H. Jay Burns, Editor<\/a><\/em><\/p>\nIt\u2019s time to ‘fess up. The bylines and credits sprinkled throughout each issue don\u2019t account for all the key contributors to Bates Magazine. For many stories, Bates professors are informal story consultants, helping us develop the best, and best-informed, interview questions.<\/p>\n
Take the story by Moscow-based journalist Peter van Dyk about the remarkable Russian business career of Jere Calmes \u201992. Van Dyk is well-acquainted with the Russian business culture, but because I didn\u2019t know the difference between an oligarch and a gargoyle before this story, I asked for help from Bates politics professor Jim Richter and Russian professor Dennis Browne. Both know Calmes from Bates and from visiting him in Moscow on Bates study-abroad programs.<\/p>\n
Browne correctly told me that Calmes\u2019 early years in Russia would prove \u201cvery fascinating.\u201d Richter urged van Dyk to ask Calmes about how doing business in Russia has changed, and what it\u2019s like for non-Russian companies trying to do business in Russia. The story touches on these topics.<\/p>\n
Our feature on Rachel Segall \u201991, the gestational carrier of a baby for Erik Mercer \u201991 and his husband Sandro Sechi, got behind-the-scenes help from Rebecca Herzig, professor of women and gender studies. After I outlined the complex story for her, her first comment was simple: \u201cI\u2019m so happy for them!\u201d<\/p>\n
But she then cautioned me not to expect that the alums\u2019 real-life thought processes would mirror what might unfold in a classroom discussion of surrogacy. That is, in the safety of Pettengill or elsewhere, students and professors tend to think \u201cincisively and articulately about tough questions of gender, sexuality, class, economics, and distributive justice.\u201d On the other hand, she observes, people often \u201cstop thinking altogether when our own real lives are at stake.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet Mercer, Sechi, Segall, and her husband Tony Hurley \u201991 nearly pounced on questions that raised tough issues, and their insights had multiple facets, like a sparkly dance ball. (Later this winter, plans are afoot for these Batesies to bring their real world experiences to Herzig\u2019s course on \u201cBlood, Genes, and American Culture.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Herzig coached me, explaining how current thinking in her field tries to untangle the many ways that surrogacy can revise \u201ccanonical kin networks.\u201d That is, surrogacy complicates traditional ideas of family and relatedness far more than the Brady Bunch ever did (or Modern Family, for that matter). She also suggested some questions, around religion and whether the race or physical appearance of the egg donor affected their selection. The alums responded candidly and, in how Mercer explained how he and Sechi chose their egg donor, with humor.<\/p>\n
Finally, when we received a letter<\/a> with questions about our Summer issue cover story on drug development, we naturally invited Steve Kates \u201983, a big part of that story, to reply. But also offering us some help was Assistant Professor of Chemistry Jennifer Koviach-C\u00f4t\u00e9. In a nice twist on the notion of faculty consulting, she asked her first-year seminar on \u201cA Drug\u2019s Life\u201d to pen a response. I say we give A\u2019s to everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getting Help from a Professor By H. Jay Burns, Editor It\u2019s time…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"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":[7,14],"tags":[10856],"class_list":["post-39950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni","category-faculty-staff","tag-bates-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39950","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\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39950"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87032,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39950\/revisions\/87032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/a><\/p>\n