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• Cosmin Ghita ’12 of Bucharest, Romania, president of Student Government
• Michael Bonney ’80, chairman of the Board of Trustees
• Paul Marks ’83 (below), CEO of the global aerospace technology firm Argosy Inc.
• Nancy Cable, president of Bates

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Former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell offers the keynote address during the "Open to the World" events on Oct. 27. Photograph by Rene Minnis.

Sharing the Chapel chancel with 15 Bates students supported in their studies by a statewide program that he founded, former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell used incidents from his own life to drive home higher education’s value to both personal growth and economic success.

Praising Bates as a college “in the forefront of higher education,” Mitchell addressed the Bates community Oct. 27 following the dedication ceremony for newly renovated Hedge and Roger Williams halls.

• Video: George’s Mitchell’s keynote address
  

Bates President Nancy Cable introduced Mitchell with an impressive summation of the senator’s long career in public service.

George Mitchell, whose Mitchell Institute provides scholarships to Maine students, greets Bates Mitchell Scholars on Oct. 27. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen.

“The United States is the first true meritocracy in human history,” Mitchell told about 200 people in the Chapel. But that meritocracy is broken if its benefits aren’t available to all Americans. “We have to make certain that we can draw on the talents of every member of our society,” and improving access to higher education is one way to do that. (In discussing the rising inaffordability of higher education, Mitchell’s speech anticipated the college-costs symposium scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 29.)

Mitchell pulled out statistics to support the common wisdom that more education means greater financial health. In Maine, he said, recent studies have indicated that people holding a bachelor’s degree earn 50 percent more than those who don’t. Similarly, those who stopped with a high school diploma are more than twice as likely to be unemployed than B.A. holders.

“We have a huge challenge in front of us,” he said, “but it’s also a huge opportunity, and it can provide a huge benefit to our state and our society,” meaning the higher tax revenues and lower government spending that come with higher rates of college graduation.

“It is a good investment to help young people go to college.”

Former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell answers questions following his "Open to the World" keynote address as Associate Professor of Politics John Baughman looks on. Photograph by Rene Minnis.

In a parallel to a story told during the dedication by Paul Marks ’83, Mitchell used his own example to illustrate the transformational role education can have. During a question-and-answer session that followed his address, he described growing up in Waterville, Maine, a son of a woman who was a Lebanese immigrant and a father of Irish extraction. A poor athlete among siblings highly accomplished in sports, Mitchell had poor self-esteem and was an indifferent student.

But a teacher at Waterville High School took Mitchell aside, gave him a book (John Steinbeck’s The Moon is Down) and told him to read it and give her an oral report on it. He read the book that night, she gave him another, and what followed was a literary year that turned Mitchell, a future federal judge, senator, peace-broker and author, into a reader. “My life would have been very different” without that teacher, he said.

Years later, as senator, Mitchell attended a University of Maine conference examining the aspirations of Maine’s young people. The message from the conference was that many young people in Maine, especially rural and low-income, had low aspirations.

Former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell speaks with a guest during a reception following Mitchell's "Open to the World" keynote address.

After the conference, hoping to serve as a role model, Mitchell set himself the goal of visiting every Maine high school twice, once to speak at graduation and once to meet with students and teachers. “I saw in the eyes of many of those students a mirror image of myself at their age,” he said.

What grew out of that effort was the Mitchell Institute, founded in 1994. Based in Portland, the institute grants a Mitchell Scholarship to a graduating senior from every public high school in Maine who will attend a two-or four-year postsecondary degree program. Among the more than 1,800 Mitchell Scholars to date, 93 have attended Bates, Mitchell said.

The institute has an especially close connection to Bates, as Bates’ own William Hiss ’66, longtime admissions dean and now a development officer, was, Mitchell said, “the most influential person in advising how this program would be set up and implemented. “He was, and is, one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met, in the field of education and beyond.”

(He was so impressed by Hiss that at one point, he asked Hiss to lead the institute. Hiss declined, but recommended someone else for the job — his wife, Colleen Quint ’86. A former Mitchell staffer in the Senate, she has been executive director since 1999.)

Mitchell has still another Bates connection in the late Edmund S. Muskie ’36, whom he described as “my mentor, my hero and ultimately my friend.” A former aide to Muskie during his long tenure in the U.S. Senate, Mitchell was later tapped to fill the Senate seat Muskie vacated when he became U.S. Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter.

Mitchell concluded his formal speech by describing the satisfaction he felt, from the perspective of an immigrant’s son, as a federal judge presiding over naturalization ceremonies. After the ceremonies, he used to ask the new Americans about their stories and why they wanted to be citizens. One young man, not yet a great English speaker, answered, “I came here because in America everybody has a chance.”

