The Harward Center for Community Partnerships at Bates holds its annual community celebration at 6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 5, in the Lewiston Public Library’s Marsden Hartley Cultural Center, 200 Lisbon St. The event is co-sponsored by the Alonzo Garcelon Society and is free and open to the public.

The event, now in its fifth year, features performances from a diverse array of groups including Bates students and members of the Lewiston-Auburn community. Light refreshments and hors d’oeuvres will be served. For more information, contact Harward Center events coordinator Brenda Pelletier at this bpelleti@bates.edu or 207-786-6400.

Artists in different media including music and spoken word are scheduled to perform. From Bates, the Deansmen, an a cappella group, and the Bates Step Team, a dance ensemble, will participate. The event will also feature students from the Androscoggin Valley Education Collaborative (AVEC) Writing Program and the Hillview Aspirations program as well as a performance by the Bald Hill Trio.

The Deansmen are a 12-voice all-male group and the oldest a cappella ensemble at Bates. Their albums include the independently distributed A Century Half Full (2007), Schlage (2004) and Vocal Syllogism (2001). Now in its 57th year, the group has performed at functions for the Boston Celtics, former U.S. President George Bush Sr., Rockapella and at other events in the Lewiston-Auburn area and around New England.

The Bald Hill Trio features Ben DeTroy on mandolin, fiddle and guitar, Mike Conant on guitar and Tim Clough on double bass. DeTroy, a lifelong musician, in recent years has performed with a New Gloucester-based band of eclectic musicians known as Mountain Avenue.
Also a member of Mountain Avenue, Conant has played guitar since his youth, and the last two years has focused on fiddle and banjo. DeTroy and Conant back up their two teenage daughters in a band called Chasini Shane.

Clough took his first electric bass lesson in the early 2000s and soon found himself drawn to the acoustic double bass. He also performs with a jazz band known as the Three Point Trio.

Students from Lewiston and Edward Little high schools will read poetry and stories they have written with the AVEC Writing Program, and girls in the Hillview Girls Aspirations Program will showcase projects including sewing and art pieces.

The Hillview program is in its third year of working with middle-school Somali girls. They meet weekly with an AmericCorps/VISTA staffer based at Lewiston Housing Authority’s Hillview Family Development and participate in activities like sewing, community service projects, visioning and goal setting, and skill building to help them to develop assets that support future success.

The Harward Center leads Bates’ efforts in community involvement, including programs in community-based learning, community volunteerism and environmental stewardship. The center works with community partners to meet community needs and, in the process, to integrate civic engagement with the Bates educational experience.

Learn more about the Harward Center for Community Partnerships.

The Garcelon Society is a community organization that raises support for the Androscoggin Scholarship Endowment at Bates, established in 2004 to increase financial support for the college’s students from Lewiston, Auburn and surrounding Androscoggin County communities.

Bates College announced today a campaign to raise scholarship funds for local students who attend the liberal arts institution. Longtime Auburn resident and Bates parent Barbara Trafton will lead the fund-raising effort for a new endowment that will be dedicated to the financial support of students from Lewiston, Auburn and surrounding communities in Androscoggin County.

Bates College President Elaine Tuttle Hansen made the announcement to about 100 community members attending a Bates Community Breakfast, the first of the 2004-05 academic year at the Edmund S. Muskie Archives on campus.

“The new Androscoggin Scholarship Fund will help to ensure that talented and deserving students from our community continue to have access to the very special kind of education that our faculty and staff work hard to provide,” Hansen said.

“It is very fitting that as we are about to mark the sesquicentennial anniversary of the founding of Bates, we reconfirm our commitment to the young people of the community that has been our home since 1855. This fund is meant to be a guarantor of opportunity for the next 150 years.”

In her remarks, Hansen said that financial aid continues to be the college’s most pressing challenge. “Today it costs about $10,000 more annually to educate each student than we charge in tuition. And many of our students cannot afford the full tuition bill due to their financial circumstances. We can only make up the difference between our revenues and expenses through earnings on our endowment or through fund raising.”

Last year Bates spent more than $14 million in financial aid awards to students. Included in this total was nearly $260,000 in direct grants to 21 students from Lewiston, Auburn and other towns in Androscoggin County. But Bates has a lower endowment than its peers in New England, and so the college’s resources are strained by the increasing needs of students and families. While alumni have been generous in their support of scholarship awards, rapidly escalating costs have persuaded college officials to appeal for the first time to the local community for help.

Trafton, who recently led the highly successful $7 million campaign to restore and expand the Auburn Public Library, will chair an organizing committee to plan how to best support the Androscoggin Scholarship Fund. “My family has deep roots in the Bates community spanning several generations,” Trafton said. “As a parent I witnessed first-hand the extraordinary effects of a Bates education on my own son, Ben. As a member of the Lewiston-Auburn community I am excited to have this opportunity to make sure that others can benefit from a Bates education.”

Trafton plans to begin recruiting members of the organizing committee in January. Donors to the scholarship fund will be able to join a new membership organization, the Alonzo Garcelon Society, which will provide special opportunities to participate in the social and academic life of the college. The Society is named for Lewiston native and former governor, Alonzo Garcelon, who persuaded the Rev. Oren Cheney, Bates’ founder, to locate his new institution in Lewiston rather than in one of several competing towns.

According to Hansen, the college hopes to raise at least $500,000 for the fund locally over the next three years. “We intend to seek the support of businesses, foundations and individuals throughout the greater Lewiston-Auburn area to start building this endowment,” she said. “Several faculty and staff members have already expressed interest in making gifts. Meanwhile, we are also actively searching for corporate or foundation sponsors to provide a dollar-for-dollar match and hope to have a total of $1 million invested in the fund by 2008.”