“You will fail — you should fail,” Evelynn Hammonds, dean of Harvard College, told the Bates College class of 2011 on May 29.

“But if you stick with it, and let your peculiarities become assets, you will succeed.”

Hammond, who is also a historian of science and professor of African American studies at Harvard, was one of three honorary degree recipients who spoke at the college’s 145th commencement. The others were Frank Glazer, a pianist of international renown and member of the Bates music faculty, and Robert Langer, an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a highly prolific inventor of healthcare technologies.

The event drew a large and enthusiastic throng, wielding cameras and portable boat horns, to the college’s shady Historic Quad. In different and complementary ways, the three honorands urged the 437 graduating students to stay true to themselves, to regard failure not as a conclusion but as a steppingstone to success, and to dream big.

The occasion marked the end of the students’ lives as Bates seniors, but it was final in another way too: It was the last of the nine Commencements hosted by President Elaine Tuttle Hansen, who leaves the college at the end of June to become executive director of the Center for Talented Youth at the Johns Hopkins University.

Hansen’s welcome offered a recap of the seniors’ time at Bates that was pertinent also as a record of achievements during her tenure. She reminded the departing seniors of her words to them in September 2007, at the Convocation that launched their Bates careers.

The class of 2011 was also the first to under earn their degrees under new curricular requirements that renewed the emphasis on writing, laboratory work and quantitative thinking, and that include General Education Concentrations intended to locate individual courses “within a multifaceted network of meaning.”

“And you have changed in another key dimension as well, arriving near the beginning of an intense effort to enrich what we now call diversity and inclusion,” Hansen said — an effort that has realized a doubling in the percentage of incoming students from previously underrepresented racial, ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Yet, Hansen told the students, change is one of the few unchanging qualities of an institution like Bates. “I reminded you in 2007 that while in some ways Bates in your time might seem uniquely challenged by all this change, in fact we remain aligned with and anchored by founding values of the college.”

She said, “Our founders would immediately recognize you and the values you have chosen: intellectual achievement, social responsibility, self-discipline, creativity, good work, warm hearts.”

Hansen concluded, “You won’t remember exactly what we say at Commencement, but you will always be able to say what you were doing and who you were with on May 29, 2011. And there won’t be many days like that.”

Presented by Dean of the Faculty Jill Reich for a doctor of fine arts degree, the 96-year Glazer drew from his 75 years of teaching a few guiding principles — in the process invoking the dust-yourself-off brand of optimism that defined so much of American culture during the 20th century.

A can-do attitude counts, the pianist said. “Others may see possibilities in us that we are totally unaware of. And if, instead of saying, ‘I can’t’ or ‘I won’t,’ we act upon these possibilities, our lives may be immeasurably enriched and we may thereby enrich other people’s lives.”

“With good grace, accept yourself for who you are and will be, without worrying about who you aren’t, and never will be,” Glazer concluded. “Do your best and let time do the rest” — fitting words from an artist whose treatment at the hands of time has been nothing short of astonishing.

Hammonds, presented for a doctor of humane letters degree by Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees Alison Bernstein, revealed that she and Bates shared a good friend and mentor: the Rev. Peter Gomes ’65, who passed away on Feb. 28. Gomes, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard, was a steadfast champion of Bates.

Gomes once told the Bates community that its founding dedication to equal opportunity made the college “quite peculiar, in the best of ways.” Extending the concept, Hammonds told the students to “celebrate your peculiarities whatever they may be.”

“Now, when you are different and somewhat peculiar, there can be a great deal of pressure from the world to do the same thing, to fit within the roles that have already been scripted for you, to resolve apparent contradictions by erasing them,” she said. “I’d like to urge you to do something different.”

The road to self-transformation is paved with failure, Hammonds reminded her listeners, offering a story about a college job she held at Bell Labs. Assigned to construct circuits for laser controllers, she couldn’t seem to build one that would work — until she could.

“To tolerate failure and frustration requires, if you will excuse the alliteration, fortitude,” she said — a kind of fortitude that, in Gomes’s words, “is the fuel of the long-distance moral runner, who despite inner fatigue and apparent outward success of others, nevertheless keeps on keeping on.”

Bates was founded by such long-distance moral runners, said Hammond. It continues to produce them. “When you succeed, she told the seniors, remember those moments at which you failed, and think you how might extend your hand to those who walk in similar paths behind you.”

Echoing Hammonds and Glazer, Langer offered two lessons: “Try to dream big dreams, dreams that can change the world and make it a better place.” And stick to those dreams no matter what.

Langer’s time in the wilderness came after he earned a degree in chemical engineering. He got more than 20 job offers from oil companies, but “I had this dream of wanting to use my background to improve people’s lives.” Opportunities to do such work — creating math and science curriculums for underserved youth, and doing health-related research — were scarce.

“But then one day, one of my friends told me that I should write to Dr. Judah Folkman, who was a surgeon,” Langer recounted. The friend said, “Sometimes he hires unusual people.” And it was his time with Folkman that set Langer on his current path.

“Whatever your dream is, many people may tell you that it’s impossible, that it will never work,” Langer concluded. “But I think that’s very rarely true. If you really believe in yourself, if you’re persistent and work hard, there’s very little that is truly impossible.”

