�ֲ���ý College has announced the election of three new trustees, effective July 1, 2026.

• Scott F. Higgins ’91, P’27 is a business leader currently working as a senior executive in the commercial insurance industry. 
• Matthew B. Schecter ’89, P’20 is a leader in the life sciences industry whose work has focused on advancing healthcare communication, education, and access.
• Sophia B. “Sophie” Wagener ’17 is an attorney based in California, whose practice is focused on general liability matters and toxic tort, defending plaintiffs in personal injury lawsuits involving exposure to dangerous chemicals and hazardous substances. 

“On behalf of the board, I want to express how grateful we are to Scott, Matthew, and Sophie for their willingness to share their considerable expertise with �ֲ���ý and for the not insignificant time commitment that comes with supporting the board’s work,” said Gregory A. Ehret ’91, P’23, chair of the �ֲ���ý College Board of Trustees. “They join an incredibly dedicated group of trustees, and I know each of them will bring valuable experiences and perspective to the board. I look forward to working with them to help ensure �ֲ���ý is fulfilling its mission.” 

The new trustees will serve five-year terms that extend to June 30, 2031.

Scott F. Higgins ’91, P’27

Scott Higgins is a business leader currently working as a senior executive in the commercial insurance industry. 

Higgins is the executive vice president for Burns & Wilcox, overseeing the firm’s North American commercial insurance division. He executes Burns & Wilcox’s comprehensive strategy and maximizes client and market relationships.

Prior to joining Burns & Wilcox, Higgins worked for Travelers for more than 30 years. He held a variety of roles at the insurance giant, working in nearly every aspect of North American operations and holding the title of executive vice president and president of Middle Market and National Property for Travelers.

At �ֲ���ý, Higgins majored in political science. A football player, he was a recipient of the Robert P.  Schmidt Award, given to a teammate who demonstrates physical and mental courage while bringing honor and achievement to themselves and their team. He earned an MBA from the Lally School of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). As a member of the alumni community, Higgins has served as a class agent and been an Alumni in Admission volunteer. He continues to work closely with other football alumni.

Higgins’ volunteer work outside of �ֲ���ý includes a deep commitment to Vista Life Innovations, a nonprofit that provides programs and services to empower individuals with disabilities to achieve personal success and independence.

Higgins and his wife Heather P’27 reside in Connecticut and are the parents of Karly and Cole ’27, a politics major with a minor in history. Cole is a member of the football team. Scott’s mother Althea Curtis Higgins ’70 also attended �ֲ���ý.

Matthew B. Schecter ’89, P’20

Matthew B. Schecter is the founder and chief executive officer of The Lockwood Group, a global pharmaceutical services organization specializing in medical communications, market access, regulatory affairs, and clinical consulting. Founded in 2007, The Lockwood Group employs over 800 professionals worldwide.  In 2021, Ares Management made a strategic investment in the company to support its continued growth and expansion.

During a 30-year career in the life sciences industry, Schecter has built and led organizations dedicated to advancing healthcare communication, education, and access. 

At �ֲ���ý, Schecter majored in political science and excelled at track and field. He was a three-time NCAA All-American, NCAA national champion, and still holds the college’s high jump record. He is a member of the College Key. As an alumnus, he served on his 25th Reunion committee, co-chaired his 35th Reunion gift committee, and has volunteered as a class agent and Alumni in Admission representative.

Schecter is active in several civic and philanthropic organizations, including Children of Fallen Patriots, which supports the families of fallen service members and helps their children pursue higher education. 

He and his wife Jill P’20 live in Palm Beach, Fla. They have two adult children, Zachary and Samantha ’20. Samantha earned a degree in neuroscience from �ֲ���ý and works as a senior marketing coordinator at Kohn Pedersen Fox in New York. Schecter’s brother, Michael Schecter ’86, is executive vice president, general counsel and chief administrative officer for Morgan Properties. Michael is married to Sharon Jane Curry ’88, a lactation consultant at Sibley Memorial Hospital.

