Greetings, Colleagues,

Below please find a summary of recent announcements and upcoming events.

The MLK Committee wrote with a gentle reminder that the proposals for the 2022 MLK Observance are due this Monday, November 1.  If you would like to submit a proposal but have questions or concerns about any aspect of the process, don’t hesitate to reach out to us (co chairs Tyler Harper and Cliff Odle), and anyone else on the committee.   Click here to submit a Workshop Proposal.

Megan McHenry of the Registrar’s Office sent a message with the latest edition of For the Record, their weekly series covering upcoming dates, deadlines, and other timely information.  This week’s FTR makes reference to two forms which are linked below.

• If you’d like to use reserved seating or waitlisting for your winter 2022 course, you can do so here asap.  Please refer to our 10/27 email for more information on both of those functions.

• The December grad application can be found here.  Seniors received an email earlier in the week about this, and they may wish to refer to that for more information.

• Winter 2022 registration is live and registration begins on 11/8.

Lori Ouellette, of the Dean of Faculty’s Office, wrote with the Zoom link to Monday’s faculty meeting at 4:30.  The Zoom link can be found here.

Kristen Cloutier, of the Harward Center wrote to inform us that students interested in applying for a 2022 Davis Projects for Peace award (info below) should plan on attending an informational meeting on Monday, November 8th at 4pm via Zoom.  Those who RSVP that they will be in attendance will be sent a Zoom link on 10/29.

RSVP HERE

The Davis United World Scholars Program, which funds a number of scholarships for international students at Bates each year, has decided to re-fund this coming summer “Davis Projects for Peace” at the colleges at which they have scholarships, including Bates.  The awards will be made to a student or group of students at each college who design the most promising and do-able project, funded at $10,000 each, which they will implement during the summer of 2022 anywhere in the world. The objective is “to encourage and support today’s motivated youth to create and try out their own ideas for building peace in the 21^st century.”  The grants are made possible by a gift of $1M for this purpose by Mrs. Kathryn Wasserman Davis.  She wants today’s students—tomorrow’s leaders—to be challenged to design and test their own ideas for world peace. This is a wonderful opportunity to make a difference in the world.  Information and particulars on the project are available at the project website:  http://www.davisprojectsforpeace.org/ 

PLEASE NOTE THAT IF YOU ATTENDED THE INFO SESSION ON 10/25, YOU DO NOT NEED TO ATTEND THIS ONE.

Kathy Ostergaard of the College Store wrote to let you know some important dates for the Winter Semester:

• Textbook adoptions are due by end of day on Friday, November 5th 
• In person buyback for Winter Term, December 7th – 11th
• Website will be live for ordering for the Winter Semester – December 1st (students will be able to view their required course materials on November 6th)
  

If you are the instructor of record you will automatically receive reminder emails regarding your outstanding textbook adoptions. It is very important to let us know this information as soon as you are able as we experienced unprecedented supply chain disruptions this past semester. A number of publishers and distributors are currently taking more than 3 weeks to fulfill orders, and I had some orders for the Fall semester that never arrived at all due to out of stock status at the publisher (Oxford University Press, Taylor & Francis.) 

As new courses are added to the course schedule I will send out a list of previously adopted textbooks and ask you to confirm them. You may also send in orders through our Google forms document at Online Textbook Adoption Form.

Having textbook adoptions early allows us to source more used books, offer better pricing to students on rentals and buy back books from students at higher prices. I appreciate your support of this effort, and am happy to help with any adoption questions or problems you might have.

One final note: we will be returning USED books for the Fall Semester shortly; the last day for students to purchase used books at the College Store for the fall term is Saturday, November 6th. Please share this date with your students. 

Erin Foster Zsiga, Dean of Students, shared the following language that she sent students about in-person classes following the November break.  As we approach the November break (November 20-28), Student Affairs has received a number of inquiries from students who wish to study remotely after the break. All students are expected to return to campus after the November break to complete the semester and take their exams. As a residential college, Bates is committed to delivering on the promise of an in-person learning and living experience. Personal interaction in the classroom between faculty and students is a critical pedagogy and essential to the education we provide. We have made a commitment to you and your families that we will make every effort to conduct classes in person, while following public health guidelines necessary to keep our community safe. For these reasons, classes will be taught in person after the November break.

As in past years, you will need to return to campus after the November break to complete the fall semester. If for some reason you do not wish to leave campus you may elect to remain on campus for the duration of the break. We anticipate having a number of students on campus during the break for various reasons (i.e. athletes who are training and/or competing, international students, and students who do not feel comfortable traveling because of COVID-19). 

Students who are departing campus prior to Thursday, November 18 need to complete this form to notify the COVID-19 Testing Center Team that you will be missing your testing appointment. 

We will not be testing during November break, but we will resume the testing program beginning Tuesday, November 29.

If you have any questions about this issue, please contact us at studentaffairs@bates.edu.

The Academic Affairs Council sent us this message regarding allocation of lines.  As part of the Phase 1b allocation process, the AAC invited four academic units to submit position concepts for four tenure-track lines. All four units are experiencing substantial enrollment pressures as defined in our letter from June 7 (available on the AAC website).  Due to the unexpected departure of a faculty member within one of these units in August 2021, the pool of available tenure-track lines increased by one. Therefore, we allocated five lines in Phase 1b.

