Financial aid and student recruitment (1.1)

Invest in student recruitment and financial aid and create and sustain an inclusive campus community.

• Increased recruiting travel and more robust, immersive, and targeted communications have resulted in a 55 percent surge in applications to Bates over the past two years.
• Continued focus on increasing the diversity in the student body, which currently stands at 21 percent domestic students of color and eight percent international students. More than 57 percent of students come from outside of New England, and 12 percent of students are the first in their families to attend a four-year college. Additional efforts to increase student body diversity are underway, including the American Talent Initiative, of which Bates is a founding member, and the NESCAC Athletics Diversity Initiative.
• A quarter of The Bates Campaign is dedicated to financial aid, with $40 million of the $75 million goal raised to date.

Expansion of faculty lines and strengthening of compensation (1.2)

Invest in the college’s intellectual vitality by adding faculty lines and ensuring appropriate compensation.

• Seven newly endowed faculty professorships have been secured in chemistry, digital and computational studies, economics, neuroscience, and equity and inclusion in STEM, with a target of 11 new lines by the end of The Bates Campaign.
• The average compensation for a Bates professor ranks in the top 10 percent of 233 national liberal arts colleges.

Recruitment of next generation of faculty (1.3)

Shape the next generation of excellent faculty with a commitment to diversity.

• The college won grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with the explicit goal of diversifying the Bates faculty, which—combined with serving as a lead institution of the Creating Connections Consortium—has helped lead to 11 of the 27 faculty hired for tenure-track positions since 2016 coming from underrepresented backgrounds.
• The faculty’s Diversity Advocate Team is working to create faculty learning communities to train members of search committees in best practices for equitable and inclusive searches.

Support for student academic success (2.2)

Support all students for academic success.

• Bates launched the STEM Initiative as a holistic approach to improving science instruction at Bates and supporting all students for success in the sciences. The college received a $1 million inclusive excellence grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to support this effort.
• Bates won a five-year $1.2 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to strengthen curriculum and teaching in the humanities and humanistic social sciences and remove barriers to academic success particularly experienced by students from marginalized groups.
• The new Wagener Family Professor of Equity and Inclusion in STEM, funded through a $3 million gift, provides a senior faculty leader dedicated to reducing barriers that prevent underrepresented groups from thriving in STEM fields.
• The Office of Accessible Education and Student Support has moved to a renovated space in Ladd Library, which now includes Bates’ first Testing Center to support students, particularly those with disabilities.
• The BatesReach online platform was launched to increase communication and services among faculty, student support advisors, academic advisors, and coaches. The software also supports and improves communication between Bates Sports Medicine and Bates Health Services.
• Bates launched the Academic Resource Commons (ARC), with support from the Davis Educational Foundation, to create a comprehensive, high-quality, and student-focused system of academic support. In 2018 Bates became the first college in NESCAC to have its peer tutor training program certified through the College Reading and Learning Association. In the three years of the grant-funded pilot, peer tutors at the Academic Resource Commons met with 1,498 students in over 13,000 learning interactions. Beginning in the 2019/2020 academic year, ARC will become a permanent Bates program.

Unified physical ARC space (2.3)

Create a unified physical space for the Academic Resource Commons (ARC).

• New space for the Academic Resource Commons opened in 2016 within Ladd Library.
• Between Fall 2016 and Fall 2018, usage of ARC increased by 63 percent, from 1,798 student visits to 2,937.

Research support for faculty, students, and thesis (2.4)

Strengthen our support for rigorous scholarship.

• Over the past three years, Bates faculty have won $5 million in research grants from such organizations as the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Justice, and NASA.
• The Bates College Institutional Repository was created to increase discovery and citation of faculty scholarship and currently holds 3,743 items.
• The college has increased its digital collection by 60 percent over the past two years.
• Faculty are now formally assisted in developing data management plans for grant proposals.
• The Thesis Café has been expanded to address multiple aspects of thesis production.
• More than $500,000 has been raised to support summer research and stipends, with an additional $340,000 provided over five years for summer research and stipends from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

General Education review (2.10)

Develop a model of general education that achieves our educational goals.