Sophia B. “Sophie” Wagener ’17

Sophie Wagener is an attorney working as an associate at California-based Walsworth LLP. Her practice focuses on general liability and toxic tort litigation — complex cases involving exposure to harmful substances. It’s work that calls on both her scientific background and legal precision.

Before joining Walsworth, Wagener gained hands-on litigation experience serving as second chair in two civil jury trials and helping defend clients across a broad spectrum of cases, including professional, product, and premises liability. During law school, she interned with a nonprofit supporting cancer patients, in-house at a healthcare company, at the city attorney’s office, and at the United States District Court for the Southern District of California. 

At �ֲ���ý, Wagener pursued biology with a minor in public health and a concentration in Asian studies — an academic combination that reflects her wide-ranging interests and love of interdisciplinary thinking. In 2023, she earned her JD from the University of San Diego School of Law, magna cum laude, and is a member of the Order of the Coif.

Wagener is an active member of the alumni community who looks forward to annual reunion weekends with her close-knit circle of �ֲ���ý friends. Her commitment to the college extends beyond participation — just one year after graduating, Wagener and her parents, Shaw B. Wagener and Debbie J. Heitz, established the Wagener Family Professorship at �ֲ���ý, dedicated to advancing equity and inclusion in STEM. Today, April Horton carries that mission forward as the Wagener Family Professor of Equity and Inclusion in STEM.

On June 12, with Reunion in full swing, Phyllis Graber Jensen, the college’s longtime director of photography and video, did something highly unusual. She showed up at a �ֲ���ý College event without any camera, save the one on her cell phone, and she did not make a single image.

That’s because the event was the opening of the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art’s exhibition, Phyllis Graber Jensen: Picture Stories, which will be up through Sept. 19. Curated by museum Director Carrie Cushman, this is a true retrospective of Graber Jensen’s work, spanning her time from student photographer to staff photographer at the Boston Herald and then her 31 years in Maine at �ֲ���ý. 

The exhibition takes up the entire first floor of the museum, and on Friday evening, fans of Graber Jensen’s work, from alumni (including former student workers) to faculty and staff, as well as her family, filled the space to capacity.

Speaking to the audience, Graber Jensen praised the “imagination and vision” of Cushman, who joined �ֲ���ý in August 2025 and took on the retrospective as the first exhibit she would curate. 

“It’s a gift and a privilege to have someone of such immense talents and kindness, someone who barely knew me and had just arrived on the scene, take such an interest in offering context and insight to the work I produced during the last 50-plus years of my life,“ Graber Jensen said. “That’s lots of ground to cover in a very short period of time. Yet she persevered, and here we are.”

There are 91 objects on display, including 51 newly printed and archival photographs, and ephemera such as contact sheets, cameras, and newspapers from Graber Jensen’s time as a photojournalist. And of course, many, many photographs from her time at �ֲ���ý.

“Working with Phyllis on this show has meant that I have gotten a crash course on the past 31 years of �ֲ���ý history, but also a really deep understanding of the spirit of this place, of what makes �ֲ���ý �ֲ���ý,” Cushman told the gathered crowd. Every photograph contains a story, she said, and, “I encourage you to pick one out, and ask Phyllis tonight, and she’ll be able to recall, without hesitation, who is in the photo, what they taught, where they worked, what they majored in, their graduation years! This in addition to all the details that led to the making of the photo.”

That recall is a testament to her intellect and her fortitude on the job, Cushman said, “but also to the tremendous amount of care that she takes with her work.”

Cushman’s scholarly essay on Graber Jensen’s work serves as the introduction to the book accompanying Picture Stories (available for purchase at the museum and at the �ֲ���ý College Store) and an assessment of her work in the medium. 

