Bates expects to award bachelor’s degrees to approximately 450 students, representing 35 U.S. states and 28 countries, on May 26. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Gary Hirshberg, prominent internationally in the organic food movement as co-founder and chairman of the organic yogurt producer Stonyfield Farm, will deliver the Commencement address and receive an honorary degree.

During Commencement, which begins at 10 a.m. on the Historic Quad and will be livestreamed at bates.edu/live, the college will also confer honorary degrees on:

• William Cronon, eminent scholar and teacher in the field of environmental history whose writings have shaped public discourse about nature, wilderness preservation and the liberal arts;
• Elaine Tuttle Hansen, Bates’ seventh president, scholar of Middle English literature and now executive director of the Center for Talented Youth at The Johns Hopkins University;
• Vivian W. Pinn, M.D., distinguished physician and pioneering leader and mentor at the National Institutes of Health who fought for greater gender equity in all realms of women’s health, medicine and research.

Clayton Spencer, concluding her first year as president of Bates, will confer the honorary degrees.

“It is a profound honor to recognize the accomplishments of these four distinguished leaders and welcome them to our alumni ranks,” said Spencer. “In their lives and work, they exemplify the possibilities that await our graduates, and they show us how the values that define the Bates experience can shape, and take shape in, the world.”

Commencement concludes the undergraduate careers of the 450 members of the Bates Class of 2013, representing 35 U.S. states and 28 countries.

More about the 2013 honorands

William Cronon

William Cronon, Doctor of Letters

A leading American scholar and teacher in the field of environmental history who is a powerful defender of liberal education and academic freedom, William Cronon is a prize-winning author whose books and articles are, in the words of The New York Times, “strikingly literary” generators of “ideas that have repeatedly shaken up the ways people think about nature.” As a thought leader in a field that emerged in the 1960s alongside the environmental movement, Cronon pursues the ideal that the study of history should pay close attention “not just to human beings but to all our companions on this planet…to say nothing of the ecosystems and climates and geophysical processes without which we cannot hope to understand the wider contexts within which human history unfolds.”

William Cronon is a leading American scholar and teacher in the field of environmental history and a powerful defender of liberal education and academic freedom.

A Rhodes scholar, Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant, Cronon’s landmark publications include 1983’s Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, and Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, published in 1991. His provocative 1995 article, “The Trouble with Wilderness” — first published in abridged form in The New York Times Magazine and later in full form in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature — argued that U.S. environmentalism was overly focused on wilderness preservation, thus failing to safeguard the more accessible natural world of everyday human life.

At the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where Cronon holds the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professorship of History, Geography and Environmental Studies, he has strengthened the undergraduate honors program by focusing it more on “engagement with the life of the mind, empowerment of undergraduates to do real and important work, and involvement in community,” in the words of Richard White of Stanford University. In 2011, after his scholarly criticism of partisan legislation in Wisconsin prompted a politically motivated request for his email records, Cronon’s erudite response in his blog, Scholar as Citizen, was saluted by The New Yorker for its great “civil courage.” The immediate past president of the American Historical Association, Cronon holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and doctorates from Oxford and Yale universities. Cronon’s son Jeremy is a member of the Bates Class of 2013.

Elaine Tuttle Hansen

Elaine Tuttle Hansen, Doctor of Letters

“Our essential task is to be alive to change,” said former Bates President Elaine Tuttle Hansen in her inaugural address. As the college’s seventh president, from 2002 to 2011, Hansen led Bates through a decade of change, both predicted and unforeseen — from the Endowing Our Values fundraising campaign, the largest in the college’s history, to laying the basis for innovative programs that effectively doubled the number of students from underrepresented backgrounds.

Elaine Tuttle Hansen was praised for executing the complex task of “creating the time and means to identify shared goals.”

In the classic teacher-scholar model of fostering listening and questioning, Hansen early in her tenure engaged the campus in strategic planning efforts that served, as she once said, to “leverage uncertainty and respond creatively to new and emerging information and opportunity.” What followed was the college’s first Campus Facilities Master Plan, which led to the construction of a new dining Commons, a College Street residence hall, and Alumni Walk; the award-winning conversions of historic Hedge and Roger Williams halls into academic centers; and the renovation of Garcelon Field.