Mitchell said, “A young man who had been an American for 10 minutes, who could barely speak English, was able to sum up the meaning of being an American in a single sentence.”

Professor of Philosophy Mark Okrent gets a close look as board chairman Mike Bonney '80 (left) and President Nancy Cable do the ribbon cutting. Photograph by Rene Minnis.

The journey of Paul Marks ’83 from Bates to China, and from being “a fairly unengaged student” to an international business leader, made an ideal narrative for the ceremonial reopening of Roger Williams and Hedge halls, facilities newly repurposed for the academic exploration of border crossings — borders national, cultural, philosophical, spiritual, disciplinary.

• Video: Paul Marks ’83 and fellow speakers at the dedication

Now based in Shanghai and CEO of the global aerospace technology firm Argosy Inc., Marks was one of Bates’ first students to graduate with a China-focused history major. His address at the dedication ceremony recounted how a Short Term trip to China in 1981, 30 years ago this year, was the challenge that set him on his life’s path.

Remarks by Bates board chair Michael Bonney ’80, college President Nancy Cable and Student Government President Cosmin Ghita ’12 were also on the program for the dedication late Thursday afternoon. Two symbolic acts completed the ceremony, as the faculty and staff who are the buildings’ stakeholders received honorary keys to Hedge and the Bill, and a ribbon-cutting made their reopening official.

Paul Marks '83 speaks to the dedication audience about his defining experience in China in 1981. Photograph by Rene Minnis.

As Marks recalled, his parents were not thrilled about the notion of his going to China. It took the persuasive powers of Professor of Sociology George Fetter, who had arranged Bates’ first-ever Short Term expedition to China two years previous, to bring them around.

Fetter had promised Marks that the trip would “change his life.” That prediction came true. During five weeks in China, Marks told his listeners, “I became hooked on China. I wanted to understand this chaotic, totally different world.”

Part of the attraction was a spur to his competitive spirit from the group’s Chinese guide, who insisted that the foreigners couldn’t learn the language. Marks rose to the challenge, betting the guide five bucks that he could indeed learn Mandarin. With his first instructor at Bates an adjunct faculty member who was the wife of a local Taiwanese dentist, Marks became Bates’ first student of the Chinese language, and continued his studies as a postgraduate.

In his welcome, Bonney, CEO of the pharmaceuticals firm Cubist, stated the theme for this celebration of two new academic buildings. “Faculty at Bates are helping students [prepare] to live, to work, to think, to lead and ultimately to solve problems in the global society. These two buildings are spaces that foster that kind of learning.”

“The decision to renovate these buildings was not an easy decision, Bonney said, owing to their age and condition after years of hard use as residence halls. “And yet we stand here today with two remarkable buildings that do honor to our history, but also position us beautifully for the future.”

Bonney was the right person to situate the buildings’ symbolic role in the context of time, as his family has been associated with Bates for nearly a century, roughly the same amount of time that the Bill and Hedge have been here. (And he and Marks, who were both students during Roger Bill’s heyday as a meeting place for, let’s say, joie de vivre, took the opportunity to point out that a benefit of the renovation was the elimination of the spilled-beer smell.)

Board chair Mike Bonney presents a symbolic key to Roger Williams Hall to Spanish professor Claudia Aburto Guzmán. Photograph by Rene Minnis.

“These two academic buildings, and the campus at large, are powered by Bates faculty,” Cable told the 175 or so listeners gathered in a tent on Alumni Walk, near the Bill and Hedge. “It is the faculty’s attention to the individual that makes the Bates experience so vitally special and distinctive academically.

“Paul’s stories inform our sense of what lasts over time, from the simple connection of a faculty member to a student, the heart of what we do.”

The ceremony began with international students Mustafa Basij-Rasikh ’12 of Kabul, Afghanistan, and Romina Istratii ’12 of Athens, Greece, welcoming the Bates community in their native languages (Istratii, anticipating Marks’ subject, also offered a greeting in Chinese, which she is studying at Bates).

Ghita, of Bucharest, Romania, touched on the chilly dampness of the day in his remarks, bringing the thought neatly around to the ceremony’s theme of global citizenship. “Cultures around the world perceive rain as an omen of good fortune,” he pointed out. “I never would have known that had I not immersed myself in the study of another language.”

French professor Alex Dauge-Roth gestures during the faculty conversation about global citizenship held prior to the dedication of Hedge and Roger Williams halls. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen.

So the foreign language faculty took an hour or so during the afternoon of Oct. 27, the day the newly renovated Bill and Hedge Hall were dedicated, to present a sampling of courses and projects in their repertoire.

