President Elaine Tuttle Hansen

On Nov. 9, President Elaine Tuttle Hansen was among a select group of educational leaders to face the national press at the annual Higher Education Media Dinner, in New York.

For this edition of the event, Hansen and representatives of the universities of Chicago, Notre Dame, and Texas (Austin), among others, met with reporters from media organizations including The New York Times, National Public Radio, NBC, ABC, The Associated Press, Time, and Newsweek.

“Only about a dozen college and education leaders are invited” to the dinner, says Bates’ media relations chief Bryan McNulty, who accompanied Hansen to the dinner at the Penn Club. “Bates has done well securing two invitations in the past four years.” Topics around the table included the future of affirmative action, rising tuitions, and education’s role in preparing students for the global economy.

Also in the national news: Anthropologist Elizabeth Eames was quoted in the Dec. 11 New Yorker describing “a true goose-bump moment” at Bates. During a Martin Luther King Day panel in 2006, Eames looked on as a colleague from Colby had a stunning surprise reunion with people she first met in a Somali village years ago. The article detailed the travails and triumphs experienced by the local Somali population as it has settled into Lewiston.

Speaking of Bates and Colby, the two schools made a big splash in Sports Illustrated. Played in an absolute downpour, their Oct. 28 football game made for some striking images — and the magazine used one prominently in its Dec. 4 “Football America” issue. 

SHORT TERMS Maine news organizations looked to Professor John McClendon, of the African American and American cultural studies programs, for help as they covered the Kwanzaa and Martin Luther King Jr. holidays….As the U.S. Congress went Democratic in November, politics professor John Baughman talked with The Associated Press about what new influence Maine’s senators, moderate Republicans Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, might wield.…The enterprising Bangor Daily News, in localizing the story about Wal-Mart’s decision to stop offering layaways, tapped the expertise of Bates economist James Hughes in December. Hughes has researched impacts on the Maine labor market caused by the discount giant….After reading about Shirl Penney ’99 and his late grandfather in the Summer 2005 edition of Bates Magazine, Yankee Magazine editor Mel Allen was inspired to write his own treatment of this poignant story.