Could Improve Student Interests in Sciences, Flagging Nationally for More Than a Decade.1 1 Also at Stake Was Whether Colby Coul

could improve student interests in sciences, flagging nationally formor e than a decade.11 Also at stake was whether Colby could compete with colleges that had already begun to fillthe need with new science buildings and equipment. Although the College's science facilities had been expanded in the 1970s, plan ners concluded that faculty growthand teaching changes now left Colby "two buildings short." The firstmodest step came in 1991-92 with a bridge between the Arey and Mudd buildings, providing needed seminar rooms and freeing space forfurther renov ations. Elsewhere, the admissions staff, expanded to handle a rising tide of appli cations and to support diversity initiatives, had outgrown its Eustis Building space. In 1991 Peter ('56) and Paula Lunder made the naming gift forthe new admissions home, east of Mayflower Hill Drive, mimicking a grand Maine farmhousewith windows of the interviewing offices facingirresistible views of the central mall and the library. Tbe Lunder House was opened in the fall of 1992, together with the Keyes-Arey bridge, the Lovejoy annex, and "Phase II" of improvements to the Bixler Center, including a gallery, art and music li brary, and additional storage space. The central steam plant was at once the least glamorous and most cost saving of any facilityyet built on the Hill. By the mid-198os the College was facinga choice: spend $1.5 million rebuilding and expanding the thirteen in dividual networked boilers or construct a central heating plant. Alan Lewis, director of the Physical Plant Department, wanted a single plant. Lewis, a fru gal Yankee, was pained to watch dollars drain through a patchwork of Rube Goldberg boilers and poorly insulated steam lines that kept the overhead grass green all winter. An engineering study concluded that a new plant would cost $6 million. Yasinski said it was way too much, and Lewis huddled with an old friend and respected Maine engineer, Seth Williams, to rescue his dream. If anyone could findthe fat in the proposed plan, Lewis knew it was Williams, retired presi dent of the Fels engineering company in Portland. (Lewis recalled that Wil liams once turned down a fancyfree lunch because he had brought his own bologna sandwich and didn't want to waste it.) Williams concluded that Colby could be its own general contractor and, sparing extra bells and whistles, a plant could be built for $} million, half the original estimate. It was claimed the new facilitywould pay foritself in fifteen yearswith savings that included trimming as much as 20 percent offthe annual fuel bill ($360,000 in 1992- 11. The national demand forscientists was expected to exceed supply by 35 percent by the year 2000. THE 1990S { 309 93).12 Three year and 2,500 fe et of new steam lines later, in the heat of August i993, the new plant fired up, on time and on budget. Not all of the expansion was accounted forby strateg.ic planning. In 1991 a surprise gift from local physician Alan Hume and his wife, Dorothy, provided the College with a ten-acre satelJite campus and, formany students, a new way of looking at the liberal arts. The Humes made their Colby ties through a se ries of students who, beginning in the early 1980s, lived with them in the sum mers and "shadowed" him in his surgical practice. Many went on to medical career . At the same time the couple opened their Sidney lakefrontpr operty to the men's and women's club-status crew teams whose rowers foundthe long, calm waters of Snow Pond (Messalonskee Lake) more agreeable than the large, unpredictable surface of Great Pond, where they had previously prac ticed. The Humes bui.lt them docks, a shell storage building13 and, with par ents of team members, helped purchase much of their equipment. As "god parents" of Colby crew the couple was in large measure responsible forthe teams' ability to achieve varsity status in 1993. In 1990, when the College was having trouble finding satisfactoryleader ship forthe health center, Hume, by then a Colby overseer, came out of retire ment to serve a four-year stjnt as medical director. Their 1991 gift, including 450 feetof shorefront, was later expanded with one hundred more feet on the shore as well as their home, in which they retained life tenancy. Only eight miles distant from the main campus, the new Colby-Hume Center served multiple purposes, including lake-related recreational opportunities for fac ulty, staff, and students. The visionary and restless doctor soon built a large barn, outfitted it with woodworking equipment, tacked on a double-station forge forme talworking, and began to offer Jan Plans. Just as applied art and music courses provide lifetime enjoyment forstudents, Hume believed the same was true forlearning to work with wood and metal. Lewiston, Maine, at torney Irving Isaacson shared Hume's belief and helped outfit thefor ges. Deer Isle, Maine, artisan blacksmith Doug Wilson was hired to teach. As students returned to campus with their finished work, it wasn't long before the num ber of applicants exceeded available January spaces in the shops. 