Dedicated to the idea of educating students for global citizenship, here are a few highlights from the presentation in the brand-new Language Resource Center:

• Alex Dauge-Roth, associate professor of French, talked about his course “Border and Disorders in French and Francophone Literature and Films.” An apt choice for a week of Bates programming devoted to breaking down borders, the course examines representations of inclusion and exclusion — for example, two opposing political ads that use, in nearly identical ways, the symbol of a black sheep among white ones to support either openness to immigration or rejection of it. “The idea is to complexify for students how they define their borders,” Dauge-Roth said. “You cannot be at home without excluding others.”
• Against a backdrop of Central European images taken last year by Rachel Morrison ’13, Professor of German Craig Decker offered a capsule history of Bates Fall Semester Abroad programs in Vienna and Berlin. Noting that all FSA programs, not just the German-language trips, are interdisciplinary by design, he said, “It’s interesting to see how students combine what goes on in the two courses.” It’s a kind of synthesis “that doesn’t always happen on campus.”
• Sarah Strong, professor of Japanese, cut to the heart of cross-cultural exchange in describing her course “The Fantastic in Modern Japan.” Looking at comics, fiction and anime film, the course encourages students to discover what’s common among cultures — but more important, to “encounter what is unfamiliar that they can learn about and bring into their sphere of understanding.” For example, how the young heroine in the manga and film Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind comes to terms with the toxic fungal forest that is consuming a post-apocalyptic world.
• A fascinating translation project undertaken by Professor of Spanish Francisca López, Lecturer in French Laura Balladur and others: Students in certain foreign-language courses have translated work by the poets participating in the college’s annual Translations international poetry festival (taking place concurrently with the Open to the World events). During the festival, the student translations have been projected on a screen while the poets read them in the original language. For the second part of the course, the students translate into French and Spanish poems written by students in a poetry course taught by Senior Lecturer in English Robert Farnsworth — and all the students, translators and translated, meet to discuss the linguistic and cultural issues that are gained in translation.

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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.

Speaking at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 26, following an Olin Arts Center screening of the documentary Food, Inc., Gary Hirshberg P’13 is president and “CE-Yo” of Stonyfield Farm, the world’s leading organic yogurt producer.

Hirshberg is the husband of freelance writer Meg Hirshberg and the father of three yogurt eaters, including Bates junior Ethan Hirshberg. Gary Hirshberg is the author of Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World (Hyperion Books, 2008) and a frequent speaker on topics including sustainability, climate change, the profitability of green and socially responsible business, organic agriculture and sustainable economic development.

Offering remarks at the dedication of Hedge and Roger Williams halls at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 27, Paul Marks ’83 was the first student to study Chinese at Bates. He is chairman and CEO of the aerospace materials maker Argosy International Inc.

Founded in 1988 and headquartered in New York City, Argosy is a leading global supplier and manufacturer of aerospace composite materials, supporting such major aerospace companies as Boeing, Sikorsky and Airbus.

Also on Thursday, George Mitchell offers the Bates Unbounded: Open to the World keynote address at 5:30 p.m.in the Chapel. Mitchell, who served as U.S. special envoy for Middle East peace from January 2009 to May 2011, is one of the most accomplished politicians and diplomats that Maine has produced in recent decades. In 2008 Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential persons in the world.

Mitchell received an undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College and a law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center. He served as U.S. attorney for Maine from 1977 until 1979, and U.S. district judge for Maine in 1979 and 1980.

He was appointed to the U.S. Senate in 1980 to complete the unexpired term of Sen. Edmund S. Muskie (a member of the Bates class of 1936), who resigned to become secretary of state. Mitchell was elected to a full term in the Senate in 1982 in a stunning come-from-behind victory.

Mitchell left the Senate in 1995 as majority leader after an illustrious career in that body. He led the successful 1990 reauthorization of the Clean Air Act, including new controls on acid rain toxins, and wrote the first national oil spill prevention and clean-up law. He was a key player in legislation including the nation’s first child care bill, the low-income housing tax credit program and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

From 1996 to 2000 Mitchell served as the independent chairman of the Northern Ireland Peace Talks. Under his leadership the Good Friday Agreement, a historic accord ending decades of conflict, was agreed to by the governments of Ireland and the United Kingdom and the political parties of Northern Ireland.

Mitchell has published four books, including Making Peace (Knopf, 1999), an account of his experience in Northern Ireland.

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“It’s the windows,” said Doris Vincent, administrative assistant for the Off-Campus Study Program. “There are so many big, bright windows.”

It was also the wall colors that glowed so pleasantly in the light from all those windows: sage green, warm cream, caramel, a rich medium blue.

And it was the generous space in the new offices. And the long views from the big windows. And the cozy lounges. And, of course, the “tokonoma” in the Asian studies common space on the second floor — tokonoma being the Japanese term for a recessed display area for artistic valuables.

