President, Karen Finocchio Lubeck ’92
Vice President, Henry Geng ‘ 13
Secretary, Flora Chan ’11
Treasurer, Donald McDade ’74
Staff Liaison, Stephanie Dumont, Assistant Director of Alumni Engagement & Friends of Bates Athletics
Advisor, Marianne Cowan ’92, Associate Director, Bates Center for Purposeful Work

• Annual membership is on a calendar fiscal year (January 1^st – December 31^st ) 
• State of ME annual report and IRS 990-N have been filed and are up to date
• All financial information for TCK, a 501 (c)(3) organization, is stored in QuickBooks
• Total income in 2020 was $9,110.25.  Although less than both 2019 and 2018, TCK managed the funds well to support Bates students.  We distributed $15,300 to Purposeful Work, the Coat Fund, and supported the Senior Gift Match.  Our operating expenses were $601.54; our net (Loss) for the year, however, was ($6,791.29)

The pandemic impacts us all and will be with us well into 2022.  Thank you for your meaningful College Key gifts in response to our dues appeals via newsletters and by social media.  On behalf of students and the programs we support, thank you.  Please send your dues/gifts each year.

Sincerely,
Donald W. McDade ’74
Treasurer, The College Key

The College Key’s engagement activities have historically required a close partnership with the Bates College Office of Advancement and the utilization of its constituent database, web design, and digital marketing platforms. In addition, the Key has several internal systems and tools that have been implemented over time to manage its activities, such as Wufoo, Quickbooks, and Paypal. While these tools facilitate several of the Key’s core functions of gift processing and communications, the Key has struggled with these tools’ lack of transparency and responsiveness in a way that has been detrimental to our ability to engage Key members. For example, it is challenging and time-consuming to produce a single member’s dues history upon request. 

As part of our continued efforts to streamline and consolidate our systems and processes with the goal of improving the College Key membership experience, the Key plans to implement an integrated constituent relationship management (CRM) system in the coming year. Once up and running, an integrated CRM will reduce overhead costs by consolidating the tools and products that the Key uses to fulfill its mission into one unified service. Perhaps most importantly, the marketing and donor engagement tools contained within an integrated CRM will allow us to better communicate the Key’s impact to you, our members, in the years to come.

“One thing that I learned is that the people who everyone else marginalized became instrumental to my success.” -Stephanie Smith ’87 Colonel, USMC (Retired)

In April, the College Key welcomed Stephanie Smith ’87, a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, having served for 27 years as an international lawyer and a Commanding Officer.  After retiring from the Marine Corps, she taught high school in Baltimore, MD for five years.  Proving that fact really is fancier than fiction, she decided to pursue a dream of documentary filmmaking.  After getting a graduate certificate in Documentary Filmmaking from George Washington University, she recently pursued an MFA in Film and Media Studies at American University.  She hopes to make documentaries on subjects that have political, cultural, and social impact.

In the first of two virtual presentations “Leadership is a Two-Way Street,” Stephanie guided the student audience through impactful stories that shaped her as a leader and role model for others. Her words were not only inspirational but also poignant for all who attended. In her second presentation, “Who Woulda Thunk It? From Bates to Iraq and Afghanistan and Back” her story from Bates to U.S. Marine Corps brought the audience on a journey where insurmountable challenges and sizable barriers did not deter her determination and leadership. 

Annually, the College Key is proud to host the Distinguished Alumni in Residence (DAIR) program which brings together students and alumni to learn from impactful stories from remarkable alumni. A few recent DAIR honorees include Hubspot’s Chief People Officer Katie Burke ’03, The Boston Globe’s Editor Brian McGrory ’84, U.S. Congressman Jared Golden ’11, and Microsoft’s Senior Researcher Susan Dumais ’75. If you have a potential nominee for a future DAIR, please email thecollegekey@bates.edu with information including the nominee’s name, class year, and a brief summary of the nominee’s qualifications for consideration.   

We were honored to hear her words and beyond proud to have her as the 2021 Distinguished Alumna in Residence. 

Purposeful Work at Bates encourages and equips students to discover and consider the threads that weave their skills and strengths, interests and values, work and studies together to create a meaningful life.

Along with the classic resume, cover letter, interview and internship/job search advising done by the counselors and staff at the Center for Purposeful Work, distinctive Purposeful Work programming across all aspects of campus life help instill this way of thinking in today’s Bates students. Alumni connections have always played a vital role in supporting students’ exploration of career paths, and students are grateful for every bit of contact they have with alumni in whose footsteps they might follow.

Last year Purposeful Work Job Shadows (formerly known as CDIPs) were all virtual and students didn’t need to pay to travel to alumni workplaces. This year, your places of work are opening up, and many students are planning to travel to visit job shadow hosts onsite – a great opportunity when possible for students in this marketplace emerging from the pandemic. We expect students with financial need will request several thousand dollars in support from the Center for Purposeful Work for that travel and related costs (suitable shirt and tie for a workplace, for example, or subway fares), and hope to be able to continue the College Key’s annual support of this transformative program for students with need to build their experience and exposure and develop their network within the alumni community. Thank you for considering supporting this program through the Key!