In it she writes, “I have not heard Phyllis describe herself as an artist, but she is keenly aware of her responsibility as a maker of visual material (as I believe all great artists should be), and she approaches that responsibility with a creative spirit and relentless curiosity that positions the photographic medium as an essential mode of storytelling, inquiry, and community building — photography at its best.” 

Graber Jensen’s earliest forays into the medium include photographing her brother Norman, who, when they were children, was often mistaken for her (and vice versa) and her documentation of the women’s liberation movement in Denmark in 1975 when she was a Cornell undergraduate studying abroad. She continued to make photographs during  her time in graduate school for journalism at Boston University, and then as a stringer for the Associated Press. About 15 images in the exhibit come from Graber Jensen’s eight years as a staff photographer at the Boston Herald.

There is also a biographical section that chronicles her time as an early — pre-Title IX — advocate for girls and women in sport when she was just a teenager, wanting to play tennis competitively. During the 50th anniversary of Title IX, a New York Times reporter wrote about Graber Jensen’s fierce determination to challenge the status quo in a story headlined .

Graber Jensen joined �ֲ���ý in 1995 as a staff writer but by 2002 was working as a photographer and multimedia producer,  just as the social media age was taking off.  In the years since, Graber Jensen, more than any other person, has been responsible for creating, nurturing, and stewarding the college’s visual identity, a role she honors with a dedication that extends well beyond an eight-hour workday.  On campus, she is too recognizable — and beloved by students —  to truly melt into the background the way she might like, but her methods are purely journalistic and her energy unmatched by anything but the care she brings to an assignment. 

For Cushman, a scholar who has specialized in Japanese art and worked extensively in photography, it’s evident that Graber Jensen came to her profession with an intuitive approach to putting subjects at ease. In the accompanying book, Cushman writes that Graber Jensen’s quiet assurance and empathy result in “images that feel genuinely of their moment.”

“Here’s what I have found,” Graber Jensen said to the crowd gathered at the museum Friday night, telling them she was paraphrasing documentary photographer Eve Arnold. “If a photographer brings compassion and curiosity to an assignment, that’s a lot. It’s those qualities, rather than the camera, that lead to a trust between photographer and subject and yield strong photographs. I hope that the framed ones on these walls reflect some of that compassion and curiosity. Call it an obsession, but it’s really a love story with �ֲ���ý and its community from which I hope never to recover.”

Graber Jensen plans to retire late this summer. 

Graber Jensen credits former Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs Sean Findlen ’99, who was her supervisor until 2022, with planting the seed for the exhibition. “At one point, before he left, he said ‘I’d love to see you have an exhibit at the museum,’” Graber Jensen remembers. Findlen remembers that he might have even said it would be a “crime” if such an exhibition didn’t happen.

“Phyllis’ work reflects the soul of the college and its many facets, contours, and angles,” Findlen said. “She has an eye that sees the heart of any situation and the skill that brings it to life in a picture. She’s simply the best of the best.”

The exhibition is made possible with funding from the Jane Costello Wellehan Endowment Fund, the Dorothy Stiles Blankfort ’31 Fund, the Alex Katz Foundation, and �ֲ���ý Arts Collaborative.

On Sunday May 31, 2026, at its 160th Commencement, �ֲ���ý will graduate 480 members of the Class of 2026, confer three honorary degrees, and hear remarks from speakers including honorand Deborah Harkness, historian and best-selling author of the All Souls series of novels.  

Commencement starts at 10 a.m. and will be held outdoors on the Historic Quad, in front of Coram Library, rain or shine. (The last time Commencement was held indoors was in 2015, when it was in Merrill Gymnasium.) The weekend is expected to be rainy and chilly, so jackets and other rain gear are encouraged for Saturday events including Baccalaureate, although weather reports indicate the sun may be out Sunday for Commencement. 

