A new genre of presidential letters, memos, columns, and blogs has sprung up on most college campuses in response to the ongoing global financial turmoil.

Demonstrating a greater sense of accountability and transparency than ever before, higher education leaders offer different details but all try to balance two messages. On one hand, we speak with both urgency and candor about budget cuts, sacrifices, and contingency plans. On the other hand, we reassure our stakeholders that we will not only survive this crisis but use it to grow stronger, with core values intact.

I have thus far contributed three letters to this outpouring. Each letter emphasizes how our response to rough economic seas is rooted in the character of the College. Bates is prepared by longstanding habits of heart and mind to economize and to be entrepreneurial, and our efforts are as always collective and sustained.

In the most immediate term, it’s all hands on deck to control costs, maintain revenues, and balance our fiscal 2009–10 budget in the face of diminished endowment performance.

This is not new or unwelcome work here; sound fiscal management has earned Bates a reputation for academic excellence that far outstrips our financial resources. Every department is pursuing greater frugality on the operations side, for example, through a Cost-Saving Initiative piloted by our Department of Human Resources.

We still plan to invest now in faculty excellence and financial aid. Planning for the next phase of the Campus Facilities Master Plan is getting under way, as we look to future improvements that will be critical to our educational excellence, including space for residential life, for research and teaching in the sciences, and for athletics and wellness.

On the revenue side, we have seen an enormous growth in the culture of philanthropy at Bates. We have a robustly emerging habit of asking for and receiving your support to keep Bates strong for future generations. In the short term, we are focusing fundraising efforts on the Bates Fund, whose revenue makes up about 5 percent of the annual operating budget. New and better ways for those who care about Bates to give of their time are also in the offing.

For the longer term, thinking and acting strategically have never been more critical, and we know the ropes here, too. Through multiyear budget planning we have a tool for considering multiple scenarios and giving serious thought to an array of options. Following up on the institutional planning work that began last year, three faculty/staff teams are now developing strategic initiatives focused on:

• the innovative learning agenda at Bates, enhancing the student experience as well as faculty teaching and scholarship;
• the natural sciences and mathematics, strengthening both curricular and physical infrastructure;
• the arts at Bates and in the community, extending the reach and visibility of our creative campus.

Around each initiative we will implement short- and middle-term projects by redeploying existing resources and by fundraising. Looking out further, our planning process will help us monitor what is changing in the environment and how we can respond now to be ready for the future.

Lasting change grows organically from the strengths of a culture, as its champions embrace the possibilities always inherent in the challenges. This college has never grown accustomed to plain sailing. The first president mortgaged his house to meet debts related to the institution, which in its infancy could easily have succumbed without the financial support of both Sunday school children and philanthropists like Benjamin E. Bates.

As Professor Emeritus of History Jim Leamon ’55 notes, early Bates students “found moral advantage in their hardscrabble reputation.” At the same time, President Cheney believed in and worked for nothing less than a grand concept. Raising money to build Hathorn and Parker, he reminded the leading citizens of Lewiston that smaller facilities would suffice for an ordinary school but not for an institution intended “for coming time.”

During the Great Depression, Bates never cut faculty or staff, nor ran deficits. Reacting to increased competition for students and their greater needs, Bates doubled its financial aid over a six-year period early in the decade and increased its spending on recruitment later in the decade. In 1936, Harry Rowe ’12, the longtime lieutenant to Bates presidents, summed up the Bates philosophy: “A holding-our-own policy will not do.”

In 2009 we will draw on these inspirational ancestors even as we look forward, not backward, and we will call on our entire community of talented faculty, dedicated staff, ambitious students, and generous supporters.

By Elaine Tuttle Hansen

Bates College has appointed Kelly Kerner as vice president for college advancement, a role that oversees the college’s fundraising, alumni relations and communications operations.

Kerner, most recently director of leadership gifts at Middlebury College, succeeds Victoria Devlin, who retired in September 2007 after nine years of service as vice president.

“We are extremely pleased to announce that Kelly Kerner will be joining Bates,” said Bates President Elaine Tuttle Hansen. “Those who have met Kelly attributed their enthusiasm about him to a variety of factors, including his proven passion for philanthropy, his understanding of the liberal arts mission and the entire advancement process, and his broad and easy rapport with a wide variety of people. The reactions on campus and from Bates trustees only add to my own sense of Kelly’s great ability, readiness and fit for Bates at this time.”

Kerner will plan and direct Bates initiatives in annual, capital and endowment fundraising. He will also oversee alumni programming for 22,500 Bates graduates worldwide and guide the college’s strategies in media relations and communications.

