On the lid of a yogurt cup in Commons, Catherine Elliott ’12 of Edina, Minn., read about a contest that would fund playground upgrades for the organization that collected enough specially marked lids.

“Wow! We have a lot of yogurt lids here,” Elliott thought. “This opportunity exists — what can we do with it?”

What she did was gather 4,500-plus lids, enough to win the $50,000 “Double Play” grant from organic yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm and KaBOOM!, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing play into children’s lives.

Elliott posted fliers and placed collection boxes around campus. Dining Services workers pitched in, collecting lids that came back to the dish room on trays.

Elliott then cleaned the thousands of lids in her dorm. She developed an elaborate system in her room to dry them, involving trash containers in which she layered the washed lids with paper towels to soak up moisture.

“I had a fan that I clipped to my desk and had running 24 hours a day to help air them out,” Elliott says.

The contest actually provided grants for two deserving organizations. Elliott’s partner, the Boys & Girls Club of Auburn-Lewiston, won first prize, $50,000 worth of play-related improvements to the Clubhouse, including renovation of a gym floor. The first-place winners also got to choose a second $50,000 grant recipient: Elliott and Boys & Girls Club unit director Andie Hannon awarded this prize to the PTA at Laurel Elementary School in Laurel, Md.

Elliott, who is organizing her studies around social-justice issues, came to Bates with a track record of community organizing. Giving back, she believes, “is all about the unseen consequences of your actions. You don’t know how far they’ll reach.”

While Sylvan Ellefson ’09 hasn’t banished sweets or Commons crispitos from his diet, he has honed an understanding of what his body needs to perform at peak level.

“I was definitely not conscious of eating a balanced diet my first year here,” says Ellefson, a Nordic skier from Vail, Colo., who won All-America honors at last year’s NCAA Skiing Championships. “But in the past two years I’ve really realized what it means.”

With the Bobcats hosting the 2009 NCAA Championships, March 11–14, and with Bates in the midst of its yearlong focus on food, Ellefson and his teammates have ample reason to make Bates Dining Services an honorary member of their team.

“Commons does a great job of providing us with the food we need for how we train,” Ellefson says.

For example, when the Nordic team travels during carnival season, their van carries Commons-provided snacks like granola, breads, fruits and yogurt for immediate post-race nutrition. “Your body recovers more quickly if you get food right after a race,” explains Nordic teammate Sam Evans-Brown ’09.

When it comes to establishing healthy food routines, the teammates support each other, says head coach Becky Flynn Woods ’89. “It’s about getting into the right habit. For example, the skiers racing later in the day will take time in the morning to prepare food, like PB&Js, for everyone to eat right after the races.”

Nordic skier and teammate Nicole Ritchie ’09, twice an All-American rower as well as a skier, has become conscious of her food choices for another reason. “A friend is doing a thesis that focuses on corn syrup,” she says. “I’ve been reading over her shoulder. The amount of energy going into producing corn syrup is pretty disgusting.”

Early in the 1900s, two manufacturing plants in Arlington, Mass., dumped their chemical waste out back, which polluted a town-owned pond, later filled to create the high school football field.

The town became aware of the contamination in the 1990s but didn’t get money to clean up the site until the 2000s.

That’s when environmental consultant Matt Grove ’94 and his team from the firm Brown and Caldwell went to work.

First, the contamination was excavated and consolidated. “We installed a cap of plastic and soil layers,” explains Grove. “And we treated the groundwater with a chemical designed to stimulate bioactivity.” As microbes grow and prosper, they create soil conditions that immobilize the contamination. New playing fields were installed over the capped portions of the property. (See aerial images during the project and after completion.)

The Arlington project illustrates the changing approach to environmental cleanups. “The idea is that it’s not feasible to clean up a site to pristine conditions,” Grove explains. “Instead, you reduce contamination to a point where the site can be deemed safe for certain uses.”

Grove, a biology and geology major at Bates who earned a Ph.D. in geology at Duke, believes that “there’s a broader acceptance of changing the way things are done to get people to be more environmentally conscious. It takes a bit of force sometimes, but I think we’re moving toward a better place in terms of the environment and the care we’re taking of it.”

Anna Skarstad '11

Anna Skarstad ’11 wants to be a farmer, but she’s not willing to hoe that row until she understands why. And she knows that farming is hard. “It’s deeper, too,” she says. “It’s a life.”

Which is the reason Skarstad lived amidst Norwegian farmers last summer, hoping to learn a little about their lives and more about her own. Supporting her travel was an Otis Fellowship, a competitive Bates grant program designed to help students explore their relationship with nature.

Skarstad, of Pleasantville, N.Y., wasn’t raised to farm. Her father is a noted violinmaker, and her mother is a composer. In fact, her father’s Norwegian grandparents abandoned a family farm to come to the U.S.

