Residential Education and Living

Almost all Colby students live on campus, some faculty members live in the residence halls, students regularly take professors to lunch and professors invite students to their homes for dinner. These interactions foster close relationships that pay off in academic student-faculty collaboration as well as in lifelong friendships between students and mentors.

The College's plan for residential life, Colby 360, has as its guiding principle the idea that a residential college affords students opportunities to learn and develop in all aspects of their college lives. It is driven by five learning outcomes: development of life skills; appreciation of and engagement with diversity and human difference; understanding democracy and civic responsibility; promoting wellness and healthy lifestyle choices; and leadership education for the 21st century.

Residence Halls

All of the residence halls are co-ed and, except for the Alfond senior apartments, all of them mix students from all four classes. Housing choices offer variety, not only in location and style but with options for chem-free halls (chosen by more than 15 percent of students) and quiet dorms.

Dialogue Housing, inaugurated in 2005, permits students with a shared academic interest to incorporated it in a residence hall. Examples have included the Green House (environmental), a Spanish-language house, and a music-and-art house. Students with special dietary restrictions are eligible for the co-op, housed in Mary Low with access to a kitchen for meal preparation.

Most of Colby’s residence halls and all dining halls have been renovated in recent years. Two halls on Roberts Row, Perkins-Wilson and Pierce, renovated in 2009, received LEED gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Kim Kenniston, Associate Director of Campus Life for Residential Education and Living
The Associate Director is responsible for Colby's residential life program, including Colby's faculty resident and faculty associate programs. One significant focus of Residential Education and Living is to work to connect the outside of the classroom experience with the work going on inside the classroom. This is accomplished through programs such series of residence hall Book Seminars taught by professors in the residence halls.

Katrina Danby, Assistant Director of Campus Life for Residential Education and Living
The Assistant Director's responsibilities are the direct supervision of the Head Resident program. She is responsible for the hiring, placement and training of the HR's. Specifically she works with the CL-6 educational programming model, which works to incorporate six different educational elements into the HR's programming.