Dana Oster ’09 had to think big — Atlantic Ocean big — during her geology research on the ever-shifting sands of Seawall Beach, part of the Bates–Morse Mountain Conservation Area along the Maine coast.

But when it came time to explain her findings at a Maine conference last year, her ideas had to fit on a 3-by-4-foot poster.

“A poster is a bit of an understatement as to how important I believe my research is,” says Oster, whose research poster won a $500 first prize during the University of Maine’s Climate Change 21 forum. “But it’s good for learning how to organize and present your research.”

In higher education, research posters have never been more ubiquitous. With professional gatherings drawing thousands of attendees, poster sessions meet the need to exchange new ideas. After all, “you can’t have 30,000 scientists at the conference of the Society for Neuroscience each giving a talk,” explains Greg Anderson, a member of the Bates biology department who helps coordinate student poster efforts.

Bates students presented just 17 posters during the inaugural year of the Mount David Summit, in 2002. This year, the number has been capped at 110.

True, there are more posters because there’s more student research, plus it’s easier to produce a poster thanks to desktop-publishing software and wide-format printing. But there’s more.

Increasingly, students are expected to practice and master the presentation of their new knowledge. As biology professor Will Ambrose has said, “If the only people who understand your research are your co-researchers and your parents, then your work is simply less valuable.”

For students developing their public voices, “posters are the best way to have a conversation about your topic and get feedback about your ideas,” says Associate Professor of Biology Nancy Kleckner.

At Bates, the posters are getting better, too, thanks to expert advice from several corners. At the College’s Imaging Center, staffer Will Ash notes that students at first find it challenging to present their work visually. “They occupy the world of writers,” he explains. “They come to us with 50 pages of thesis that they are very attached to.”

Using more graphics and fewer words — and learning how to meld the two — are the keys to engaging viewers, who tend to be moving, distractible targets. “Creating a poster is an artistic endeavor,” Kleckner says.

When Ash and a student sit together at a computer with an open InDesign document, Ash is the one working the mouse, aiming to show “what’s out there, what’s possible,” he says. “I’m driving, but the student is the backseat driver telling me where to go,” he explains.

The hope, he says, is that the student’s aesthetic sense will kick in. “Seeing is believing when it comes to good design.”

By H. Jay Burns, photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen

Blind from birth, Steve Hoad was raised by a mother who “understood that children were children,” he says. “It was expected that I would do things children do.” His outdoors experiences as a child and a desire to conserve land solidified Hoad’s dream to one day live with his family on a farm. [More...]

The class taking a lunch break at Rip Gorge outside of Baxter State Park

From Graham: Another cool class I am taking this year is called Field Geology in Maine. What’s awesome about it is how the course introduces you to the principles of geology while working in the field. Therefore, it isn’t the same old “rocks in a box” kind of geology that sounds oh-so boring. Instead, the professor has the philosophy that the best way to learn geology is by doing it. About once a month, our lab will go out on a field trip to the coast, Baxter State Park, or even Acadia National Park. Here we collect data on a subject that we are learning about in lectures and take samples back to the lab and learn about its history. Before this class I knew NOTHING about geology, and already I am keeping a field notebook and identifying all kinds of rock types, formations, and seeing more in my natural surroundings than ever before.

-Graham

I have a few pictures from some of the field trips we have taken so far this year. I’ll try to get some better ones on the trips to come. So, keep checking back and I’ll have more soon! 

My lab during a sea kayaking field trip, we ended up writing a report on the formation we are standing around

Using traps baited with peanut butter, a Bates research team spent the summer catching small mammals and studying the ticks they carried, specifically looking for ticks infected with the Lyme bacterium. Working with visiting biology professor Ronald Barry were biology majors Elizabeth Rogers ’09 (shown above picking the critters off a white-footed mouse) of Mansfield, Mass., and Nelish Pradhan ’10 of Kathmandu, Nepal. The research was supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. [More...]

Carlisle said Phelps’ real impact will be evidenced in coming years. “The Olympic market changed, not just Michael — but the Olympics themselves, the way we look at them, the way they will be presented,” said Carlisle, whose stable of Olympic swimmers also includes Portland’s Ian Crocker, world record holder in the 100-meter butterfly. They will all benefit from Phelps’ effort, though Carlisle said it may take some time. [More...]

First-year students Ed Muskie, at left, and Charles Taylor in their Bates dorm room in Roger Williams Hall, circa 1932. Below: Muskie waits to be called onstage during the Democratic National Convention in August 1968. (Photographers unknown. Photos courtesy of the Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library.)

A new photographic exhibit, including seldom-seen family images, depicting the late Maine statesman and environmentalist Edmund S. Muskie is on display at Bates College’s Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, 70 Campus Ave.