But the urge to work the land apparently didn’t leave the Skarstad genome. When she was 10, Skarstad saw a documentary about Norwegian farming. She saw men, tethered by ropes, descending a Norwegian hillside to harvest hay. “I couldn’t believe that was a reality,” she says. “I wanted to go to Norway to see how the farmers survive.”

Through World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, Skarstad found Norwegian hosts Anders Braanaas and Hilde Buer. Each had been widowed several years ago, and, to skip a lot of details, “the two sheep farmers fell in love,” explains Skarstad. As the pair still maintain their separate farms, Skarstad helped them both during her visit, often driving a banged-up Czech car between the two farms.

At first, the experience felt helter-skelter: painting a barn here, putting up a fence there. “All the tasks seemed unrelated, like pods of work,” she says. Slowly, Skarstad saw unity in all the farm duties. “It all had so much of a point,” she says now. “We were working to keep pace with the earth.”

Most students who study creative writing with Robert Farnsworth find themselves in a relationship measured in years, not semesters.

A widely published poet and member of the Bates faculty since 1990, Farnsworth sees that relationship as a two- or three-year conversation conducted through “office-hour meetings, workshop discussions, scribbling on manuscripts that students give me,” he explains.

“I try to pay close attention to what they initially feel they want to do, and what challenges can be put in front of them to widen the possibilities for their writing, to give them some opportunity to see themselves into territories that they did not know existed for them.”

Farnsworth is the right teacher for young writers still seeking their voices, says Gabe Fried ’96, winner of the 2007 Kathryn A. Morton Prize for his debut collection of poems, Making the New Lamb Take.

“Great teachers — of anything — recognize the strengths of the students in front of them,” says Fried. “Rob allowed us to explore our strengths and ambitions while making sure we could live with our shortcomings.”

This mentoring approach, aspirational and challenging, has elicited enduring appreciation from the ranks of Farnsworth proteges. In fact, support from students resulted in Farnworth’s receiving the 2008 Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching, an honor determined through the votes of past and present students.

The award joined a list of credentials that includes a PEN New England Discovery Award, a 2006 summer residency at the Frost Place in Franconia, N.H., and the role of featured speaker at Bates’ 2006 Convocation — again through a student vote, this time that of the departing Class of 2006.

Madeline White '09

Why did you decide to major in physics?

I’ve always enjoyed thinking about things larger than the world we live in. It has always fascinated me that we are able to study and understand what is way beyond our physical reach, and I always wanted to be a part of trying to understand that.

I’ve been really interested in being an astronaut since I was in third grade. This got me interested in science and physics, and now that I’m older I’m still trying to pursue my dream of becoming an astronaut.

Tell me about your research projects.

Last year I did an independent study titled “Stellar Structure” under the instruction of physics professor Eric Wollman. We did lab work measuring the properties of stars and light sources. We also derived and applied four fundamental equations for the physical structure of stars, and verified an existing solar model using these four equations.

I’m also writing my thesis in astronomy — more specifically in stellar structure. I’m constructing a computational model of a star, and from there I hope to be able to model some unconventional stars. I’m still working with Professor Wollman.

During summer 2008 you took part in a Research Experience for Undergraduates program at Indiana University in Bloomington. What were you doing?

I did theory work in two-dimensional quantum mechanics — the study of systems of particles on the atomic scale. I was at a desk doing a lot of computer programming. I really enjoyed it. Not only did I learn a lot and get good programming experience, but also was able to see the professional physics field first hand.

What is your impression of the future of women in physics?

At Bates I’ve never experienced any issues with being a woman in physics. While I think there still are people in the physics world who look down on women trying to make their way in that field, my impression is that the vast majority of people don’t consider gender, just the person’s work itself.

I think many of the stereotypes of women in science are being overcome and women are not being judged or held back nearly as much as they used to even 30 years ago. Of course I won’t know any of this for sure until I’m out in the field myself.

What makes you good at what you do?

I’m very persistent and will not give up until I am completely satisfied with my results. This is especially important in the lab. You need to be patient and willing to try things 20 times to get them right. This also helps with long problem sets, because you can’t give up on those until you figure out the answer.

What happens after Bates?

I’d like to attend graduate school and get a Ph.D. In the long run I would like to be doing astrophysical research somewhere.

By Erin Bond ’09

Why did you decide to major in physics?

I’ve always enjoyed thinking about things larger than the world we live in. It has always fascinated me that we are able to study and understand what is way beyond our physical reach, and I always wanted to be a part of trying to understand that.

I’ve been really interested in being an astronaut since I was in third grade. This got me interested in science and physics, and now that I’m older I’m still trying to pursue my dream of becoming an astronaut.

