The Bobcat takes a break after May 15′s “It’s a Great Day to Be a Bobcat” campaign, when Bates sought 555 additional alumni donors to the Bates Fund in one day. Photo by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College

The college sought 555 additional alumni donors to the Bates Fund in one day, part of the ongoing campaign to reach 55 percent alumni participation by the close of the giving year on June 30.

Alumni easily exceeded the goal with 599 total gifts, bringing their total Bates Fund participation thus far to 37 percent, a three-point increase in one day.

The slogan “It’s a great day to be a Bobcat” comes from former football coach Web Harrison ’63, who adapted the cheer from his days as a U.S. Marine — “It’s a great day to be a Marine!”

Today it is used to observe any successful Bates endeavor.

The Wednesday event, dubbed “It’s a Great Day to Be a Bobcat!,” celebrated alumni pride while also raising awareness about Bates Fund giving, which supports faculty salaries and student financial aid, among other programs.

The May 15 challenge came on the heels of several recent Bates Fund successes. This spring, young alumni secured Bates’ first March Mania victory, defeating Colby, Connecticut College and Trinity in a competition to see which college could garner the most gifts to their annual funds from their 10 youngest class years.

Last year, Bates alumni achieved a record-breaking 55 percent participation and earned an extra $500,000 for the college.

Alumni had until midnight on May 15 to make their gifts and be counted in the challenge.

• Make a gift to the Bates Fund.

The profile of President Spencer in the April 2013 issue of Maine magazine carries the headline “Grit and Shared Enterprise.”

In the April issue of Maine magazine, President Clayton Spencer talks about her love affair with Maine and her philosophy of “shared enterprise.”

In a profile titled “Grit and Shared Enterprise,” Spencer tells writer Sarah Braunstein, “I loved what I did at Harvard. But if headhunters called asking if I was interested in a presidency, I would always say: ‘Call me when it’s Maine.’”

“Maine,” she continues, “is a granite state, not a sand state. What I respect most about New England — and Maine — is its substance.”

Substance, she says, is central to the important work that lies ahead for Bates, particularly her emphasis on financial aid.

“It’s critical that we’re on the side of opportunity, not on the side of greater wealth stratification or income inequality.”

As a leader, she tells Braunstein, she prefers the notion of “shared enterprise” over the concept of transparency. The latter, she explains, implies “others on the outside looking in.” She would much rather see the community working together on the issues and challenges facing the college, and viewing the work as a shared experience.

• Read the complete profile from Maine Magazine, April 2013.

A Boston police officer shouts instructions on Boylston Street in Boston on April 15, 2013. Photograph by Bates photographer Mike Bradley, who was at the marathon earlier in the day and returned to cover the aftermath for a New York City media outlet.

Marcus was reporting on the race when the bombs transformed Boylston Street just before 3 p.m. on April 15.

After the bombing, runners weren’t able to collect belongings that had been transported back to Boston from the race start in Hopkinton. By evening on April 15, thousands of yellow plastic bags with runners’ gear had been collected near the finish line, including this pile on Berkeley Street. Photograph by Mike Bradley/Bates College.

A veteran of the Boston Marathon himself, Marcus also reports on the group of nearly 300 runners who gathered in East Cambridge for a group run the next day. He writes:

“In a city still shell-shocked by the Boston Marathon bombings, and with just a few hours’ notice on social media and by word of mouth, some 270 runners answered the call put out by a local running club whose weekly get-togethers at the Courtside, a beloved dive bar, usually attract 30.”

“Boston won’t stop running.”

The group’s route that evening covered both sides of the Charles River and raised $3,000 for victim relief.

One of the organizers, P.J. Aspesi, tells Marcus that “we tried to figure out how we could come together afterward and help, and show everybody that Boston won’t stop running.”

• Read the Esquire story from April 15, 2013.
• Read the Esquire story from April 17, 2013.
• Read the Runner’s World story from April 17, 2013.

Bates’ BOLD alumni increased their total number of March Mania gifts by 63 percent over last year.

With 1,448 donations to the Bates Fund, the college’s alumni of the 10 youngest classes not only  beat the competition, they earned a $25,000 bonus for the college, bringing their total March gift to $88,205.

