Third annual Mount David Summit celebrates student achievement

Through poster presentations, panel discussions, exhibits and performances, more than 250 Bates College students will take part in the third annual Mount David Summit, starting at 2:30 p.m. Friday, April 2, in Pettengill Hall, Andrews Road.

The summit is open to the public at no charge. For more information, call the Office of the Dean of Faculty at 207-786-6065.

Established in 2002 to demonstrate the intellectual range and depth of student accomplishment at Bates, the event gives students from all classes and disciplines the opportunity to share with the community their research, service-learning and creative work.

This year’s event, the largest yet, will include more than 150 students presenting posters, talks, videos and a one-woman play; another 40 exhibiting photographs; and 60-plus performing in musical ensembles that include the college orchestra.

In sessions from 2:45 to 4:15 p.m. and 4:30 to 6 p.m., students will display and explain nearly 100 research posters in Perry Atrium, Pettengill Hall. Poster topics will run a wide gamut, including the effects of carbaryl pesticides in Maine, a case study of autism, the potential cancer-fighting effects of a chemical extracted from hyacinth beans and mathematical modeling of the 1918 influenza pandemic.

Concurrent panel presentations will take place in ground-floor classrooms in Pettengill. Topics include the acculturation of Somali students in Lewiston schools, a study of the effects of microcredit in developing countries, the abolitionist roots of Bates founder Oren Cheney and an examination of Appalachian Baptist music that includes shape-note singing by the student a cappella group Northfield.

Two performances start at 8 p.m. For her thesis project, Saida Cooper, a senior theater major from St. Albans, Maine, performs Jane Wagner and Lily Tomlin’s The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe in Gannett Theater, Pettigrew Hall.

In the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, Lecturer in Music Philip Carlsen conducts the Bates College Orchestra and guest artists Frank Glazer, pianist, and senior Cass Panuska, soprano, in works by Mozart, Debussy, Corigliano and Franck.

The event title “Mount David” is borrowed from a Bates landmark—the tall, wooded rocky outcropping at the corner of Mountain Avenue and College Street.

Watch for a full summit schedule at the Web site www.bates.edu/mt-david-summit.xml.