Slideshow: This Month at Bates

Around here, it seems like winter, spring, classes, and exams are all sitting at a four-way stop, each waiting for the others to get going.

While we wait, enjoy these images from this month at Bates.

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First Greeter

“It’s super exciting to have new Bobcats on campus. I’m kind of the first person in the line of everybody who’s welcoming them today,” says admission tour guide Ronan Goulden ’22, an environmental studies major from Lagunitas, Calif.

He’s standing outside Chase Hall, where newly admitted members of the Class of 2023 arrived and departed for a series of campus events on April 5, including an official welcome from President Clayton Spencer.

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Art in High Places

Working with Bates Museum of Art curator Bill Low, Mickai Mercer ’19 of Philadelphia discusses the placement of his ceiling-high drawings in the museum’s Upper Gallery.

On April 5, Mercer and 13 other studio art majors welcomed the community to an opening reception for the annual Senior Thesis Exhibition.

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From MSNBC to Bates

Just a day before the release of the Special Counsel’s report, Joyce White Vance ’82 packed the Edmund S. Muskie Archives for her talk on the Mueller investigation and the rule of law.

“We are watching the rule of law being tested,” she told her audience. “There are some people questioning whether the rule of law is up to the task ahead of it.”

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Busting Fake News

Associate Professor of Digital and Computational Studies Carrie Diaz Eaton teaches her course “Calling Bull in a Digital World” in Carnegie Science Hall.

The course seeks to equip its 24 students with a variety of critical tools, including computational ones, for determining what’s slanted, downright fake, or innocent but wrong. “We want people to be able to think that they have a role as a digital citizen to play in the world of fake news,” she says.

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Fog on the Quad

Associate Professor of Chemistry Jennifer L. Koviach-Côté crosses the Historic Quad, enveloped by early spring fog.

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Framed in Doubles

Juniors Isabelle Rovinski of New York City and Suzanne Elfman of Longmeadow, Mass., play their doubles match vs. Tufts in Merrill Gymnasium.

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It’s a Wrap

With friends cheering the big moment, history major Margaret Dever ’19 (left) of Marblehead, Mass., binds her honors thesis with the help of Milly Detels ’22, also of Marblehead.

Dever’s thesis, written under the direction of Visiting Associate Professor of History Melinda Plastas, is titled “Irish Identity, American Identity, and the Irish American Anti-Partition Movement.”

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Mon Dieu!

The last day of French class means it’s the final act of a semester-long play featuring the adventures of Marie Malika d’Alger, a fictional Franco-Algerian heroine who’s the brainchild of Professor of French and Francophone Studies Kirk Read.

From left, Katie Carrier ’22 as Isabelle Adjani, Jamie Kelleher ’19 as Malika d’Alger, Kaylah Johnson ’21 as Eugene Gemale, Emma Vlahakis ’20 as Ploc, and Jake Michael ’21 as Plic perform Le Bateau Flottera mieux que l’Avion (“The Boat Will Float Better than the Plane”).

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Flattening the Competition

Jordyn Tveter ’22 of Topsfield, Mass., carries the ball vs. Bowdoin in women’s lacrosse action at Garcelon Field.

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Portrait of Excellence

After posing for portraits in her Pettigrew Hall office, and after the camera had nearly been put away, Stephanie Kelley-Romano leaned forward in her chair. It was a characteristic pose: “It’s how students see me when they arrive,” she said as one final photo was taken.

Kelley-Romano, an associate professor of rhetoric, film, and screen studies, is the 2019 recipient of the college’s signature teaching award: the Ruth M. and Robert H. Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching.

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Gathered for Gala

Kathryn Cleary ’19 of Portland, Maine, and Kayla Larrivee of Lewiston, Maine, dance at the 30th annual Gala, a semiformal ball for all members of the Bates community and their guests.

The event, held in the Clifton Daggett Gray Athletic Building, featured the Phil Rich Swing Band and a variety of student performances.

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The Art of Storytelling

Emily Bernard, a professor of English at the University of Vermont and author of Black Is the Body: Stories From My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine, visits Associate Professor of English Eden Osucha’s class on narrative in Hathorn Hall.

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Bravo ARC!

Professor of French and Francophone Studies Kirk Read leads the applause during a year-end celebration for the Academic Resource Commons and its excellent student tutors.

Recently, the system for training ARC tutors earned a major national certification. The certification confirms “that we’re serious about our work,” says Dan Sanford, ARC director.

The event also celebrated the conclusion of a three-year grant from the Davis Educational Foundation that established the ARC as a pilot program. Having proved its worth, the resource commons will transition to “a permanent part of the Bates vision,” Sanford says.

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Working with an Adviser

Psychology major Coy Candelario ’19 of Haverhill, Mass., talks with his thesis adviser, Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Alex Borgella, at the Mount David Summit on March 29.

Candelario’s senior thesis looks at how skin tone and Spanish language ability can affect perceptions of identity.

While the senior and his adviser “are both Hispanic,” Candelario explains, Borgella “is light-skinned but speaks fluent Spanish, and I’m dark-skinned and speak no Spanish. That’s where this whole idea developed. We’re like, ‘Let’s test this.’”

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First-Year’s First Home Run

Antonio Jareno ’22 (No. 18) of Marietta, Ga., gets saluted by captain Jake Arend ’20 (No. 4) of Newfields, N.H., and the rest of the Bates team after hitting his first collegiate home run during the Bobcats’ victory over Trinity at Leahey Field. Jareno also doubled in the eventual winning run.

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A Thesis in Dance

Sara Hollenberg ’19 (right) of Stamford, Conn., choreographed and performed in “Lots 20, 22, 24, & 26: Dune Road” as part of her senior thesis in dance.

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Pictures at an Exhibition

Seen at the Museum of Art’s opening reception for the Senior Thesis Exhibition, studio art major Chandler Ryan ’19 of Delmar, N.Y., created a series of black-and-white portraits of Bates women in response to the so-called male gaze: the sexual objectification of women, created by men, in literature, art, motion pictures, and popular culture.

The portraits “subvert that norm,” says Ryan. She’s “the one doing the looking, with my female subjects presenting themselves and looking back at the viewer.”

 

Way to Go

Nick Glover ’20 (foreground) of Austin, Texas, and Ben Eckardt ’19 of Belle Mead, N.J., react to a point during their doubles match during the team’s victory over Colby in Merrill Gymnasium.

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The Best Is Yet to Come

Seniors Emily Bowen, Afia Sekyere, Yeymi Rivas, and Kayla Jackson pose during an annual banquet hosted by the Office of Intercultural Education in Memorial Commons. The event’s theme: A Royal Affair.

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Four More Years

Seniors Lexi Kemp of Hopewell, N.J., and Ethan Simon of New York City have been in school together for eight years. “But we’re not doctors yet,” quips Simon.

Back in 2015, after attending high school at Blair Academy, “we sat at graduation chanting, ‘Four more years!'” he says. They’ve been together as long as two presidential terms. Maybe it’s time to roll back the 22nd Amendment?

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Garcelon Rollover

Men’s lacrosse head coach Peter Lasagna gathers his team on Garcelon Field after the No. 12 nationally ranked Bobcats defeated Hamilton.

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