{"id":97455,"date":"2015-10-23T10:33:39","date_gmt":"2015-10-23T14:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=97455"},"modified":"2017-02-22T17:08:11","modified_gmt":"2017-02-22T22:08:11","slug":"retirement-of-sarah-potter-77-bookstore-director-who-also-teaches-virtues-hard-work-and-thoughtfulness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2015\/10\/23\/retirement-of-sarah-potter-77-bookstore-director-who-also-teaches-virtues-hard-work-and-thoughtfulness\/","title":{"rendered":"Retirement of Sarah Potter ’77, bookstore director who also teaches virtues ‘hard work and thoughtfulness’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"For<\/a>

Retiring College Store director Sarah Potter ’77 has given generations of student workers a sense of normalcy amid their intense, day-to-day academic lives. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Back in 2006, when Caitlin McKitrick \u201910 and her mother came into the bookstore on her first day at Bates, buying books was on their to-do list.<\/p>\n

Also on the list was saying hello to the store\u2019s director, Sarah Emerson Potter \u201977, a contemporary of Caitlin\u2019s mom, Rosemary Duggan McKitrick \u201975.<\/p>\n

Potter, out and about on the store floor per usual, greeted the McKitricks and asked Caitlin how she was doing so far.<\/p>\n

Caitlin\u2019s response? \u201cI burst into tears.\u201d<\/p>\n

No stranger to students and their stress tears, Potter swept Caitlin and her mom back to her office for some quiet time and deep breaths. Later, she hired Caitlin as a student worker.<\/p>\n

From that day forward, Caitlin recalls that Potter \u2014 who retires as bookstore director on Oct. 30 after 35 years \u2014 \u201calways lent a sympathetic ear\u201d to the student workers, \u201calways asked after our well-being, reminding us to relax, sleep, and eat \u2014 and she was always ready with a new book recommendation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most everything in a college bookstore comes at a price, but in the case of the College Store at Bates, there\u2019s a notable exception, that being what Potter has given to some 185 Bates students who\u2019ve worked in the bookstore over the years. (And she’s been at Bates long enough to have hired students in the 1980s and their Bates children in the 2000s.)<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of us try to help students become fully formed people.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To them all, she’s given guidance and support, while instilling the best qualities of a Bates education, such as the twin, double-helix virtues of \u201chard work and thoughtfulness,\u201d in the words of Hallie Balcomb \u201914.<\/p>\n

In this sense, staff are Bates educators, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of us try to help students become fully formed people,\u201d Potter says. \u201cWe all want them to get a sense of who they really are, so that even if they don\u2019t really know what they\u2019re jumping off into\u201d when they leave Bates, \u201cthey have the confidence to jump.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"In<\/a>

In March of her senior year at Bates, student worker Hallie Balcomb ’14 gets a hug from bookstore director Sarah Potter ’77. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

We could go in many other directions to salute Potter\u2019s contributions to Bates.<\/p>\n

She has run this $1.2 million business with skill and a human touch, handling everything from purchasing and pricing to managing the college\u2019s relationships with a host of businesses, from car dealerships and local hotels to furniture vendors.<\/p>\n

As the college\u2019s \u201ccontract officer,\u201d she ensures that Bates is \u201ceasy to do business with and is responsive to vendors,\u201d says Doug Ginevan, assistant vice president for financial planning and analysis. \u201cShe has done it superbly.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s embraced sustainable practices, receiving a Stanton Environmental Stewardship Award in 2013 from Bates, and the Harward Center honored her in 2008 with its Staff Award for Community Volunteerism and Leadership.<\/p>\n

Changing with the times, Potter has adjusted the store\u2019s mission. More of a textbook \u201ccounselor,\u201d the store sees its \u201cobligation as much more than selling a textbook. It\u2019s to help a student somehow get that book,\u201d she says, whether through a sale, rental, reserve, or other way.<\/p>\n

She creates community in specific ways. She\u2019s published the jovial and offbeat \u201cGood Reads for Leisure Moments\u201d summer reading list each spring since 1997, a friendly place where someone like Dana Professor of Theater Martin Andrucki can admit to admiring the books of Maeve Binchy. (\u201cI still can\u2019t tell if Marty was being tongue in cheek,\u201d Potter says.)<\/p>\n

Like other Bates alumni staff members \u2014 like Leigh Campbell \u201964, who continues to counsel students for Student Financial Services \u2014 Potter\u2019s combination of job focus and personal experience gives her a good sense of student life.<\/p>\n

Each year, Potter hires a dozen or more students to handle the cash register, stock shelves, and keep the place looking sharp.<\/p>\n

In many cases, Potter is part of their lives literally from start to finish.<\/p>\n

Balcomb, now teaching at St. James School in Hagerstown, Md., was hired after meeting Potter on her first day at Bates. Four years later, on Commencement Day, \u201cI turned the corner of the ramp to receive my diploma and saw Sarah standing there with her wonderful colleagues, ready to reach out for a hug.\u201d<\/p>\n

In between, Potter says that she and her colleagues try to give students \u201ca sense of normalcy.\u201d The staff helps to balance and relieve students from the intense academic rigor that many of them are experiencing for the first time in their lives.<\/p>\n

And she treats students the way she was treated by the staff at Bates.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople like the dorm housekeeper, the night watchman, or the women I worked with in Commons were family; they teased me, and I could tease them back,\u201d Potter recalls. \u201cThey were incredibly connected to my daily life, and I could always turn to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Potter and her staff \u201cwere my family away from home,\u201d says McKitrick.<\/p>\n

The road to academic honors has a few stress stops on the way, and for McKitrick one stop was giving a public talk about her anthropology thesis.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I walked into the room, Sarah was sitting front-row center,\u201d McKitrick recalls. \u201cI hadn’t mentioned it to her but she found out about it and came to support me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s being able to come in and be who you are. You can be grumpy. You can unload.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Potter\u2019s interest in student life is more than personal, and her work to supervise student workers involves seeing them at their best, their worst, and everything in between.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s being able to come in and be who you are. You can be grumpy. You can unload \u2014 \u2018unpack\u2019 is probably a better word for what they do,\u201d Potter says.<\/p>\n

Years ago, one of the store\u2019s student workers was caught stealing merchandise. Working with student deans, Potter focused on restorative justice, not punishment. She and her staff met with the student and talked about what happened.<\/p>\n

\"At<\/a>

At Reunion 2002, Sarah Potter ’77 talks with Ernest Muller, professor emeritus of history, and his wife, Peg. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWe talked about how it made us feel, and the student was horrified and remorseful,\u201d Potter recalls. \u201cI don\u2019t know what the student is doing now. But you hope it was the kind of teachable moment that helped create a better life.\u201d<\/p>\n

It helps that Potter, who came to Bates from Gorham (Maine) High School, has never forgotten what it\u2019s like to be a Bates student.<\/p>\n

Many students get overwhelmed when they can\u2019t be the same kind of student they were in high school, \u201cwith their fingers in a lot of curricular and extracurricular pies,\u201d she says. At Bates, \u201cyou can\u2019t leave yourself a half-hour to do homework after your play rehearsal like you did in high school. The academic intensity won\u2019t allow it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember what it was like to come here and be overwhelmed. I feel their anxiety.\u201d<\/p>\n

While a student\u2019s faculty mentor often exerts influence later in a student\u2019s Bates life, the student-supervisor work relationship often starts early and builds from there.<\/p>\n

Jason Hall \u201997 has a law degree from Vanderbilt and is vice president for entrepreneurship and innovation for the St. Louis Chamber.<\/p>\n

Hall brings to his work today what he saw in Potter back then \u2014 how being \u201cpositive and authentic\u201d has a \u201ctremendous influence on motivating a team.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 1993, he was a first-generation-to-college student, and over the next four years his campus work would become \u201cvery much a part of my life and experience at Bates.\u201d<\/p>\n

His first and only job was in the bookstore, and his touchstone was Potter, an emotional shock absorber who was \u201calways incredibly positive and extraordinarily good-humored.\u201d No matter how things were going for Hall at Bates, he knew that \u201cgoing to work was going to be a bright spot for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hall brings to his work today what he saw in Potter back then \u2014 how being \u201cpositive and authentic\u201d has a \u201ctremendous influence on motivating a team.\u201d Not to be ignored, either, is how an upbeat boss simply \u201cmakes the daily life of those she leads brighter in so many ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

After their weepy meeting, McKitrick says that Potter \u201csaw me grow up over those four years \u2014 navigating school, stress, new friendships, breakups, and new relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n

And a marriage. When McKitrick met her future husband, Ethan Warren \u201908, it was a meet-cute, Bates bookstore style.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe and his friends called me \u2018CBG\u2019 \u2014 Cute Bookstore Girl,\u201d says McKitrick, who is in graduate school at the Yale Nurse-Midwifery\/Women\u2019s Health Nurse Practitioner program.<\/p>\n

He kept stopping in to buy pens, ink cartridges, and batteries before he got the courage to introduce himself. \u201cWe went on our first date eight years ago over fall break, and got married in July.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am so glad Sarah offered me that job!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sarah Potter ’77, who retires Oct. 30 after 35 years as director of the College Store, provided a “sense of normalcy” for the legions and generations of student workers in the store.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":97510,"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":[7,1],"tags":[131,7725],"class_list":["post-97455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-batesnews","tag-college-store","tag-sarah-potter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97455","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=97455"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97524,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97455\/revisions\/97524"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}