Bates College

For other uses, see Bates (disambiguation), Bates (surname)

Bates College is a private liberal arts college, founded in 1855, located in Lewiston, Maine, in the United States. Bates confers Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) or Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degrees. The College enrolls approximately 1,700 students. Bates is a nonsectarian institution.

Bates is located on a 109 acre (441,000 m²) campus. Primary academic resources on campus include the George and Helen Ladd Library; the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, which holds the papers of the former Maine Governor, U.S. Senator and U.S. Secretary of State and member of the Class of 1936; and the Olin Arts Center, which houses a concert hall, and the Bates College Museum of Art. The College also holds access to the 574 acre (2.32 km²) Bates-Morse Mountain Conservation Area, in Phippsburg, Maine, which preserves one of the few remaining undeveloped barrier beaches on the Atlantic coast; and the neighboring Bates College Coastal Center at Shortridge, which includes an 80 acre (324,000 m²) woodland and freshwater habitat, scientific field station, and retreat center.

History

Hathorn Hall

Bates has always admitted students of different races, religions, genders and nationalities. Although they met with considerable criticism from other regional colleges, the founders held fast to their commitment to admit both men and women. Founded in 1855, Bates was New England's first coeducational college, and several of its earliest students were former slaves.[1] The College was originally called the Maine State Seminary and replaced the Parsonsfield Seminary which burned under mysterious circumstances in 1854. The Parsonsfield Seminary was founded in 1832 by Free Will Baptists and served as a stop on the Underground Railroad.

As with many New England institutions, religion played a vital role in the College's founding. The Reverend Oren Burbank Cheney founded and served as the first president of Bates. He was a Freewill Baptist minister, a teacher, and a former Maine legislator. Cheney steered through the Maine Legislature a bill creating a corporation for educational purposes initially called the Maine State Seminary, located in Lewiston, Maine's fastest-growing industrial and commercial center.

Cheney assembled a six-person faculty dedicated to teaching the classics and moral philosophy to both men and women. In 1863 he received a collegiate charter, and obtained financial support for an expansion from the city of Lewiston and from Benjamin E. Bates, the Boston financier and manufacturer whose mills dominated the Lewiston riverfront. In 1864 the Maine State Seminary became Bates College. The College consisted of Hathorn and Parker halls and a student body of fewer than 100.

Nearly 200 students and alumni of the College and Seminary served in the American Civil War (1861-65), and only two students from Georgia fought for the Confederacy.[2] With Cheney's support, the first woman to graduate from a New England college was Mary Mitchell, class of 1869. Cheney also ensured that no secret societies or fraternities were allowed on campus. One secret society was founded at Bates in 1881 and is thought to be responsible for a fire starting in the bell tower of Hathorn Hall in March of 1881, but the society was not sanctioned by the President or the College.[3] By the end of Cheney's tenure, in 1894, the campus had expanded to 50 acres (202,000 m²) and six buildings.

George Colby Chase, a graduate of the Bates Class of 1868, succeeded Cheney in 1894. Known as "the great builder," Chase oversaw the construction of eleven new buildings on campus, including Coram Library, the Chapel, Chase Hall, Carnegie Science Hall, and Rand Hall. A twelve-inch reflecting telescope was installed in Stephens Observatory on top of Carnegie Science Hall in 1929. Chase tripled the number of students and faculty, as well as the endowment. The Cobb Divinity School (Bates Theological Seminary) and Nichols Latin School departments of the College were discontinued under President Chase.

His successor was Clifton Daggett Gray, a clergyman and former editor of The Standard, a Baptist periodical published in Chicago. Gray saw Bates through an era marked by vibrant growth and modernization, but also through the years of the Great Depression and World War II. On campus, renovations were completed on Libbey Forum and the Hedge Science Laboratory, and the Clifton Daggett Gray Athletic Building and Alumni Gymnasium were constructed. In the 1940s, when male students abandoned college campuses to enlist in the armed forces, Gray established a V-12 Naval Training Unit on campus, assuring the College students - men and women - during wartime. When he retired, in 1944, Gray had increased the student enrollment to more than 700 and doubled the faculty to seventy; the endowment had doubled to $2 million.

