Slideshow: This Month at Bates

As the decade draws to a close, we also experience the end of the semester. The calendar says another day or two of fall. But we know winter has arrived.

December can be dark and cold, yet our lives at Bates are often filled with engaging light and warmth. We’re grateful for what we have, and eager to share it with you in this final 2019 edition of This Month at Bates.

Aerial Greetings

Michelle Holbrook-Pronovost, senior academic technology consultant and manager of Bates’ Digital Media Studios, made this drone image of a photo session capturing the wreath-bedecked Bonney Science Center and the construction team.

Note the “areaway,” which will be the building’s air intake, at lower left center, and the wall of concrete forms along Campus Avenue. The wide-angle lens is deceptive: The drone was only a little higher than four-story Chu Hall, which was nearby.

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Den Delivery

Bobcat Den worker Roman Hudgins ’21 of Winchester, Mass., hands over a Den Delivery food order to Olivia Kranefuss ’22 of Madison, N.J., on Nov. 19. Founded in 2013 by Matt Perejda ’14, Bobcat Den Delivery is a student-run food delivery service.

As evidenced by its loyal customers, who altogether place around 20 orders per night every Sunday through Thursday, it’s one of the most beloved institutions on campus, perhaps second only to the Den itself.

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Alumni Dunk

Nick Gilpin ’20 of Hampden, Maine, throws down an emphatic dunk during the men’s basketball team’s 84-69 win over Saint Joseph’s College.

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Day Is Done

Anyone who’s spent much time on the Historic Quad will recognize this view: the setting sun reflected in the windows of Carnegie Science.

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Community-Based Learning

Mike Jones ’20, an art major from Stratford, Conn., makes a presentation about deforestation to Lewiston Middle School students in Memorial Commons. Jones and other students in Carla Essenberg’s “Biology of Cooperation” class, which explores how and why organisms cooperate, participated in a community-engaged learning partnership with a team from the nearby school.

The Bates students created 10 different learning stations for the younger students, who then circulated for 20 minutes at each display. The morning included an introductory overview by Essenberg and a concluding Q&A.

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Poster Paradise

Sonja Pieck, associate professor and chair of environmental studies, listens as a student explains her research during a poster session in Hedge Hall during the final week of classes.

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Walking Through the Snow

The snow has stopped and Jake O’Hara ’21 of Milford, Conn., and Eva Melendes ’21 of Hingham, Mass., head over to the Den for a favorite snack: mozz sticks.

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Birding in Thorncrag

From left, Wilder Geier ’22, Lars Schuster ’20, and Julian Cook ’20 study a pileated woodpecker in Lewiston’s Thorncrag Bird Sanctuary. Nick Lund of Maine Audubon spotted the bird as he led Jane Costlow, Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies, and her students in the course “Living With Animals” on a midday birding excursion.

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Feeling the History

“I feel the history,” said⁣ Justin Phillips ’23 of Old Saybrook, Conn., who tried on not one, but four Major League Baseball World Series rings that belong to the New York Yankees minor league hitting coach Ken Joyce. Joyce took part in an end-of-semester panel in psychology professor Su Langdon’s First-Year Seminar, “The Sporting Life.”⁣

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Up, Up and Away

Inspired by her childhood in a Maine island community, Maddie Hallowell ’20 is developing climate-tracking sensors. For fun, she sends balloons into the stratosphere to measure what’s going on. For a recent launch, club president Hallowell and the rest of the student team rose at 5 a.m. to drive to New Hampshire, where they launched a balloon filled with 200 cubic feet of helium dozens of miles into the atmosphere.

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Feeding Your Mind

“I came to look and ask questions,” said history major Ursula Rall ’20, right, who attended an informal presentation by Stephon Baxter ’23, Marisela Flores Pineda ’23, and Martha Reyes ’23 on their project “Camp Body, Mind, Soul.”

