Campus spirit

An introduction to the variety of ways — from real dollars to social capital — that Bates College contributes to the economic fabric of Lewiston-Auburn

BY BILL HISS

Vice president for external affairs, Bates College

When I was a student at Bates College in the 1960s, and when I first returned in 1978 as a dean, few students used Lewiston-Auburn for much more than a meal or movie. But the change in that attitude over the last 15 years has been significant, both in how Bates students and faculty use Lewiston-Auburn and in how residents of those communities use Bates.

Most students get the message clearly that career and social service work will be an integral part of their undergraduate years at Bates, and the people of Lewiston-Auburn have been wonderful about including students in their work and lives. Now students and faculty both come to Bates expecting to do significant research in Lewiston-Auburn. It is a perfect American urban microcosm, with everyone from entrepreneurial millionaires to serious social service clients, and a good deal of blue-collar and middle-class residents in between those extremes.

At myriad levels Bates and the local communities are a joint effort: The college’s economic strength depends in part on the health and success of Lewiston-Auburn, and Bates works with the communities in roles from economic partner to think tank to seed bed. One part of that town-gown story involves the economic impact of a college that draws students from all over the world. The other part is the rapidly expanding economic and community cooperation between Bates people and the communities, a process of growing social capital and finding common cause.

Real capital, social capital

Bates College has an annual operating budget of $70 million. About 90% of this money comes from outside Maine, and most Bates expenditures stay within Maine, much within Lewiston-Auburn. Bates pays upwards of $7 million yearly to more than 350 local businesses and individuals. In addition, Bates periodically spends millions of dollars for capital expenditures: new construction, renovations and technology. Whenever feasible, we choose local suppliers and contractors.

Bates is one of the top 10 employers in the Lewiston-Auburn area. It employs more than 700 permanent full-time and part-time employees in all skill levels. Employees receive more than $31 million in wages and $9 million in benefits. Bates jobs are secure and mostly unaffected by economic downturns, in large part due to the reputation of the school and its ability to attract qualified students from around the country; in recent years, Bates received more than 4,000 applications for the 450 places in each first-year class. Fifty-nine percent of all Bates employees reside in Lewiston-Auburn, and two-thirds live in Androscoggin County.

In addition, Bates has expanded its curriculum with new fields — including neuroscience, environmental studies, classical and medieval studies, American cultural studies — that bring scholars and researchers to the community. The faculty headcount has grown by 23% since 1990 and by 58% since 1980; the college’s total workforce has grown by 12% and 52% during the same time periods. Remember when growing the economy meant creating high-level, well-paid jobs in new fields? Bates still fosters this kind of growth.

Bates, its employees, its students and its 6,000 yearly overnight visitors generate at least $70 million in direct spending, and an estimated $122 million-$139 million in direct and indirect spending as money re-circulates through the local economy. As a nonprofit educational organization, the college is exempt from most taxes, but it pays about $350,000 in fees for local government services, and $150,000 in property taxes on real estate not used for educational purposes.

Besides the dollars that go to the local economy, the college is also an engine of “social capital” — the service-learning and voluntary activities that help create the economic and cultural profile of the region, and that have powerful and complex mutual benefits for Bates and surrounding communities. Bates students learn outside their classes from practical experience: Students learn both values and careers from area business people, doctors, lawyers, teachers, social servants and government officers. The quality of life of Bates employees improves as the community prospers. As the Twin Cities develop and become more attractive, the college finds it easier to attract quality employees and students. By cooperating on mutual interests, a synergy is created, and Lewiston-Auburn and Bates gain more together than they could by working separately.

Convention centers and airborne castles

While many people have contributed to Bates’ involvement with Lewiston-Auburn in recent years, Don Harward, president of the college from 1989-2002, made involvement in the community a hallmark of his leadership. During Harward’s tenure, city and college officials, often through the community development agency LA Excels, helped bring national attention and significant funding to the community. (Gov. Angus King called LA Excels “the most extensive community development project in the history of the state,” while the Department of Housing and Urban Development termed it “one of the most integrated development projects in the nation.”) The efforts were distinctive in their integrated approach — colleges, hospitals, city governments, businesses and the arts all worked together. An early project for LA Excels was to encourage a new hotel and conference center to locate in Lewiston — a project, now complete, that is already contributing to the local economic climate.

