Watch a video about the 2009 Mount David Summit.

The ninth Mount David Summit, Bates College’s annual celebration of student academic achievement, takes place at 2:30 p.m. Friday, April 2, in Perry Atrium, Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk).

More than 400 students will participate in this year’s summit, making it the largest ever. In concurrent sessions throughout the afternoon in Pettengill, the New Commons Building and Gannett Theater, students will present research posters, talks, panel discussions, a photography exhibition and film screenings. The summit will culminate in a performance by the Bates College Modern Dance Company at 7:30 p.m. in Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St., and a Bates College Choir concert at 8 p.m. in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

See the full schedule.

The Mount David Summit is open to the public at no cost. For more information, visit the Web site or contact Kerry O’Brien at this kobrien@bates.edu or 753-6952.

The summit offers students an opportunity to share their research, creative work and community-based learning. Presentations include:

• 43 students from the course “African Perspectives on Justice, Human Rights and Renewal” will give talks and posters;
• Three students will discuss gender and Islamic law;
• Two panels will discuss local community-based research and student work on a community food assessment;
  A Roman law class will hold a mock trial, eight Roman law students will give research talks and a Latin class will read excerpts of “Miles Gloriosus,” the comedy by Plautus;
• Students from the course “Mapping and GIS” will present posters on a range of topics they analyzed using global positioning technology;
• Two panels will commemorate the 20th anniversary of the women and gender studies program at Bates. In the first, students will discuss their current research. In the second, five alumni will discuss ways that their academic work in women and gender studies has informed their careers;
• Two panels will look at the rich experience of off-campus study, with students discussing their research projects around the globe and the challenges of photography abroad;
• Students of Spanish will discuss topics ranging from health care in Nicaragua to speech and culture in Andalucia;
• A mini-summit on neuroscience research will feature talks and posters;
• Other talks will explore marine ecology, cell biology, psychological perception, learning, speech perception, literary criticism, the history of blackface minstrelsy, Tibet and China, immigration and earning power, climate change, museum internships, sex education in Maine schools, elder care, the sociology of the lobster fishery and two rhetorical analyses of first lady Michelle Obama.
• Film students will screen recent works and two poetry readings will be presented;
• Students will present more than 100 research posters in African American studies, anthropology, Asian studies, biochemistry, biology, chemistry, economics, education, English, environmental studies, geology, history, mathematics, neuroscience, politics, psychology, rhetoric, Spanish and theater.

See abstracts of all student presentations.

This multimedia presentation features what has become a dynamic tradition at Bates: the annual Mount David Summit, held this year on April 3. An eagerly anticipated presentation of student scholarship, service-learning and creative work, the summit unfurls a panorama of the rich life of the student mind at Bates. Produced by Phyllis Graber Jensen.

C. Challen Willemsen ’10 enjoys presenting his research on Maine orchids during the 2009 Mount David Summit, the annual campus-wide celebration of student academic achievement.

Then, midway through Ken’s first semester, his dad lost his job. But Ken didn’t lose out. “Bates really came through for me,” he recalls. “I received grants and loans, and I did campus work. The Bates philosophy was, ‘We have you here. We want you to stay here.’”

Spalding had reason to reminisce after attending the Mount David Society Scholarship Luncheon on April 3, where supporters of Bates financial aid met current students who benefit from their generosity.

Currently, about 37 percent of Bates students receive more than $20 million in scholarship grant aid. A few of them spoke at the April luncheon, held in the Jarnryd Room of the new dining Commons on the day of the annual Mount David Summit.

“It makes it gratifying to give and compelling to give more.”Rising from her seat, Nicole Svirsky ’09 of Newburyport, Mass., talked about her senior thesis combining political economy and law. She examined the transnational barriers that inhibit effective child-labor policies, scrutinizing ideological differences between the International Labour Organization and the World Trade Organization and doing comparative case studies of Pakistan and Brazil.

At Bates, “I have learned and matured as a person and a scholar,” she concluded. “I have made friends here that I will keep in touch with for the rest of my life. The Bates community is fantastic, and we are all fortunate to be a part of it.”

Another speaker, Oscar Cancio ’08 of Los Angeles, talked about his unlikely hockey career at Bates as a metaphor for opportunity.

“That’s what gets to me,” says Spalding, the Maine woods project coordinator for RESTORE: The North Woods, a conservation organization. “Given the opportunity to attend Bates, these students have accomplished so much, and they appreciate the support they’ve been given. It makes it gratifying to give and compelling to give more.”

As some Bates students (and alums) look back on their experience, members of a younger cohort — high school seniors — are now deciding where they’ll attend college. About half of all incoming Bates students typically apply to six or more schools, and April is when students compare the colleges that accept them.

Financial aid is part of the comparison.

“After acceptance letters go out, it takes about a week before we hear questions from families,” says Wendy Glass, director of Student Financial Services. “They spend time looking carefully at all of the offers they’ve received from colleges. They are being cautious and realistic about this financial commitment.”