They presented their work during an end-of-semester poster session with students in “Feed Your Mind: Food Justice and Community Gardens,” taught by Lecturer in Humanities and Assistant Director of Writing Stephanie Wade. Rall had mentored the three in a pre-Orientation segment of Bobcat First! during summer 2019. That Bates program seeks to foster a greater sense of well-being, belonging, and self-empowerment among first-generation-to-college students.

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Fast Forward

Brianna Gadaleta ’23 of Chappaqua, N.Y., battles for a loose ball during the women’s basketball team’s thrilling 74-73 overtime victory over Colby.

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One and Only

“My hat? It’s the only one I own,” says Arya Mohanty ’23 of Winchester, Mass., as she poses for a quick portrait in the snow on her way to lunch in Commons.

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‘Elevator Girl’

Dawrin Silfa ’21 of New York City plays Peter and Tara Rodic ’22 of Bijeljina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, is Vanessa in the Bates production of Elevator Girl. Donna Hokes’ play about sexual assault was directed by Ellie Yguico ’20 of Sherman Oaks, Calif., as a thesis production in partial completion of a major in theater directing.

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Manipulating Atoms

Megan Strynar ’23 of Lexington, S.C., a student in Associate Professor of Chemistry Matthew Côté’s First-Year Seminar “Nanotechnology Project: Manipulating Atoms,” inspects a scanning tunneling microscope that she and classmates built. The course provided a hands-on introduction to the interdisciplinary field of nanotechnology — technology based on nanometer-scale structures (a nanometer is one billionth of a meter).

Divided into three groups, specializing in software, electronics, and mechanical design, students created the microscope and fabricated and characterized nanostructures — an achievement for which IBM researchers received the 1986 Nobel Prize.⁣ The students “didn’t know what they were signing up for,” Côté said, smiling. In lieu of a final exam, students shared drafts of poster presentations for the 2020 Mount David Summit. ⁣⁣

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Home Run

Senior Alexander Ignatov of Trumbull, Conn., won both the 500-yard and 1,000-yard freestyle races as the Bates men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams swept Wesleyan in the season opener at Tarbell.

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Up in Arms

Coaching Clara Porter ’22 of Portland, Ore., for a voice recital, Lecturer in Music Joëlle Morris, at rear, models a gesture for “The Willow Song” by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

Morris is also the newest director of the Bates College Choir.

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Thesis Celebration

“Oops, I did it again,” joked Matthew Puckace ’20 (center left), a double major in sociology and politics, referring to his second completed thesis, in sociology, which explores Generation Z’s consumption behavior. With him is Max Lash ’20, holding his politics thesis, an analysis of U.S. government shutdowns. Celebrating with them are Dinos Lefkaritis ’20, Katie Manternach ’21, and Colby Marsh ’21.

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The Money Trail

Perla Figuereo ’21 of the Bronx, a double major in theater and rhetoric, and psychology major Alya Yusuf ’21 of Mumbai present their research to members of the Bates community at a digital poster session about their findings for “Data Cultures,” a course taught by Anelise Shrout, assistant professor of digital and computational studies.

Students are working to extract data from records held by Bates and the Lewiston Public Library of the college’s early financial history.⁣ They focused on gifts that helped founded the college, links between those donations and the slave economy of the 19th-century U.S., and the impact of this financial history on Bates today. ⁣

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Fun But Challenging

“It was fun, but challenging. Definitely challenging,”⁣ said Jenna Berens ’23 of Durham, Conn., reflecting on her first semester at Bates. Leaving Parker Hall, she was headed to a study session for her last final, in microeconomics, scheduled for the following day.

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Candles and Carols

Maddy Clark ’20, with Max Friedenwald-Fishman ’21 and Brett Schmidt ’23, sings “Silent Night” during Candles and Carols, held in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall. The Bates College Multifaith Chaplaincy’s annual candlelit service offered communal singing, reflective readings from many traditions, and musical offerings by various ensembles and soloists.

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