To honor Harward’s contributions, on his retirement the college raised $1.8 million to endow permanently a Harward Center for Community Partnerships at Bates. The center will integrate many of the college’s activities involving LA Excels, service-learning and community-based research activities.

The center will also help us dream up new ways to interact with the community, which reminds me of Thoreau, who wrote warmly of building castles in the air. That is where they belong, he said, but put foundations under them. I have a few castles in the air of my own — some with foundations partly built, some still airborne — related to how the college and Lewiston-Auburn can help each other grow. One example has to do with the Androscoggin River, one of the region’s natural gems. Bates and the City of Lewiston could develop a wonderful park on the Lewiston side of the river to balance and reflect the new Auburn park on Maine Street. Another has to do with a personal dream: The college could collaborate with local developers to build a Bates alumni retirement community — an increasingly popular feature on or near college campuses around the country — perhaps in a restored mill along the river.

Those castles are made possible by what’s already happening. The other night our family filled a row at the Community Little Theatre production of “Singin’ In The Rain.” It was an extraordinary show: brassy, imaginatively staged, with a large cast and crew of community members. The show’s director was John Blanchette, a Lewiston native who earned a Bates degree in theater and rhetoric and is now a local insurance agent. John gives hundreds of hours yearly to local theater and to coaching Lewiston High School’s award-winning speech team.

Like so many other Lewiston-Auburn residents with ties to Bates, John gives back, both as a businessman and to build social capital. The models for a vigorous and productive college-community relationship are all around us.

Bill Hiss has worked at Bates and lived in Lewiston-Auburn and Minot for more than 25 years, and serves as a director of the Mitchell Institute and of the Androscoggin County Fund of the Maine Community Foundation. Jim Fergerson, director of institutional planning and analysis at Bates, contributed much of the research for this piece.

Let’s stay together

The list of ways that Bates and the LA community interact is long, but highlights include:

• During the last fiscal year, 61,954 documented hours of service were given by Bates students through service-learning projects. Another 5,047 documented hours of volunteer service were given by Bates students during the academic year, and 5,182 hours of mentoring were done in the local schools. Approximately 179 community agencies and institutions were involved with Bates service-learning projects. Bates employees contribute more than 23,000 hours of community service yearly.

• A ongoing series of breakfast seminars offers dialogue and networking between national leaders, community leaders and Bates faculty and staff, often with a theme connected to community development.

• The Bates College Museum of Art’s role in the Maine Art Museum Trail has gained national recognition and helped create an annual attendance of 22,500. The museum welcomed 7,700 local students, and a teacher-training workshop for local public elementary and secondary school teachers. (I went with my son’s third grade class from Minot last year; for about a third of the students, it was their first visit to a museum.) An estimated 17,000 people attend Bates-sponsored concerts, dance or theater. Performance groups reach 4,000 local area school children a year.

• All athletic contests at Bates are open to the public and free. People regularly use the tracks or the path around Lake Andrews for exercise or charitable walkathons.

• More than 4,000 community members attended a rally in the Bates fieldhouse last winter to welcome our new Somali neighbors to the community.

• For more than 30 years, as many as 30 local high school seniors have taken courses at the college for free, often with a positive effect on their college admissions decisions. Community members may take a course at Bates as “special students,” or audit a Bates course without academic credit for a nominal fee. For more than 50 years, area schools have provided practice teaching and role models for Bates students hoping to enter education as a career.

• A member of the Maine Organic Farmers and Growers Association (MOFGA), Bates Dining Services buys organic produce from local farmers, has donated more than 21,000 meals to local agencies, and contracts with a local farm to compost large amounts of our kitchen waste. Many Bates students learn about environmental issues from community members.

Bill Hiss

(Reprinted with permission from Mainebiz)