12. ln fact, the plant waspaid forin savings beforethe end of the century. In addition a co-generation turbine, installed at the plant in 1999 to capture excess steam, makes about 10 percent of the campus electricity needs. 13. The Humes significantly enlarged the building in 1997 and trustees appropriately named it forthem. 310 } MAYFLOWER HILL The mundane matter of financial resources was listed last in the strategic plan, but raising money was key to achieving almost all the rest. Although the en dowment had crossed the $100 million mark (1993), Colby's portfolioranked twenty-third among the top twenty-five collegesin the U.S. News & Wo rld Re port ranking. It was clear that meeting the major goals would require a mas sive capital campaign, and in 1992, trustee Edson Mitchell '75 was put in charge of developing a campaign "nucleus fund." With the economy begin ning to swing upward, there was reason for optimism. The development office reported a record $8.2 million in gifts and pledges forthe year 1992-93, and the number of alumni donors topped seven thousand (42 percent). Marts and Lundy, the firmthat had plotted the firstcapital campaign for the new campus, was hired to suggest a goal for the coming one. Following some scratching of heads, the consultants said the goal should be no more than $75 million. Cotter and Pugh said no. Thq had bigger ideas and chose what they called "a nice round number" of $100 million. It was, they knew, an ambitious figure that would require donors to dig deeper than ever before. (Cotter re called that only a few years before heand board chair Bullock traveled to Chi cago to ask a potential donor for $5,000.) In fact the giving bar had already been raised in the establishment of named professorships. Colby began the decade with only three fully endowed chairs; in the fouryears leading up to the campaign, however, six more were added. The seventh, given on the eve of the public campaign, was from Pughand his wife, Jean (Van Curan) '55, who gave a $1-million endowed professorship in economics and added $100,000 to "pad" the chair with support for the researchwork of the incumbent. A new standard of giving was firmlyset, and before thecampaign ended at the begin ning of the year 2000, the Pugh giftwould be replicated twenty-three times. As plans were being finalized fora formal announcement of the Plan for Colby campaign, the F. W. Olin Foundation sent word that it would give $6-4 million fora fully equipped science building.14 Colby had been courting the foundation since Strider's days. In the 1994 round, seventy-nine colleges had applied. Colby was one of three to succeed. The largest single grant the College 14. Franklin W. Olin, who played baseball forthe professional Washington Statesmen (1884-84), was the founderof a small black powder factoryin Alton, Illinois, where Eli jah Lovejoy was martyred. The company became the Western Cartridge Company, which after Wo rld War I acquired the Winchester Ammunition Company that produced most of the U.S. small arms ammunition during Wo rld War II. Olin's oldest son, John, used the profitsto build Olin Industries, an early conglomerate. The Winchester Com pany operated in its original factory,about a mile fromthe Elijah Lovejoy Memorial. THE 1990S I 311 had ever received boosted the "nucleu fu nd" of the campaign to $48 million, and the announcement of the giant gift was kept secret to give special impe tus to the gala campu campaign kick-offdinner in October. In the spring, sci entists gladly surrendered their parking lot in front of the Arey Building so that work on the new Olin Building could begin. The construction marked the beginning of the largest building boom since Colby had moved up the Hill. ECHO BOOMERS More numerous than their parents, the children of baby boomers arrived on a tide of prosperity. Demographic and economic chart lines went up at the same time. Raised on video games, MTV, and the computer, echo boomers used the Internet to discover a shrunken and beckoning world. While their own diversity made them more tolerant than their predecessors, they too fo ught to findcultu ral harmony. The new media had also made them discerningsh oppers, and colleges competed fiercely fo r their fa vor. Colby captured more than its fa ir share, reach ing into the fa r cornersof the nation and the world to pluck students from the top rungs of the academic ladder.

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