From Rumford to Washington: Edmund S. Muskie’s Life in Photographs is drawn from the Edmund S. Muskie Papers at Bates, an important documentary collection relating to this Maine native and member of the Bates class of 1936 who served as a Maine governor, U.S. senator, presidential candidate and U.S. secretary of state.

The archives is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Admission is open to the public at no charge. For more information, please call 207-786-6272.

The semi-permanent exhibit coincides with the 40th anniversary of Muskie’s 1968 vice presidential campaign, when he ran with Democrat Hubert Humphrey, and with the 50th anniversary of Muskie’s election to the U.S. Senate.

The exhibit also marks the end of a $65,000, 15-month grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. The grant enabled the archives to finish processing its Muskie holdings, including items received from the Muskie family in 2005, rendering these historic materials fully accessible to researchers for the first time.

“A lot of the Bates students who do research in the papers are able to make valuable connections between the political challenges and questions of 30 or 40 years ago and those of today,” says Muskie Papers archivist Christie Peterson, who curated the exhibit.

“I think some of them are surprised by how relevant Muskie’s career is to issues they care about personally today.”

The exhibition illustrates highlights of Muskie’s life, from his childhood in Rumford to his time at Bates, from his 1954 election as Maine’s governor to his service on the federal Tower Commission investigating the Iran-Contra affair. “There’s also a section devoted entirely to the environment, because that was the thread that ran throughout his life,” says archives director Kat Stefko.

“The exhibit draws entirely upon the Muskie papers,” says Stefko, and includes many personal photographs — including an image of the freshman student Muskie in his Bates dorm.

Much of the collection documents Muskie’s 22 years in the Senate, where his accomplishments included the landmark Clean Air Act of 1970 and Clean Water Act of 1972. Totaling some 2,350 linear feet of materials, the college’s Muskie holdings include letters and memoranda; family scrapbooks; press releases and news clippings; speeches, reports and reference materials; and audiotape, photos, film and videotape.

A companion collection at Bates is the Muskie Oral History Project, comprising 442 interviews with individuals who knew, affected or were affected by Muskie.

The grant was Bates’ first from the NHPRC, the grantmaking arm of the National Archives. It enabled Stefko’s team to finish indexing the Muskie holdings and moving them into archival storage, ensuring the longest possible life for the materials. In addition, some 800 magnetic audio recordings were stabilized and digitized, and the collection’s computerized index was updated to make it more powerful and more compatible with national databases.

“During the period of the grant,” Stefko adds, “we worked with the Muskie family to lift the restrictions on material prior to 1947, so materials about his early life are now available for scholarly research for the first time. It allows people to really get to know his biography in a way that you wouldn’t before.

“There are, for instance, all of the letters that he wrote home to his sisters when he was a student at Bates, talking about how he’s balancing his academic schedule with student government or being a waiter” in a college dining room.

“This week we had General College Elections,” the young Muskie wrote in one of those letters from Bates, this one written to his sister Lucy in March 1935. “I was fairly successful. I was reelected president of my class and, in your senior year, that is the biggest honor you can get as far as offices go. In addition to that I was elected Vice-president of the Student Council.”

More Muskie Archives news:

