Bates College is a coeducational, nonsectarian, residential college with special commitments to academic rigor and to assuring in all of its efforts the dignity of each individual and access to its programs and opportunities by qualified learners. Bates prizes both the inherent values of a demanding education and the profound usefulness of learning, teaching and understanding.
Bates was founded in 1855, more than 165 years ago, by people who believed strongly in freedom, civil rights and the importance of a higher education for all who could benefit from it. Bates is devoted to undergraduate education in the arts and science, and a commitment to teaching excellence is central to the college’s mission.
Bates was the first coeducational college in New England, admitting students without regard to race, religion, national origin or gender.The college is recognized for its inclusive social character; there are no fraternities or sororities, and student organizations are open to all.
Our Presidents
Garry W. Jenkins — In office as of July 1, 2023
The Bates Board of Trustees unanimously elected Garry W. Jenkins as Bates’ ninth president on February 27, 2023.
2012-2023 — A. Clayton Spencer
As the college’s eighth president, Clayton Spencer identified the forces shaping society and higher education and found opportunities for creative action.
Under Spencer, Bates strengthened its reputation as one of the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges by making strategic improvements in existing and emerging areas of the Bates enterprise:
Centering equity and inclusion as animating values in Bates’ curriculum, teaching, student life, and the daily work of everyone at the college
Expanding the faculty and increasing the successful recruitment and support of faculty members from traditionally underrepresented groups
Designing Purposeful Work, a nationally known program rooted in the liberal arts to prepare students for lives of meaning and purpose
Adapting and adding to the physical infrastructure at Bates, including two new residence halls and a $75 million investment in STEM facilities
In May 2014, President Spencer hears from Hyo Sun Hong ’16 (left) of Montclair, Calif., who studied graphic design during Short Term under an innovative Bates program that gives students the chance to learn professional skills from visiting practitioners. At center is Professor of Russian Dennis Browne. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College)
In teaching, learning, and research, Bates has established itself as a leader in pursuing innovative and equity-driven approaches designed to remove barriers to student learning and improve the academic experience for all students. These efforts are supported in part by major grants from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Bates invested over $75 million to create the new Bonney Science Center, renovate Dana Chemistry Hall, and improve Carnegie Science Hall. In addition to state-of-the-art labs, these facilities also offer modern classroom and collaborative study spaces for all disciplines.
“Her greatest contribution is to instill and entrust to our community the real sense of possibility of Bates as a model for the residential liberal arts in the 21st century.”
Michael Bonney ’80 Bates Trustee Emeritus, Board Chair 2010–2019
Through gifts from Bates trustees, alumni, and parents, the college established seven new endowed professorships. Three positions were designated to support a new Program in Digital and Computational Studies, announced in 2016, and three additional faculty lines were created in economics, neuroscience, and chemistry. In 2018, Bates created a seventh endowed professorship dedicated to equity and inclusion in STEM.
In addition to expanding the faculty, the college has worked hard to increase recruitment and support of faculty members from traditionally underrepresented groups. Over the past five years, the college has hired 34 new tenure-track faculty, half of whom identify as BIPOC.
Since 2015, Bates has completed a comprehensive reorganization of offices under Student Affairs: Advising and Student Support, Accessible Education, Athletics, including sports medicine and recreation, Campus Life, Counseling and Psychological Services, Global Education, Health Services, Purposeful Work, and Residence Life and Health Education.
“Clayton made truly values-driven decisions during the pandemic. What also is incredible is her ability to execute on these decisions. It wasn’t just a well-intended path. She followed through and did the right thing for Bates, for the students, for the community.”
Dr. Stacey Rizza P’20, an infectious disease expert who consulted to Bates during the pandemic
During Spencer’s tenure, the number of admission applications has increased by 67 percent, from 5,362 in 2012 to 8,937 applications for the Class of 2027. Bates has deepened its commitment to financial aid, strengthened programs for first-generation students, and expanded the percentage of enrolled students who identify as Black, Indigenous, or people of color by 56 percent, from 18 to 28 percent of the student body. Thirty-nine percent of the incoming Class of 2027 self-identify as students of color.
In 2022, Bates was chosen as one of the first five colleges to participate in the Schuler Access Initiative. Funded by the Chicago-based Schuler Education Foundation, this program will generate up to $100 million over the next 10 years — up to $50 million from the foundation to match up to $50 million from Bates donors — to expand the number of talented students at Bates from America’s lowest income families. Bates has raised $34 million from Bates families in the first year of the program to be matched by $34 million from the foundation.
“The word is sometimes overused, but she’s genuinely authentic. Who she is is who she is, and I find that incredibly grounding. She’s also served as a mentor to me to find my own groundedness. So if I had to describe Clayton, that would be it: Authentic, genuine, and caring.”