Later in the decade, Hansen issued Choices for Bates, the result of a collaborative college-wide planning effort that identified strategic areas of focus including the Arts Collaborative, an integrated introductory science and math curriculum, a Learning Commons and the Diversity in Excellence project. Praised by the Board of Trustees in 2011 for executing the complex task of “creating the time and means to identify shared goals,” Hansen initiated additional efforts that allowed Bates, during the global economic recession, to maintain its excellence in academics, financial aid and student life while curtailing costs. A trustee of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and recipient of honorary degrees from Haverford and Morehouse Colleges, Hansen now leads the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, where she remains at the center of the national discussion of higher education aspirations and access. A distinguished scholar of feminist and Middle English literature and the author of three books, Hansen earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Mount Holyoke College and master’s and doctoral degrees in English literature from the University of Minnesota and University of Washington, respectively.

Gary Hirshberg

Gary Hirshberg, Doctor of Humane Letters

As a global leader of the organic food movement, Gary Hirshberg, co-founder and chairman of Stonyfield Farm, exemplifies how to marry sustainability and corporate success. Beginning in 1983, Hirshberg has grown his company from a seven-cow organic farming school to an operation topping $360 million in annual sales, making Stonyfield the largest organic yogurt producer in the world.

“Hirshberg’s message is simple,” said Sierra magazine in 2007. “Reducing a company’s environmental impact is good for the bottom line.”

The company is considered a model of corporate environmental consciousness: becoming the first U.S. manufacturer, in 1995, to offset 100 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions; developing environmentally friendly packaging; and treating waste with an anaerobic digester that runs partly off the biogas it produces. “Hirshberg’s message is simple,” said Sierra magazine in 2007. “Reducing a company’s environmental impact is good for the bottom line.” Through partnerships with industry giants and major retail chains like Wal-Mart, Hirshberg, the author of Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World, proved that organic and sustainable food options could be brought to the masses at a profit. “When we run an item past the supermarket scanner,” he argues, “we’re voting — for local or not, for organic or not.” That mantra — and a compelling appearance in the acclaimed 2009 documentary Food, Inc. — has helped Hirshberg take the sustainable food debate to the boardroom and dinner tables across the country.

A 1972 graduate of Hampshire College, Hirshberg has received numerous awards for corporate and environmental leadership, including a 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and has served on a variety of nonprofit and corporate boards. In 2011, he was appointed to the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations by President Barack Obama. He currently writes on food and environmental issues for The Huffington Post, and is chairman and founding partner of Just Label It, a national campaign for a federal requirement to label genetically modified foods. He is married to writer Meg Cadoux Hirshberg, and they have three children, including Ethan Hirshberg, a member of the Bates Class of 2013.

Vivian Pinn, M.D.

Vivian W. Pinn, M.D., Doctor of Science

With the medical establishment under increasing criticism for its shortsighted treatment of women’s health, the National Institutes of Health in 1991 chose exactly the right person to confront the problem: Vivian W. Pinn. She became the first director of the NIH’s new Office of Research on Women’s Health, designed to advance the fair representation of women in research as both subjects and practitioners. In her 20 years in the post, Pinn worked to expand women’s health research beyond the traditional foci on breast and reproductive health and to bring more women and minorities into medicine and medical leadership.

Vivian Pinn worked to expand women’s health research and to bring more women and minorities into medicine and medical leadership.

Pinn’s accomplishments at the NIH culminated a lifelong passion for advancing equality in all aspects of health care. Daughter of an African American family in segregated Virginia, Pinn set her sights on medicine at the age of 4. With one grandparent suffering from cancer and another from diabetes, she noticed that “whenever the doctor came, they were always better afterwards, and I liked that,” Pinn has said. Her resolve to enter medicine was galvanized by her mother’s death, caused by cancer that went undiagnosed because the doctors did not take seriously the complaints of a black woman.