Charles Franklin Phillips was a professor at Colgate University and a leading economist before coming to Bates as the College's fourth president. He initiated the Bates Plan of Education, a liberal arts "core" study program. He also directed expansions of campus facilities, including the Memorial Commons, the Health Center, Dana Chemistry Hall, Pettigrew Hall, Treat Gallery, Schaeffer Theatre, and Page Hall. When he retired in 1967, Phillips left a student body of 1,000 and an endowment of $7 million.

Thomas Hedley Reynolds assumed the presidency in 1967. His greatest achievement was the development and support of faculty, which brought Bates recognition as a national college. In addition to recruiting teacher-scholars, Reynolds championed better faculty pay, an expanded sabbatical leave program, and smaller classes.

Additions to the campus under Reynolds' presidency included the George and Helen Ladd Library, Merrill Gymnasium and the Tarbell Pool, the Olin Arts Center and the Bates College Museum of Art, as well as the conversion of the former women's gymnasium into the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and the acquisition of the Bates-Morse Mountain Conservation Area. Many of the early twentieth-century houses on Frye Street that now accommodate students, a popular alternative to larger residential halls, were acquired at this time.

Donald West Harward began his service as sixth president of Bates in 1989. During Harward's presidency, students received greater opportunities to study off campus with Bates faculty or in College-approved programs. He integrated more fully into student academic and intellectual life the senior thesis, the important capstone experience that has been a part of the Bates curriculum since the early twentieth century but is now a focal point.

Under Harward, Bates for the first time in many years reached out institutionally into the community of Lewiston-Auburn. Bates students and faculty built relationships in the community through one of the most active service-learning programs in the country.

More than twenty major academic, residential, and athletic facilities were built during his tenure, including Pettengill Hall, the Residential Village and Benjamin E. Mays Center, and the Bates College Coastal Center at Shortridge.

Elaine Tuttle Hansen became Bates' seventh president in 2002. Her immediate goals included securing resources for financial aid, competitive faculty and staff salaries, increased diversity of the faculty and student body, technological advances, and new curricular initiatives. Central to Hansen's vision is an in-depth master plan, launched as "The Campaign for Bates: Endowing Our Values" in 2004.

Academics

Pettengill Hall

Bates operates on a 4-4-1 schedule: two semesters and a month-long "Short Term." The College offers 24 department majors, eight interdisciplinary program majors, and 24 secondary concentrations. The most popular majors at Bates are economics, psychology, biology, English, political science, history, and environmental studies. The college requires a senior thesis in most majors.

The percentage of Bates students who study off-campus is among the highest in the nation, with 64% of the Class of 2004 receiving credit for off-campus study.

Currently, 100 % of tenured or tenure-track faculty members hold the Ph.D. or another terminal degree. Bates students work directly with faculty; the student-faculty ratio is 10:1, and faculty members teach all classes. Nearly 60 % of class sections, excluding independent studies and senior theses, have fewer than twenty students enrolled.

Eighty-six percent of Bates College seniors or alumni applying to graduate programs in the health professions were accepted for matriculation in the fall of 2003. Bates students and alumni are consistently accepted to the top tier of law schools including Cornell, Duke, Harvard, University of Michigan and New York University. More than 70% of recent alumni have earned graduate or professional degrees within ten years of graduation.

Bates is highly ranked in annual rankings published by the Princeton Review, which named Bates the number one "Best Value College" in the United States in 2005. The college is also highly ranked among liberal arts colleges in annual rankings published by U.S. News & World Report *.

Athletics

Terence O'Connell '06 (Photo by Aaron Todd)

The Bates Bobcats compete in the NCAA Division III New England Small College Athletic Conference. The official school color is garnet (the Garnet was the original mascot), though black is traditionally employed as a complement. Bates is home to one of the oldest college football teams and fields in the United States, Garcelon Field. The first college football game in Maine was played versus Tufts in 1875.[4] Bates fields thirty-one varsity teams. There are also intercollegiate club teams in ice hockey, rugby, sailing, men's volleyball and water polo. The Men's Rugby team placed second in the nation in 1997. Recent NESCAC champions include men's track and field (2000). The 2004 women's basketball team was ranked the number one NCAA Division III team in the United States for most of February 2005 and finished the year ranked number six by the USA Today/ESPN Today 25 National Coaches' Poll. They lost to University of Southern Maine in the Sweet 16.

The Bates College athletics department was ranked 19th out of 420 in the 2005 NCAA Division III winter rankings.

