Rows and rows of folding chairs appeared on the Historic Quad this week in preparation for members of the Class of 2029, who arrive en masse on August 28 to begin their time at Bates. The class will be officially welcomed by President Garry W. Jenkins at 2 p.m. Thursday after a whirlwind morning of moving in with the help of family and friends. 

The Class of 2029 is made up of 497 students who attended 410 high schools in 44 states, as well as Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico, and 23 different countries. Nearly a quarter of them come from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds and 56 of them are the first generation in their family to attend college. (Many of the class’s 29 new Kessler Scholars, a group of high achieving students who are first-generation to college, arrived on campus earlier this week for their orientation through the Bobcat First Program.) Bates has 31 varsity teams, and the Class of 2029 includes 156 recruited athletes, many of whom arrived early to practice with their teams.

Almost a tenth of the class — 9.45 percent — come from Maine, including two students from Lewiston and one from Auburn. But 60 percent of the class comes from outside New England, including states as far away as Hawaii and Alaska. Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Idaho, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming are also represented. 

Many of these new Bates students come from multilingual households, with a wide range of languages — over 40 — being spoken in their homes. Forty-one members of the class hold passports from other countries, including Argentina, Armenia, Bulgaria, Cambodia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Japan, Kenya, Nepal, Romania, and Uganda.

Bates will also welcome 10 transfer students on Thursday, including some who will be making the transition from large universities to a small liberal arts college.

As always, the new class is filled with talented students with wildly varied interests and experiences. Here is just a partial list of the uniquely driven and skilled humans you’ll find in the Class of 2028:

• An international competitive Scottish Highland dancer
• The president of their school’s spike ball club
• An oyster farmer, a cheesemonger in training, and the founder of a lobster business named “Wicked Lobstah!”
• The leader of a five-piece jazz funk band
• A member of the Polynesian Outrigger Racing team (that placed second in the world championships)
• The developer of a software game to aid in diagnosing dementia
• The goalie for the U18 Korean national ice hockey team
• An independent filmmaker who has already made four movies
• The manager of an Instagram account that is dedicated to covering English soccer and has over 24K followers 
• The founder of Kneading to Help, a youth-led organization that bakes and delivers homemade bread to community fridges and homeless shelters
• A track and field state qualifier from Colorado who helped build a community garden in one of Washington, D.C.’s food deserts
• A marching band section leader who serves on the teen advisory board of their local public library in Alabama and also helps manage a Little Free Library full of books by Black, indigenous, and People of Color authors or feature main characters who are BIPOC
• A theater director and playwright from Massachusetts who is a research intern investigating health care access to LGBTQ+ youth
• The builder of a 250-square-foot treehouse on a remote island in Washington state
• An adaptive skiing instructor who co-authored a petition for the governor to declare a climate emergency in Alaska. 
• A student council president who co-founded a food drive in Western Massachusetts
• A ukelele player who founded a traditional Lebanese dance troupe and, also, a club that creates space for Middle Eastern and North African students to find common ground  
• A volunteer naturalist for whale watching and a volunteer education assistant with a shark conservancy
• A giant slalom ski racer who was ranked in the top 50 competitors in the country
• An Appalachian ballad singer and leader in the International Thespian Society
• An advanced fiddler with the Maine-based Pineland Fiddlers ensemble
• A glass art apprentice who worked under Brooklyn-based artist Ernest Porcelli
• A chocolatier who also makes jewelry and designs magazines
• A freelance disc jockey
• A former intern in the Department of Oncology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
• The founder of a nonprofit focused on recycling e-waste
• A student cabinet member with the Maine Dept. of Education
• An Appalachian Mountain Club crew member
• A children’s book author who also taught English in Iraq

On Thursday, after their welcome from Jenkins, the first-year students will move into orientation and then head out on weekend-long AESOP (Annual Entering Students Orientation Programs) trips ranging from hyper local excursions to adventures through Maine’s mountains and along its coastline. Then it’s back to campus for Convocation at 11 a.m. on September 2 and the first day of classes on September 3. A warm welcome home to our new Bobcats.