• Expert on vice presidency to discuss Muskie’s 1968 campaign

• Garcelon family to donate papers

– Office of Communications and Media Relations

First-year students Ed Muskie, at left, and Charles Taylor in their Bates dorm room in Roger Williams Hall, circa 1932. Below: Muskie waits to be called onstage during the Democratic National Convention in August 1968. (Photographers unknown. Photos courtesy of the Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library.) A new photographic exhibit, including seldom-seen family images, depicting the late Maine statesman and environmentalist Edmund S. Muskie is on display at Bates College’s Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, 70 Campus Ave. From Rumford to Washington: Edmund S. Muskie’s Life in Photographs is drawn from the Edmund S. Muskie Papers at Bates, an important documentary collection relating to this Maine native and member of More Muskie Archives news: • Expert on vice presidency to discuss Muskie’s 1968 campaign • Garcelon family to donate papers the Bates class of 1936 who served as a Maine governor, U.S. senator, presidential candidate and U.S. secretary of state. The archives is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Admission is open to the public at no charge. For more information, please call 207-786-6272 or e-mail muskie@bates.edu. The semi-permanent exhibit coincides with the 40th anniversary of Muskie’s 1968 vice presidential campaign, when he ran with Democrat Hubert Humphrey, and with the 50th anniversary of Muskie’s election to the U.S. Senate. The exhibit also marks the end of a $65,000, 15-month grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. The grant enabled the archives to finish processing its Muskie holdings, including items received from the Muskie family in 2005, rendering these historic materials fully accessible to researchers for the first time. “A lot of the Bates students who do research in the papers are able to make valuable connections between the political challenges and questions of 30 or 40 years ago and those of today,” says Muskie Papers archivist Christie Peterson, who curated the exhibit. “I think some of them are surprised by how relevant Muskie’s career is to issues they care about personally today.” The exhibition illustrates highlights of Muskie’s life, from his childhood in Rumford to his time at Bates, from his 1954 election as Maine’s governor to his service on the federal Tower Commission investigating the Iran-Contra affair. “There’s also a section devoted entirely to the environment, because that was the thread that ran throughout his life,” says archives director Kat Stefko. “The exhibit draws entirely upon the Muskie papers,” says Stefko, and includes many personal photographs — including an image of the freshman student Muskie in his Bates dorm. Much of the collection documents Muskie’s 22 years in the Senate, where his accomplishments included the landmark Clean Air Act of 1970 and Clean Water Act of 1972. Totaling some 2,350 linear feet of materials, the college’s Muskie holdings include letters and memoranda; family scrapbooks; press releases and news clippings; speeches, reports and reference materials; and audiotape, photos, film and videotape. A companion collection at Bates is the Muskie Oral History Project, comprising 442 interviews with individuals who knew, affected or were affected by Muskie. The grant was Bates’ first from the NHPRC, the grantmaking arm of the National Archives. It enabled Stefko’s team to finish indexing the Muskie holdings and moving them into archival storage, ensuring the longest possible life for the materials. In addition, some 800 magnetic audio recordings were stabilized and digitized, and the collection’s computerized index was updated to make it more powerful and more compatible with national databases. “During the period of the grant,” Stefko adds, “we worked with the Muskie family to lift the restrictions on material prior to 1947, so materials about his early life are now available for scholarly research for the first time. It allows people to really get to know his biography in a way that you wouldn’t before. “There are, for instance, all of the letters that he wrote home to his sisters when he was a student at Bates, talking about how he’s balancing his academic schedule with student government or being a waiter” in a college dining room. “This week we had General College Elections,” the young Muskie wrote in one of those letters from Bates, this one written to his sister Lucy in March 1935. “I was fairly successful. I was reelected president of my class and, in your senior year, that is the biggest honor you can get as far as offices go. In addition to that I was elected Vice-president of the Student Council.” – Office of Communications and Media Relations

The descendants of 19th-century Maine Gov. Alonzo Garcelon, who played a key role in the choice of Lewiston as the home of Bates College, will donate an extensive collection of family papers and other materials to Bates.

David Garcelon, Alonzo Garcelon’s great-great-grandson and a surveyor living in Concord, Mass., on March 27 announced his donation to Bates of hundreds of manuscripts, photographs and other artifacts dating back to the 18th century.

Alonzo Garcelon, a Lewiston native, was a surgeon who served in both houses of the Maine Legislature and as Maine governor. He was also prominent in Lewiston business affairs and co-founded the Lewiston Journal newspaper. Garcelon taught at Bates and served as a college trustee. The college’s football field, on Central Avenue next to the new dining Commons, is named after him.

David Garcelon will donate his family’s papers to the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, a facility at Bates whose holdings include extensive and important materials relating to the life and career of Muskie, the late Maine governor, U.S. senator and secretary of state, and environmental advocate.

The Garcelon donation includes hundreds of pages of original manuscripts and research conducted by David Garcelon relating his family to the histories of Bates, Lewiston and Maine, as well as the United States and 18th-century France.

The collection bears, too, on the history of the Pullman Palace Car Co., the well-known manufacturer of railroad rolling stock and one of the world’s largest corporations at the beginning of the 20th century. Charles A. Garcelon, son of Alonzo, served as Pullman’s chief operating officer from 1889 until 1906.

“It is the family’s desire to preserve the collection and hopefully add to it through research projects by Bates College students and others,” the donor wrote in a statement to the college. “It is also the family’s wish that others with Garcelon family artifacts will contribute to the collection at Bates, in honor of the family and in honor of Bates College.”

He wrote that the “Garcelon family is proud of Bates,” noting too that he and other Garcelons are convinced that Alonzo Garcelon focused his “hard work and contributions to Bates College . . . because he wanted the children of the area to have access to the finest education possible.”

– Office of Communications and Media Relations

Bates senior Eben S. Miller of Woolwich will explore the dynamics of African American resistance in Maine beginning with the 17th and 18th centuries, a period of relatively individual-based resistance, followed by protest organized around community institutions in the latter part of the 19th century. The final part of Miller’s talk will consider the stragegies devised by the civil rights movement within Maine as well new directions in social transformation pursued by the contemporary African American community.

Miller, a history major, will base his talk on his honors senior thesis. The lecture is part of an ongoing series of Friday afternoon lectures presented at Bates College.