Faculty feature: Professor Arterberry shares her experiences

Professor and developmental psychologist Martha Arterberry reflected on her early life experiences, and how they set the ball in motion for the changes that would ensue.

“I never thought I would become a psychologist or a faculty member. Growing up, I really liked babysitting and being around little kids,” Arteberry said.

“My dad was convinced that I needed to be a medical doctor, and when I got into college, I was just trying to figure out what to do. At the same time, as a hobby, I was always doing art.”

Although Arterberry studies children’s memory and is somewhat skeptical about what recall really is, she remembers much from her childhood.

In an interview with The Colby Echo, she stated that her earliest memory was “decorating [her] bike for the hometown Fourth of July parade.”

Her drive to exercise her creativity was thematic throughout her life. Around age five Arterberry experienced something that provided her with a newfound sense of confidence in her artistic pursuits.

“So I made this paint- ing, and it’s just a pot with a bunch of flowers, but [my mother] framed it in this really, really nice frame,” Arteberry explained. “It took me a while to realize the importance of what it means for a parent to take something that you made and elevate its importance by putting it in a really nice frame. So, it’s more than just a piece of artwork; it’s a sign of my family’s support for my creative work.”

There is a lot of pressure on college students to pursue a career in something practical, as opposed to something they are passionate about.

In college, Arterberry defied this expectation, allowing her love of art and desire for a successful career to mingle. She reveals how one college class in- spired her to do just that.

“In the class, we were talking about how we see the world and the information that we use to see the world. For me, that connected really well with what the artist is trying to do,” Arteberry said. “The artist is trying to depict how we see the world, or play around with the traditional ways we might see the world and present a different way of seeing the world.”

These days sprung forth new beginnings for Arterberry.

“I found out that that professor had a baby lab where he was asking questions about how babies see the world. For me, it all popped together,” Arteberry explained. “Here I am studying children, thinking about artists and representation and how we do this on a daily basis with the in- formation that is out there and how we come to understand our world through our experiences.”

She disclosed how, at this point in her life, everything started to fall into place. Right out of college, she was able to find work as a full time researcher at a baby lab and could not have been more ready to embark on her chosen career path.

“I moved to Minnesota to do it. I am going to do this job wherever anyone would hire me. I didn’t know where Minnesota was,” Arteberry exclaimed. “I had to look it up on a map, but I moved to Minneapolis to work at the University of Minnesota,” Arterberry exclaims.

This was not the only pivotal moment of Arterberry’s adult life. After leaving graduate school, she taught at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania for 17 years and needed a change in scenery.

“I was at a point where I was just wondering whether I wanted to keep doing this,” Arteberry said. “I got the opportunity to come to Colby, and it totally confirmed that I did. It was something about needing to be in a new place that helped.”

Outside of teaching, Arterberry enjoys early mornings, riding her bike through Maine, and sometimes traveling. Her favorite place that she ever traveled was New Zealand.

“We went in our summer, which was their winter. So, we ended up staying just in the North Island. Everywhere we went, it was just a fascinating place,” Arteberry said. “The geography changes so much in a relatively small area. I felt like it was a living geology course because you had the coast line, you had volcanoes, geysers, and sulfuric stuff coming out of the land. It was just so interesting.”

~Jenna Boling `24