{"id":2621,"date":"2010-04-21T17:46:45","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T17:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hub-dev.bates.edu\/magazine\/?page_id=2621"},"modified":"2017-09-06T11:41:09","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T15:41:09","slug":"five-and-time","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/back-issues\/y2004\/summer04\/departments\/class-notes-3\/five-and-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Five and Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Time reunites five former co-workers<\/strong><\/p>\n

By H. Jay Burns, Photos from Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library and Phyllis Graber Jensen<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

In the fall of ’78, the Bates admissions staff members gathered for a group photo\u00a0with their new dean, Bill Hiss ’66.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Fall 1978: (from left) Marcus Bruce ’77, Bill Hiss, Ginny Harrison ’63, Karen Harris ’74, and Wylie Mitchell.<\/p><\/div>\n

Collectively, the five staffers \u2014 from left, Marcus Bruce ’77, Hiss, Ginny Harrison ’63,\u00a0Karen Harris ’74, and Wylie Mitchell \u2014 had four years’ admissions experience. The new\u00a0dean had none. Little could they imagine that 26 years later \u2014 as they gathered again\u00a0to celebrate the retirement of their friend and colleague Harrison, associate dean of admissions\u00a0\u2014 that their collective Bates service would top out at what Mitchell, now dean\u00a0of admissions, calls “125 years of experience\/fun\/rewards\/satisfaction\/pride.” Given that\u00a0admissions professionals move around like military families, the five’s long service may\u00a0be unique. “I don’t know if another college can point to five admissions folks who have\u00a0stayed connected to their institution as we have,” Mitchell says.<\/p>\n

After his own deanship from 1978 to 1991, Hiss has served as a Bates vice president,\u00a0now focusing on external affairs. Bruce went on to earn his Ph.D. at Yale and is a Bates\u00a0professor of religion. Harris earned her M.B.A. at Yale and entered a business career and\u00a0has remained an active Bates volunteer, now as Trustee.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Summer 2004: (from left) Marcus Bruce ’77, Bill Hiss, Ginny Harrison ’63, Karen Harris ’74, and Wylie Mitchell.<\/p><\/div>\n

Bates admissions would later gain fame for not only dropping SAT requirements\u00a0but also tracking effects of the change through aggressive computer analysis. But first\u00a0the staff had to get computers. In the fall of ’78 “we were just figuring out how to run\u00a0an admissions office,” Hiss admits. After the super-organized Mitchell noted that each\u00a0applicant’s name and address was being typed upwards of 23 times during the admissions\u00a0process, Hiss says he “served notice on President Reynolds that we were getting\u00a0computers no matter what they cost.”<\/p>\n

From Reynolds came the order to expand the applicant pool \u2014 in social, economic,\u00a0and geographic terms \u2014 into what became and remains a more diverse and national\u00a0student body. Diversity issues were at the forefront, Bruce agrees. “The staff had a commitment\u00a0to continuing what has always been a tradition at Bates,” says Bruce, whose\u00a0Bates admissions skills later paid off during his Yale graduate studies, where he earned\u00a0$1 per folder as an admissions reader.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Time reunites five former co-workers By H. Jay Burns, Photos from Muskie…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"parent":2534,"menu_order":82,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_dimp_site_id":"","_dimp_override_contact":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"class_list":["post-2621","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2621"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13671,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2621\/revisions\/13671"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}