Colby College Digital Commons @ Colby Colby Alumnus Colby College Archives 1979 Colby Alumnus Vol. 68, No. 1: Fall 1978 Colby College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/alumnus Part of the Higher Education Commons Recommended Citation Colby College, "Colby Alumnus Vol. 68, No. 1: Fall 1978" (1979). Colby Alumnus. 105. https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/alumnus/105 This Other is brought to you for free and open access by the Colby College Archives at Digital Commons @ Colby. It has been accepted for inclusion in Colby Alumnus by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Colby. Inside The Colby Alumnus The President's Page Page 1 Volume 68, Number 1 Fall 1978 Special Science Section Page 2 Published quarterly In which Gerard Piel, president and pub­ fall, winter, spring, summer lisher of the Scientific American, discusses by Colby College science and the liberal arts, Dean Marriner traces the history of science at Colby, and College editor a look is taken at the college's marvelous Mark Shankland new greenhouse. Editorial associate Richard Nye Dyer Good Fortune Brings Two Copley Portraits to the Layout and production Museum of Art Page 8 Martha Freese Shattuck Following an unusual series of events, the Photography number of Copleys in the museum rose to Mark Shankland four. Letters and inquiries should be sent to the editor, change of address notification Following Their Parents' to the alumni office Footsteps Page 10 Second-class postage paid This fall, 38 freshmen who are the sons at Waterville, Maine and daughters of Colby parents arrived at the college-an exciting event for both Postmaster generations. send form 3579 to The Colby Alumnus Colby College The Search for a President Waterville, Maine 04901 Page 11 An arduous task is now underway, and Moving? when it is completed, the college will have The Post Office charges Colby its 18th president. 25¢ for each Alumnus returned to us for lack of the proper News of the College Page 12 address. If you have moved, or plan to do so, please help by sending your new address to the People Page 21 Alumni Office, Colby College, Waterville, Maine 04901. Sports Page 22 Thanks News of the Classes Page 23 Cover photo Milestones Page 37 The Keyes and Arey Life Sciences buildings are now linked physical­ ly-by the new greenhouse. Reminiscing Inside Back Cover 75.13 The President's Page N VIEW OF THE FACT THAT THIS IS should give some evidence of recog­ I my final year in the office of Pres- nition of an age in which architec­ ident, it might be appropriate for the ture had fostered so many exciting several issues of the Alumnus be­ new forms. Furthermore, the ex­ tween now and Commencement to pense in construction of Georgian reflect some retrospective rumina­ buildings was becoming prohibitive. tions. There have been a good many The first two departures were the changes at Colby over what will Benjamin Thompson dormitories on have been nineteen years, and some the chapel hillside, and about the of them are worthy of comment. In same time the Richard Hawley this issue I will say something about Cutting physical education complex the physical changes, next time on the northern edge of the campus. something about the modifications Both were, in quite different ways, in the academic program, and in the eminently successful, and when the spring a few general reminiscent ob­ Thompson dormitories won an in­ servations. ternational award from the Ameri­ In the first few years of this ad­ can Institute of Architects we were intrusion upon the classical lines of ministration the Eustis Administra­ proud and gratified. their Georgian design. tion Building was completed and oc­ Since that time our architectural In all the construction we have cupied, and soon thereafter the ventures have been in the contem­ been engaged in during the past five Charles A. Dana dormitory de­ porary vein. The wing on the Bixler years, a series rather remarkable in signed, as it was then, for women. Art and Music Center is dramatic scope for a small liberal arts college We built a new press box (not ex­ and functional, a fine example of a during a decade of financial strin­ actly an architectural marvel) and modern addition to a classical struc­ gency, two other internal renova­ were given the Gould Music Shell, ture. tions have produced some of the which was erected on the edge of the The same architectural firm, most dramatic results. The old campus beyond and north of the · Johnson and Hotvedt, designed the Roberts Union is scarcely recog­ Coombs Baseball Field. The total Garrison-Foster Health Center, bril­ nizable in all sorts of ways once one reconditioning of Coombs Field be­ liantly placed, on the advice of our goes inside, and