Pinn graduated from Wellesley College in 1962, where she was one of four black women in her class. She went on to the University of Virginia School of Medicine, where she was the only woman in her class and the only minority student. She was associate professor of pathology and assistant dean of student affairs at Tufts University School of Medicine before joining the faculty at Howard University College of Medicine, where she became the third woman in the United States to chair an academic department of pathology. Among her many honors, Pinn is the namesake of an advisory college for medical students at the University of Virginia, and received the Dean’s Medal from the Tufts University School of Medicine in 2011 for her work in recruiting students of color, expanding financial aid and mentoring medical students. She is senior scientist emerita at the Fogarty International Center of the NIH.

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Indeed, though Bates was chosen as their classroom college at random, they’ve made the most of the chance acquaintance.

Their teacher, Madelyn Hashemi, created the cheer, which the class sings every week in front of the school. They also spent time early in the year learning about Bates. “My scholars know the mascot is the bobcat and can tell you interesting facts about the animal,” Hashemi says.

“They know that the college is in Maine, diagonally across the U.S. They have seen pictures of the campus, sports and classes from the website. They are beyond thrilled to have had a true connection with the college.”

Equitas Academy is a K–2 charter school in Los Angeles, and this clip is courtesy of Bates parent Joe Pagano P’14, who visited the school while working on a marketing communications project involving several U.S. charters that are associated with Building Excellent Schools. He and his wife, Kathleen O’Brien Pagano ’86, head up Pagano Media.

Parents and Family Weekend 2012 featured a wide range of activities and opportunities that allowed parents and families to experience Bates through the eyes of their students.

The myriad events of the program included many activities that make up a typical Bates weekend, including athletic contests and performances. The weekend also featured special events, such as a faculty symposium on “Teaching and Scholarship in a Liberal Arts Environment,” a student research symposium, and opportunities to honor and remember the life of Troy Pappas ’16, a wide receiver for the football team.

For a look at this memorable weekend, watch the slide show on the Bates Flickr site, or view the images in the embedded slide show above. Photographs by Mike Bradley, Phyllis Graber Jensen and Simone Schriger ’14. For more about the football game, view a slide show on the Bates Athletics site.

Bates dancers perform Alwin Nikolais’ “Tensile Involvement” in 2004. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Two performances of widely diverse repertoire by Bates College dancers, including the return of the influential masterwork “Tensile Involvement” by Alwin Nikolais, take place at noon Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 6-7, in the college’s Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St.

Featuring the Bates Dance Company, student dance clubs and faculty performers, these Parents & Family Weekend performances are open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-8294.

Nikolais, a pioneering choreographer, championed non-representational dance. He was known for a multimedia approach that, similar to opera, was intended to bring all aspects of the performing arts to the audience.

He choreographed “Tensile Involvement,” his best-known work, in 1953, also designing the set, costumes and lighting, and composing the music. The piece launches the dancers into interactions with giant ribbons that transform the stage into a dynamic matrix of color, sound and motion.

The most recent performance of the piece by Bates dancers was in 2004. A gift by Marcy Plavin, founder of the Bates dance program, makes this year’s production possible.

Also on the program:

• work by hip-hop choreographer Robin Sanders from Memphis, Tenn. The guest choreographer for a springtime course that took Bates dancers into local public schools, Sanders “was such a hit that we have brought her back for our core creative process course, Dance Repertory Performance,” says Bates dance program director Carol Dilley;
• dances choreographed by Dilley, by faculty member Debi Irons and by student choreographers;
• a performance of Balinese dance by guest artist Shoka Yamamuro;
• and dances by student clubs — the Dynasty Step Team, Ballroom Dance Society and the liturgical dance troupe Justified.

George Mitchell, the former U.S. senator who served as President Obama’s special envoy for Middle East peace until last spring, delivers the keynote address during a weeklong celebration of international and interdisciplinary education at Bates in October.

Mitchell speaks at 5:15 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 27, in the Bates College Chapel, 275 College St. His talk follows the dedication of Hedge and Roger Williams halls, recently renovated by the college into academic facilities that are advancing the Bates education still further across national and interdisciplinary boundaries.