March Mania is the annual giving challenge that pits young alumni from four NESCAC schools against one another to see which college can rack up the most gifts to their respective annual funds in one month. This year, Bates competed against Colby (last year’s champions), Connecticut College and Trinity.

To sweeten the deal, an anonymous Bates trustee promised a $25,000 bonus to the Bates Fund if the young alumni, dubbed “BOLD” (Bobcats Of the Last Decade), reached 1,200 gifts.

The Bobcats pounced to an early lead, holding steady through the April 1st giving deadline. Bates Fund volunteer Doug Ray ’10 kept the momentum going through a promotional video and social media campaign.

“It’s really good to see digital media being adopted” for annual giving “on such a wide scale,” says Ray. “If one person posts on Facebook, that post may reach a few hundred people they know, whereas a phone call or an email really only reaches one person.

“These new forms of communication can really change the game.”

After losing last year to Colby by 63 gifts, a dedicated group of BOLD alumni volunteers — 165 in all — reached out to friends and classmates, encouraging them to give any gift, any size to reach the participation goal.

In a turn of poetic justice, current Bates seniors rallied to defeat Colby in their own special Class of 2013 March Mania competition. For one week in March, the two colleges competed to see who could garner the most senior gifts.

Twenty-nine percent of Bates seniors made gifts compared with Colby’s six percent, bringing Bates’ total Senior Gift participation for the year to 83 percent.

• View the Report of Giving for March Mania 2013.

Students discuss the challenges and tactics of writing fellowship proposals at the Mount David Summit on March 29, 2013.

The March 29 panel, titled The Research and Writing of Strong Graduate Fellowship Proposals, offered students’ insight into the fellowship application process based on their recent experiences.

The panelists included Spencer Collet ’13 and James LePage ’13, recipients of a Davis Projects for Peace grant using new media training to address the conflict between Israel and Palestine; Daniel Peach ’13, recipient of an honorable mention for the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship; Cameron Sheldon ’13 and Destinee Warner ’13, finalists for Fulbright English Teaching Assistantships; and Olivia Krishnaswami ’15, a 2012 recipient of a Davis Project for Peace grant with Natacha Danon ’15, to support women’s economic opportunities in rural India.

Robert Strong, lecturer in English and graduate fellowships adviser, moderated.

Below are eight tips from the panelists:

• Know your audience: For the highly technical Goldwater Scholarship, Peach made sure his tone remained formal and academic.

• Follow your passion: Successful proposals demonstrate a knowledge of or passion for a particular program or issue. For the Fulbright, Sheldon took the initiative to study the culture, history and politics of her chosen destination, Armenia. Krishnaswami’s grant evolved from a high school fundraiser she created.

• Start early: Warner began drafting her Fulbright application the summer before her senior year in order to prepare for the fall deadline — which unfortunately coincided with thesis work and other commitments.
• Show off your skills: Think about how prior leadership and extracurricular activities apply to your proposal.
• Stay flexible: “There are going to be unanticipated issues that you’re going to have to find a way around,” said Krishnaswami, so incorporate those into your proposal. She said having an “exit strategy” and budgeting for unexpected costs helped show the committee that she was planning ahead.
• Be concise: Many proposals limit you to a one- or two-page description of your project. Practice getting your proposal down to an “elevator pitch.”

• Revise, revise, revise: Take advantage of advisers and other resources like the Writing Center to get feedback on your proposal throughout the process. Bates maintains a Fulbright committee to support the program’s high number of applicants.

• Manage expectations: Collet recalled the stress of the days leading up to the final announcement. He recommended forgetting all about the proposal or finding ways to distract yourself. Once you submit your proposal, it is in the hands of the selection committee.

Warner reassured her fellow students that even if you are not selected for a fellowship, writing a proposal can be valuable preparation for the classroom and the working world.

“The experience of writing any proposal,” she said, “helps to strengthen the ability to conceptualize, write and follow through.”

Loring Danforth, professor of anthropology, is this year’s Kroepsch Award recipient. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Asking students to examine their own cultural investments and engage with one another is part of getting them to think like anthropologists, says Danforth, Charles A. Dana Professor of Anthropology.

When students begin to see the cultural underpinnings of their hobbies and beliefs, “that’s the most fun.”

At the same time, he says, “you get students who are insulted, offended, troubled. That can be really agonizing to work through, but it means you’re hitting on something really important and interesting.”

