The fate of the orangutan and its rainforest home, the provision of eye care to underserved African communities and the aftermath of Liberia’s brutal civil wars are topics that Bates College students will discuss in public presentations during October.

The three students are recipients of Phillips Student Fellowships, Bates grants that supported their research abroad.

Robert Little, a junior from Auburn, offers the presentation Helping People and Orangutans Through Video at 4:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 11. Two more presentations take place at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 13: Emily Howe, a senior from Carlisle, Mass., delivers Unite for Sight and Theodore Sutherland, a senior from Accra, Ghana, offers Beyond the Culture of War. Both events take place in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

Phillips Student Fellowships provide cross-cultural experiences focused on research, service or the arts. The fellowships are much sought after at Bates and are awarded through a competitive process.

Little did his research in Borneo, Indonesia, where he investigated the status of orangutans and the destruction of the rainforest. He did video interviews with residents on both sides of the rainforest issue, both those involved in clearing the forests and those working to protect them.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Howe will detail her volunteer service in Ghana with the organization Unite for Sight, which brings ophthalmological care to communities with the goal of eliminating preventable blindness. A pre-med student, Howe helped provide free eye screenings and observed surgeries.

Because of her interest in public health, Howe says she found it especially interesting to “learn about different barriers to health — especially cultural barriers,” and observe Unite for Sight’s strategies for overcoming these barriers.

Sutherland worked in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, to observe how the country is rebuilding — culturally, socially, politically and economically — five years after a devastating 14-year civil war.

Working in the office of the Monrovia’s mayor, Mary Broh, he gained a unique perspective on how public policy is used in an African context to negotiate the cultural, economic and social tensions that arise from the mayhem of wars. With an ultimate goal of “learning about how conflicts change the culture of countries,” Sutherland will contrast his Liberian experiences with his perceptions of Ghana and America.

The Phillips Student Fellowships honor Charles F. Phillips, the fourth president of Bates College, and his wife, Evelyn M. Phillips. Grants provide students with an experience of immersion in another culture, opportunities for extensive research, service-learning, volunteer work or career exploration, as well as unique opportunities for intellectual and personal growth.

An original composition by a Bates senior from West Virginia is featured in a concert by the Bates College Gamelan Orchestra at 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 11, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

“Gamelan” refers to a broad genre of traditional Indonesian music played primarily on percussion instruments. Barbara Byers, an interdisciplinary major in music and dance from Elkins, W.Va., composed and will dance a piece titled “Monkey” that’s included on the program. Byers studied various traditional performance disciplines, including gamelan, while in Indonesia last summer on a Phillips Fellowship from Bates.

The concert is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

The program comprises a variety of instrumental and vocal music, including a contemporary arrangement of a traditional lullaby. Also included is a solo masked dance that originates in Cirebon, a city on the north coast of West Java, and portrays a character from the Hindu epic “Ramayana.”

Assistant Professor of Music Gina Fatone directs the Bates College Gamelan Orchestra. The ensemble is composed of students and faculty members Carol Dilley, associate professor of dance, and Jennifer Woodruff, visiting assistant professor of music. The concert will also feature the vocals of a Bates alumna, Lisa McClellan ’09.

Bates College has gamelan instruments from Central Java and West Java, Indonesia. The instrument set named Gamelan Mawar Mekar (“Blossom of Inspiration”), acquired by the College in 2001, is composed of iron and brass pieces and was made in Central Java in 1997.

A smaller bronze chamber ensemble from West Java, of a type called gamelan degung, was donated to the college in 2007. The concert will feature both sets.

In addition to its public performances, the orchestra makes a distinctive contribution to ceremonial events at Bates and is increasingly integrated into the arts and cultural curriculum.

Matthew Côté, associate professor of chemistry; Atsuko Hirai, Kazushige Hirasawa Professor of History; and John Rhodes, associate professor of mathematics, have been awarded Phillips Faculty Fellowships for the 2002-03 academic year, announced Donald W. Harward, president of Bates College.

Phillips Faculty Fellowships at Bates provide a full-year’s paid leave, with additional funding for scholarly research, enabling fellows to travel, pursue scholarship and interact with other leading scholars in their field.

Côté will spend one year fabricating and studying arrays of metal oxide nanostructures at the Laboratory for Surface Science and Technology at the University of Maine at Orono. Access to the laboratory and to its staff expertise will expand the range of research possibilities for Côté and his students, and will produce continuing collaborations after Côté’s return to Bates.

Hirai plans to complete her manuscript, Government by Mourning: Death and Political Integration in Japan, 1612-1912 and secure its acceptance for publication. Her research is a study of governmental edicts on mourning and related rites in Japan. The grant enables her to complete extensive archival work in Tokyo as well as in provinces of Japan, and to meet with scholars in Japan and the United States who are working on related topics.

Rhodes will focus in two areas: number theory and mathematical biology. His plans include investigating the number theory of modular forms for complex quadratic number fields. The grant also will enable Rhodes to develop a new research direction in phylogenetic invariants, studying algebraic methods of inferring relationships among species from DNA sequence data.

The Phillips Faculty Fellowships are part of an ambitious initiative of awards, honors and opportunities for faculty and students funded by a $9-million endowment bequest from former Bates President Charles F. Phillips and his wife, Evelyn Minard Phillips, in 1999. President and Mrs. Phillips, longtime Auburn residents, served Bates from 1944 through 1966. Charles died in March 1999, just months after the death of Evelyn, his wife of 65 years. In addition to the faculty fellowships, the Phillips Endowment Program supports student fellowships, two endowed faculty professorships and academic programs recommended by the dean of the faculty.