A religion major, Wyche quickly learned that “at Bates you’re not just another number. Here professors care about their students flourishing,” she says.

She recalled what she felt when first-year adviser Marcus Bruce invited Wyche and her parents to his home for tea and pumpkin pie. “He made us feel like valued members of the community.”

Wyche never took a course with Margaret Imber, of classical and medieval studies, but the two grew to respect each other while serving together on the Student Conduct Committee. Imber, an attorney, served as a role model for Wyche, an accomplished Bates debater. “The most important thing I learned from her was line of questioning,” says Wyche.

Wyche has a great heart and incredible capacity for nuanced analysis, says Imber. “It’s very hard to learn to organize one’s factual questions in a case around the relevant code provisions — often what’s interesting from a human perspective is irrelevant from the perspective of whether or not conduct violates the code. Tamara was just very, very good at understanding what was relevant and important and boring in on those questions.”

Wyche put those skills into practice as a summer intern on Capitol Hill for the Black American Political Action Committee. Asked to research gubernatorial and mayoral candidates and then decide on their suitability for funding, Wyche first doubted her ability to make such decisions. But she then realized that her Bates education had more than prepared her to do the job. As a political liberal working in a conservative organization, Wyche concluded that “considering different points of view allows you to better present your own.”

The symposium, which begins in Pettengill Hall at 9 a.m., is designed to share Bates scholarship with alumni, students and their parents, along with the faculty at large. The 10 presentations involve research soon to be published, projects still in development, and results of sabbaticals. Questions and discussion after each talk are encouraged. Among the presenters are:

Margaret Imber, assistant professor of classical and medieval studies, who uses the legal defense of a Roman citizen (accused of seducing a widow with magic) to illustrate how provincial Romans constructed their cultural identity;

Loring M. Danforth, professor of anthropology, who makes the game of soccer a frame for examining ways in which the ethnic and cultural narratives of Australian society serve the country’s political and economic interests;

Erica Rand, associate professor of art. Rand, author of the alternative social history Barbie’s Queer Accessories (Duke University Press, 1995), scrutinizes Ellis Island for the traces of immigrants whose sexual and cultural identities fell outside the mainstream.