“If you want to solve all the problems that we’re facing in this world, it’s unlikely that the people and ideas that got us to where we are will be the ones that are going to get us to a different place,” Segway inventor Dean Kamen told 464 graduates at Bates College’ 141st Commencement ceremony.

“It’s going to require new people with new ideas. And that would be you,” Kamen said in one of the ceremony’s biggest applause lines. (See the honorands’ addresses and citations, slide shows and videos).

Inventor-entrepreneur Kamen was one of four honorary degree recipients at the ceremony, which took place under gathering clouds on the college’s historic Quad. The other honorands were children’s book illustrator-author Eric Carle, actress-writer Anna Deavere Smith, and Corey Harris, a respected roots musician who graduated from Bates in 1991.

In her fifth Bates Commencement, President Elaine Tuttle Hansen led the ceremony. “This ceremony celebrates you, Bates graduates — your habits of mind and soul, and our enduring pride in you,” she said. Hansen concluded by asking the assembly to applaud the people — parents, grandparents, “special others” and faculty — who had done so much to support the students in their journey to this day.

The first of the day’s honorands, Carle may be best-known for his 1969 book The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which has eaten its way into the hearts of millions of children worldwide. Since Caterpillar, Carle has illustrated more than 70 books, many of them best-sellers and most of which he also wrote. More than 75 million copies of his books have been sold around the world.

Carle, who dropped out of school at 16, told the graduates of his “unerring confidence that, when I grew up, I would draw pictures.” He said, “I must warn you that following your dream comes with a price.” In his case, that price lay in not learning much about other subjects, such as math and Latin, that would have served him well later in life. “I regret that,” he said.

Carle also explained how he came to write Caterpillar, getting the idea as he punched holes in a stack of paper. “The holes made me think of a bookworm, and with the help of my good editor, the bookworm became a caterpillar” and the subject of his breakthrough book.

“You see, a good editor, a hole-puncher in good working order and a little bit of luck will take you a long way,” Carle said.

“I was asked to write a speech, but instead I’m just going to talk to you,” Harris began. Sixteen years after his own Bates graduation, the 38-year-old musician returned with a resume that includes well-regarded CDs exploring the spectrum of African-influenced New World music and a central role in a episode of Martin Scorsese’s 2003 PBS series The Blues.

Harris recounted his very first visit to Bates, when this college in a small Maine city seemed like “an outpost. I felt like I was somewhere in the North Pole.” Coming from what he regarded as an insular community in Colorado, “it’s funny that I chose Bates to see the world,” he told the graduates. “But, when I look at you all, I can see that you are the world.”

Harris credited Bates with increasing the diversity of its campus community, while reminding the graduates that in his view, if one considers the world as a whole, “there’s no such thing as a minority.”

He said, “It was at Bates that I got to interact with people I never thought I’d interact with . . . This was my jumping-off point to discover the world.”

Kamen’s Segway personal transporter is the best-known of a string of sophisticated innovations that more typically aim to improve the lives of medical patients and people lacking access to basic necessities of life. College graduates are often exhorted to go fix the world, but Kamen was unusually blunt about what needs fixing and how the worst problems stack up against the worries that graduates may have, such as how to repay college loans.

Kamen reminded his listeners that “a billion people live on less than a dollar a day. And four billion — that’s two-thirds of humanity — on less than two dollars a day.”

He pointed out that the people with the education and privilege to be effective leaders are an “incredibly small minority of this planet. They have a huge advantage in the leverage they have and the control they have.”

In the traditional verbiage that colleges use in presenting honorary degrees, honorands are accorded all the “rights, privileges and responsibilities ” that pertain to the honor. Kamen had opened his address by saying he wanted to know about those privileges. But Smith, known for writing and performing plays that comment on American race relations and other social issues, jokingly responded, “I still want to know what the rights are.”

Taking community as a theme, Smith asked the students to think of community as the people not just close by, but the ones they can possible reach. “What’s so important is, how long is your reach?”