“To be part of a place with the trajectory that Bates is experiencing is something anyone would desire,” Kerner said. “I very much look forward to working with the president, the trustees and the advancement staff.”

Prior to his 14 years at Middlebury, Kerner spent three years at the University of Portland in Oregon as a development director and athletics marketing director. He earned a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and also holds an associate degree in humanities from Foothill College in Los Altos, Calif.

Annually, Bates raises more than $14 million from more than 9,000 donors. In 2006, Bates completed a comprehensive fundraising campaign, raising nearly $121 million from 18,813 donors, including alumni, parents, friends, corporations and foundations. The Bates endowment is approximately $275 million.

Bates College is widely regarded as one of the finest U.S. liberal arts colleges. Alumni frequently cite the capacities they developed at Bates for critical assessment, analysis, expression, aesthetic sensibility and independent thought. About 40 percent of students participate in career internships, and more than two-thirds of recent graduates enroll in graduate study within 10 years after graduation. Bates was founded in 1855 by Maine abolitionists, and Bates graduates have always included men and women from diverse racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds.

– Office of Communications and Media Relations

Bates has passed the $100-million milestone in its fund-raising campaign, announced Vice President for College Advancement Victoria M. Devlin.

The $101 million in gifts and pledges through Jan. 31 is part of a six-year campaign to raise $120 million. Known as The Campaign for Bates: Endowing Our Values, the fund-raising drive will end June 30, 2006. The College’s last campaign ended in 1996 having raised $59.3 million against a $50 million goal.

“This is great news for Bates,” said Devlin. “We’ve reached a milestone thanks to a committed and passionate group of alumni, parents and friends. They understand how important Bates is in today’s world. We’re very grateful.”

Established through discussions among trustees, faculty, staff, students, alumni and parents, the $120-million campaign seeks $45 million in new endowment for financial aid; $20 million in new endowment to sustain academic quality; $10 million in new endowment that is unrestricted in purpose; $20 million for facility revitalization, including a new dining Commons; and increased annual giving to the Bates Fund, with a goal of $25 million over five years, to support the operations of the college.

Of the $101 million raised, Devlin pointed to two areas of success. “Donors have exceeded our academic goal, giving $21.2 million,” she said. “That sum includes five new endowed professorships. In many ways, our donors have eloquently underscored the notion that Bates’ reputation begins and ends with its great faculty.”

Increased giving during the campaign period has allowed Bates to accelerate its plans to increase faculty salaries, Devlin said. “We must raise our pay to be competitive with our peers, while at the same time managing escalating energy and health-care costs.”

Members of the Bates Board of Trustees have contributed more than $30 million during the campaign, far surpassing prior campaigns in dollars and participation. Trustee gifts endowed the new Harward Center for Community Partnerships, which celebrated its official opening Jan. 25-27.

“The initial gifts to the campaign came from our board,” Devlin noted. “All 40 members, plus each of Bates’ senior administrators, and a select group of alumni, parents and friends, stepped forward with gifts. As trustee Michael Bonney ’80 said at the time, ‘If we, who know and love Bates the best, can’t stretch to make this happen, who will?’”

Capital gifts totaling $9.2 million will enable the college to break ground over the summer and fall for a new $30-million dining commons, designed by Sasaki Associates Inc. of Watertown, Mass., and new residential housing, designed by Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott of Boston.

Led by trustee David Parmelee ’64, the Annual Alumni Fund reached an all-time high of $1.68 million, a 25 percent increase over last year’s record. Three hundred alumni volunteers joined the Annual Fund staff in increasing alumni participation by eight points to 47.3 percent, the highest level since 1989-90.

Mark Shriver and Dr. Patricia McKay of Atlanta, Ga., whose son Andy graduated from Bates this spring, coordinated the most successful Parents Fund in the college’s history. More than 1,000 Bates parents, past and present, contributed $258,000 to the Parents Annual Fund.

Overall, Bates received gifts totaling $7.6 million from a record 8,998 donors from all sources. The dollar total was raised despite the lowest bequest total since 1979. However, total gifts from alumni set a new record.

Also contributing to this highly successful year was $2.1 million in the form of life-income gifts, the largest amount ever received in this category at Bates. These gifts pay their donors a lifetime income and are then used for the charitable interests at Bates identified by the donors.

“It was a satisfying and productive year for the Bates development program and the college, which is grateful for the financial support offered and the distinctions it brings Bates,” said Ronald A. Joyce, vice president for development and alumni.