![\"170502_Short_Term_Gardening_0432\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2017\/05\/170502_Short_Term_Gardening_0432.jpg\")
<\/a>Max Millslagle \u201917 of Bend, Ore., works on shrub beds next to the Kenison Gate on Campus Avenue. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cI definitely notice where we have worked, and it’s always rewarding to see that we are making progress,\u201d says Millslagle, who has done yard work as a summer job. \u201cIt’s nice being outside and playing around in some dirt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Millslagle isn\u2019t taking a Short Term course this spring (students need to complete just two during their Bates career), so he\u2019s free to focus on this landscaping work, plus having fun with his soon-to-graduate classmates.<\/p>\n
Two years younger, Jamie Kelleher \u201919 from Redondo Beach, Calif., balances grounds work with fieldwork: Her Short Term anthropology course, \u201cEncountering Community,\u201d involves research in Lewiston-Auburn.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the good things about this job is that there are structured times,\u201d Kelleher explains. \u201cMy Short Term is mostly independent research, so this job gives me an opportunity to be outside, meet some new students, and make money at the same time. It also keeps me in very good shape!\u201d<\/p>\n
This is Bergevin\u2019s 35th year at Bates. Starting as a member of the Facility Services grounds crew, he has maintained a passion for planting, gardening, and making the campus look its best during prime time,\u00a0Commencement weekend.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Bill Bergevin sweeps the sidewalk after a mulching session near Carnegie Science Hall. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s nice, hopefully, at the end of Short Term to take a breath, look at the campus, and feel a little bit of satisfaction that we played a part in how good it looks,\u201d he says. \u201cBecause it almost always does look impressive for Commencement.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s cool to have a part in how campus is going to look when I graduate in a few weeks,\u201d says Clarke Shipley \u201917 of Andover, Mass.<\/p>\n
In order to get his students squared away and ready to work by 8 a.m., Bergevin starts as early as 6:30 in the morning, rain or shine. He sets out and dries out (as needed) all of his equipment, consisting of several rakes, shovels, mulching forks, hoes, buckets, bins, tarps, dump truck, and a Bobcat skid-steer loader.<\/p>\n
A big focus of the work is to clean up the shrub and flower beds, raking and removing leaves left over from the fall cleanup and removing winter debris.<\/p>\n
\u201cI try to look at the campus through other people\u2019s eyes and see what I think they see,\u201d Bergevin says. \u201cI try to do everything that I can to make sure that the place looks good for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/a>Max Millslagle ’17 of Bend, Ore., JD Chow ’17 of Montclair, N.J., and Diego Marcogliese ’17 of Los Angeles take a brief break from work to pose for a photograph. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n
Once all the beds are cleaned up all around campus, Bergevin and his students go through and lay down black mulch, delivered earlier in the spring by a company in nearby Poland.<\/p>\n
The 60 yards of mulch is delivered to the Cutten Maintenance Center. Bergevin uses a college dump truck to haul large loads to where he and his students are working \u2014 dumping them on a large tarp \u2014 then uses the Bobcat to bring smaller loads closer to the beds.<\/p>\n
Once all the mulching is done, the next project is to plant annuals and perennials around campus.<\/p>\n
![.<\/a><\/p>\nThe Historic Quad, Bates\u2019 oasis, is one of Bergevin\u2019s favorite Bates places. As old trees come down, he\u2019s selected and planted more than a few new trees over the years.<\/p>\n\u201cIt is rewarding to know that I played a role in how the campus is going to look for the next 50 to 100 years,\u201d says Bergevin, with just a hint of a smile as he works, on his hands and knees, mulching beds near Carnegie Science Building.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt’s cool to have a part in how campus is going to look when I graduate in a few weeks,\u201d says senior Clarke Shipley \u201917.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":107643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":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":""},"categories":[14,11012,11009],"tags":[11199,10831,10804,11198],"class_list":["post-107628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-staff","category-student-life","category-the-college","tag-bill-bergevin","tag-commencement","tag-facility-services","tag-historic-quad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107628"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107881,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107628\/revisions\/107881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2017\/05\/170502_Short_Term_Gardening_0503.jpg\"){kind=link}