Colby, Bates and Bowdoin work as partners to run study abroad centers in Cape Town, South Africa, London, England, and Quito, Ecuador. The centers offer a wide variety of courses designed to make full use of the instructional and cultural resources of the regions.

The CBB program was launched in 1999 with funds from a 1998 Mellon grant. To date, 300 students and 25 faculty members from the three colleges have participated. As a rule, students are in their junior year upon participating in the study abroad program.

“While the focus of the grant is international study, it has promoted wonderful collaboration among the faculty of the three colleges in Maine as they plan programs together,” said Stephen W. Sawyer, associate dean of students at Bates and director of the college’s off-campus study programs.

“The grant has allowed our faculty to join our students abroad, to share the wonderful learning experiences that occur in the field,” Sawyer said.

CBB faculty and students come from varied disciplines, and courses have been offered abroad in anthropology, art history, biology, English, ecology, government, history, mathematics, performing arts, sociology and Spanish language.

Participating students receive instruction by CBB faculty and local scholars. Courses are given at the program’s three centers and at the University of East London and Cape Town University. Local field trips are integrated into the courses.

Students also interact with local families, and do community service and internships. In Cape Town, CBB students tutor high school students in basic science, work in an HIV-awareness campaign and help communities grow cash crops. In Quito, they work at schools, an orphanage, a children’s rights organization and a center for rehabilitating prostitutes. In London, students volunteer in local business, government, media and arts organizations.

The new grant from the New York-based Mellon Foundation will strengthen and solidify the management of the CBB program through support of its central administration office, which is located at Bowdoin and charged with integrating the resources, expertise and common goals of the three colleges.

The grant will support efforts to build and broaden connections between the three campuses and London, Cape Town and Quito. Increasing student enrollments, maximizing educational opportunities at the off-campus locations, making the program financially viable and funding program evaluation are also important goals of the grant.

The conference explores diversity in race, religion and sexuality. Presenters include Betsy Sweet, coordinator of curriculum development and training at the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence at the University of Southern Maine. Sweet makes the keynote speech at 10 a.m. March 2 in the Perry Atrium, Pettengill Hall.

The conference also includes panels with faculty from the three colleges, as well as presentations and performances by students and residents from the colleges’ host communities.

“The conference began last year when a group of Colby students thought that a dialogue about diversity needed to be sustained among the three campuses,” says Katie Burke, a Bates junior from Canton, Mass. “This year, we wanted an approach that included not only our campuses but the communities in which we live, and that looked more at ourselves and the world around us than at diversity as an object or some intangible idea.”

Among conference topics are Somali culture in Lewiston, sexuality on campus, the impact of college on students’ religious beliefs, race relations in schools, town-gown relations, and the effects of Sept. 11 on people of Muslim belief or Middle Eastern background.

The conference begins Friday evening with a drag show produced by the Bates advocacy group OUTfront at 7:30 p.m. in Chase Hall Lounge. Sponsored by the Bates literary journal SEED, the show will be followed by a gathering for poems and songs at 9 p.m. at the Ronj coffeehouse, 32 Frye St. Saturday’s activities begin with a reception in Perry Atrium at 9 a.m. and conclude with open-mic performances at the Ronj from 7 to 10 p.m.