Danforth’s ability to work through these sometimes-visceral discussions has earned him a devoted following of students throughout his more-than 30 years of teaching at Bates.

This year, he received the college’s Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching, established in 1985 by a gift from Robert Kroepsch ’33.

Watch a brief video about Loring Danforth. Produced by Phyllis Graber Jensen.

Click here to view the embedded video.

His lecture, titled “#Bates2Saudi,” takes place at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, March 21, in Room 201 of the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections, 70 Campus Ave.

The lecture is open to the public at no cost. Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. For more information, please call 207-786-6066.

Proposed and coordinated by Saudi native Leena Nasser ’12, Danforth’s student at the time, the excursion introduced the class to Saudi culture and included meetings with a range of activists, professionals and everyday citizens.

Leading the trip proved to be as much a learning experience for Danforth as his students.

“I was being an anthropologist myself, just taking notes furiously,” he says. At the same time, he recognized that he was “modeling for the students asking questions, doing interviews and taking notes.”

The cultural exchange did not always go smoothly. Danforth recalls an incident in which one of his non-Muslim students attempted to pick up a copy of the Q’uran, an act widely regarded as taboo in the Muslim world.

Danforth used the incident as a teaching opportunity, engaging their Saudi hosts in a debate about how non-Muslims interact with Islam’s sacred text.

Steven Kemper, chair of the Bates anthropology department, says Danforth “brought to this department a notion that anthropology, the content of the discipline, is a moral endeavor…that it is a way of treating people and caring about people.”

Danforth puts the writing on the wall for his students. Photograph by Ryan Donnell.

Nasser agrees. She says, “There is a lot of diversity” among students at Bates, “but not many classes utilize this diversity and perspective in the classroom like Professor Danforth.”

Reflecting on her experience in Danforth’s courses, Claire Jakimetz ’08 of Litchfield, Conn., says, “Every class was a dialogue — a safe, supportive environment to pose questions, dissect puzzles and offer our own explanations.”

Almost a year later, a few students from the Saudi trip continue to meet with Danforth to discuss ways they can use their experience to dispel myths about Saudi Arabia and Muslim culture more broadly.

Together, they have contributed essays and op-eds on the subject. Danforth is contemplating writing a book based on his “furious” notes and observations.

It’s an example of how Bates is the “perfect balance of teaching and scholarship,” he says. “And you need to do both really well and really seriously.”

“To have a community of people who are good scholars and care about teaching has been a blessing.”

Danforth’s lecture is co-sponsored by the Kroepsch Award Selection Committee, the college division chairs, Information & Library Services and the Dean of the Faculty’s Office.

“What did you learn at Bates that you have used in the workplace?”

Nugent, a poet and motivational speaker, posed his top-of-mind question to four Bates alumni panelists who’ve built, and are building, their careers in the Lewiston-Auburn community.

Michael Creedon ’15 and Jonah Greenawalt ’16 react to panelists at Beyond Intellectual Profit, a symposium on navigating diversity in the workplace. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

The panel, composed of Sarah Davis ’10, Nate Libby ’07, Julia Sleeper ’08 and John Jenkins ’74, was one of several discussions during the March 2 Bates symposium Beyond Intellectual Profit: Using Classroom Knowledge in the Workplace, coordinated by Therí Pickens, assistant professor of English, and facilitated by Nugent.

Motivational speaker and facilitator Kirk Nugent encouraged conversation between the panelists and audiences. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Sarah Davis ’10

Davis said she experienced a “seamless connection” between Bates and her work with Welcoming Maine, an organization that supports community integration for immigrants and refugees. She began working directly with the Lewiston community through the Harward Center in her first semester and went on to design her own major around social justice. Bates gave her the freedom to connect theory and practice.

Nate Libby ’07

Libby pays the bills as a property manager and nonprofit consultant but is deeply involved in local politics as a Lewiston city councilor and state representative to the Maine Legislature. A history major at Bates, he credits the Short Term unit “Introduction to Historical Methods” — aka “History Hell” — with teaching him to think critically and evaluate information. As a scholar, politician and consumer of information, he says, “You must be skeptical of what you read and what you hear.”