Biochemistry major Sebenele Lukhele ’26 of Manzini, Eswatini, will deliver the senior speech. The tradition of having a member of the senior class give a speech to their classmates was longstanding at �ֲ���ý up until the mid-20th century. The tradition resumed in 2013, which makes Lukhele the 15th senior speaker in the 21st century.  If you just did the math and are confused about why Lukhele isn’t the 14th, that’s because in 2021, due to the pandemic, �ֲ���ý practiced social distancing and split the class in half alphabetically, holding two separate ceremonies as a precautionary measure, and two graduating seniors shared the speaking honor.

�ֲ���ý will confer three honorary degrees on Sunday. H. Scott Bierman ’77, a leading economist in the study of game theory, president emeritus of Beloit College, and a former member of the �ֲ���ý Board of Trustees, will receive a Doctor of Humane Letters degree. Seema Hingorani, an investment executive at Morgan Stanley and founder of the nonprofit Girls Who Invest, will receive a Doctor of Humane Letters degree.

Harkness will receive a Doctor of Letters degree. For more than 30 years, Harkness taught the history of science, medicine, and magic, and recently retired as professor emerita of history at the University of Southern California. During that time, she published five novels in her All Souls series, including her debut novel, The New York Times best-selling A Discovery of Witches, which was also adapted into an enormously popular television series by the same name.

There’s an element of a full circle moment in Harkness’ visit to �ֲ���ý to receive an honorary degree and give the Commencement address. The protagonist of A Discovery of Witches is a historian of alchemy named Diana Bishop. The fictional Bishop teaches at Yale University and did her graduate work at New College, Oxford. But before all that, Bishop graduated from �ֲ���ý. The character even dons a sweatshirt featuring a garnet Bobcat in A Discovery of Witches.

Among other noteworthy elements to the 160th Commencement: This will be the last time Professor Mary T. Rice-DeFosse carries the mace at a �ֲ���ý Commencement. This honor goes to the senior most member of the faculty. Rice-DeFosse, a professor of French and Francophone studies who joined the faculty in 1984, is retiring from �ֲ���ý. In 2022, she became the first woman to carry the mace. Phillips Professor of Mathematics Peter Wong, who has been at �ֲ���ý since 1988, will assume the duties of mace bearer at the next processional. 

The application pool for the Class of 2030 is the largest in �ֲ���ý’ history with a total of 12,009 applicants seeking admission for the 2026-2027 academic year. This marks only the second time the number of applications has surpassed 10,000 in the college’s 171-year history. 

The likely explanation for the increase — 24 percent more applicants than in the Class of 2029 pool — is multi-factored, according to Director of Admission Darryl Uy. �ֲ���ý continues to expand its recruitment efforts through direct contact from admission counselors traveling in the United States and internationally, increased marketing efforts across multiple platforms, and partnerships with organizations committed to access. 

This includes �ֲ���ý’ new partnership with , a national nonprofit that connects high-achieving students from low-income backgrounds with leading institutions of higher education. �ֲ���ý, Harvard College, and the University of Richmond all joined QuestBridge in early 2025, bringing the total number of undergraduate QuestBridge institutions to 55.

QuestBridge has a simple motto, “Dream big, a top college is possible,” and a promise to match low-income students with full scholarship support from its partner institutions. 

That partnership led to hundreds more applications to �ֲ���ý and sparked another change that only bolstered that increase. 

“As a QuestBridge partner, we would be waiving the application fee for any QuestBridge applicant,” Uy said. “In order to stay true to �ֲ���ý’ mission of access and equity, we decided to eliminate the application fee for all applicants.”

Uy said the Admission team received hundreds of applications for the Class of 2030 from students at high schools — and regions — that �ֲ���ý had never received applications from in the past. “That was really exciting,” Uy said. “Both geographic and economic diversity are strengths that speak to the �ֲ���ý mission.” 

Students admitted through Regular Decision learned about their status on Saturday, March 14. They have until May 1 to accept or decline. Two rounds of Early Decision resulted in slightly more than half the class committing by January.

