After mentoring a group of boys from Poland Regional High School and teaching them photography, Bates College junior Jacob Bluestone of Huntington, N.Y., has mounted their images in an exhibit titled In Our Hands, Through our Eyes in Chase Hall Gallery, 56 Campus Ave. Open to the public at no charge from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, the exhibition continues through April 9. The display is sponsored by the Department of Art and Visual Culture, with the support of a Phillips Fellowship and an Arthur Crafts Service-Learning Award.

Bluestone received a summer 2005 Phillips Fellowship to fund The Honesty of Broken Language, a project that sent him to Cochabamba, Bolivia. He spent eight weeks there in a position organized by Volunteer Bolivia, teaching and working with disadvantaged children in a school-like setting.

An accomplished student photographer, Bluestone documented his work and the community. He armed his students with disposable cameras, taught them about photography and set them off to record life in their neighborhood in Cochabamba.

The Phillips Student Fellowships provide funding to Bates students to design exceptional international or cross-cultural projects focusing on research, service-learning, career exploration or some combination of the three.

Back at Bates, Bluestone received a Crafts service Award from the college to continue his project with a group of local teenagers, he says.The exhibition features the work of Pete Brown, Patrick Collins, T.J. England, Terence Welch and Nick Williams.

“It has been very exciting, interesting and difficult at times to expose the boys to the possibilities created by a little hard work,” says Bluestone. He learned much about himself in his new role as a teacher. “The group had the most success when they were enjoying the experience and I was able to establish a fun environment far outside the classroom, away from any idea of schoolwork,”  he says.  ”As a teacher, mentor and student I shared the enjoyable experience of photography with the group, while simultaneously getting a glimpse into each of the boys’ lives.”

Crafts service Awards defray expenses for students who design an academically-related service-learning project. Awards are competitive, granted without regard to financial need and available to students in all disciplines and classes.

Through poster presentations, panel discussions and readings, a photography exhibit, film projects and much more, some 200 Bates College students will publicly share their academic and creative efforts at the fifth annual Mount David Summit, starting at 2:30 p.m. Friday, March 24, in Pettengill Hall, Andrews Road.

Named for the “mountain” that is a Bates landmark, the summit comprises two afternoon sessions of poster presentations in Perry Atrium, concurrent panels elsewhere in Pettengill, and evening presentations of film and dance elsewhere on campus.

Several presentations focus on research or service-learning projects undertaken in Lewiston and Auburn, including collaborations with Museum L/A, oral histories in the Franco-American community, curriculum development and assessment in local schools and literacy initiatives.

The summit is open to the public at no charge. For more information, please call the dean of the faculty’s office at 207-753-6952 or visit the summit Web site.

“The Mount David Summit gives us an opportunity to reach across disciplines and hear about the discoveries our students are making in their research, service-learning projects and creative work,” says Jill Reich, Bates’ dean of the faculty. “What’s most exciting is that everyone who attends has the chance to learn from these students, who have become experts in their fields.”

The projects covers topics as diverse as environmental pollution in Acadia National Park, the effects of gender on college aspirations and the evolution of the dance music called reggaeton. Film projects include three narrative-fiction pieces and four works produced in a course using video and musical technology to explore collaboration in dance and music.

In sessions beginning at 2:45 and 4:30 p.m. in the three-story, glass-walled Perry Atrium, students present posters explaining their research into myriad subjects in the sciences and humanities. Meanwhile, other students discuss their projects in panels organized by theme and moderated by faculty. “Memory and the Holocaust,” “Measures of the Mind and Body in Psychology and Science” and “Themes in Arthurian Literature” are a few of the panel themes.

The annual Off-Campus Study Photography Exhibition, in Pettengill Hall, features striking images of distant locations captured by students studying off campus.

At 7 p.m. in Schaeffer Theatre, students perform dances and show films made for the course “Atelier,” which uses new technologies to promote collaboration in music and dance. At 8 p.m. in the adjoining Pettigrew Hall, four seniors screen their fictional films “Counter Clockwise,” “Estranho, Estranho” and “Sad Robot.”

As Bates College celebrates its sesquicentennial year, senior Alexander Verhave of Wellesley, Mass., has mounted an exhibit of black and white photographs titled Bates College 2005. On display in Chase Hall Lounge through May 22, the 20 photographs include contemporary landscape and still life compositions of Bates College taken by Verhave, a geology major and photography editor of The Bates Student, the campus newspaper. The photographic series “portrays the places and sights that have defined my four years at Bates,” says Verhave. The exhibit is supported by funding from the Office of the Vice President for External Affairs.

Verhave planned the photo essay in response to the college’s announced plans to grow physically, including the building of a new dining hall and student housing. As Bates expands, “it is important to document and reflect on where the campus stands today, after 150 years,” says Verhave.

“Bates possesses a unique aesthetic quality among colleges around the country. It is a welcoming place where you can step off the paved path and choose your own course across the grass and through your studies,” Verhave says.