A Private College for the Public Good
We celebrate these successes with this annual issue of Colby magazine. Our stories explore how students, faculty, alumni, and community partners make things better for all of us in a variety of fields and disciplines.
Colby’s efforts are a matter of obligation and responsibility, as well as an opportunity to lead boldly. At a time when higher ed is under attack, and many institutions are pulling back, Colby continues to expand outward with strategic, targeted initiatives and partnerships designed with impact and outcome for the communities they serve.
With example after example, Colby asserts the value of a gold-standard liberal arts education and why it must remain essential and accessible in a functioning society.
“When you think about colleges and universities being engines of positive change in society, that begins with our educational programs and our research. But when it extends to support our communities in many different ways, then it becomes a much more powerful model,” said President David A. Greene. “And if we do it right, then I think we can begin to change the narrative about colleges and universities in this country for the better.”
Colby is uniquely qualified to change that narrative because of its vision, its willingness to be audacious, and its proven success. We are meeting this moment—this consequential moment—by planning initiatives based on their impact on Mayflower Hill, in Waterville, across Maine, and far beyond.
Everything accomplished through the ongoing success of Dare Northward ($1 billion and counting) positions the College to lead with action. We’re not just vital to our community. We’re vital to the world.
We have credible data to measure our impact. Colby supported $2.52 billion in statewide economic output from 2019 to 2024, including $1.33 billion in the Waterville area. More than 620,000 people visited the city during that five-year period for Colby-related events, including athletics and the arts. As enrollment has grown, Colby students remain a dependable customer base, spending $47.4 million in greater Waterville over those years and much more statewide.
We present some of that data, and other measurements, throughout these pages to provide context for the scope of the work Colby is doing and why it matters when it comes to economic development and the health and sustainability of communities.
Our words and photos celebrate some of that vitality in human terms, anchored by a report that documents how Colby interacts with partners beyond Mayflower Hill to address specific needs, crises, and opportunities in areas of community resilience, the biosciences and biomedicine, public policy at the local and state levels, and in other areas.
The forward focus of this community-centered work is an investment in the sciences, specifically in biomedical engineering, environmental engineering, materials engineering, and public health. Resulting in a new cross-disciplinary science complex, this initiative will tackle Maine’s public health and environmental challenges, elevate Colby’s role in Maine’s science ecosystem, and address workforce needs in critical fields, all through the lens of the liberal arts.
The science program builds on the forward momentum of Colby’s centers, labs, and institutes. Through their external work in recent years, they have created numerous models for effective partnerships with local, regional, and national entities—in higher education, the private sector, nonprofit, and government—that support Colby’s growth in key areas of need.
As large segments of society have traded civility for hostility in their public discourse, the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs’ weekly speaker series, In the News, teaches and reminds us how to respectfully discuss divisive topics. These are important lessons, especially for today’s students, who, speaking broadly, grew up conditioned by algorithms and then were thrust into the isolation of the pandemic. Many arrived on campus without having had the opportunity to learn the nuances of face-to-face discourse and disagreement.
The positive impact of In the News has rippled across peer groups on campus and should become a model for peer institutions across the country. “It is too good to be kept a secret,” said Dexter Thomas, a multimedia journalist and two-time In the News guest. “Other colleges and universities need to start copying Colby.”
There is a rich story to be told about the Central Maine Education Consortium, a collaborative network linking K-12 schools and regional colleges to improve student and teacher experiences and promote the teaching profession. Spearheaded by Sherry Pineau Brown, a lecturer in education and coordinator of teacher education, this undertaking is personally important to Greene, a son, brother, and father of educators and a product of a public school education.
“My view is pretty simple about this,” he said. “The two most important industries in the world are education and medicine. If you can educate people and make sure their health is good, the chance that they’re going to lead long and productive lives goes way up.”
In a country with the advantages of the United States, there’s no reason to settle for anything less than excellence in both. “And so we have to fight for it,” the president said, affirming his support for Brown’s efforts. “Our kids deserve it, their parents deserve it, our communities deserve it. That is a fight that’s worth taking on.”
Greene fielded many questions when Colby introduced the Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence in 2021, the first such institute at a liberal arts college. Two prominent ones: Why are you doing this? Why be so ambitious about it?
AI was a new concept, largely unknown. But few people would ask those questions five years later. Today, the use of AI is exponential. Our piece explores how the Davis Institute is Meeting the AI Moment through faculty fellowships, courses, and in a variety of ways across the College, in all academic divisions and most areas of study. By its very nature, Davis AI is working for the public good by democratizing artificial intelligence, creating guardrails, and making certain today’s students and tomorrow’s leaders understand its ethical use.
This spring, the Colby College Museum of Art and the Lunder Institute for American Art flex on an international scale, partnering with Tate Britain in London for a traveling exhibition about James McNeill Whistler and “Whistler’s Finish,” a conservation research project dedicated to the preservation of Whistler’s artwork. Whistler is at the core of the Lunder Collection, with more than 300 objects and nearly 150 rare books, journals, photographs, and archival materials. Colby contributed key loans from the Lunder Collection for the project. In addition to providing the world with perspective on this important American artist, this partnership provides students and faculty with direct access to conservation research and technical art history.
Other stories salute the academic excellence of Colby’s first Rhodes Scholar in 25 years, Daniel Juzych ’26; the teaching and research excellence of alumna-professor Cait Cleaver ’06; and the entrepreneurial excellence of Theo Satloff ’19, Carl-Philip Majgaard ’18, and Ian Patterson ’18.
All of this is possible because of the consequential leadership of the Board of Trustees, and particularly board chair Jane Powers ’86. We’re in the fortunate position of having a board deeply rooted in Colby that can look to the future to ensure vitality 25, 50, and 100 years from now. When many boards are talking about budgetary problems and mired in the challenges of today, the Colby board does what it should be doing, which is preparing for what comes next—such as AI five years ago or the quantum revolution tomorrow.
Because Colby will not be a bystander.
Editorial Director
