Commencement Speakers and the Video of the Week

Just the other day, Bates announced the speakers for this year’s commencement, the likes of which include two people I’ve never heard of, and Robert DeNiro. Now, I’m sure the two speakers that I haven’t heard of are very nice, intelligent people, but the only one a truly care about hearing at this point is Robert DeNiro (it’s not being insensitive, its just the truth people). Robert DeNiro. I still cannot believe it. The man is walking intimidation. Just looking at his headshot on the announcement page (LINK!) makes me feel intimidated. Maybe it was his role as a overbearing father-in-law in Meet the Parents that brings out this feeling inside of me when I look at him. It’s just going to be awesome to have a world-known, famous public figure at Bates speaking for our (“our” meaning the class of 2012, aka my class) commencement ceremony. It’s going to be awesome.

This news got me thinking about great speeches and great speakers, and, being a sports guru, I immediately think of the single greatest sports speech ever given, Jim Valvano’s 1993 ESPY’s speech…read more and listen to the speech here

Doing a Little ReLAXing

Instead of spending two full days driving to and from home for spring break this year, I decided to stay at school to hang with some friends, catch up on sleep, hit the gym religiously, enjoy the warm sunny weather, and do my laundry from the past 4 weeks (a little bit of Gym Tan Laundry, if you will).  Now, you might be asking yourself, why would anyone ever want to stay at school for a break when it would be quite easy to just go home?  Great question.  Now that I have achieved the status of legendary NARP (I added the legendary to spice things up), I no longer can rely on daily practices to keep myself in shape, and instead now must work diligently on establishing a workout routine and a healthy diet in order to keep the bod looking good for short term.  For a newfound NARP, this is surprisingly hard to do, but this break has allowed me to accomplish that goal, as well as establish several other important, ground-breaking goals for short term (most of which involve reliving freshman year shenanigans)…more

 

Embracing My Inner Enviro-Nerd on Earth Day

After endless hours of buses and ferries, I’m back in Edinburgh after six days in the Orkney Islands, just north of mainland Scotland. The frantic internet scramble that undoubtedly accompanies any return from a remote getaway (“QUICK! Facebook! Twitter! Email! The world is changing and I’m in the dark!”) led me to the realization that today is Earth Day! In high school, I never forgot about Earth Day. My friends will remember celebrations in my parents’ poolhouse, complete with green and blue balloons, earth-shaped sugar cookies, and little me preaching about sustainable water usage and the benefits of hiking.

My enviro-nerdiness in high school extended beyond coercing my friends into acknowledging Earth Day with me. Read More

The Housing Lottery

Gemma helps provide her perspective on Housing at Bates:

“Okay, so I’m going to be honest, the housing lottery can be pretty stressful. However, I am only writing this post to show that it all works out in the end. I apologize for the length of this post! I will try to keep it as concise as possible, but I think that this is important information and I just want everyone to get the gist of the housing lottery. I am not sure if any of you have thought about how housing might work when you get to college, but it is definitely something to think about and to know about!

At Bates there are many options for places to live.”  Continue reading here

End of an amazing season: Debate 2012

This year, the Brooks Quimby Debate Council had an extraordinary season. Moving from 16th in the world to 9th and having a team (Colin and Ian) who are 4th best team in the world is absolutely amazing.

Below is the description of the club, and if you have any desire to join, please contact me!

The Brooks Quimby Debate Council is the debating society at Bates College, founded just after the College in 1855. Among many firsts…click here

Handing in my 208 page Thesis: A Photographic Journal Entry.

As you all know, my thesis studied the relationship between contemporary avant-garde art and creative censorship in Beijing. After working on this paper for 9 months, I went to Staples Friday morning at 8am and printed 3 copies: one for the Asian Studies Department, one for Politics, and one for myself. I must say that this experience was like nothing I had every felt before.

Blood, sweat and tears have all come into play at some point or another during this project and what you are about to see in these photographs is the handing in the thesis, the politics reception, and the Senior Thesis Art Exhibit afterwords.

Enjoy and to the Class of 2012, we made it!!!

To see the photographs, click here

Behind Mount David Summit

March 31st marked the annual Bates College’s Mount David Summit. The Summit is a showcase academic achievement, and over three of my own friends and I participated in the event.

Not only was my photograph chosen for the Mount David exhibition, but I was also able to discuss my thesis research in my presentation: Examining Creative Censorship in Beijing’s 798 Art District…continue here

College costs: Schools say they hear the complaints and they’re doing something about it

The Sun Journal of Lewiston, Maine featured Bates in the following Article:

Jamie Merisotis talked to President Barack Obama at the White House weeks before his State of the Union address.

The topic: college costs.

Merisotis, one of a dozen educators in the room that day, heads the Lumina Foundation, a nonpartisan nonprofit that wants 60 percent of the U.S. population to hold a college degree by 2025. The rate is currently below 40 percent.

