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From Undergraduate Leadership To Sympathetic Teaching
Martha Guernsey Colby
The Michigan Alumnus 309
The Michigan Alumnus 309
By LOLA JEFFRIES HANAVAN, '12
MARTHA GUERNSEY COLBY, '19, Ph.D.'22, Associate Professor of Psychology, is, like all her colleagues, deeply concerned about the future of liberal educa tion and the teaching profession. She believes that a teacher must have character as well as clever ness, and an exceptionally broad and thorough groundwork before specialization. Although she is very quiet by nature, her recent vigor ous writings on fundamental edu cation problems have brought her national recognition.
A westerner by birth and early education, Dr. Colby entered the University of Utah as a freshman. There she won the annual literary prize by an essay called "Old Clothes," and decided to become a writer. Shortly afterward, a fugue entitled "In Defiance of Richter's Manual of Harmony" won a conservatory award, and she decided to become a musician. But her first week as a sophomore in the biological and psychological labo ratories at Michigan changed the course of her career.
As a faculty advisor, she retains a first-hand sympathy with student problems of specialization and "liberal" balance. Dr. Colby's early interests sur vived as a vocations. In college she wrote music for the Junior Girls' Play, was Woman's Editor of the Michigan Daily, the Michiganen sian, and the campus literary magazine, Chimes. She was a member of Chi Omega, Sigma Alpha Iota, Mortarboard, Stylus, and Sigma Xi. As a graduate student, she held three University of Michigan fellowships, and her dissertation was awarded the Solis prize.
In 1926-27 she studied in Vienna on a Social Science Research Fellow ship, and in 1929 was awarded the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Fellow ship for further study abroad. At various other periods she has travelled extensively with her hus band, spending fifteen months of 1936-37 in the Orient and Near East.
Professor Colby is the author of several scientific contributions, and a member of various national and local professional organizations. As President of the Women's Re search Club in 1941, and of the Women of the University of Mich igan Faculty in 1942, she was ac tive in efforts to coordinate these organizations with war work, both national and local. She is a mem ber of the Women's War Commit tee of the University, and a Red Cross instructor for college classes in First Aid.
She is married to Walter Francis Colby, Professor of Physics, with whom she shares a deep interest in science, music, literature, languages, and plain dirt gardening.