But admission season is not over, with Uy and his team shifting their efforts into a different stage of recruitment — making sure admitted students have the clearest understanding of all that �ֲ���ý has to offer as they make their decisions. 

Overall, the Class of 2030 is expected to be a robust one, with about 520 students.

On March 27, �ֲ���ý held the first of two full-day events for admitted students, called �ֲ���ý Beginnings. These are opportunities for admitted students and their families to visit in a more relaxed environment than what is often a whirlwind of college tours prior to and during their senior year in high school. The second �ֲ���ý Beginnings is April 17.

�ֲ���ý Beginnings kicked off with early bird tours, an a cappella show in Chase Hall, and then welcomes from both Uy and President Garry W. Jenkins, who joked that, as a lawyer by training and a law professor for 20 years prior to joining �ֲ���ý in 2023, he can’t help thinking of his remarks as “our closing argument to you.” 

Jenkins highlighted the college’s exceptional faculty and the close-knit learning environment. “No graduate assistants here,” he told the group. “Just world-class, engaged faculty devoted to their enormously talented and driven students.” 

�ֲ���ý’ combination of a liberal arts curriculum and professional skill development produces a special kind of graduate, he added, which he saw first hand from a post-Commencement perspective when he was the dean of the University of Minnesota Law School. 

The day’s programming included opportunities to meet with financial aid advisors, sessions on what the First-Year Experience at �ֲ���ý looks like, an academic fair, a student panel, tours of first-year housing, an open house at the Student Center for Belonging and Community, a chance to learn about community-engaged coursework, and a student life spotlight session.

While lunch was being served in Commons, admitted students had a chance to pick up a paintbrush and contribute to a collaborative art project, specifically tailored to the Class of 2030 and led by Maine artist Pat Corrigan. The tagline? “Make your mark on �ֲ���ý before you even move in.”

In all, 175 admitted students visited on March 27. The April 17 event, which will include the same events, is already at capacity, “Building a class is about more than sending an admission letter,” Uy said. “It’s about exploring and understanding the opportunity and making a commitment to a really exciting future.” 

The survival of two trees, believed to be the oldest on campus, makes almost no sense. For at least 151 years, a hemlock and its next door neighbor, a red oak, have been growing closer together than probably any arborist would have recommended. On the new interactive historic map of �ֲ���ý, they show up as two circles, touching.

Their branches overlapping in places, the hemlock and red oak are boxed in by buildings and structures — the flying staircase up to Ladd Library sweeps within about six feet of them — and are so near to Coram Library (completed in 1902), Carnegie Science Building (completed in 1912), and Ladd (completed in 1973) that it is a wonder they weren’t considered an impediment to any of those construction jobs and cut down. The trees are a little like Carl Fredricksen’s house in the 2009 Pixar movie Up, enveloped by growth, although in the trees’ case, not threatened by anything but age. 

The historic map, a project of the Muskie Archives, debuted last fall, but was only viewable while using campus WiFi. It’s now available from anywhere with an internet connection, and in addition to giving historical insights into every building on campus over time, ivy stones, memorials and class gifts, it includes the option of exploring the significant trees of �ֲ���ý. Courtesy of the research skills (and deep curiosity) of Sam Howes, the reference and digital initiatives archivist at the Muskie Archives, anyone can browse the history of these and 19 other campus trees through photographs, images, and captions. 

The archivists found the first evidence of the hemlock and red oak on a map of Lewiston and Auburn created in 1875 by an unnamed artist and made available for sale in 1876 by J. J. (John Joseph) Stoner, a publisher based in Madison, Wis. It’s a bird’s eye view, which the Maine Historical Society allowed Muskie to reproduce for the historic maps project. How the artist got this view is a wonder: “I believe what actually happened is he would go up in a balloon,” Howes said. Presumably the daring artist sketched like mad while in the balloon basket. 

The map’s precision makes it highly valuable to the Muskie Archives and the historic mapping project, which Howes and his colleagues Caitlin Lampman, the education and engagement archivist, and Pat Webber, the college archivist, began working on nearly two years ago, with a digital assist from Jake Paris, senior web developer and designer. “This is the only map from this time period that is accurate for the �ֲ���ý campus,” Howes said. “Basically every other map drawn at this time showed the aspirational buildings that they were going to build,” such as a twin to Parker, on the other side of Hathorn. “A lot of those maps actually show it as though that building is there, even though it never happened.”

The hemlock and oak were sketched in ink as a tiny duo in an otherwise empty field, and in fine detail, the shape of a hemlock is distinctive. The two trees are still visible to anyone standing in front of Hathorn Hall, but in that era would have been essentially the only things visible in an otherwise unobstructed view of the Maine State Seminary building, aka John Bertram Hall, which was built in 1868.

Howes found a few key written records of the trees, first in a 1913 interview with Professor Jonathan Stanton, who believed that these trees had been natural growth. A November 1933 edition of the �ֲ���ý Alumnus included a lengthy feature by William H. Sawyer Jr., Class of 1913, who taught biology at �ֲ���ý from 1916 to 1962, titled “Our Campus Trees.” 

“Of the original trees on campus,” Sawyer wrote, “if there are any, the red oak and hemlock at the corner of the Carnegie Science Building, three large elms on Campus Avenue, and the mixed hardwood and evergreen growth adjacent to the heating plant and ‘Lake Andrews’ are probably the only survivors.” 

The Muskie Archives has added images of the trees whenever possible (some trees noted on the map live on only in memory, but there are some lush vintage photographs of the elm planted by the Class of 1870, which came down likely after the 1950s). In addition to that 1875 bird’s eye view, there is a very early photograph from 1890 that shows the hemlock and red oak, and another taken from Mount David in 1903, after Coram was built, that shows the oak beginning to develop its sprawl and surpassing the hemlock in height. A photo from 1910, taken from John Bertram, shows them from the other side. 

The historic campus map project has been almost two years in the making, but it may never be “done.” That’s because little tidbits of knowledge, some in the form of images, others written documentation, or accounts from �ֲ���ý people, continue to come in on a regular basis. Crowd-sourcing will keep the historical map, like the campus itself, ever-evolving.

Additionally, there is the fact that Howes keeps finding new rabbit holes to go down. He’s spent a lot of time in archives of Lewiston papers, The �ֲ���ý Student, and other publications. “And then you find stuff accidentally,” he said. Howes is more than okay with that; nuggets of information worth adding to the map are true treasures. “I’m actually in the middle of scanning a bunch of things now that I’m like, ‘Oh, OK, I need to add that in,’” Howes said, sounding utterly delighted. 

�ֲ���ý has once again been recognized by the American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching for its deep level of commitment to community engagement, an honor the college first achieved in 2008 and again in 2015. Recently �ֲ���ý was also lauded  by ACE and Carnegie for its success in providing paths for graduates to earn competitive wages. 

Last week, ACE and Carnegie announced that �ֲ���ý had been designated with the 2026 Carnegie Elective Classification for Community Engagement. Community engagement constitutes “collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity.”

At �ֲ���ý, inspiration for that work comes from the diverse and rich opportunities for student learning, skill building, and collaboration offered by the college’s location, explained Darby Ray, director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships. 

“The Carnegie recognition is a wonderful affirmation of the college’s dual commitment to high impact student learning and community well-being, as well as the off-campus community’s investment in our students, “ said Ray, who is also the Donald W. and Ann M. Harward Professor of Civic Engagement.

Mutual respect between college and community, along with desire for collaboration, is a key part of the success, Ray said. “The result of it is that �ֲ���ý students have meaningful opportunities to work alongside community leaders to develop and apply knowledge and skills to address real-world challenges like public health, affordable housing, and arts-based economic development.” 

�ֲ���ý was one of approximately 230 institutions nationwide to receive the 2026 Carnegie Elective Classification for Community Engagement, and the only Maine institution of higher education on the list. This designation, which �ֲ���ý must apply for cyclically, is valid until 2032.

“Your institution’s application documented excellent alignment among campus mission, culture, leadership, resources, and practices that support dynamic and noteworthy community engagement,” ACE and Carnegie wrote in a letter to �ֲ���ý, lauding the college’s “exemplary institutionalized practices of community engagement.” 

�ֲ���ý has advanced the work of deepening partnerships, leveraging community assets, and addressing urgent societal challenges with “clarity and distinction,” the award letter said. The accomplishment “is especially noteworthy amid significant federal policy and funding shifts shaping the future of higher education.” 

In addition, in 2025, �ֲ���ý was identified for its success in a relatively new classification that ACE and Carnegie began using in 2022, the Student Access and Earnings Classification (an earlier version was known as the Social and Economic Mobility Classification), which prioritizes student success. The classification is intended to identify which American colleges and universities are providing access to students from lower socioeconomic and historically underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds to higher education and paths to earning competitive wages.

�ֲ���ý ranked high in terms of its return on investment. Eight years after a student first enrolled at �ֲ���ý — so typically, four years into being in the workplace — data shows that their median earnings are 68 percent above the median earnings of a comparison group of similar institutions. 

“Both these designations speak to the deep and rewarding experiences �ֲ���ý has to offer to students,” said President Garry W. Jenkins. “We’re committed to our community and we’re giving our undergraduates meaningful educational experiences not just on our campus, but within the Lewiston-Auburn region we care about so much. They’re volunteering in public schools and museums. They’re consulting and conducting research in a wide range of areas, from sustainability to water quality and asbestos remediation, and studying the history and culture of this community.”

These community connections are not fleeting, Jenkins noted. “We see this reflected in how many �ֲ���ý graduates stay in the state — a little more than 12 percent — or how they develop the habit of building community connections in their future neighborhoods and communities across the country and the world.”

“At �ֲ���ý, we believe that students from all backgrounds should have access to the transformative power of education,” Jenkins added. “That is and always has been part of our mission. To know that their �ֲ���ý education is helping graduates thrive in their careers is reason to celebrate.”

Shortly after Courtney Smith joined �ֲ���ý in the fall of 2024 as an associate professor of theater, he floated an idea for a production that was both over-the-top ambitious and absolute catnip to his colleague Sally Wood, a visiting lecturer in theater who was trying to decide what play to direct in the fall of 2025.

His suggestion would require help from an unprecedented number of campus partners and doing due diligence to be compliant with local, state and federal regulations — and test Schaeffer Theatre like nothing else in its 65-year history.  What Smith had said to Wood was: “You know what would be really awesome? Metamorphoses.”

Wood is used to pulling things off. When she’s not in the classroom or in one of �ֲ���ý performance spaces, she’s working with professional theaters and actors all over the region, including Portland Stage Company and the Theater at Monmouth. But the 1998 play, an omnibus interpretation of Ovid’s Greek mythology written by MacArthur Award winner Mary Zimmerman, has one foundational issue that makes it seriously complex to pull off. There’s just one set. But it’s a swimming pool. As much as Wood was thrilled that Smith was game for this project,  she said would not have suggested it. 

“Just because it’s too much to ask,” she said, sitting on the stage this fall as the dress rehearsal was about to get started for what would be a sold-out run of Metamorphoses encompassing Halloween weekend. “It’s so big.”

To do it right, you need to build a pool on a stage that can handle, say, 22,000 extra pounds in the form of water, as well as performers who don’t mind getting wet. That means lots of laundry. Major technical challenges. Because of all Metamorphoses requires to bring it to life, Wood said the play is rarely produced except in academic settings. It can be done without the full soaking experience, say with kiddie pools or some sort of reflective surface, she said. 