As many of you know, we have a very special tradition of helping students with financial needs from warm climates equip themselves with coats, boots, hats, and gloves for the cold Maine winters. This College Key financial support has been happening in a warm (pun intended) and quiet way for many years — some of you readers may have been on those fun Freeport trips with Dean Davis, Dean Reese, or others when you were students! I think we could all agree that this caring support for the individual students on campus is an important part of what makes Bates special and what nurtures our Bates community. Thank you all for making it possible for The College Key to continue this vital outreach to our students for their wellbeing and sense of belonging.

Annually, the College Key presents the Distinguished Service Award in recognition of the dedication and excellence offered to the college by truly distinguished members of the faculty and staff, the College Key has presented the Distinguished Service Award annually during Reunion Weekend since 1993.
The 2021 Distinguished Service Award is proudly presented to Professors of Earth and Climate Sciences Michael Retelle and J. Dykstra “Dyk” Eusden Jr. ’80. While their introductory courses are affectionately may be referred to as “Take a hike with Mike and Dyk,” their impact throughout the Bates community runs deep and broad. For 34 years, Mike and Dyk have welcomed and encouraged primary research in their scholarly work from Bates students. Their teachings stretch from the walls of Carnegie to the Arctic Glaciers, the rocky Maine coast, and the South Islands of New Zealand. Their academic passion is infectious, no matter the major.

This unrivaled Geology teaching friendship epitomizes the love of learning. “He’s been my Geology brother for multiple decades,” noted Dyk. For 34 years, this dynamic duo infused a love of learning to any student who was fortunate to spend time with them. Hear from both Mike and Dyk about being the 2021 Distinguished Service Recipients.

On an individual level, each professor is beyond talented in his scholarly work. In a 2018 Bates article, Mike notes, “It’s fun seeing [STUDENTS] experience something you’re so passionate about,” he says. “Importantly, it’s training the next generation of scientists, if not polar scientists.”

Dyk is an intrepid field scientist who brings his students into the world so they can see, discover, learn from, and record geologic history, whether on Maine coastal islands or in the U.S. West. He is an expert on the regional geologic history and ancient tectonics of the Appalachians, as well as active tectonics in the South Island of New Zealand. A past recipient of the Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching, he involves students as co-authors of papers, research posters, and mapping projects. A leader in the sciences at Bates, he has served as department chair, division chair, and co-chair of the STEM Facilities Review Committee that has developed options to meet the needs of current science programs as well as anticipated program growth.

Dyk teaches courses in bedrock geology that all have a strong field component of experiential learning. His two favorite courses are Short Term’s “Geology of the Maine Coast by Sea Kayak” and “Katahdin to Acadia: Exploring Maine Geology.” At the upper level, he teaches courses structural geology, Appalachian geology, and GIS. These courses also involve lots of hands-on, outdoor and indoor, experiential learning.

Mike Retelle teaches courses that focus on Earth surface environments and records of environmental change. Currently, Mike is involved in several research projects in the high latitude North Atlantic region. He began his arctic research as a graduate student working in the Canadian arctic focusing on the glacial and sea-level history and high-resolution records of climate change preserved in annually layered lake sediments. Mike has been working in Svalbard, Norwegian high arctic since 2005. He co-led a summer research program for undergraduates, the Svalbard REU Project, sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Arctic Natural Sciences program. This program is now a summer research course in the Arctic Geology Department at UNIS, the Norwegian University Centre in Svalbard, in which Mike is the lead instructor. Mike and students have worked on a collaborative project in Finnmark, northern Norway since 2014 with colleagues and students from Iowa State University, Norway, and the Netherlands in a study of present and past marine climate recorded in the annual growth patterns of the long-lived bivalve Arctica islandica.

Closer to home Mike works with Bates Geology students in a beach monitoring program on the coast in Central Maine on the beaches of the Phippsburg Peninsula. Mike’s summer coastal interns work out of the Bates Shortridge Coastal Center. The research focuses on topographic profile surveys on beaches including Popham Beach State Park, Seawall Beach at the Bates Morse Mountain Reserve, and pocket beaches on Cape Small.

A hearty congratulations to Professors Retelle and Eusden for 34 years of impactful teaching.

As members of The College Key, we invite you to nominate outstanding alumni for membership into the honorary organization!

The College Key was formed in 1992 by the merger of the College Club, which was founded in 1891, and the Bates Key, established in 1936. The purpose of the College Key is to recognize outstanding Bates alumni(ae); encourage and recognize student academic and extracurricular achievement; support academics, student life, and campus improvement; provide student aid including scholarships and other kinds of financial assistance; and contribute to the general the welfare of the College.

In addition to faculty and staff nominated students in the Senior and, sometimes, Junior classes who are inducted each year, The College Key selects new alumni members based on the following criteria: service to the College, leadership in the community, success in a chosen field, and character.

In preparation for your reunion, please consider nominating classmates who have dedicated themselves to Bates in ways consistent with The College Key’s purpose who are not currently organization members. If you would like to nominate a Bates alum, please complete this nomination form by April 30, 2022.

The Bates College Key welcomed 23 new alumni(ae) members at the 2021 annual meeting. The Alumni nomination committee is composed of four key members (Sally Ehrenfried ’89, Gretchen Shorter Davis ’61, Teddy Rube ’16, and Flora Chan ’11). In our selection process, we based the nomination on four areas of assessment: service to the College, leadership in the community, success in chosen field, and character. We received nominations from alumni, staff, and faculty through our online nominations form.

Alumni Inductees – June 24, 2021

The student College Key inductees for 2021 were: