An actress, educator, biomechanics researcher, Maine philanthropist and CNN host will receive honorary degrees and speak at Bates College’s 143rd Commencement ceremony at 10 a.m. on Sunday, May 31. [More...]

Daylilies frame the 2003 ivy stone on Carnegie Science Hall. In a new tradition, the Class of 2008 stone, designed by Stephanie Higgins ’08 of Beaverton, Ore., will be installed well after its graduation, on Commencement eve 2009, as part of One-Year Reunion festivities for the class. With all spaces on Carnegie Science filled, Pettengill Hall will be the site for the 2008 and future ivy stones.

Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen.

The new Bates Scholar-Athlete Society “makes clear our commitment to the scholar-athlete ideal,” said Bates alumnus and trustee Dan Doyle ’72, who is founder and executive director of the Institute for International Sport, in Kingston, R.I. “Bates is an example of a college that effectively combines academic rigor with a highly respected athletic program.”

The society will include seniors nominated by their coaches who have compiled a 3.5 grade point average or have received a special nomination from faculty and staff for distinguished academic achievement in their junior and senior years. To be eligible for induction, student-athletes must participate in a varsity sport for at least three years. The society is designed to honor about 25 student-athletes each year of the roughly 175 varsity athletes that graduate.

“The Bates Scholar-Athlete Society honors dedication to excellence in scholarship and sportsmanship,” said Bates President Elaine Tuttle Hansen. “It celebrates the ways in which athletics fits into the overall collegiate experience.”

Suzanne Coffey, Bates athletic director and past chair of the NCAA Division III Management Council, said that Bates student-athletes “will know from their first days on campus that induction into the Scholar-Athlete Society is a goal whose achievement is modeled by generations of outstanding students. By dedicating themselves intensively to both academic and athletic pursuits, students at Bates set a standard for each other and for our wider academic and athletic communities. The academy is wrestling with the proper role for intercollegiate athletics programs within institutional missions. In creating the Scholar-Athlete Society, Bates is presenting to our students (and to the academy) a clear statement about the expectation for excellence in the classroom and achievement on the playing field.”

“Athletics certainly should not dominate,” Coffey said, “but it absolutely is part of the mission of our academic institutions. It should be considered in the same context as classroom learning, service-learning and study abroad.” Doyle added: “We know the special bonds that form in the classrooms, residence halls and playing fields at this time in young lives. We hope our society provides a model that other colleges might find useful.” A gift from Doyle to the College will support the program, annual awards dinner and newsletter.

Coffey stressed that the society is “more than a one-time event. We are creating a network, a continuous loop of expectation. Society members will in turn inspire undergraduates to want to be part of this now and as they climb professionally in life.”

As well as honoring undergraduates as they graduate, alumni who distinguish themselves as scholars and athletes and subsequently in their careers will also be inducted at annual ceremonies. Also honored will be one or more faculty members or former Bates coaches who have fostered the scholar-athlete ideal.

“It’s not about playing time but the commitment and dedication one puts into both academics and athletics; it’s the aggregate hours one spends on the practice fields and in the library that accentuates his or her unique talent and drive to succeed,” Doyle said. “I find one of the most admirable groups of young people in America to be Division III athletes who come to practice every day, work hard, support the team and yet are not rewarded with playing time. I have known many successful people who fall into that category. The Scholar-Athlete Society will include stars and substitutes who share a common commitment to superior effort in the classroom and on the playing fields.”

The inaugural induction ceremony will take place May 28, during Bates Commencement weekend. The keynote speaker for Bates’ first induction ceremony will be Donald “Dee” Rowe, considered the “father” of the University of Connecticut basketball program. Rowe was head coach at UConn 1969-77 and still works as a special adviser. Doyle said that years ago, Rowe was his high school coach, and his great inspiration for the way athletics brings together for common purpose athletes of very different backgrounds. Doyle said that Rowe, who is “76 years young” is considered “the best speaker in our field.”

Bates is uncommon in that nearly two-thirds of its students participate in 30 varsity and 12 club sports. Bates is a charter member of the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), and its teams compete with fellow members Amherst, Bowdoin, Colby, Connecticut College, Hamilton, Middlebury, Trinity, Tufts, Wesleyan and Williams, as well as with teams from other colleges and universities.

The Scholar-Athlete Society complements the Milton L. Lindholm Scholar Athlete Awards, which have been given annually since 1976 to the senior male and female athletes with the highest academic averages. The awards honor Milton L. Lindholm, Class of 1935, who served as Bates dean of admissions for 32 years.

Joining Holbrooke as honorary degree recipients were career educator Robert E. Dunn, Bates class of 1950 (doctor of humane letters); biochemist Leroy E. Hood, M.D. (doctor of science); and urban sociologist William Julius Wilson (doctor of laws).