Visit the Open to the World website.
More about the Hedge and Roger Williams renovations.
More about the speakers .

During the 4:15 p.m. dedication, Paul Marks ’83, chairman and CEO of the aerospace materials maker Argosy International Inc., offers remarks about living as a global citizen. Mitchell’s talk and the dedication of Hedge and Roger Williams halls culminate Open to the World: Bates Celebrates Unbounded Learning, the Oct. 24-28 series of events.

The week’s speakers also include Gary Hirshberg P’13, “CE-Yo” of yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm. The full Open to the World schedule will be announced later in October. For more information, please contact 207-786-6336 or arichard@bates.edu.

Here are events that have been confirmed to date:

Monday, Oct. 24: Bates observes United Nations Day.

Tuesday, Oct. 25: Translations: Bates International Poetry Festival opens with a 4 p.m. welcome, readings by international poets at 4:45 accompanied by English translations, and an evening reception at 6, all in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

This five-day event includes poets from around the world presenting their work, accompanied by translations created by Bates faculty and students; and a conference on the art and practice of translation. For more information, please contact gdumais@bates.edu or 207-786-8293.

Wednesday, Oct. 26: At 6 p.m. is a screening of Food, Inc., the Academy Award-nominated documentary exposing the corporate-controlled, industrialized underside of American food production. Following the screening at 7:30 p.m., Hirshberg, a prominent figure in Robert Kenner’s 2008 film, offers remarks. Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Thursday, Oct. 27: Hedge and Roger Williams halls are rededicated at 4:30, followed by Mitchell’s keynote. The keynote will be simulcast in Perry Atrium, Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk). A reception in the atrium follows Mitchell’s speech.

Friday, Oct. 28: In “Global Possibilities,” five young Bates alums discuss their experiences with initiatives that have both local and global consequences; at 4 p.m. in the Keck Classroom (G52), Pettengill Hall.

Parents and Family Weekend 2011 (see more photographs) featured a wide range of activities and opportunities for students and families to get together, including:

• student poster research
• a cappella concert
• Bates Career Development Center information session
• annual faculty symposium
• athletics against Hamilton and Tufts
• international fair
• Bates Listening Tour
• Annual Parents and Family Weekend Harvest Dinner
• modern dance concert

Roland Davis ’92, director of the Office of Intercultural Education, supported the theme by telling a story of how he learned to give his young daughter freer reign as she began kindergarten.

Though it had been his dream to drive her to school every day, she wanted to ride the school bus — a desire complicated by the fact that the bus driver would be picking her up at home but leaving her off at day care. It was a wrinkle that sent the already anxious dad around the bend.

On her first day of school, “I decided to follow the school bus to make sure was going where it was supposed to go,” said Davis. It was quite a process, as he had to stop every time the bus stopped, hanging back behind the bus even when the driver indicated that he was welcome to pass.

Soon after Davis got home, a police car pulled into the driveway. Davis had to explain to the cop that, yes, he was the guy tailing the school bus. “I am an unhinged helicopter parent whose daughter had her first day of kindergarten today,” he told the police officer, and he had been worried that the bus driver would leave her off in the wrong place.

The cop was satisfied, and left. As for Davis, he was strangely reassured. The system had worked, with both the driver and the police doing what they should have done to look after his child.

The moral of the story: “We can’t control everything, nor in most cases should we have to. More often than not, things work out as we hope they will,” Davis told the gym full of parents.

“The child that you’re leaving off today will be just fine.”

Quipped Tedd Goundie, dean of students and program host, as Davis left the dais, “Each time I hear that story, it gets no less disturbing.” The parents laughed, knowingly.

Through June 30, donors to the Bates Fund contributed a record $5,503,676, exceeding the fund’s $5.5 million goal. The year-end total represents a 16.5 percent increase over 2010 and 28-percent increase since 2009.

All gifts to Bates in fiscal 2011, including endowment and capital giving, totaled $12,703,994, up 20.5 percent over 2010 and 43 percent since 2009.

