{"id":63135,"date":"2013-03-10T10:51:49","date_gmt":"2013-03-10T14:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=63135"},"modified":"2024-07-01T15:59:47","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T19:59:47","slug":"spencers-inaugural-address-where-bates-stands-how-the-college-can-move-forward-while-staying-true-to-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2013\/03\/10\/spencers-inaugural-address-where-bates-stands-how-the-college-can-move-forward-while-staying-true-to-itself\/","title":{"rendered":"Spencer\u2019s inaugural address: where Bates stands, how the college can move forward, while staying true to itself"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spencer to Bates: ENGAGE!<\/p>\n

By Doug Hubley<\/p>\n

\"Mace<\/a>

Mace bearer Sawyer Sylvester, professor of sociology, leads the academic procession to Merrill Gymnasium on Oct. 26, 2012. Photograph by Mike Bradley<\/p><\/div>\n

In the year since Clayton Spencer was named Bates\u2019 eighth president, she has offered a strikingly active and consistent interpretation of where Bates stands and how the college can move forward while staying true to its own best self.<\/p>\n

Her views have come at three signature addresses: the December 2011 event that introduced her to campus; during Reunion 2012 on the eve of her official start as president; and, most recently, at her Oct. 26 inaugural installation.<\/p>\n

At each turn, Spencer has vividly described a specific scenario: As shifting economics and, especially, exploding information technology transform higher education as we know it, Bates can respond by being brighter and bolder about what it has always done so well \u2014 namely, standing firmly on principle while engaging robustly with the world.<\/p>\n

In the next decades, \u201csuccess will go to the institutions that engage most robustly and effectively with the forces\u00a0that are reshaping our world.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fittingly, the inaugural address, titled Questions Worth Asking<\/em>, was the richest statement of Spencer\u2019s thesis to date, and she used Benjamin E. Mays \u201920, the great educator, theologian and civil rights leader, as both a metaphor for the founding Bates ethos and a guide for applying that ethos to the coming times. (Take a new look at Mays on page 24.) Bucking societal norms, Bates was inclusive and progressive in ways that directly benefited students of color like Mays, a leader who in turn amplified and passed those values forward to lift up all of U.S. society.<\/p>\n

His story, Spencer stated, makes clear that we have always \u201cencountered individuals in their full humanity. We took as our task educating them with intellectual rigor, ethical responsibility and care for their fellow human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added, \u201cThese qualities are in the DNA of Bates College, and they define us to this day. They also point the way forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Clayton<\/a>

Clayton Spencer shows off the presidential collar following her installation as the college\u2019s eighth president. Photograph by Mike Bradley<\/p><\/div>\n

Spencer explored the theme of technology-driven change with the words of another new president. In his September inaugural address, MIT\u2019s Rafael Reif situated higher education on the threshold of a \u201ctechnological transformation [that] has the potential to reshape the education landscape \u2014 and to challenge our very existence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unhindered access to unimaginable amounts of information has changed both the work of education \u2014 \u201csome of the most powerful changes are occurring at the heart of scholarship and knowledge creation,\u201d as Spencer pointed out \u2014 and the context in which it\u2019s done.<\/p>\n

So in their intellectual reach, liberal arts colleges like Bates \u201chave become a great deal larger,\u201d she explained. \u201cYet enlarging the screen on which we must project our institutional identity and compete for faculty and students makes this tiny campus…look ever smaller.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, liberal arts colleges educate fewer than 4 percent of the college students in America. And the relevance of the \u201ctough-minded tradition of the small New England college,\u201d as Thomas Hedley Reynolds put it at his own inauguration, in 1967, is increasingly questioned. But schools like Bates should regard such questioning as an invitation not just to demonstrate their relevance, but to strengthen it, Spencer said.<\/p>\n

This scrutiny \u201cchallenges us to make a virtue of our scale, delivering our particular model of education at a high standard of excellence,\u201d she said, describing a paradoxical liberal arts model that embraces both \u201cthe pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, with no practical aim,\u201d and the \u201cteaching of values…that shape a human being who can in turn shape the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which brought her listeners back to a Bates graduate who had done just that: Mays, who remains the proof and embodiment of values that endure after 158 years, she said.<\/p>\n