When families do start asking questions, an increasingly common one reflects the current U.S. recession. “Families are concerned about moving forward, about what they can expect if their circumstances change,” says Glass.

Do you have questions about the Bates financial aid program? Contact the Office of Student Financial Services.

The answer hasn’t changed much since Ken Spalding was a student. Bates still meets the demonstrated need of all matriculated students, for better or worse.

“We will strive to make decisions that are consistent and equitable from one year to the next.”"Paying for a Bates education is a collaborative effort among parents, students, and Bates,” Glass explains. (That hasn’t changed, either: as a student, Spalding worked two summer jobs at 70-plus hours at week.) “When parents ask about the future, we try to paint a realistic picture of how an aid package might change if circumstances change. We reassure families that we will strive to make decisions that are consistent and equitable from one year to the next.”

Glass and her staff field many concerns and outright complaints, but she makes sure not to forget the happy words from families just beginning their Bates relationship.

It might be just a handwritten note added to a financial form: “Our daughter is absolutely thrilled to be coming to Bates. We are committed to doing what we can to make this happen, and we deeply appreciate the aid you’ve provided to our family.”

The eighth annual Mount David Summit, Bates College’s annual celebration of student academic achievement, takes place April 3. More than 280 students are participating in this year’s summit. In concurrent sessions throughout the afternoon at Pettengill Hall, participants present research posters, short talks, panel discussions, a photography exhibition and film screenings.

The Mount David Summit is an opportunity for Bates students to share recent research, service-learning and creative work. More than 100 research posters represent work in Asian studies, biochemistry, biology, chemistry, Chinese, economics, education, environmental studies, history, mathematics, neuroscience, physics, politics, psychology and public health.

• Friday, April 3, at 2:30 p.m.
• 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk)

On a given February night in 1939, an entertainment-seeking Lewiston resident could sit at home and listen to Death Valley Days on the radio. Or he could take in a movie, like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, starring Mickey Rooney and Walter Connolly, at the Empire.

And if their appeal was nil? Well, how about the science show at Bates?

True: A big public event in Lewiston during February 1939 was likely the Biennial Science Exhibition. That year’s edition attracted more than 2,500 visitors, including many residents and high school students, during its two-day run, Feb. 23–24.

This photograph from the Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library shows future pharmacist Ed Scolnik ’39 in Hedge Hall, then the home of the chemistry department, performing chemical mischief during a skit called “A Night of Alchemy” (hence the alchemic symbols on the sheet behind him). Bates still offers a public exhibition of student wizardry in the form of the annual Mount David Summit, a showcase for students who have both mastered their sometimes-obscure areas of study and can explain their work, too. But at least when begun in 1918, the goal of the Science Exhibition was mostly to “show…the facilities available at Bates for scientific work,” in the words of a Bates Student story.

Indeed, the Student’s long story mentions a slew of exhibits — a live albino Flemish rabbit, partially dissected cats, and an X-ray demonstration — but names not one student, despite the event’s sponsorship by the student scientific organizations.

The 1939 and subsequent exhibitions became more student- and technology-centered. Some 65 students made presentations in ’39, more than a few of which reflected an intensifying belief that technology could explain the human condition. For example, attendees could learn their blood pressure — but that wasn’t all, the Student reported. “Those who came stag tested at a lower blood pressure than those of the other variety.”

“Science and technology exhibitions — the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair being a leading example — were a big deal at the time,” says Rebecca Herzig, an associate professor of women and gender studies whose expertise is in the intersection of science, society, and identity.

Our fascination with (and anxiety about) science and technology, she adds, “has only continued to deepen.” By 1951, exhibition presentations would explain the Androscoggin River’s odor, cancer mutations in mice, and synthetic fibers from the Bates Mill.

In fact, says Herzig, the word “technology” was just coming into much wider use in the early 1900s. “Historians have argued that people were reaching for ways to understand and convey the influence of the bewildering artifacts and systems around them,” she says. “They had to adopt a whole new word — sort of like ‘Googling’ today.”

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

Ralph Perry ’51 (right) received the 2007 Distinguished Alumni Service Award, named for Helen A. Papaioanou ’49 (left). Perry received the award in Pettengill’s Joan Holmes Perry ’51 Atrium — a space that honors Perry’s late wife — during Homecoming’s Volunteer Recognition Dinner. Perry was saluted for his philanthropy, for his “profound and passionate service to Bates,” and for helping “others understand that Bates is a very special place that needs strong support to preserve its future.”

Perry partnered his extensive philanthropy initially with Joan Perry, who died in 1994, and now with his second wife, Mary Louise Seldenfleur. It was Perry and Seldenfleur, in fact, who proposed using Perry Atrium to showcase high academic achievement, and in 2008 that showcase, the Mount David Summit, celebrates its seventh edition.

Mount David Summit 2008

The slide show features what has become a dynamic tradition at Bates: the annual Mount David Summit, held this year on March 28. An eagerly anticipated presentation of student scholarship, service-learning and creative work, the summit unfurls a panorama of the rich life of the student mind at Bates. [More...]