Other highlights:

• Alumni participation reached its 45-percent goal (45.2 percent), up from 41 percent two years ago, reflecting an increase of some 1,000 new alumni donors.
• Participation from Bates parents, defined as all current parents and alumni parents who have given within the last three years, reached a record 39.1 percent.
• On a national level, Bates’ three-year gain in dollars since 2008 ranks second among a peer group of 17 national liberal arts colleges.
• The eldest Bates Fund donor in 2011 was Al Webber ’28, age 103.
• The youngest donors were in the graduating Class of 2011, which directed its traditional Senior Gift to the Bates Fund. Seventy-six percent of the class gave to the Senior Gift, a 17-percent increase since 2009.

“Giving to Bates involves and touches more people every year,” says annual giving director Christina Traister ’94. “A record 9,814 alumni, parents and friends made the Bates Fund part of their giving tradition this year. And more volunteers than ever are contributing to the grassroots work to ensure the fund’s success.”

Adds Traister, “It’s a nice position — to be able to thank more people!”

Since 2008, the number of Bates annual giving volunteers has more than doubled, Traister says. Volunteer alumni and parent leaders organized approximately 100 meetings and teleconferences relating to their work on the Bates Fund in 2011.

Representing gifts from alumni, parents and friends, the Bates Fund provides about 5 percent of the college’s annual operating budget. Revenue from student fees and funds drawn from the endowment comprises the balance.

The fund’s success has been part of Bates’ strategic response to the global economic crisis that began in 2008, says Kelly Kerner, vice president for college advancement.

“Like all colleges, our endowment took a hit when the markets tanked in 2008 and 2009,” he says. “Our investments have recovered, but our conservative spending policy means that the amount Bates annually draws from the endowment has seen a seven-figure reduction in recent years.”

“Key to Bates’ ability to do more than just weather the recession.”

The Bates Fund’s $1.2-million growth since 2009, Kerner says, along with a campus cost-savings program to identify $600,000 in budget savings, “have been key to Bates’ ability to do more than just weather the recession.”

Since 2009, expanded academic and student programs include a major renovation to Garcelon Field; a new academic major in dance debuting for 2011; and the renovation and expansion of two historic buildings, Hedge Hall and Rogers Williams Hall, as prime academic centers.

The Bates Fund’s success comes as the college embarks on a national search for the successor to Elaine Tuttle Hansen, the college’s seventh president, who departed June 30 to lead the Center for Talented Youth at The Johns Hopkins University.

By exceeding Bates Fund goals, says interim president Nancy Cable, “our alumni, parents and friends have sent a proud and timely statement about the strength and resolve of our college.”

What one word best describes Bates?

Their responses are below. “In a Word: Bates” is an end-of-year project of the Bates Fund that’s seen a variety of alumni, faculty, staff and students responding to the Bates-in-a-word question.

“Holistic,” says Joseph Kibbe ’11 of Portland, Ore.

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“First-rate,” says Frank Glazer, Bates Artist in Residence

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“Opportunity,” says Ethan Waldman ’11 of Playa del Rey, Calif.

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“Chill,” says Gavin Segall-Abrams, Greensboro, N.C.

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“Experience,” says Nikki Rankine ’11 of Brooklyn, N.Y.

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“Tight-knit,” says Ada Tadmor ’11 of Brookline, Mass.

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“Tradition,” says Graham Jones ’11 of Belmont, Mass.

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“Rollercoaster,” says Shervin Chambers ’12 of Brooklyn, N.Y.

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“Complete,” says Theodore Sutherland ’11 of Accra, Ghana

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To bring such abstract questions to a “more informed and pragmatic” context, Hansen shared perspectives from Bates Career Development Center director Karen McRoberts.

From a career perspective, Hansen related, the Bates liberal arts experience gives students the ability to create a compelling and distinctive narrative about themselves, a story “that shows that what you did translates into the analytical skills, the communications skills, and the interpersonal skills that employers, graduate schools and professional schools want.”