In short, the few staffers and faculty from Off-Campus Study and the foreign language departments who toured the renovated Roger Williams Hall on July 7 were glowing right along with the wall paint, delighted by the many improvements, aesthetic and functional, over their previous quarters.

The tour was a prelude to moving day on July 25, when offices were turned over to the Bill’s 27 occupants. In an arrangement similar to what Bates and general contractor Wright-Ryan Construction worked out for Hedge Hall, which opened to occupants on June 27, Bates has assumed operational control of the building while the contractor continues its work.

Of which there ain’t much, at least inside. “The places where furniture goes are done,” project manager Paul Farnsworth reported on July 21. “The last thing that we’re doing is touch-up paint on the handrails in Stair Two,” the stairway in the new section of the building.

The end game for the Bill differs in significant ways from Hedge’s. Both buildings are undergoing punch-list inspections and corrections. But at Hedge, in order to shift workers over to the Bill as soon as possible, that process began only after most other work was complete. At Roger Williams, they’ve been working on punch lists as they’ve gone along, so they’re ahead of the game.

The Bill has also been faster because of its configuration. Its ceilings are higher, which makes some tasks easier to do. And while its footprint is close to square, Hedge’s is long and skinny, which both constricts the space for people to work in and, crucially, enforces stricter adherence to the building plans.

Don’t take that wrong. Because architects can’t foresee every condition in a building, Farnsworth explains that sometimes you need to move a wall slightly, for instance, to make things fit. “In Hedge, we didn’t really have that option as much, where in Roger Williams we were like, ‘Yeah, we can move that out an inch — no one will know the difference.’ ”

Outside the Bill, workers poured a substantial set of steps leading from the stair tower to the Library Quad, and graded the area near the Evelyn Minard Phillips Remembrance Garden. With new grass already sprouting on the side of Roger Bill facing Pettengill Hall, the remaining loam and grass seed should be spread by the end of July.

Finally, 17 months after it appeared, the fence around the construction site was taken down on July 20. We walked by one day and it took a few minutes to figure out what was missing. And when we finally did realize that the thing we were missing was an obstructed view, we took it as a signal from the heavens.

We began our reporting on the Hedge Hall and Roger Williams renovation with the arrival of the construction fence — and as the fence goes, so does Campus Construction Update, at least for now. Thanks for reading.

On June 27, right on schedule, faculty members in philosophy, religious studies and environmental studies moved into their new offices in the renovated Hedge Hall.

About 10 faculty and staff, out of 20 total occupants, were on campus to take possession of their new quarters, says project manager Paul Farnsworth.

“They love it. They’re using words like ‘space,’ ‘color,’ ‘interesting architecture,’ ‘well-designed,’ ” he says.

All that being said, though, work goes on at Hedge. Bates has resumed responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the building, but the general contractor is still hands-on.

The major chore is fixing “punch-list” items — the detailed tweaks, repairs, finish-ups and do-overs discovered during final inspections by contractor Wright-Ryan Construction and architect JSA. That final phase should be wrapped up in a few weeks.

At least, Farnsworth says, the punch-list work is pretty much finished for the office spaces. Next week, he adds, Jackie’s Cleaning & Maintenance of Lisbon, Maine, will give the building a good going-over.

And soon it will be time for the foreign-language faculty and study-abroad staff to move into Roger Williams Hall. The remaining renovation work “is going fast now,” says Farnsworth.

“We’re getting ready to bring tote boxes over to Hathorn” — current home of the language folks — “so people can start packing.” Moving-in day is scheduled for July 25.

At the Bill, the architects have started their punch-list inspections — “punching out,” as they say, the second and third floors in both the old and new sections.

As for ongoing work, it’s all about surfaces as painters paint and flooring installers, um, floor. There’s still plenty of flooring to lay, but much of the remaining paintwork is finishing touches. You may notice big sheets of plastic hanging inside the stair tower: Those are protecting the glass walls from paint splashes.

Not to neglect the ceilings in all this talk about walls and floors, ceiling tiles are being installed left and right. And, looking back at the stair tower, handrails are being welded into place along the stairways.

On the outside, sheet-metal experts are finishing up their work, including the placement of charcoal-gray ContinentalBronze cladding onto the soffits on the Bill’s new office block. This “preweathered” copper product, with the black slate roofing, now dominates the eastern face of the building. Ultimately the copper will oxidize to the familiar blue-green patina of exposed copper.

Otherwise the most conspicuous exterior progress has been on the ground, as landscapers have laid a layer of loam around the building’s northwest corner, making apparent where pathways will go. The corner nearest New Commons will get the next load of topsoil. And soon we can expect to see some green, green grass on loam.