for American Art, Colby is hosting timely, public discussions at a half-dozen top museums to help their leaders and curators grapple with a question that goes to the core of their existence and sets the path for the future:

What is the state of American art?

“The Lunder Institute serves as a compass for practitioners in the field, and it helps us to think about the many different directions that we have yet to explore,” said Erica Wall, executive director of the Lunder Institute, during a March event at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. “But what we’re really asking is what is the state of America, and how is that reflected in our exhibitions, discourse, and scholarship?”

NOTABLE
Alice F. Mason ’45

While Alice Mason was building her reputation as the queen of Manhattan real estate, she harbored a secret. One kept for more than 45 years.

She was a Black woman passing as white.

Alice Christmas Mason ’45 helped define the social structure of New York’s elite starting in the 1960s as a real estate broker and social arbiter. She died Jan. 4, 2024, in her rent-stabilized apartment in Manhattan. She was 100.

“Alice was more matchmaker than real estate broker. She knew the buildings, the co-op boards, and the buyers and greased the wheels for all concerned,” said author Michael Gross.

She was born Alice Christmas in 1923 to a Philadelphian “bourgeois family of color,” so fair-skinned they were dubbed the White Christmases. Her race-conscious mother had decided her daughter should “pass” and live in the white world “so as not to face the era’s prejudices toward people of color,” the New York Times reported in her obituary.