Madison Louis ’13 is making the most of her College experience. Only a sophomore, the Wellesley, MA native and Grossman resident serves as assistant director of the Colby Volunteer Center (CVC), leads COOT2 trips and organizes alternative spring break trips to New York City. She is also an active member  of the Colby Hillel group and volunteers in the Writer’s Center. In addition to this impressive resume of extracurriculars, Louis double majors in international studies and French and plans to minor in anthropology. In her rare moments of free time, Louis can be found running the trails near the Hill. She names the Messalonskee Stream trail, which is located off of Rice Rips Road, as her favorite.

Along with her fellow CVC members, Louis has recently been busy organizing events such as the recent Polar Bear Dip and the upcoming Colby Cares Day. Louis said that the CVC is in the process of planning Johnson Day, a resurrected College tradition in which students spend the day working together to beautify the campus.

    Louis expressed excitement about her upcoming alternative spring break trip to the Big Apple. She and two other leaders are taking “11 students to New York City to volunteer in soup kitchens and food pantries for the week,” Louis said. Louis’s fellow sophomores Kelsey Naruse and Larissa Lee, who went on last year’s New York City trip will serve as her co-leaders. After last year’s trip, “we started trying to figure out how to make it happen again,” Louis said, adding that the three started planning this year’s trip in August of 2010. “We’re trying to make it more of a permanent opportunity for Colby students.” 

    This past fall, Louis co-led the Camden Hills B COOT2 trip with Raleigh Werner ’11 and Chip Boghossian ’12. “It was a really good experience,” Louis remarked, “it’s so different being on the other side of the equation,” she said, referring to her first-year experiences as a COOT2er.
    The Foss dining hall devotee thoroughly enjoys living in Grossman, which is the College’s art and music dialogue house. “It’s a small dorm, but I like it there,” she said. “There are good kids in there.”

    Next year, Louis plans to study abroad in a French-speaking country, though she had not yet pinpointed her exact destination. She says that she is seriously considering going to Switzerland. “I’m interested in going [there] because I can speak French, and also because [so many] international organizations are based in Geneva.”

    As one might expect from such a highly involved student, Louis cites the school’s sense of community as her favorite aspect of life at the College. “My favorite thing about [the College] is the community here and the fact that you can walk across campus and say hi to all [sorts of] different people,” she said.

    Given the impressive  activities that Louis has already accumulated halfway through her college career, it’s clear that Louis will certainly continue to leave her mark on the Hill in the years to come.