This anonymous gift from a Bates alum — perhaps the first, and certainly the largest, of its kind to a U.S. college — builds on our strengths and recognizes the additional costs of certain sustainable practices. Before the gift, about 22 percent of our food already came from local farmers and vendors; now we are able to purchase about 28 percent from these sources. Up to 84 percent of the food we don’t use re-enters the food cycle: to a food bank, into compost or to a recycling center, or as “waste” to a local pig farmer to be consumed as food by another species. We have never outsourced our food operations, and for many years staff members have been strong supporters of our environmental and communal ethos.

The purpose of Bates Contemplates Food is to call attention to ongoing programs as well as special events that teach us to ask questions about food. Where does it come from? How is it sourced and prepared at Bates? What is our role in the larger food system in which we are all embedded? Why are sustainable, healthy food cultures so important and so endangered, and what is the relationship between how we eat and how we think? Seeking answers often means confronting how little we know about complex and confounding issues ranging from dependence on petroleum and diet-related diseases in the U.S. to threats like species extinction and global hunger. But by feeding body and mind together, we may learn to make better choices in the face of complexity.

In presenting Bates Contemplates Food to the College audience at Convocation this fall, I juxtaposed two stories, one fictional and one factual. The first story, about two meals the narrator eats on her visit to the fictional university of Oxbridge, is taken from the opening chapter of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, where Woolf introduces her argument about the relationship among money, space, and creative thought.

The luncheon meal at one of the men’s colleges is a glorious feast: “partridges…with all their retinue of sauces and salads” and “potatoes, thin as coins but not so hard….sprouts, foliated as rosebuds but more succulent.” Consumed slowly and satisfyingly, the sumptuous meal has the effect of lighting a “profound, subtle and subterranean glow which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse.”

The meager evening meal, by contrast, is taken at Fernham, the neighboring women’s college recently founded on a small endowment to promote the radical idea of higher education for women. This meal of stringy beef and prunes dampens the spirit, leaving Woolf toher unexceptionable conclusion: “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

The second story that I told at Convocation was about Bates dining itself. While the spirit of communal Bates dining has always been strong and willing — notwithstanding the historical reality that Bates women of my generation were the very first to be allowed to eat in the same dining hall with men — the physical space of Bates dining, Chase Hall’s Commons, grew less adequate to our dining needs over the years.

In planning to correct that situation, our architects initially advanced the au courant idea of “distributed dining” — multiple facilities spread around the campus, with food courts and fast-food franchises. To their surprise, Bates students promptly vetoed the idea and insisted on dining as a committee of the whole. True, they wanted a bigger and brighter and better Commons, but their ideas focused on a better space for one and all. And so we built a place where cooks and servers could excel in their work, and where students would be called to the table to eat nourishing food with good friends and great ideas.

Both the new Commons building and our sustainable dining practices are now more visibly than ever at the heart of our educational vision, reminding us that a liberal education prepares a whole human being for life. Today, in the high-speed, high-tech, competitive, and distracting world where we eat too much and too fast and too often alone, it’s critical to ensure that respectful and ethical human interaction is still at the core at Bates College.

By Elaine Tuttle Hansen

The gift establishes the James L. Moody Jr. Family Professorship in the Performing Arts and is a way to strengthen the foundation of Bates for future generations, says Moody. “As the years pass, I have more and more appreciation for the possible infinite life of Bates. Perhaps one has to live for a while before you get that feeling. Compared to our lives, Bates’ life can be eternal.”

The gift also reflects the Moody family’s interest in performing arts. “Bates programs in dance, theater and music not only encourage artists, but they also help others recognize the value of art in society,” Moody said. “Students who engage in the arts at Bates get fulfillment from their own participation. They provide enjoyment for others in the community. Those people, in turn, appreciate the gift of the artists, and carry that appreciation into their lives after Bates. Our lives are richer and so becomes society.” Moody, the son of a 1929 Bates alumna who taught school in Gorham, came to Bates hoping to be a teacher, but left eager to join the business world. In 1959, Moody joined Maine based Hannaford Bros. Co. and rose rapidly through the ranks. He served 19 years as chief executive officer and five years as board chairman before retiring fully in 1997. Under Moody, Hannaford grew from a small Maine wholesaler to a $2.9-billion regional grocery retailer.

In June, Moody will retire as chairman of the board of trustees at Bates College, a position he has held for 14 years. He has been a Bates trustee for 23 years.

“No role of institutional leadership is more important than that of being board chair,” said Harward, who will retire himself in 2002 after 12 years as Bates College president. “Jim Moody, as board chair, has been a graceful and wise friend of the college and a resourceful and reliable partner in leadership. We are in his debt.”

Moody’s philanthropy at Bates has often dovetailed with the college’s highest fund-raising objectives. In the 1970s, he helped to endow a chair in honor of Charles F. Phillips, president from 1944 to 1967. In 1992, he gave the first $1-million gift ever received by the college, initiating the 1991-96 Bates Campaign. His contributions to the Ursula P. and Frederick B. Pettengill Hall, dedicated in October 1999, helped complete one of the college’s most ambitious building projects. Of his latest gift for the endowed professorship, Moody felt it important to, “encourage others to be as optimistic about Bates’ future as I am.”

A recognized corporate and community leader in Maine, Moody has served as a director of several publicly-held companies including UnumProvident, Staples Inc. and the IDEXX Laboratories. His public service has included serving as director of the Portland United Way and chairman of the board of Maine Medical Center.

“We are exceedingly pleased with Ms. Devlin’s appointment. She is a leader in her field, and we look forward to the vision and talents she brings to the college,” Harward said. “Her selection positions Bates to build upon its significant fund-raising successes of the last several years.”

Prior to her arrival at Bates last month, Devlin served as vice president for development and marketing at WGBH Educational Foundation in Boston, where she was responsible for all development activities, including annual fund and membership, major gifts, auction, local and national corporate as well as local and national foundation activities for the nation’s largest public broadcaster.

An accomplished manager and development officer with responsibility for a 120-person staff, at WGBH she initiated breakthrough development programs and built a major gifts program in an organization that had relied heavily on annual giving and corporate sponsorship. Before going to Boston, Devlin held a similar position as senior vice president for development and marketing at WETA in Washington, D.C.

A Holy Names College graduate, Devlin completed graduate studies in comparative literature and secondary education at the University of California, Berkeley.

Vice president for Women in Development of Boston, Devlin has served on the Founders’ Board, The Children’s Inn at the National Institutes of Health, Washington, D.C.; and on the board of directors for Woods Hole Foundation, Woods Hole, Mass.

Overseeing a 28-person development and alumni affairs staff at Bates, Devlin will plan and direct the college’s initiatives in the areas of annual, capital and endowment fundraising, as well as alumni programming for 15,600 Bates graduates worldwide.

Annually, Bates College raises in excess of $10 million from nearly 11,000 donors, including alumni, parents, friends, corporations and foundations. In 1996, Bates concluded a $59.3-million fund-raising campaign, which helped push the permanent endowment to $150 million, a total that has tripled in less than a decade. Ongoing fund-raising intiatives at Bates include securing support for the new, $18-million academic building of 91,000 square feet, scheduled for fall 1999 completion.