WEST NEW PORTLAND
Samuel Harold Anderson of West New Portland received a bachelor of arts degree in economics. Anderson played varsity football for the college in 1997 and was a member of the men’s alpine ski team throughout his Bates career, serving as captain in the 1998-99 season. He is the 1999 recipient of the college’s Dr. Lloyd Lux Award, given annually for overall contribution, dedication and leadership in the college’s skiing program. A graduate of Carrabassett Valley Academy, Anderson is the son of Paula Anderson, West New Portland, and William Anderson, North New Portland.

WEST PARIS
Melissa Vining of 52 Kingsbury St. received a bachelor of science degree (magna cum laude) in chemistry. Vining, who has a secondary concentration in French, was named Bates College’s 1997-98 Ruggles Scholar, a fellowship awarded to a junior for academic excellence in the liberal arts and sciences. Vining used the $1,000 fellowship to fund her senior thesis as well as to attend a number of scholarly conferences to discuss the thesis findings. She was elected to Sigma Xi, a North American Honor Society founded in 1886 to reward excellence in scientific research. Named a Dana Scholar after her first year at Bates, Vining has been a dean’s list student, junior adviser and member of the varsity softball team. The granddaughter of Ruth Hazelton of West Paris, Vining is a 1994 graduate of Oxford Hills High School.

Lewiston, Maine

Graduates: 383

Degrees: BA, BS

Speaker: Chinua Achebe, novelist

Honorary degrees: Peter J. Gomes, minister of the Memorial Church and Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard University; Natalie Webber Gulbrandsen, president of the International Association for Religious Freedom; and Edward O. Wilson, entomologist and Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard

Joining Achebe as honorary-degree recipients will be one of America’s most eloquent ministers, Peter J. Gomes, a Bates alumnus; human-rights activist Natalie Webber Gulbrandsen, a Bates alumna; and entomologist Edward O. Wilson. Harward will confer bachelor’s degrees on approximately 390 seniors in an outdoor ceremony at 10 a.m. in front of Coram Library, following the traditional procession of seniors and faculty, which will be led by bagpipers. In case of rain, the graduation exercise will be held in the Margaret Hopkins Merrill Gymnasium.

A novelist, short-story writer, poet and essayist, Achebe is one of the most important figures in contemporary African literature. His novels, chronicles of the colonization and independence of Nigeria, are among the first works in English to present an authentic rendering of African culture. Achebe’s works are a successful fusion of Ibo folklore, proverbs and idioms with Western ideologies and Christian doctrine.

“Things Fall Apart” (1958), Achebe’s first novel, is considered a classic of contemporary African fiction for its realistic portrait of Ibo society at the turn of the century when Europeans first came upon the Niger.

His subsequent novels “No Longer At Ease” (1960), “Arrow of God” (1964), “A Man of the People” (1966) and “Anthills of the Savannah” (1987) bore out the early promise of his first award-winning book. Critic G.S. Killam calls Achebe “arguably the most widely read and discussed African writer of his generation.”

The author of two-short story collections, “The Sacrificial Egg, and Other Stories” (1962) and “Girls at War, and Other Stories” (1973), he also has published several essay collections as well as two volumes of poetry, including “Beware Soul Brother, and Other Poems” (1971), the winner of the first (British) Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1972.

The fifth of his parent’s six children, Achebe was raised in an evangelical Christian family in the village of Ogidi. He attended Government College in Umuahia and University College in Ibadan, and received his B.A. from London University in 1953.

His first career, in radio, ended abruptly in 1966 when Achebe left his position as director of external broadcasting in Lagos during the national upheaval and massacres that led to the Biafran War (1967-70). The Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College since 1990, Achebe retired in 1981 from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he was named professor emeritus four years later. He taught in the English departments at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, from 1972-75, and at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, from 1975-76.

Achebe has received numerous honors from different parts of the world, including more than 20 honorary doctorates from universities in Britain, the United States, Canada and Nigeria, as well as Nigeria’s highest award for intellectual achievement, the Nigerian Order of National Merit.

Peter J. Gomes ’65 is the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and minister of the Memorial Church at Harvard University. Since being named by Time Magazine in 1979 as one of America’s seven most influential preachers, he has remained an insistent voice of conscience, blending a conservative view of religion and morality — he is a leading authority on the Pilgrims of Plymouth–with contemporary concern for the physical and spiritual welfare of all Americans. His closely reasoned sermons are among the quintessential Harvard experiences.

Natalie Webber Gulbrandsen ’42 is president of the International Association for Religious Freedom, a worldwide organization based in London which promotes human rights, interreligious cooperation, peace and justice. She previously was moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association, an officer in the Girl Scouts organization and a member of numerous Wellesley (Mass.) civic groups.

Edward O. Wilson is an entomologist, evolutionary biologist, naturalist and author. His development of sociobiology in the 1970s made him a convenient target for those who say nurture is all, nature nothing, in animal and human development. But sociobiology has prevailed as among the most important work ever done on animal behavior, and Wilson has emerged as a leading theorist in support of conservation, particularly biodiversity. His book “The Insect Societies” (1971) remains a classic.