Student Programs and Leadership Development

Bates seeks to educate the whole person, both within the classroom and beyond, and we enlist the full Bates community in this effort. Through original, flexible programming, students engage in critical ways with every aspect of campus life. They develop the qualities of confidence and commitment and the tools of collaboration and compromise that serve them well as members of the college community and of the communities they are part of beyond Bates.

Student programs that are central to the Bates experience — and that we seek to enhance through The Bates Campaign — include the Chase Hall Programming Board’s late-night weekend programming, outdoor recreation and civic engagement trips during first-year student orientation, and programs offered to students who must remain on campus during college breaks. In addition, with approximately a quarter of our students participating in over 24 club sports teams, we seek to strengthen support and advising for these teams.

We offer over 20 student leadership programs housed in different areas of the college — athletics, Campus Life, the Harward Center, the Office of Intercultural Education — that give students multiple pathways to explore their particular interests and progress as leaders. Currently, we are working to create a more coherent and unified framework for student leadership development that strengthens our ability to better prepare students for life after Bates.

Gifts to student programs and leadership development will allow us to offer an array of carefully defined and well-structured programs that better develop leaders of all kinds.