Christine Schwartz, Associate Vice President for Dining, Conferences, and Campus Events
One feature of Bates’ approach to student development that has drawn national recognition is the Purposeful Work program. It is rooted in the core principles of the liberal arts, has curricular and co-curricular aspects, and takes a four-year, developmental approach to working with students.
The concept of purposeful work is based on the premise that meaningful work, however each individual defines it, is fundamental to shaping a life; the Bates program helps students determine how to navigate the evolving worlds of work based on developing their own sense of identity, agency, and purpose.
“She cares. When you lead with passion and care, you usually get some great outcomes. And that’s what we’ve seen with President Clayton Spencer.”
Omar Sarr ’23, Economics and French and Francophone Studies Double Major
Over the past decade, Bates has undertaken a strategic program of infrastructure improvements, highlighted by major facilities projects that extend the college’s identity and resources along Campus Avenue, including Bonney Science Center, as well as Chu and Kalperis residence halls, the latter a mixed-use facility incorporating the Bates College Store and the college’s Post & Print operation.
The ongoing renovation of historic Chase Hall, to be completed in fall 2023, is designed to create a nexus for student programs and services. Bates also completed an award-winning renovation of the landmark Peter J. Gomes Chapel in 2021.
2011–12 (interim) | Nancy J. Cable
Nancy J. Cable assumed duties as interim president of Bates on July 1, 2011. She served in that capacity until July 1, 2012, when she returned to a position as a vice president, also serving as senior adviser to the eighth president, Clayton Spencer.
Cable joined Bates in early 2010 as vice president and dean of enrollment and external affairs, with responsibility for strategic enhancement in admission, financial aid, career development, and college communications, marketing and positioning.
On Oct. 22, 2012, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations announced Cable’s appointment as president, effective in the spring of 2013. Based in Jacksonville, Fla., the foundations were established in 1952 by industrialist and philanthropist Arthur Vining Davis and are dedicated to supporting education, theological education, public television and health care.
In addition to the A.V. Davis Foundations appointment, with the support of the foundations’ board of trustees, Cable will travel next summer to China as a Fulbright Specialist. Based in Hong Kong, she will work with a team of scholars on developing liberal arts education in China.
Cable has built a national reputation in higher education, compiling a distinguished record of senior leadership at highly regarded colleges and universities and in various national higher education organizations, including Guilford College, Davidson College and the University of Virginia.
2002–11 | Elaine Tuttle Hansen
Elaine Tuttle Hansen became the college’s seventh president in 2002 and served until 2011. A former professor of English and provost at Haverford College, she worked to enhance the traditional strengths of Bates: open and intense intellectual inquiry; individualized student and faculty interactions in a historic residential setting; and a community unified by the ethical principles of integrity, egalitarianism, and social responsibility.
During her presidency, the college developed greater resources for financial aid, increased diversity of the faculty and student body, strengthened environmental sustainability and stewardship, and made technological advances. Hansen undertook a range of institutional planning initiatives, including facilities master planning and academic planning.
Under Hansen, a collaborative process of strategic thinking about Bates’ future prompted the college to pursue a deeper integration of ideas and practices in the areas of arts, natural science and mathematics, and learning across the entire Bates experience. Hansen appointed teams of faculty and administrators to lead the work for each major component of the plan.
By 2011, Hansen had guided Bates through Phase I of its ambitious Campus Facilities Master Plan. A new residence hall for 150 students at the foot of Mount David opened in August 2007. A new Dining Commons, opened in February 2008, preserves the Bates tradition of centralized student dining. The renovation and expansion of historic Roger Williams Hall and Hedge Hall, completed in 2011, has created new academic facilities including state-of-the-art classrooms, faculty offices, study areas, computer labs, lounges and administrative spaces.
With a wide array of goals for her administration accomplished, Hansen announced in spring 2011 that she would step down from the Bates presidency at the conclusion of that academic year. She subsequently accepted the position of executive director of the Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth. As the third person to lead CTY since its founding in 1979, she has continued her leadership in the field of education and her commitment to helping young people with outstanding academic capabilities fulfill their potential.
1989–2002 | Donald West Harward
In 1989, an observer of the Hedley Reynolds presidency noted that Bates was somewhat isolated geographically and by temperament. Could the next president, it was asked, open Bates up to the challenges and problems facing the rest of the world?