• The general education program was revised and approved by the faculty in March 2018 to begin in the fall semester of 2019.

Science facilities (2.12)

Build new science facilities to support our ambitions in science education.

• Planning and design have been completed for construction of the Bonney Science Center, renovations to Dana Chemistry Hall, and improvements to Carnegie Science Hall. Construction on the new facility has begun with expected completion by the fall semester of 2021.
• Bates received a $50 million gift from Bates alumni and parents Michael ’80 and Alison Grott Bonney ’80 to fund the new facility.

Digital and Computational Studies program (2.13)

Implement the new program and major in Digital and Computational Studies.

• The college designed and launched the new Digital and Computational Studies Program (DCS).
• Three program faculty, supported by three new, fund-raised professorships, have been hired and are integrating DCS coursework throughout the curriculum.
• Program made possible by early commitments to The Bates Campaign totaling $10 million.

Environmental sustainability in operations and behavior (3.3)

Reinforce our commitment to the natural world and environmental sustainability in the operations of the institution and in the promotion of environmentally sound practices of members of our community.

• Bates became the seventh college in the country to announce carbon neutrality, having reduced its carbon footprint by 95 percent since 2001.
• Bates was the first college campus in the country to use renewable fuel oil, a clean and sustainably sourced energy.
• Commons, the college’s central dining hall, recycles or composts 80 percent of its waste.
• Bates received a gold rating from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education in 2017 and finished in first place among NESCAC institutions in the 2017–18 nationwide Recyclemania Challenge in the Waste Minimization category.

Purposeful Work (3.4)

Promote Purposeful Work as a distinguishing element of the Bates experience and seek ongoing funding for the program.

• Led by a new senior associate dean for Purposeful Work, Purposeful Work and the Bates Career Development Center have been integrated as the Center for Purposeful Work.
• In partnership with Gallup in 2019, Bates released a nationally representative survey examining the role that purpose plays in the work lives of college graduates: “Forging Pathways to Purposeful Work: The Role of Higher Education.”
• 93 faculty members have offered Purposeful Work Infusion courses since 2014, and more than 85 percent of students will experience at least one Purposeful Work Infusion course before graduating.
• 454 students have received Bates-funded Purposeful Work internships since the program’s inception in 2015, while more than 1,100 students participated in a Purposeful Work Infusion course in the winter of 2018.
• $3.9 million has been raised for Purposeful Work, most of which contributes to internship and curricular support.
• Purposeful Work has received significant media attention in such outlets as the Washington Post, Quartz, Chronicle of Higher Education, MaineBiz, WGBH, Christian Science Monitor, and Chicago Tribune.

Health and wellness (3.5)

Provide students with resources to maintain the health and wellness necessary to achieve academic and personal success during their time at Bates and beyond, paying special attention to the differentiated needs of students with disabilities and from other marginalized groups.

• An increased emphasis on the health and wellness of Bates students has included a redesign of Health Services, completed in 2016, and of Counseling and Psychological Services, completed in 2018, with services and standards revised to meet best practices.
• Renovation of the building that houses these two offices better meets operational and service needs.
• A Health Education Program has been created and embedded in the student residential experience.
• A working group is currently developing a peer-based four-year co-curriculum for health and wellness.

Financial sustainability and revenue orientation (4.1)

Maximize the financial sustainability and revenue orientation of the college.

• The college publicly launched the $300 million Bates Campaign in 2017, and more than $209 million has been raised to date.
• Annual fundraising has increased meaningfully – from $12 million in 2013 to $28 million in 2018.
• To date, the college has raised $80 million toward its $160 million goal for the endowment.
• Through budget discipline and increased philanthropy, the college has strengthened necessary financial reserves.
• Record applicant pools reflect strong demand for Bates, which is critical to our tuition-dependent model of higher education.
• The college has constructed new residence halls (Chu and Kalperis) and enhanced existing facilities (Chase and Commons) with air conditioning, increasing the college’s ability to host summer programs.

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