The Harward Center for Community Partnerships held its second anniversary bash downtown, bringing food, music, dance, poetry, and bonhomie to the new Marsden Hartley Cultural Center.

HCCP director David Scobey welcomed about 100 guests to the Jan. 26 party, held in the 1870 Pilsbury Building on Lisbon Street, now part of Lewiston’s public library.

In two years, Scobey said, the HCCP has widened a two-way street where Bates people contribute to community life, and community partners enrich the College curriculum. “Tonight we celebrate all that,” he said.

The program was fittingly varied: singing by the Deansmen, fiddling and contradancing, hip-hop dance, and poetry by students and a local Somali writer. The library and the Garcelon Society, a civic group raising Bates scholarships for local students, co-sponsored the fete.

There was much to celebrate. Fall 2006 saw the start of Public Works In Progress, a series in which faculty and staff discussed their HCCP-funded community projects.

Also during the fall, Bates and the HCCP were twice honored for community engagement work. The Corporation for National and Community Service named Bates as one of 70 institutions for the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll.

And the Carnegie Corporation listed Bates with the inaugural group of institutions certified for a new “community engagement” classification — with recognition for the quality of both its partnerships and curriculum.