Colby College today announced it has received a $150-million lead commitment for a new science complex that will catalyze a half-billion dollars of investment in science and technology. The anonymous gift is the largest in Colby’s history and one of the most generous for any liberal arts college. The new funding will elevate Colby’s role in Maine’s burgeoning science ecosystem, create new engineering and public health programs to enable faculty and students to lead in new and emergent fields, and make it possible for the College to build a state-of-the-art science complex.
Full story here: https://news.colby.edu/story/colby-college-receives-the-largest-gift-in-its-history/
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Fantastic donation and interesting article. They are also planning on adding some engineering degrees as well.
Looking at this announcement along combined with Pres. Baucomb’s comment that he sees Middlebury as more like Dartmouth than Williams in some ways it makes wonder ponder whether or not we might be seeing an emerging future direction for some of the NESCAC schools?
It does feel to me like the tide continues to shift in favor of LACs beefing out their offerings in the TE parts of STEM.
Old school Arts and Sciences purists may object, but I actually agree that these days, people with TE degrees are not just restricted to narrow related professional paths, they are showing up in government, law, business, and so on. So this sort of thing is actually really important in my view:
“Expanded science and engineering programming at Colby in this moment represents an incredible opportunity for our students to take a human-centered approach to science and technology,” said Colby’s Provost Denise Bruesewitz. “Students who join the Colby community with an interest in STEM get the best of both worlds, in the sense that they directly engage in leading-edge scientific research as collaborators with Colby faculty and our incredible network of partner research institutions, with all the advantages of a holistic liberal arts education. Our students will be prepared to be the next generation of science and tech leaders.”
Then adding a four-year engineering program is a capital-intensive project, but if you get the capital . . . seems like a solid idea these days.
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