"If you want to solve all the problems that we're facing in this world, it's unlikely that the people and ideas that got us to where we are will be the ones that are going to get us to a different place," Segway inventor Dean Kamen told 465 graduates.

Sent on their way with armfuls of good advice — including best-selling historian David McCullough's suggestion that "however little television you watch, watch less" — 387 Bates College students made the transition from seniors to alumni.

Speaking at Bates' 139th Commencement, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams observed that this graduating class will be known as the Class of 9/11, a catastrophe that occurred just days after its members started college.

The College's 138th Commencement saw the most notable change in tradition since 1971, the year President Hedley Reynolds, urged by the senior class, moved the exercises from the Lewiston Armory to the steps of Coram Library.

Fending off a threatening rain nearly until the end of its 137th annual Commencement, Bates College sent 443 graduates into the world in a ceremony that also honored a leading expert on religion and law, a pioneering cardiologist, the head of the United Nations Children's Fund and the college's recently retired sixth president.

The Class of 2002 graduated on Monday, May 27. Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, recognized internationally as one of the world’s most profound thinkers and as a scientist who bridges the literacy gap for general audiences, received an honorary doctor of science degree and speak at the 136th commencement at Bates College.

Writer and composer James McBride opens the 147th academic year