Seen as Green, Part Two

The greening of Bates kept the College in the news through the summer and fall (“Bates in the News,” Summer 2007). The arrival of the Zipcar car-sharing service in September was a particular favorite of news photographers, thanks to the slick Toyota Prius hybrids that the Massachusetts-based organization stationed on campus.

Earlier in the year, major Maine media outlets paid close attention to the Museum of Art exhibition Green Horizons, a dynamic exploration of sustainability. The Associated Press picked up on the Clean Sweep “garage sale” that supports local charities and keeps items discarded by students and employees out of the landfill. Bloomberg News mentioned President Elaine Tuttle Hansen’s participation in the carbon-cutting American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment.

Taking the historical view, Forbes noted that the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library had given researchers access to the papers of chemistry professor Walter Lawrance, who led mid-20th-century efforts to reduce pollution in the Androscoggin River.

Short Terms

Picking up the environmental theme was a central Maine newspaper that reported on geo professor Mike Retelle’s summer journey to the Norwegian island of Svalbard, where he is tracking the alarming retreat, thought to be the result of global warming, of centuries-old glaciers. Other faculty turned up in publications across the continent and beyond. As the AP reported, Retelle’s geo colleague Dyk Eusden joined radio host Garrison Keillor and other members of the Prairie Home Companion gang for a PHC cruise to Norway in July. Eusden offered lectures and conducted shore expeditions.

Montreal’s Gazette mentioned English professor Lillian Nayder’s presentation, to a Dickens Society gathering in that city, about Charles Dickens’ ill-used wife…. Dana Professor of Religion John Strong offered context for a display of Buddhist relics in California…. India’s Statesman introduced to its Calcutta readership Lavina Shankar, associate professor of English and a daughter of the city (see story this issue).…Bates students, too, made the news. The San Antonio Express-News looked on as Uriel Gonzalez ’11 won a trip to Russia for his performance in a Russian-speaking competition in Texas. Closer to home, The Boston Globe talked to Stephen Lattanzi ’08 about the youth theater he co-founded in Winchester, Mass.…The Lewiston Sun Journal gave Jim Fergerson, head of the College’s Institutional Planning and Analysis office, op-ed space to explain why schools like Bates are reviewing their participation in college rankings like those of U.S. News & World Report (see story this issue). Most college officials, Fergerson wrote, “know that what appears to be so precisely ‘counted’ doesn’t necessarily reflect what really ‘counts’ as academic quality.”