“Many of us have been educated to celebrate our own identities and to celebrate that which we understand because that’s what we came from,” she said. But she challenged her listeners to “come out of your safe houses of identity . . . to a state that I call the crossroads of ambiguity, where there is no house, where it is not safe.”

She recounted how, as someone who has stayed in plenty of hotels, she saw no point in opening the curtains when she entered her room on at the start of her visit here. Later she changed her mind and opened the curtains, realizing that daylight would help her get up in the morning.

“When I woke up this morning I saw that extraordinary waterfall,” the Androscoggin River’s Great Falls between Auburn and Lewiston. “Even at the moment when we think we know something, if we stop to open the curtains, to open our eyes, to open our hearts in another way, there just might be that waterfall. And that waterfall might lead to a new thought or a new spirit.”

The 464 members of Bates’ class of 2007 consisted of 249 women and 215 men. Fifty-five were Maine residents, out of 249 New England residents. One hundred eighty five came from other states, and 30 from other countries.

The most popular subjects in which members of the class of 2007 majored were psychology, with 51 graduates; political science, with 50; and economics, with 41. Fifty-two students took double majors.

Four honorary degree recipients will speak at Bates College’s 141st commencement, on May 27. The honorands are children’s book author Eric Carle, singer-songwriter Corey Harris ’91, inventor-entrepreneur Dean Kamen and actor and author Anna Deavere Smith.

The 10 a.m. commencement ceremony will take place on the historic quad in front of Coram Library. In case of rain, the ceremony will be held in Merrill Gymnasium.

Eric Carle creates brilliantly illustrated and designed picture books for very young children. His best-known work, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, has eaten its way into the hearts of literally millions of children all over the world and has been translated into more than 30 languages and sold more than 25 million copies. Since publishing Caterpillar in 1969, Carle has illustrated more than 70 books, many best sellers, most of which he also wrote. More than 75 million copies of his books have sold around the world.

Distinctive and instantly recognizable, Carle’s art work is created in collage technique, using hand-painted papers, which he cuts and layers to form bright and cheerful images. The appeal of Carle’s books lies in his intuitive understanding of and respect for children, who instinctively sense in him someone who shares their most cherished thoughts and emotions. The themes of his stories are usually drawn from his extensive knowledge and love of nature — an interest shared by most small children. The Washington Post describes Carle’s “mega-bestsellers” as “picture books about usually unlovable creatures that overcome obstacles to find meaning in life.”

Says Carle: “With many of my books I attempt to bridge the gap between the home and school. I believe the passage from home to school is the second biggest trauma of childhood; the first is, of course, being born. Indeed, in both cases we leave a place of warmth and protection for one that is unknown. The unknown often brings fear with it. In my books I try to counteract this fear, to replace it with a positive message.”

In 2002, Carle and his wife, Barbara, helped to found the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Mass., the first full-scale museum in this country devoted to national and international picture book art, conceived and built with the aim of celebrating the art that we are first exposed to as children.

Carle will receive the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters at Bates.

Acclaimed for his brilliant, blues-based exploration of African diaspora music, singer-songwriter Corey Harris, a 1991 Bates graduate, began his musical journey with 1995′s Between Midnight and Day, a collection of traditional Delta blues songs performed with just voice and National steel guitar. “I’m grounded heavily in the blues, but I let everything influence me,” Harris told Bates Magazine in 1997. “I try to be as open as I can.”

A high-honors anthropology major at Bates, Harris won a postgraduate Watson Fellowship to study pidgin English in Cameroon (his senior thesis topic), then taught English and French in Napoleonville, La., traveling to New Orleans to perform on weekends. Music soon became his singular pursuit. His second CD was Fish Ain’t Bitin’ (1997), winner of the 1998 W.C. Handy Award for best acoustic blues album, followed by the plugged-in Greens from the Garden (1999), Vu-Du Menz (2000) and Downhome Sophisticate (2002), the latter showcasing a dazzling command of styles.