In addition to outdoor athletic fields, Bates has indoor and outdoor tracks, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, squash courts, an ice hockey rink, a boathouse, several basketball courts, indoor and outdoor tennis courts, an independent weight room with treadmills and elliptical machines, and a new astroturf field.

Student life

Bates College Chapel

The 1,700 students at Bates come from 44 states, Washington, D.C., and 68 foreign countries. Bates does not have any fraternities or sororities. Bates is often described by New Englanders as one of the "Little Ivies."

There are nearly 90 student run clubs and organizations at Bates. Some of the most active clubs include the Deansmen a cappella group, the Bates College Outing Club, the nationally ranked Brooks Quimby Debate Council, WRBC Bates Radio, The Strange Bedfellows and the Bates College Republicans.

The Bates Student has been the main student newspaper since 1873. The John Galt Press is a conservative/libertarian newspaper founded and published at Bates and distributed at a number of other colleges and universities. The Bates College Mirror has been the student yearbook since 1909. Also, the Garnet, a literary magazine, has been published at Bates since 1879.

Bates has many official and unofficial annual traditions including: Puddle Jump, Ronjstock, Senior Pub crawl Parade to the Goose, President's Gala, "Ivy Day" (also known as the Baccalaureate, where class Ivy Stones have been chosen since 1879), Trick-or-Drink, Halloween Dance, Class Dinner, Stanton Ride, Newman Day, Clambake at Popham Beach and Winter Carnival by the Outing Club since 1920, Alumni Reunion Parade since 1914, and the annual Oxford-Bates debate since 1921.

Notable alumni

Many notable individuals have attended Bates College, including Edmund Muskie, Bryant Gumbel, Robert F. Kennedy, Peter J. Gomes, Ella Knowles, William Stringfellow, Benjamin Mays, John Shea, David Chokachi, and Maria Bamford.

Notable faculty, officers and staff

*Oren B. Cheney, president and founder 1855-1894, abolitionist, state legislator
*James Blaine, trustee 1863-1893, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senator from Maine (1876-1881) and U.S. Secretary of State (1881), Republican candidate for President of the United States (1884)
*Nelson Dingley, Jr., trustee 1863-1899, Governor of Maine, 1874, U.S. Congressman from Maine (1881-1899)
*Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, ex officio trustee 1866-1870, Governor of Maine, Civil War General
*William P. Frye, trustee, U.S. Congressman (1871-1881), U.S. Senator from Maine (1881-1911)
*Person C. Cheney, trustee, New Hampshire governor (1875-1877), U.S. Senator (1886-1887), Envoy to Switzerland (1892-1893).
*Alonzo Garcelon, founder and trustee, Governor of Maine (1879-1880)
*William Trufant Foster, professor and debate coach, first president of Reed College (1910-1919)
*Porter H. Dale, professor, U.S. Congressman and U.S. Senator from Vermont (1923-1933)
*William Pope.L, lecturer, conceptual artist

Bates in literature, film and culture

The Sopranos (1999) - In an episode entitled "College," Tony Soprano and his daughter Meadow visit Bates, where Meadow remarks that Bates students claim "Bates is the world's most expensive form of contraception." Tony and Meadow also visit Colby and Bowdoin, but Meadow is waitlisted and goes to Columbia.[5]
*The Bates campus was filmed in the "The Letter," a movie about the pro-diversity rally for the local Somali population in Lewiston, Maine.
*The College gained national notoriety in the New York Times in 2004 for its celebration of Newman Day.
*Dave Matthews referred to a concert he performed at Bates in 1995 on the Charlie Rose Show, claiming that the concert "at this little college in Maine" sparked his career.[6]
*During World War II, a warship was commissioned the S.S. Bates Victory, named after the College.

References

*Alfred Williams Anthony, Bates College and Its Background (Philadelphia: Judson Press, 1936).
Bates College Catalog 2004-2006, Lewiston, ME: Bates College, 2004.
Bates Student, 1873-2006
*Emeline Cheney. The Story of the Life and Work of Oren B. Cheney (Boston: Morning Star Publishing, 1907).
*Mabel Eaton, General Catalogue of Bates College and Cobb Divinity School: 1864-1930 (Lewiston, ME: Bates College, 1930)

Bates College: Encyclopedia BETA

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