Julia Sleeper ’08

Sleeper came to Bates expecting to major in biology only to discover a passion for education. A placement at nearby Lewiston Middle School exposed her to the range of challenges faced by local youth, particularly those from immigrant and refugee families. Like Davis, she used the classroom as a place to better understand her work in the community, and vice versa. She has since co-founded Tree Street Youth in Lewiston, a community center that empowers youth to make healthy choices through academics, athletics and the arts.

John Jenkins ’74

When Jenkins arrived on the Bates campus in 1969, he was one of only a handful of students of color. He jokes that he didn’t notice — he was too busy keeping up with his grades. Bates, he says, is “relentless in teaching you to persevere.” Bates helped him become a “citizen of the world” and taught him to take initiative, which certainly served him well in his role as a community leader. Now a public speaker, Jenkins is the former mayor of Lewiston and Auburn as well as a state senator.

All smiles, Drew Gallagher ’11 poses with a group of his students at Bruce-Monroe Elementary School in Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy of Drew Gallagher ’11.

Entering the teaching profession through Teach for America, Gallagher was one of nearly 600 new first-year teachers in the Washington public schools in fall 2011. That year, Bates was ranked 17th in the country for number of Teach for America participants.

He won the New Teacher of the Year award in 2012 and the Rubenstein Award for Highly Effective Educators, an honor he shares with just 27 other teachers in the district. The award comes with a $5,000 cash prize.

Gallagher teaches at Bruce-Monroe Elementary School, where 61 percent of students are multilingual or English Language Learners. Almost 90 percent receive free or reduced lunch.

Despite the limited resources at his school, he believes his students are “incredibly talented kids who all have the ability to rise.”

As a Teach for America recruit, Gallagher made Washington, D.C., his top choice precisely because it is one of the lowest performing urban districts in the country.

He says it’s “completely ridiculous” for any school in the nation’s capital to under-perform “when change is being made here every day.”

• Read the interview in the Lowell Sun, Feb. 1, 2013

But I was more interested in the scholar than the skates.

A participant as well as scholar of culture, Rand often injects personal experiences into her work. Here, skating in Falmouth, she bends back her leg for a catch-foot spiral, a move she describes in Red Nails, Black Skates. Photograph by Mike Bradley/Bates College.

Red Nails, Black Skates (Duke University Press, 2012) is something of a crash course in Rand’s area of cultural criticism, specifically the overt and insidious ways that gender and sexuality, as well as race and class, shape all of our identities and experiences.

That begs the question — in my case a series of questions — about the intertwined personal, scholarly and pedagogical commitments that influence cultural critics like Rand, the college’s Whitehouse Professor of Art and Visual Culture and of Women and Gender Studies.

In other words, how does she approach writing and teaching about something as both amorphous and intimate as culture?

“We participate in culture,” says Rand. “I want to show how we are participating in culture by modeling a critic who also looks critically at her own investments and the things she studies.”

Asked about her intended audience, Rand replies, “I envisioned the book being for a wide range of people. First of all, I have to admit I really wanted skaters to read it. I’m always interested in having my writing be accessible within and outside academics.

“Although I wanted to say hard and complicated things, I wanted to say it in an accessible way,” she says.

One such strategy was to divide the book into a series of short essays, allowing readers to encounter the ideas at their own pace.

Whether writing about a cultural phenomenon or teaching one of her courses here at Bates, Rand encourages her audience to recognize how they, too, perform and respond to gender.

Nothing about figure skates is more obvious than their “gender coding” by color, Rand writes, which was popularized by Sonja Henie, seen here in Boston in the 1930s. Photo courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

In her course Women, Gender, Visual Culture, which she is teaching this semester, Rand asks her students to “understand that it is not as if some people over there have a gender story. Everyone has a gender story.”

That said, she’s not interested in “busting open all kinds of gender notions and throwing them all out.”

She explains that some people find pleasure in traditional expressions of femininity, herself included, and masculinity. What’s important, however, is that those expressions not be the result of restrictive stereotypes.

That self-awareness permeates Rand’s writing. For her, it says something about what she calls “the politics of academic work and the politics of criticism.”

As a scholar, Rand recognizes that she participates in the cultural phenomena she studies and is not shy about putting her personal perspectives front and center.