As Bates’ sixth president from 1989 to 2002, Donald West Harward answered that question by affirming the important idea that “learning is a moral activity that carries responsibility beyond the self.” Harward helped Bates see how traditional College values of egalitarianism and social justice created a moral imperative to connect academically to the world beyond Bates. Students achieved greater opportunities to study and conduct research off campus and with their professors, and the capstone thesis program enjoyed greater integration with the rest of the academic offering.
Harward oversaw the creation of two dozen new academic programs, giving faculty the proper resources to investigate the new questions emerging where traditional disciplines bumped into each other. “You can’t just study the molecular structure of a substance,” he would say as an example, “without learning about the people who might be using the substance to create things that can destroy our environment.”
Under Harward, Bates for the first time in many years reached out institutionally to the Lewiston-Auburn community. Bates faculty and students built relationships with the community through one of the most active service-learning programs in the country. While upholding the notion that a college’s intellectual activity must remain for the most part cloistered, Harward would help Bates provide a national model for ways colleges and universities can nevertheless connect to and support their local communities.
Bates’ infrastructure saw major improvement during the Harward presidency with the planning and building of 22 essential academic, residential and athletic facilities. These include Pettengill Hall and its Perry Atrium, the Bates College Coastal Center at Shortridge, Dunn Guest House, Keigwin Amphitheater and the Lake Andrews restoration, the Residential Village, Benjamin E. Mays Center, Wallach Tennis Center, John Bertram AstroTurf field, track and soccer field, softball field, Underhill Arena and the Davis Fitness Center.
1967–89 | Thomas Hedley Reynolds
When Thomas Hedley Reynolds retired after serving as Bates’ fifth president from 1967 to 1989, he could say that of the 159 faculty members, all but 16 had been appointed during his presidency. While key facility improvements also marked his tenure, the championing of the Bates faculty was perhaps his greatest achievement.
“President Reynolds has given us more time, more colleagues, and perhaps above all else, more self-esteem,” said a member of the history faculty John R. Cole, in 1989. “The result is that a good college of good teachers has become a better college of better teachers.”
An early move towards this achievement was Reynolds’ emphasis on improving salaries in an effort to attract and retain high-quality faculty. Bates achieved greater gender equity during the Reynolds years, as well as an improved faculty-student ratio and an average class size of 15.
Furthermore, Reynolds also encouraged closer faculty involvement in the governance of the college through elected committees as well as the expansion of the sabbatical program. His own experience as a teacher and a scholar allowed Reynolds to recognize teaching and scholarship as complimentary professorial activities (previous administrations had viewed the two as generally antithetical), leading Reynolds to encourage faculty research and creativity.
Arriving at Bates during a tumultuous time for U.S. colleges, Reynolds was also faced with students upset by strict campus social rules reflecting 1950s sensibilities. He guided the college through the campus tensions of the late 1960s and ’70s with a renewed emphasis on involving all members of the community in making decisions.
Significant renovations and physical additions to the campus under Reynolds include the George and Helen Ladd Library, Merrill Gymnasium and Tarbell Pool, the Olin Arts Center with its Bates College Museum of Art, the conversion of the former women’s athletic building into the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, and the acquisition of the Bates-Morse Mountain Conservation Area. The houses on Frye Street, a popular and creative residential alternative to traditional dormitory housing, were also acquired primarily during the Reynolds presidency.
President Emeritus Reynolds died Sept. 22, 2009.
1944–67 | Charles Franklin Phillips
Charles F. Phillips was a full professor at Colgate and a leading economist before coming to Bates as the college’s fourth, and youngest at age 34, president. He had also taught at Hobart College, and at the time of his interview at Bates was on leave from Colgate and working for the U.S. government in the Office of Price Administration and Civilian Supplies as deputy administrator in charge of rationing.
At Bates, Phillips initiated the Bates Plan of Education, a liberal-arts “core” study program, and developed the “3/4 Option” which allowed students to complete their college education in three years if they desired. He also saw the campus expand with the additions of Memorial Commons, the Health Center, Dana Chemistry Hall, Lane Hall, a new Maintenance Center, Page Hall, Pettigrew Hall, Treat Art Gallery, and Schaeffer Theatre. Phillips also added full-time administrators to the college staff: an alumni secretary, a director of admissions, a dean of men and an assistant to the president.
Known for bridging the gap between the academic and business worlds, Phillips won many friends for the college, and often encouraged young graduates not to join a big company, but to start their own. Convinced that the American economic and political systems thrive on competition, Phillips applied this theory to Bates and its graduates. In his inauguration address he quoted Edison: “Genius [required to make it big] is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” During his time at Bates, Phillips lived by this adage – he was famous for keeping a tight schedule, with or without a clock, and for working late hours.
Phillips retired in 1967, leaving a student body of 1,004 and an endowment of $6,938,000. He lived in Auburn after retirement and passed away in 1998.