Obama has a similar goal, pegged to 2020.

One of the problems blocking that effort? For about three decades, “we’ve seen tuition (increases) more than doubling the rate of inflation,” Merisotis said. “Now I think we’ve gotten to the point (where) the country has these significant goals, but we don’t have a lot of capacity to invest more money, and we don’t have the capacity to charge people the increasing rates.”

It’s a national challenge for Obama and, in some ways, a local one for Merisotis.

He’s a Bates College graduate and a Bates trustee. Next month, he’ll vote on whether that school ought to raise rates or stay firm at $55,300 a year. It’s already one of the most expensive in the country.

So, what’s a college to do?

The president has ideas, previewed during the State of the Union, including using federal student aid as an incentive to keep tuition down and creating a “College Scorecard” that compares, at a glance, cost, graduation rates and earnings potential.

Around central and western Maine, where college costs range from $5,000 to $55,000 a year, school leaders say they’re working diligently to keep college affordable. Including Bates.

Today, we look at the six colleges in Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties and examine what they charge and how they’re minding their bottom lines.”

 

The section that Features Bates:

 

“Bates College

Full-time tuition and fees: $42,800

Room and board: $12,500

Average financial aid package: $38,700

Size of student body: 2,000 (of those, 250 are usually studying abroad)

Degrees offered: 2 bachelor’s degrees (covers 35 majors)

Student-faculty ratio*: 10:1

Retention rate from first year to second, full-time students*: 92 percent

Graduation rate, within six years*: 88 percent

Nancy Cable doesn’t flinch. Bates College is expensive.

The interim president says the college is worth the price, and that students who need financial help get it.

At the same time, “There’s a lot of pressure on our costs not to go up,” said Cable, who is leading the school until Clayton Spencer’s arrival in July.

Last year, the Chronicle of Higher Education found Bates to be the 14th most expensive college in the country when all costs are considered. (Sites that list it in the top spot, such as the U.S. Department of Education’s college finder, are inaccurate because they base their rankings on tuition, which Bates does not typically separate from the total cost.)

Sixty percent of the college’s operating budget is spent on faculty, and another 28 percent on financial aid, Cable said. Half of all students receive some form of financial aid (grants, a campus job, loans) that covers up to 100 percent of the cost, based on need.

Bates wants a socio-economic mix in the classroom, she said. That’s part of the experience. It means to some degree, a student who pays full price is helping pay the way for another student who is less well-off.

“What you have then is a very robust learning environment that we believe is the best in the world,” she said.

The college doesn’t use teaching assistants or graduate students in the classroom. Small class sizes and having faculty available after hours pays off, she said: Better than 85 percent of Bates students finish their bachelor’s degree in four years. Nationally, 55 percent of students finish in five years.

A Bates education, she argues, saves the expense of an extra year somewhere else.

Since 2009, tuition, room, board and fees at the college have increased $2,000 a year. The average financial aid package went up $1,800 each time.

“We’ve been restraining the rate of increase for quite some time,” Cable said. “We have a moral responsibility to do everything we can to be affordable to qualified students.”

Bates put its course catalog online to streamline registration and keep staffing down. It has combined positions and uses bio-fuels to save money. There’s a turn-off-the-lights campaign and a please-take-only-what-you’re-really-going-to-eat effort in the dining commons that saved, in three months, at least $1,500 and 2,500 pounds of food waste.

The college is also reaching out. In November, Cable met with the heads of Central Maine Community College, the University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn College, Kaplan University, College for ME, Central Maine Medical Center’s nursing college and Lewiston and Auburn school superintendents.

Among the topics, Cable said, was: “How can we keep costs reasonable?”

That same group is due to meet, informally, again.

Jamie Merisotis, president of the Lumina Foundation, a Bates graduate from the Class of 1986 and a trustee for the past seven years, said he understands schools such as Bates, Bowdoin and Colby face pressure to explain the sticker price.

“I think it’s a legitimate question to say, ‘How much value are we adding and how do we make sure that we deliver high-quality learning at the lowest possible cost?'” he said.

For him, Merisotis said, Bates was worth it, personally and professionally. He pointed to skills such as critical thinking and writing.

“Bates, I think, added value for me that allowed me to have some options in life that I don’t think I would have had absent (that),” he said.

According to the college, 4,905 students applied for 500 spots this spring, just off last year’s record-breaking number of applications.

* Source: National Center for Education Statistics”

 

For the full article, click here

Music To Rock Out To In The Springtime

It is also spring time in Scotland!

Margaret Writes:

“YES! It’s finally Spring. After a long string of cloudy, sunless days, Edinburgh was absolutely turned around this week with the most incredible weather. There’s a huge park in front of my building called The Meadows, and every inch of it was covered with picnic blankets, small children, instrument-players, frisbee-throwers, sun bathers, barbecued food, and the happiest dogs I’ve ever seen. Check it out:

”

For a list of the Springtime music, tune in here!