The Mays story, she said, is a story about mindset. For Bates, that mindset is about \u201cstanding firmly on principle and encountering the world with energy and confidence.\u201d In the next decades, she said, \u201csuccess will go to the institutions that engage most robustly and effectively with the forces that are reshaping our world.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Bates, this could mean changes in faculty recruitment, departmental structure, even how academic disciplines are defined \u2014 but most important, it means an even greater dedication to the goal of teaching and learning that engages with the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe stand ready \u2014 together \u2014 to challenge ourselves and to engage the world.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The mindset exemplified by the Mays story is one “grounded in ideas and values, but porous to the world,\u201d she said. \u201cFor the liberal arts college it means, among other things, recognizing that the line between theory and practice is breaking down. It means…that we see the growing concern of students and parents with employment prospects… as a deep aspect of our obligation as a liberal arts college to prepare our students for a life of purposeful work.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her discussion of the character of Bates graduates, she took a cue from the late Rev. Peter Gomes \u201965, for whom the College Chapel had been ceremonially named the day before Spencer\u2019s installation. Liberal arts colleges, Gomes once preached, put \u201cthe making of a better person ahead of the making of a brighter person, or a better mousetrap.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A poignant moment during the installation: Clayton Spencer hoists her academic cap, the same one that her father, Samuel Reid Spencer Jr., now 93, wore as president of Mary Baldwin College and Davidson College. Photograph by Mike Bradley<\/p><\/div>\n

In Spencer\u2019s words, the liberal arts college, with its intimate scale, has an advantage when it comes to this task of creating better people. Bates shapes human beings who are not only \u201cequipped to navigate a complex world, but also motivated with empathy toward their fellow human beings,\u201d a goal that comes alive every day through the legions of students exercising both minds and hearts through community-based learning projects in Lewiston.<\/p>\n

And, through Mays, Spencer concluded her address by interpreting the notion of community as it has been constructed at Bates, one defined by openness and inclusiveness \u201cwell before we had the language for such things,\u201d she said, adding that ours is an intentional community that anticipated, by nearly a century, the GI Bill that introduced a new egalitarianism to other campuses nationwide.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe genius of American higher education is that it unites excellence and opportunity,\u201d she said. Bates can claim this union \u201cas a core element of our identity, and we need to continue to build on this deep aspect of who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meaning, in practical terms, that Bates must make an \u201cunwavering commitment\u201d not only to the financial aid that supports a diverse student body, but to the existence of a campus culture \u201cthat embraces diversity across many dimensions, giving richness and power to the educational experience of all of our students.\u201d<\/p>\n

No one can predict the future, but Spencer closed her speech by invoking someone famed for predicting what its gadgets should look like: Steve Jobs. The late Apple co-founder once told a group of graduating students that \u201cyour time is limited, so don\u2019t waste it living someone else\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLikewise, at Bates, we don\u2019t have time to waste,\u201d Spencer said. \u201cBut we are not in danger of living someone else\u2019s life. We know who we are and what we stand for, and we stand ready \u2014 together \u2014 to challenge ourselves and to engage the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spencer\u2019s inaugural address bates.edu\/inauguration<\/a><\/p>\n

\"President<\/a>

President Spencer and her father, Samuel Reid Spencer Jr, sit together on a campus bench after the ceremony. Her father and her mother, Ava, attended the installation, as did Clayton’s children. Photograph by Rene Minnis<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Citing Benjamin Mays \u201920 as both metaphor and guide, Clayton Spencer\u2019s inaugural address frames the challenges facing Bates and suggests why the college is fully equipped to move forward<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":63139,"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":[1],"tags":[10856,12356,11024,9873],"class_list":["post-63135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-batesnews","tag-bates-magazine","tag-center-for-purposeful-work","tag-magazine-features","tag-winter-2013"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63135","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=63135"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122375,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63135\/revisions\/122375"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}