yet from the outside came a project in later years, and landscape architectural consultant there is relatively little change. We several athletic areas here and there Carol Johnson, in a grove of trees now have in Roberts a fine Student were landscaped and completed, between Dana and Lorimer Chapel. Union of which everyone is proud notably the soccer fields in honor of The treatment of the brick in the and to which almost every student Gilbert F. (Mike) Loebs. Utanksto Jette Gallery and Lenk Studio wing goes for one reason or another al­ the Class of 1940 and others, we of the Bixler Center is similar to the most every day. And the renovation were able to acquire the building treatment in the Health Center, and of the Runnals Union is likewise that became, with some architec­ as one stands in the middle of the mostly internal. The old gymnasium tural additions and changes, the quadrangle in front of the library has given way to the theatre, and Millett Alumni House. these two buildings appear to be the building in itself is now a Per­ It was in the mid-sixties that we bound together by a soft texture forming Arts Center. Yet the integ­ came to the conclusion we inevita­ that contrasts happily and harmo­ rity of this building named so ap­ bly reached about the architecture. niously with the classical Georgian propriately for Dean Ninetta Run­ The red brick, colonial, eighteenth­ structures that surround them. nals is intact. century Georgian style that the col­ Those two buildings paved the Still other changes have been lege architect, Jens Frederick Larsen, way for the Seeley G. Mudd Science made. The acquisition of the Colby­ had in mindwhen the new campus Building, conceived by the Alonzo Marston Preserve in Belgrade pro­ was designed in 1930, was growing Harriman firm, similar in materials, vides a splendid laboratory for the monotonous. Stately and handsome quite different in design, situated in study of our natural environment. as Georgian architecture is, there such a way that the tone of the The McPartland Music Shell makes was a certain artificiality in the rigid entire quadrangle is enriched and performances of many kinds in the symmetry as the buildings multi­ softened. And, of course, to com­ Wadsworth Gymnasium not only plied here on our rolling�illside. plete the science complex, both possible but vastly superior in tone And as the twentieth century neared Keyes and Arey (once known as the to any comparable event in the days its two-thirds mark it grew more Life Sciences Building) have been al­ and more apparent to us that Colby most completely renovated without continued on page 20 1 Why Science? by Gerard Piel, Sc.D. '60 This article has been written for the Alumnus by Gerard Piel, Sc.D. '60, one of the most gifted men of American science. Its publication coincides with the dedication of the Seeley G. Mudd Science Building and the comple­ tion, this fall, of the new Science Center. A 1937 graduate of Harvard, Piel was science editor at Life magazine from 1939 to 1944. After two years as assistant to the president of the Henry]. Kaiser Co. and associated companies, he became president and pub­ lisher of the Scientific American in 1947, a position he still retains. In the citation read at commencement in 1960 in con­ ferring a doctor of science degree, President ]. Seelye Bixler told Piel: "Committed to the idea that science can flourish only in a society that protects freedom of con­ science and that public opinion in a free society must shape the course of science itself, you have made the Scientific American a journal through which scientists can speak to their fellow citizens and laymen in turncan ask for scientific judgment on the problems on which they seek light. Your conviction that the work of tl1e laboratory makes a significant impact on society, and society one no less significant on the laboratory has en­ abled this important magazine under your inspired guidance to interpret the needs of one to the other .... Colby would honor you particularly for your realistic vision of what mind's control over nature may mean for the future and for your exposition of the role which science itself may play in the practice of the liberal arts." Piel is an overseer of Harvard College and a trustee of Radcliffe College, Phillips Academy, the American Museum of Natural History, New York University, the Mayo Foundation, and the Henry ]. Kaiser Family Foundation.He is the author of Science in the Cause of Man, 1961, and The Acceleration of History, 1972. 2 CIENCE rs AS NATURAL TO A LIBERAL EDUCATION AS ignorance of science. Public anxiety cannot much longer S literature, history, the arts and the other enterprises be appeased by the distractions of affluence and gad­ of the humanities.