• Frank Glazer, pianist and Bates artist in residence
• Evelynn Hammonds, scholar of science and race who is dean of Harvard College
• Robert Langer, renowned MIT bioengineer and prolific inventor

Frank Glazer: “We are dealt a certain hand at birth over which we have no control. But we have a lot to say about how we play the game.”

Internationally known for his artistry and dedication, beloved for his generosity and celebrated for his artistic longevity, pianist Frank Glazer made his concert debut on a vaudeville stage in 1927. The event began a performing career that’s still in progress.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Evelynn Hammonds: “I’d like you to try your hand at failing, and, by failing, to discover something more about your own fortitude.”

Considered one of the leading scholars in the field of the intersection of science and race, Hammonds is dean of Harvard College and also the Barbara Gutman Rosenkrantz Professor of History of Science and of African and African American Studies.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Robert Langer: “Dream big dreams. Many people may tell you that you’ll never achieve it. But I think that’s very rarely true.”

Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT, is a bioengineer with some 760 patents issued or pending worldwide, in use by 220 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies.

Click here to view the embedded video.

An internationally renowned pianist based at Bates, a leading scholar on the intersection of medicine and race, and a distinguished MIT researcher and inventor will speak and receive honorary degrees during Bates College’s 145th commencement ceremony at 10 a.m. Sunday, May 29, on the college’s historic Quad, at Campus Avenue and College Street.

The event concludes the undergraduate careers of the approximately 440 members of the Bates class of 2011, representing 35 states and 42 countries.

The 2011 Bates honorands are (in alphabetical order):

Frank Glazer, Bates Artist in Residence and Lecturer in Music

Internationally known for his artistry and dedication, beloved for his generosity and celebrated for his artistic longevity, Frank Glazer made his concert debut on a vaudeville stage in Milwaukee in 1927, when he was 12 years old. The event began a performing career that’s still in progress.

A protégé of legendary pianist Artur Schnabel and composer Arnold Schoenberg, Glazer made his New York debut in 1936 at Town Hall, and his orchestral debut as soloist three years later with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Koussevitzky. Glazer’s career hit its stride following World War II military service and, more to the point, a two-year effort to reinvent his piano technique. This study produced a relaxed, economical style central to both Glazer’s artistry and his astonishing musical longevity in a field where hand problems are endemic.

Glazer began teaching at the Eastman School of Music in 1965, and in 1977 came to Bates, where he became an artist-in-residence in 1980. He has played countless solo, chamber ensemble and orchestral concerts; made more than 60 recordings, including two released by Bates in 2010; hosted his own television program in the 1950s; and, in Maine, co-founded the New England Piano Quartette and two chamber music series. Glazer’s recent performances at Bates include a season-long survey of all 32 Beethoven sonatas in 2009–10 and, early this year, three “Sundays with Schubert.”

In a 2006 interview, Glazer said: “I don’t know what retirement means. I’ve worked all my life to get to this point, where I like the sounds I hear.”

Evelynn M. Hammonds, Dean of Harvard College

Considered one of the leading scholars in the field of the intersection of medicine and race, Hammonds began her tenure as dean of Harvard College in 2008. Prior to her appointment she served as Harvard University’s first Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity. She is also the Barbara Gutman Rosenkrantz Professor of History of Science and of African and African American Studies.

Hammonds joined the Harvard faculty in 2002 after teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was also the founding director of the Center for the Study of Diversity in Science, Technology and Medicine. Her scholarly interests include the history of scientific, medical, and sociopolitical concepts of race and sexuality, the history of disease and public health, gender in science and medicine, and African-American history. She is the author of “Childhood’s Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control Diphtheria in New York City, 1880-1930,” many scholarly articles and the co-editor of “The Nature of Difference: Sciences of Race in the United States from Jefferson to Genomics” (MIT Press, 2008) with Rebecca M. Herzig of Bates.

Hammonds was named a Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer (2003–2005) by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. She has been a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and a Fellow in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Hammonds earned a doctorate at Harvard in the Department of History of Science, a master’s in physics from MIT, a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a bachelor’s degree in physics from Spelman College.

Robert S. Langer, David H. Koch Institute Professor,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Langer is one of 14 Institute Professors at MIT — the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member. He has written more than 1,100 articles, and has approximately 760 patents issued or pending worldwide. His patents are licensed or sublicensed to more than 220 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies.

He served as a member of the United States Food and Drug Administration’s Science Board, the FDA’s highest advisory board, from 1995 to 2002, and as its chairman from 1999 to 2002.

In 1989 Langer was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and in 1992 he was elected to both the National Academy of Engineering and to the National Academy of Sciences. He is one of very few people ever elected to all three United States National Academies and the youngest in history (at age 43) to ever receive this distinction.

Langer has received more than 180 major awards including the 2006 United States National Medal of Science and the 2008 Millennium Prize, the world’s largest technology prize. The citation for his 1996 Gairdner Foundation International Award noted that “there is general agreement that Dr. Langer pioneered the field of controlled drug release delivery systems (slow release oral systems, transdermal patches, injectable microspheres and slow release implants).”

He received his bachelor’s degree in 1970 from Cornell University and his doctorate in 1974 from MIT, both in chemical engineering.