“[The CD] isn’t what you’d expect from a musician well-versed in traditional blues,” wrote The Washington Post. “Unless it’s someone who also has a passion for the music of Jamaica and West Africa, the rhymes and rhythms of rap, the sensuous allure of Afro-Caribbean dances, the horn-charged funk of James Brown and the fiery, guitar-driven sonics of psychedelic rock.”

In 2003, director Martin Scorsese put Harris at the center of “Feel Like Going Home,” the debut episode of the PBS documentary The Blues, in which Harris traced American blues music to its African origins. Scorsese filmed Harris performing with the late, legendary guitarist Ali Farka Toure, an experience that led to the CD Mississippi to Mali, followed by Daily Bread in 2005. Harris lives in Charlottesville, Va., where he is on the board of directors of the Field School, a middle school for boys opening in fall 2007.

Harris will receive the honorary degree of Doctor of Music.

“Most people today look at technology and see magic,” inventor-entrepreneur Dean Kamen told Newsweek last December. Kamen’s creations may indeed seem magical, from the two-wheeled personal transporter called the Segway to health care innovations, such as the first wearable insulin pump for diabetics, that have transformed daily living for many. But Kamen’s commitment to his calling transcends any single invention, as he is passionate about bringing young people into the field and heightening the profile of science and technology in education and society. In short, if technology seems like magic, he wants to ensure an ample supply of magicians.

One of his proudest creations is FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), an organization dedicated to motivating the next generation to understand, use, and enjoy science and technology. This year, FIRST’s student competitions in robotics will involve nearly 33,000 high school students in 1,300 teams; and more than 92,000 9-to-14-year-olds in 45 countries will take part in FIRST’s LEGO League competitions.

Born on New York’s Long Island, Kamen attended Worcester Polytechnic Institute, during which time he developed the interest in medical technology that led him to produce the insulin pump. His inventions since then have included the HomeChoice portable dialysis machine and the Independence iBot, a “super-wheelchair” whose sensors, microprocessors, and gyroscopes allow people with mobility impairments to negotiate stairs and broken terrain. Kamen’s most recent projects include systems to purify water and generate electricity in resource-poor regions.

He is the founder and president of DEKA Research and Development Corp., of Manchester, N.H., where he pursues both proprietary inventions and initiatives for corporate clients. Kamen received the National Medal of Technology in 2000 and the Lemelson-MIT Prize in 2002, is a member of the National Academy of Engineers, and in May 2005 was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Kamen will receive the honorary degree of Doctor of Science.

Hailed by Newsweek as “the most exciting individual in American theater,” playwright, actor, performance artist and author Anna Deavere Smith uses her singular brand of theater to explore issues of race, community and character in America. In 1996, she was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (known as a “genius” grant) for creating “a new form of theater — a blend of theatrical art, social commentary, journalism and intimate reverie.”

Smith is perhaps best-known as the author and performer of two one-woman plays about racial tensions in American cities: Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and Twilight: Los Angeles 1992, which earned two Tony nominations. Combining the journalistic technique of interviewing subjects from all walks of life with the art of recreating their words in performance, Smith, a two-time Obie winner, transforms herself onstage into an astonishing number of characters (up to 46 in one show), expressing their own points of view on controversial issues.

In 2004, Smith released two plays, House Arrest and Piano, that question the power of the media in shaping our “truths.” She has appeared in many television shows, including a recurring role in The West Wing and most recently in Life Support on HBO, about HIV in the African American community; and in motion pictures, including Philadelphia, The American President and The Manchurian Candidate.

In 1998, in association with the Ford Foundation, Smith founded the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue at Harvard (now at New York University). The institute’s mission is to explore the role of the arts in relation to vital social issues. A tenured professor at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, Smith’s current work in progress is Let Me Down Easy, exploring expressions of the human body, both its frailty and vitality.

She will receive the honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts.