Dear members of the Bates community,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In some ways, summer is the quiet time at Bates. Students have mostly gone home, or off to explore exciting internships, research, work, or travel opportunities. Faculty colleagues are focused on research and preparations for the next academic year. Staff colleagues are tending to projects that get set aside in the busier months and taking well-earned vacations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the other hand, campus remains a busy place. Contractors are working on projects that are more easily completed when there are fewer people around. Conferences, camps, and the Bates Dance Festival bring hundreds to our beautiful campus for collaboration and exploration. Last month, the Trek Across Maine made its annual overnight stop at Bates, filling our lawns and tents with tired (and ravenous!) cyclists raising monies to support the American Lung Association. And, of course, Bates employees continue to do the work that powers the college throughout the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I thought you might appreciate a quick update on that work, some of our shared accomplishments, and where we\u2019re headed. After all, you make it all possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On May 31, we held the college\u2019s 160th<\/sup> Commencement<\/a>, celebrating the 480 members of the Class of 2026 and awarding honorary degrees to three distinguished individuals: H. Scott Bierman \u201977, Seema Hingorani, and Deborah Harkness, who offered the Commencement Address.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two weeks later, more than 1,200 Bates alumni and family members returned to campus for Reunion Weekend<\/a>. It was fantastic to see so many members of classes ending in \u201c1\u201d and \u201c6\u201d (as well as other alumni who wanted to support and see them) in Lewiston and renewing their connections to Bates and to each other. We had a couple of perfect Maine summer days for a wonderful weekend of fun and festivities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We held a ground-breaking ceremony for the new Stoddard Fitness and Well-Being Center<\/a> on May 1, beginning the work of creating a magnificent new space to support the overall well-being of our broader college community. It\u2019s exciting to see this important project<\/a> for the college, which also includes substantial renovation of the beloved Alumni Gym (which turns 98 years old this year), begin to take shape. Thanks to the generosity of many alumni, parents, and friends, we have raised $29 million toward the total goal of $31 million in philanthropy to support this transformative $45 million capital project. We are so close to our goal\u2060\u2014\u2060if you have been considering a gift in support of this project or see its potential benefit, there has never been a better moment to make your mark on Bates athletics and well-being for generations to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other major changes to the physical campus include a long-needed renovation of the softball field<\/a>, including the installation of artificial turf that will allow our team to play home games earlier in the spring and when weather conditions are less than ideal. This renovation is part of a multi-year effort to transition the three remaining grass competition fields used by our varsity and club teams to turf fields, making them safer and more playable for our students. And last August, we moved the Bobcat statue<\/a> from the path to Merrill Gym to a place of honor at the corner of Garcelon Field, where it is much more visible\u2060\u2014\u2060and much more accessible to the athletes and fans who touch it for good luck!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Speaking of athletics, we had an amazing year. The field hockey, men\u2019s basketball, women\u2019s basketball, track and field, swimming and diving, men\u2019s and women\u2019s rowing, and men\u2019s lacrosse teams all made end-of-season NCAA appearances. For the first time, Bates won three NESCAC championships in a year. We won two NCAA titles in men\u2019s swimming and had a runner-up finish in women\u2019s rowing. We celebrated 150 years of Bates football<\/a> with a double overtime win over Amherst, and we marked 50 years of softball with a double-header victory over Trinity<\/a>. The men\u2019s swimming and diving team took the President\u2019s Cup at the annual CATSBY award ceremony, in recognition of their excellence in athletic competition, in the classroom, and in the community. All this success resulted in Bates finishing among the top 10 percent of Division III athletics programs nationally, placing in the top 40 of more than 400 institutions in the 2025\u201326 Learfield Directors\u2019 Cup standings, awarded by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond the many on-field honors our student-athletes earned this year\u2060\u2014\u2060e.g., All-American and all-region recognition, All-NESCAC selections, and records broken across multiple sports\u2060\u2014\u2060Bates athletes continued to distinguish themselves academically as well as in competition. Literally hundreds of Bates athletes were named to CSC Academic All-District and NESCAC All-Academic teams, a reminder that excellence in the classroom remains as much a part of the Bates identity as excellence in competition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In October, we inducted the inaugural class<\/a> of Bobcat athletes into the Bates Athletics Hall of Fame. We recently announced the 2026 class<\/a>, which includes five inductees and seven legacy honorees (individuals whose contributions and achievements occurred more than 50 years ago).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the arts, Bates students continued to shine in every aspect of creative production and performance. Highlights included outstanding a cappella concerts by the Merimanders, ManOps, Deansmen, Crosstones, and Take Note; magnificent offerings from the choir and orchestra; a breathtaking Marcy Plavin Spring Dance Concert; and a sold-out run of Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins\u2019 play \u201cEverybody.\u201d In the fall, a sold-out run of \u201cMetamorphoses\u201d\u2060\u2014\u2060an extraordinary undertaking that required constructing an actual pool on the Schaeffer Theatre stage, reimagining the entire venue\u2060\u2014\u2060left audiences (and me) spellbound. And the student-designed and -produced Bates Film Festival<\/a> brought audiences from all over the state and region to both campus and to Portland to view and discuss more than two dozen films of national and international renown. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We launched two critical community-building programs this year. The first is BOND, the Bates Open Network on Dialogue<\/a>, which is designed to help us live more fully into our mission of \u201cengaging the transformative power of our differences\u201d and enhance the discourse and expression of ideas, beliefs, and opinions that may be controversial or strongly opposed by others. Each semester, we will offer a program led by an outside expert that consists of two parts: a presentation by (or fireside chat with) our guest and a dinner and facilitated dialogue where participants can discuss what they heard and what they\u2019re thinking about. In 2025-26, we welcomed Jamal Greene, Dwight Professor of Law at Columbia, to talk about freedom of expression on college campuses, and podcast host Shankar Vedantam<\/a> (Hidden Brain<\/em>), who spoke about dialogue across difference. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On a related front, we are integrating the Constructive Dialogue Institute framework into the First-Year Experience and across student clubs and organizations. All members of the incoming Class of 2030 will participate in the program, as will other student leaders and professional staff, giving them useful tools to foster a culture of inquiry, dialogue, and free expression. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The second community-building program is something we\u2019re calling the Lake Andrews Series, which is designed as a semesterly event for senior leadership of the college to update colleagues on important initiatives\u2060\u2014\u2060as well as for members of the campus community to ask questions and provide comment. This program is a direct response to concerns expressed in a recent employee engagement survey in which staff expressed a desire for greater connection with and communication from college leadership. I\u2019m pleased to say that the first iteration of the Lake Andrews Series, in March, was by every measure a great success, with robust turnout, strong engagement, and affirmative feedback from participants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And we continue to make important progress on the sustainability front, another core commitment of the college. The new Stoddard Fitness and Well-Being Center is the first building on campus designed to Bates\u2019 high-performance sustainability standards, and will use 80 percent less fossil fuel energy than a building of equivalent type and size. The center will also have a rooftop solar array\u2060\u2014\u2060the first photovoltaic array on our main campus\u2060\u2014\u2060that will significantly reduce the energy cost of the building. We will also add a new EV charging station in the next few months, bringing the total number of public charging hubs on campus to 18. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The work of strengthening the academic core of the college to meet the needs of coming times is, of course, an eternal, ever-evolving project. In her first year as Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty, Joanne Roberts worked with faculty and colleagues across the institution to address myriad important aspects of the academic program, making meaningful improvements for the faculty and students of both today and tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We welcomed 16 new tenured or tenure-track faculty in 2025\u201326 in departments and programs across the curriculum. We hired 11 more for the start of the 2026\u201327 academic year in high interest areas such as art and visual culture, biology, chemistry, economics, politics, and psychology, among others. This continues a robust and deliberate stretch of hiring over the past few years as we have sought to renew and expand our faculty and the offerings available to our students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2025\u201326, in addition to their world-class teaching and dedicated mentoring of students conducting advanced research, Bates faculty published 86 journal articles, 15 book chapters, and 4 books, as well as making almost 200 presentations on their work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have made important strides forward in both administrative processes related to academics and to academic requirements themselves. These include changing the course registration process to increase access for Bates students and adding a second degree conferral date in December. We will still hold just one commencement ceremony in May, but December grads will no longer be held back in seeking employment or graduate school admission for the lack of an official graduation date. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We expanded our general education program to include a global languages option. Students may now choose to complete a global languages Mode of Inquiry (MOI) as one of the five required MOIs among six options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As some of you will know, the graduation requirements at Bates in recent years have required a \u201cmajor plus one\u201d\u2060\u2014\u2060with that \u201cplus one\u201d being either a second major, a minor, or a GEC, which stands for \u201cGeneral Education Concentration.\u201d These thematic areas have allowed students to develop exposure to, and expertise in, topics such as applied mathematical methods, music and culture, or water and society. The problem is that the term \u201cGEC\u201d\u2060\u2014\u2060commonly pronounced as \u201cgeck\u201d by Batesies\u2060\u2014\u2060was not broadly legible beyond our campus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Effective July 1, the term \u201cGEC\u201d was officially retired and we will now simply refer to these as \u201cConcentrations.\u201d Concentrations will continue to be a space for faculty to develop new, innovative, and inter- or transdisciplinary programs that will help prepare students to make connections across their studies and to prepare for their futures. Offerings will include business analytics, law and society, public health, international business, learning and teaching, globalization, and design. (Some of these already exist; some are being launched this upcoming year.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have also created a new post-baccalaureate teacher certification program in which recent alumni can return to Bates for an additional semester and complete the requirements for a Maine State Department of Education public school teaching certificate. This certificate makes the holder eligible to teach in any public school in the United States. We have long seen strong interest in teaching careers among Bates students, but the state\u2019s requirement that those seeking certification complete a full-time, 14-week student teaching practicum made attaining certification during the traditional four-year academic program at Bates possible for very few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As it is for seemingly everyone, artificial intelligence (AI) and other new technologies have been very much on our minds at Bates. We know that it is important to both understand how students, faculty, and staff are already using these new technologies and to offer guidance on their most appropriate and beneficial use. We especially want to make sure that students get the exposure, and develop the skills, they will need for life after Bates\u2060\u2014\u2060without sacrificing what makes a Bates education special, or at the expense of developing the uniquely human capabilities that have always made Bates graduates indispensable (and which become even more relevant in a world of AI).<\/p>\n\n\n\n I tasked an AI working group with developing a set of principles and guidelines around AI, which has been drafted, shared with the campus community for comment, and is being finalized this summer. Additionally, with donor support, we developed a series of AI innovation grants for faculty and staff, applicable to both pedagogy and campus operations, to help support AI adoption for those who see opportunity and want resources for exploration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bates remains in high demand! We had a record 12,009 applicants for the Class of 2030. That is a 45 percent increase since I first came to Bates three years ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We expect to welcome approximately 550 members of that class to Bates this fall. Forty-three percent will receive financial aid; 14 percent are Pell-eligible and 13 percent are among the first generation in their family to attend college. Students in the Class of 2030 will join us from 40 states, the District of Columbia, and 27 countries besides the U.S. We will also enroll about a dozen new transfer students this fall. We will release more details about the class in September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Class of 2030 will also include our first cohort of QuestBridge Scholars (19 students). As we announced in early 2025<\/a>, Bates is partnering with QuestBridge, a national nonprofit that connects high-achieving students from low-income backgrounds with leading institutions of higher education, in order to more robustly fulfill our commitment to providing access to and support throughout a Bates education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And an honorary member, of sorts, of the Class of 2030 will be our newly-appointed vice president for enrollment and dean of admission and financial aid, Victoria Neason Wallace<\/a>. Tori, who started at Bates on July 1, is a terrific addition to our senior leadership team and an experienced and visionary leader in liberal arts enrollment. We\u2019re glad to welcome her as one of our newest Batesies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bates students won a whopping 16 Fulbright awards this year.<\/a> Fifteen of those went to members of the graduating Class of 2026, which also included a Watson Fellowship winner, two Goldwater Scholars, and a Truman Scholar. Two members of the Bates faculty, Elena Maker Castro (psychology) and Michel Droge (art and visual culture) also won Fulbright awards<\/a>. This extends Bates\u2019 extraordinary run as a top producer of Fulbright awards, which now spans 15 consecutive years. In addition, a recent alumnus was awarded a prestigious Schwarzman Scholarship (modeled on the Rhodes Scholarship) to pursue a master\u2019s degree in global affairs at China\u2019s Tsinghua University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This year also saw the wonderful recognition of two members of our English department, Jessica Anthony \u201996 and Myronn Hardy, as Guggenheim Fellows<\/a>, one of the most esteemed honors in the academy. Professor of Digital and Computational Studies Carrie Diaz Eaton received renewed support from the Hewlett Foundation for her work with the Institute for a Racially Just, Inclusive, and Open STEM Education in the form of a two-year $1 million fund for general operations. And Carolina Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia, Associate Professor of Art and Visual Culture, won the Kirby Walker Documentary Award from the San Francisco International Film Festival for her film How to Clean a House in 10 Easy Steps<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition, Allison Brown, associate director of Counseling & Psychological Services, was named a 2026 Harriett Copher Haynes Leadership Mentoring Award winner by the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thanks largely to work driven by the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, Bates was once again recognized by the American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching<\/a> for its deep level of commitment to community engagement, an honor the college first achieved in 2008 and again in 2015<\/a>. Bates was also recently lauded by ACE and Carnegie for its success in providing paths for graduates to earn competitive wages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And even though the Bonney Science Center opened back in 2021, it keeps winning awards! In March, the Boston Society for Architecture<\/a> gave its highest recognition, the Honor Award, to the Bonney Science Center for \u201cexceptional innovation, sustainability, and community impact,\u201d calling it \u201cone of the premier examples of modern educational architecture in New England.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nAcademics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Admission\/Enrollment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Recognition, Honors, and Collaborations<\/h2>\n\n\n\n