The units were notified on October 15 of the allocations we made. Linked here is a folder containing the position concepts we received and the letters notifying units of our decisions.

We are currently working on the Phase 2 allocation process. The deadline to submit position concepts in Phase 2 was Monday, October 18th. We aim to notify units of our decisions in the coming weeks. After we have made these allocations, we will again share the position concepts and decisions with the faculty as a whole.

Finally, this winter we look forward to conversations with the faculty as a whole concerning Phase 3 and beyond.

The Committee on Faculty Governance sent this message with an update on the format of our monthly faculty meetings.  As was the case in September and October, we will pursue a remote meeting format on Zoom for our November and December faculty meetings. As we stated before, we are aware of the limitations of a remote meeting format on Zoom and its impact on building and maintaining relationships among colleagues. But, as we continue to cope with COVID-19, we believe that gathering the entire faculty indoors is still inadvisable for our November and December meetings. Among the most important factors contributing to this decision are the forecasted rise of average daily cases in Maine over the next two weeks and the perspective of intensified travel over Thanksgiving break that may increase the chance of getting and spreading COVID-19. We will keep evaluating the situation and return to in-person meetings as soon as it is possible.  We appreciate your understanding and continued efforts to keep the Bates community healthy and safe.

Megan McHenry of the Registrar’s Office wrote to us with this information.  As we prepare to release the winter schedule to students, it’s time to think about reserved seats and waitlisting for winter courses.

• A given CRN can use either waitlisting or reserved seating, but not both.
• Waitlisting is fairly self-explanatory.  It gives students the option to be notified if a seat opens in your course, after which they have a period of time to register before the open seat is offered to the next person on the list.
• Reserved seating allows you to set aside a certain number of seats for particular groups of students, including class years, majors, minors, or a combination of those.  I’ve included an info sheet that will give you more detail about how this function works.

Contact Megan for the Google Form for anyone who wants to apply waitlisting or reserved seating to their winter course(s).  The office will be loading the information into the schedule pretty constantly, but that’s a manual process so there will be a lag between when you submit and when you see it in the schedule (so no need to panic if it doesn’t show up right away!).

The winter schedule will be available to students no later than Friday, 10/29 and registration begins Monday, 11/8.  If final edits and additions allow, we will absolutely turn it on sooner to give everyone as much advising and planning time as possible.

Rachel Forcillo, of Purposeful Work, shared an email with information on Job Shadow (virtual and in-person!) opportunities on Handshake.  For more information, contact Rachel or see the Bates Center for Purposeful Work website.

Next, upcoming events.

Veterans Day Remembrance

November 11, 2021
9:00 am

Bates Veterans Plaza
All are invited to a centering moment where together we will hear reflective readings and interfaith prayers, observe silence, and share in the ritual of laying stones of remembrance on the memorial. Additionally, a basket of stones will be left at the foot of the memorial from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. if you would like to have a quiet private moment to lay a stone at any point in the day. Everyone, of any spiritual tradition or secular tradition, veterans, friends and family of veterans, alumni, and all are welcome to participate in these events.   There will be a catered luncheon for Veterans of Armed Forces among Bates students, staff, and faculty at 11:30 a.m.. Please RSVP to Heather Taylor, htaylor@bates.edu, if you wish to attend the lunch. 

“Summoning Freire and Evoking Baldwin to Navigate the Politics of Disruptive Pedagogy”
Friday, November 5, 2021
2:30-4:00 – Zoom
Dr. Mignonne Guy’s virtual keynote address, originally scheduled for the CBB Pedagogy Matters Conference in August, has been rescheduled. We invite you to register for this virtual talk. The talk will be open to all faculty and staff at Bates, Bowdoin and Colby Colleges.

The Luck of the Irish by Kirsten Greenidge
October 31 @ 2 pm
November 1 @ 7:30 pm
Gannett Theater
Please, come and celebrate our Assistant Professor, Cliff Odle’s very first mainstage directing production.  Tickets and more information are available on Eventbrite:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-luck-of-the-irish-by-kirsten-greenidge-tickets-187617056667?aff=ebdsoporgprofile

Literary Arts Live presents poet Ada Limón
Wednesday, November 3, 2021

7:00 – 8:00 pm

A Zoom reading and conversation.  https://bates.zoom.us/j/99151507691

Ada Limón is the author of five poetry collections, including The Carrying (Milkweed 2018), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her fourth book, Bright Dead Things (Milkweed 2015), was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry, she serves on the faculty of Queens University of Charlotte Low Residency M.F.A program and lives in Lexington, Kentucky.  FMI: Jessica Anthony at janthony@bates.edu

Virtual film screening of Una Casa Sin Cortinas    

and discussion with the Director, Julián Troksberg.

Thursday, November 4, 2021 

4:15pm – Zoom

A talk with Julián Troksberg, director of “Una casa sin cortinas”(A House Without Curtains). María Estela Martínez, better known as Isabel Perón, achieved what Evita Perón never could: From an unknown cabaret dancer she became the first female president of the Americas. But after surviving prison and exile under South America’s most brutal military dictatorship, Isabel was forgotten in popular memory. This documentary uncovers why Isabel still haunts Argentina today.

Register for this event here: https://forms.gle/8fT7LmVfKrRcPxhx6