Tell me about your research projects.

Last year I did an independent study titled “Stellar Structure” under the instruction of physics professor Eric Wollman. We did lab work measuring the properties of stars and light sources. We also derived and applied four fundamental equations for the physical structure of stars, and verified an existing solar model using these four equations.

I’m also writing my thesis in astronomy — more specifically in stellar structure. I’m constructing a computational model of a star, and from there I hope to be able to model some unconventional stars. I’m still working with Professor Wollman.

During summer 2008 you took part in a Research Experience for Undergraduates program at Indiana University in Bloomington. What were you doing?

I did theory work in two-dimensional quantum mechanics — the study of systems of particles on the atomic scale. I was at a desk doing a lot of computer programming. I really enjoyed it. Not only did I learn a lot and get good programming experience, but also was able to see the professional physics field first hand.

What is your impression of the future of women in physics?

At Bates I’ve never experienced any issues with being a woman in physics. While I think there still are people in the physics world who look down on women trying to make their way in that field, my impression is that the vast majority of people don’t consider gender, just the person’s work itself.

I think many of the stereotypes of women in science are being overcome and women are not being judged or held back nearly as much as they used to even 30 years ago. Of course I won’t know any of this for sure until I’m out in the field myself.

What makes you good at what you do?

I’m very persistent and will not give up until I am completely satisfied with my results. This is especially important in the lab. You need to be patient and willing to try things 20 times to get them right. This also helps with long problem sets, because you can’t give up on those until you figure out the answer.

What happens after Bates?

I’d like to attend graduate school and get a Ph.D. In the long run I would like to be doing astrophysical research somewhere.

— by Erin Bond ’09

Lynne Lewis

When a hydropower dam on Maine’s Kennebec River was taken out in 1999, not everyone agreed that was a good thing.

But recent research by Bates environmental economist Lynne Lewis shows just how good a thing it was. [More...]

When a hydropower dam on Maine’s Kennebec River was taken out in 1999, not everyone agreed that was a good thing.

But recent research by Bates environmental economist Lynne Lewis shows just how good a thing it was.

Removing the Edwards Dam restored 17 miles of this important river to a more natural condition. Those miles once again became home to such migratory fish as striped bass and Atlantic salmon, as well as the birds that prey on them and nature lovers eager to experience the river’s transformation.

Historically, in states like Maine where rivers were treated as part of the industrial infrastructure, pollution and other industrial effects depressed the value of property near rivers. Lewis’ Kennebec research offers proof that the opposite effect holds true as well: Restoring a river to a more natural state raises those values.

To compare the worth of properties before and after the dam was removed, her innovative model combined geographic information systems (GIS) technology, home sales in the region, and the results of surveys asking recreational users how they felt about the river.

GIS allows Lewis and the Bates students who work with her to relate their data precisely to locations around the river. The before-and-after data from both the real estate market and the surveys shed light on a property’s “hedonic” value — the extent to which property pleases the people who use it.

“We can ask people what something’s worth to them, and that’s the survey work,” she explains. For example, how much do people say they’re willing to pay for better air quality?

On the other hand, the property value component shows how people actually spend their money, as opposed to how they say they would spend it.

“Everything about water resources fascinates me,” says Lewis, who is now doing similar work involving the Penobscot and Androscoggin rivers, and has become a go-to authority on dam removal.

“It’s the life blood of the universe, and we can’t live without it — and we fight over it and put our garbage in it.”

A religion major, Wyche quickly learned that “at Bates you’re not just another number. Here professors care about their students flourishing,” she says.

She recalled what she felt when first-year adviser Marcus Bruce invited Wyche and her parents to his home for tea and pumpkin pie. “He made us feel like valued members of the community.”

Wyche never took a course with Margaret Imber, of classical and medieval studies, but the two grew to respect each other while serving together on the Student Conduct Committee. Imber, an attorney, served as a role model for Wyche, an accomplished Bates debater. “The most important thing I learned from her was line of questioning,” says Wyche.

Wyche has a great heart and incredible capacity for nuanced analysis, says Imber. “It’s very hard to learn to organize one’s factual questions in a case around the relevant code provisions — often what’s interesting from a human perspective is irrelevant from the perspective of whether or not conduct violates the code. Tamara was just very, very good at understanding what was relevant and important and boring in on those questions.”

Wyche put those skills into practice as a summer intern on Capitol Hill for the Black American Political Action Committee. Asked to research gubernatorial and mayoral candidates and then decide on their suitability for funding, Wyche first doubted her ability to make such decisions. But she then realized that her Bates education had more than prepared her to do the job. As a political liberal working in a conservative organization, Wyche concluded that “considering different points of view allows you to better present your own.”