{"id":155496,"date":"2023-06-29T19:17:26","date_gmt":"2023-06-29T23:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=155496"},"modified":"2023-06-29T19:30:00","modified_gmt":"2023-06-29T23:30:00","slug":"pretty-cool-proud-and-grateful-for-her-time-at-bates-president-spencer-offers-final-remarks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2023\/06\/29\/pretty-cool-proud-and-grateful-for-her-time-at-bates-president-spencer-offers-final-remarks\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Pretty cool’: Proud and grateful for her time at Bates, President Spencer offers final remarks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Clayton Spencer\u2019s final remarks as the college\u2019s eighth president<\/a> were among her most personal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Delivered to Bates alumni of the last 70 years at Reunion on June 10, Spencer\u2019s address during the Annual Gathering of the Alumni Association was as multigenerational as her audience’s, hearkening back to her first experience living at a liberal arts college, at Davidson, when her father was president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was a child living in the Davidson president\u2019s house in the \u201960s, with my brother\u2019s rock band, complete with scraggly hair and ratty jeans, practicing in the garage behind the dorms. I was taking it all in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Left,
On Oct. 26, 2012, the day of Clayton Spencer’s installation as Bates’ eighth president, she sits with her father, Samuel Reid Spencer Jr., who was president of Davidson College when Clayton was growing up. (Rene Roy for Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Spending the last 11 years as Bates\u2019 president has been “pretty cool,” Spencer said, to be able to conclude “this phase of my life as I began it \u2014 living on a liberal arts campus among a bunch of 18- to 22-year-olds at such an intense and dynamic time in their own development.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And about those 18- to 22-year-olds that she\u2019s lived (very) close to over the last 11 years at Bates? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are \u201cstill curious. They are idealistic,\u201d Spencer said. \u201cThey care about the world, they are developing their agency, and they want to gain the knowledge and tools to solve the world\u2019s hardest problems. They are generous and kind and open. And they are very funny.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To her personal recollections, which included anecdotes about those funny Bates students, Spencer added her thanks. \u201cI am proud and grateful to be associated with this fabulous college that you guys are lucky enough to claim as your own,\u201d she told the alumni, concluding her address with these words:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201dIf I\u2019ve learned one thing over the past 11 years, it is this: It\u2019s always a great day to be a Bobcat.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI am proud and grateful to be associated with this fabulous college that you guys are lucky enough to claim as your own,\u201d Spencer said in her final remarks as president, shared with alumni at Reunion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":63138,"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":[4,11009],"tags":[10935],"class_list":["post-155496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-the-college","tag-clayton-spencer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155496","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\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155496"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":155501,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155496\/revisions\/155501"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}