“People all have a personal stake in what they are studying and working on. They may tell you about it or they may not tell you about it. But I don’t believe, not only with popular culture but in any critical or academic endeavor, that there is a critic at some elevated level looking down.”

Keelin Godsey ’06 makes a point during the panel discussion “Economic Challenges, Social Justice and the Athletic Experience,” part of the college’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day program on Jan. 21, 2013. Panelists also included moderator Erica Rand, Whitehouse Professor of Art and Visual Culture and Women and Gender Studies; student athlete Jacqui Holmes ’13; and head squash coach Pat Cosquer ’97. Photograph by Mike Bradley/Bates College.

The most-decorated athlete in Bates history, a collegiate and national record-setter in the hammer throw, Godsey for years dreamed of competing on the U.S. Olympic team. He placed fifth at the U.S. track and field championships in 2010.

But when it came time to raise money to train for the 2012 Olympic trials, the sponsors weren’t as impressed.

Keelin Godsey ’06 was a prominent figure in Sports Illustrated’s feature on transgender athletes in its May 28, 2012 issue.

Godsey believes that snub and his ongoing struggle to secure sponsorship resulted directly from his decision to compete as an out transgender man.

He described “the unspoken rule” where “no one would ever tell me why I wasn’t” receiving bids from sponsors. “But I was also the only trans athlete willing to talk about it.”

Godsey shared his story during a panel discussion about economic and social barriers to athletic participation, part of Bates’ annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance.

Joining Godsey were Pat Cosquer ’97, head coach for men’s and women’s squash and former student-athlete, and Jacqui Holmes ’13, a tennis player. Erica Rand, Whitehouse Professor in Art and Visual Culture and Women and Gender Studies, moderated.

The panel, titled “Economic Challenges, Social Justice and the Athletic Experience,” addressed the challenges faced by athletes from underrepresented backgrounds, many of whom find themselves competing against socioeconomic barriers throughout their careers.

This 2010 portrait shows squash coach Pat Cosquer ’97 and Cheri-Ann Parris ’13 of St. Philip, Barbados, the team’s co-captain in 2013. Cultural differences that create tension within a highly international and multicultural program like squash need to be addressed head-on, says Cosquer. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Cosquer spoke candidly about the diversity of athletes on the Bates squash teams, about half composed of multicultural or international students. “I like to talk about ‘one program’ and how we’re all together moving towards common goals of winning and educating and learning from each other.”

But those cultural differences “create some tension sometimes,” he acknowledged.

That is why Cosquer favors addressing those conversations head on, fostering understanding and unity.

Holmes, who wrote her senior thesis on access and achievement in youth athletic programs, recalled coming face to face with her own racial and socioeconomic privilege while working at a youth tennis program last summer.

The Boston-based program catered to urban youth and aimed to empower children through sport combined with academics. Holmes admitted to having a “huge vision” for changing these students’ lives in just a few months.

“But,” she said, “that wasn’t what they wanted.”

She came to realize that, as an outsider in their community, “I was there not only to teach them something that’s really important for me, but also for them to teach me about what’s important to them, and what they felt they wanted to accomplish and what success was to them.”

For Bates tennis player Jacqui Holmes ’13, a reality check came when her “huge vision” for her summer tennis clinic failed to align with what her students really wanted.

The panel followed the premiere of Bates’ You Can Play video, part of a national program to increase safety and inclusion for LGBT athletes.

In the video, Bates student athletes affirm in a variety of forms and languages the same core message: “If you can play, you can play.”

That is, teams want talent regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation.

• Watch the Bates You Can Play video.

But as Cosquer and others pointed out, sometimes an athlete’s ability to play matters less than his or her ability to pay for the requisite gear and training. He described students who struggle to afford the necessary equipment and NCAA rules that limit how donations to teams can be allocated.

According to these rules, teams cannot seek support for individual players. Rather, they must raise funds for the entire team, regardless of need, which is often a much tougher proposition.

Economics aside, the panelists were asked what strategies teams could use right now to bolster inclusiveness among players. All three stressed communication and listening.

“Everybody comes from a different place and has different experiences,” said Cosquer. While the team may have a common goal, what “each student-athlete needs to get to that team’s goal is completely different.”

Reflecting on his personal experience, Godsey believes that progress will depend on changing the broader cultural perceptions of LGBT individuals both on and off the field.