1920–44 | Clifton Daggett Gray
As the college’s third president, Clifton Daggett Gray, clergyman and former editor of Chicago’s The Standard, saw Bates through an era marked by vibrant growth, the Great Depression and World War II.
In the early 1920s, Bates debating went international; Libbey Forum and Hedge Laboratory were renovated, and the Clifton Daggett Gray Athletic Building and Alumni Gym were built. Then, in 1929, the stock market crashed. Students became hard to find. Who could afford the $600-a-year tuition? The result was a year in the red. However, the financial difficulty did not last long.
When World War II came, Bates responded. Gray arranged for a V12 Naval Training Unit on campus, assuring the college good students during wartime while other colleges were feeling the draft. Ninety Bowdoin students came upriver to Bates for the V12 program.
By the time he retired in 1944, Gray had increased student enrollment from 527 to 749, faculty from 36 to 70 and the endowment from $1 million to $2 million.
1919–20 (acting) | William Henry Hartshorn
Following the May 1919 death of President Chase, faculty member William Henry Hartshorn served as acting president for nearly a year until the appointment of Clifton Daggett Gray, whereupon he returned to his teaching duties. A member of the Bates Class of 1886, Hartshorn taught at his alma mater for 37 years. He began his Bates career in 1889 as an instructor — later professor — of physics and geology, and in 1894 he became a professor of English literature, a position he held until 1926.
Hartshorn was one of the most beloved Bates professors of his day, was affectionately known by his students as “Monie.” In addition, the Class of 1923 dedicated their senior edition of The Mirror to him.
On the morning of Feb. 24, 1926, just before the start of the day’s classes, Hartshorn died at his classroom desk and was found by his students, sitting with his copy of Paradise Lost open to that day’s lesson. After his death, a testimonial to Hartshorn appeared in The Bates Student, attesting to the love his students felt:
“[H]is perspective on life was not a relic of other days. He understood our present generation of students as well as he understood the generation of 30 years ago. Some professors are appreciated only after they are gone. Not so with ‘Monie.’ Human and fair in all his dealings with his students, he was the bedrock upon which Bates men and women could base their ideals.”
1894–19 | George Colby Chase
George Colby Chase graduated from Bates in 1869 and taught for 22 years as professor of English at the college before he became the second president of Bates.
Chase, known as “the great builder,” oversaw the construction of 11 new buildings, including Coram Library, Rand Hall, the Central Heating Plant, the Chapel, Libbey Forum, the Carnegie Science Hall, and Chase Hall; he tripled the number of students and faculty; and he managed to increase the College’s endowment from $259,000 to $1,135,000.
Chase was known for being “fanatically frugal” and money-conscious: when he went on fundraising trips, he often had his son take his trunk on a wheelbarrow to the railroad station. And when the faculty said they thought students should bear more of the cost of their education, he reluctantly approved a $5 tuition increase (the Trustees later voted to raise the cost $15, making tuition $90).
A teacher-president in the old tradition, Chase taught at least one course throughout his entire incumbency. His home, at 16 Frye St., functioned as a campus facility where students would go for their admission interviews, various progress checks and upon graduation, letters of reference.
In April of 1919, at age 74, Chase wrote to the Trustees regarding his retirement, and the selection of a new president: his successor was to be “a man strong in scholarship, in his Christian character and influence, in business ability, and in warm sympathy with young people . . . and hopefully not older than 35.” On May 27, 1919, after a full day at work, George Colby Chase died of a heart attack.
1863–94 | Oren Burbank Cheney
The Rev. Oren Burbank Cheney was the founder and first president of Bates College. He was a Freewill Baptist minister, a teacher and a former Maine state representative. In 1854 the Parsonfield Seminary, a school at which Cheney had been a student and a teacher, burned down. Seeing a need for a new, larger, and more centrally located school for his denomination, Cheney steered a bill through the Maine Legislature in 1855, creating a corporation for educational purposes called initially “Maine State Seminary.”
According to Bates history, the two existing Maine colleges, Bowdoin and Colby, were confident they could offer all the higher education the state needed. But Cheney persevered. He assembled a faculty of six dedicated to teaching the classics and moral philosophy, and in 1863 received the collegiate charter. In 1864 the Maine State Seminary became Bates College. The College consisted of Hathorn and Parker halls, and the student body numbered fewer than 100.
At the end of Cheney’s tenure, tuition was $36 a year, the library amounted to 16,500 volumes, and the campus had expanded to 50 acres with six buildings. Bates was known for its nondiscriminatory liberal education, made available even to students of limited financial means, and for “doing great work for the state of Maine in educating teachers for its public schools.”