“And I think it still works. But there’s magic in the water. Real magic. When people see it, it’s like, they always remember it. And I don’t know of any other play that has that kind of stamp.”

+Click here to learn more about what Graham Austin was thinking during this scene

The actors are in and out of the pool throughout the play, with one character drowning in a shipwreck, along with his crew (�ֲ���ý dancers in this case), another conducting a seduction in the water, King Midas hanging out poolside with a drunken Bacchus, and even a god’s offspring undergoing modern therapy while spinning across its surface in a round pool toy. 

The first time Wood saw Metamorphoses was in New York at the Circle in the Square, with Zimmerman directing (the writer/director would go on to win a Tony for that production in 2002). “I remember just not breathing,” Wood said. “I’ll never forget just not breathing, for like an hour and a half, and being so sad when it was over.”

“I’m convinced it’s the water,” Wood added. “The play on the page is beautiful and really good, but there’s a trance. It’s crazy. There’s a literal transformation that happens once you get in there.”

And it happens for the actors. “I loved getting in that swimming pool,” said Graham Austin ’28 of Basalt, Colo., a likely theater major, who like the more than a dozen student cast members played multiple roles.  As Phaeton, son of Apollo, he is the character getting therapy in the pool, and Austin played the part with the gusto of Sean Penn as the iconic Spicoli of 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High. “It was a highlight of every time I did that play. Just overall, fantastic time in that thing.”

Engineering the pool into being was a major feat that started in August, about a week after another theater and production veteran, Mike Quinn, started his new role at �ֲ���ý as technical director. He and Smith, who served as production manager, lighting and projections designer, and faculty advisor for students on the technical side of the production, are splitting some of the duties formerly performed by longtime �ֲ���ý theater leader Michael Reidy before his recent retirement from his position as senior lecturer in theater and managing director of Theater and Dance.

A Maine native who spent 14 years in scenery construction and technical design in New York, Quinn had been working in Portland since 2023 with various venues and organizations.  At the dress rehearsal, Wood joked that Quinn might not have taken the job if he’d known what his first month would be like, but Quinn said he’d been warned. “He [Smith] said, you’re going to have to build a pool if you take the job.”  

Getting the specifications right  — no one wanted to capsize the Schaeffer stage — was key. In the end, the depth of the empty pool was 24 inches, but the water itself couldn’t be that deep. 

“It is not a 16th over 16 inches,” Quinn said. “As prescribed by the structural engineer.” 

“We had to task a fairly wide group of people to make sure that as an institution we were checking boxes and crossing our ‘t’s and dotting our ‘i’ s,” said Chris Streifel, �ֲ���ý’ director of capital planning and construction. “There were all kinds of different codes and building ramifications that we had to work through structurally.” 

Because the audience needed to be able to see into the pool, Schaeffer also had to be reimagined as a venue. Risers were constructed in the wings of the stage in lieu of the regular seating . This limited the audience size somewhat, but made for an intimate experience; during particularly splashy scenes, audience members in the front row might have gotten a little damp (although crew members whisked through between scenes, wielding mops to put the water back into the pool). 

Getting the chemistry of the water just right kept Quinn busy as well. At first the team hoped to keep it fresh with herbal and natural remedies, but after draining it over October break, they opted to add chlorine, since there were many bodies moving in and out of it during rehearsals. But not too much. “We did not want it smelling like the Y,” Wood said. At ABC Pool and Spa Center on Lisbon St., one of the workers groaned when Quinn stopped by; queries from �ֲ���ý had apparently become that much of a regular thing. “I think they were like, ‘Oh my God, why don’t you guys just get it together?’” said Wood.

+Click here to learn more about what was going through Eirene Furr’s mind as she acted in this scene

The pool was both a weird quirk and an inspiration for Eirene Furr ’28, a rhetoric, film, and screen studies major from Washington, D.C., who plans to focus on playwriting. She came to �ֲ���ý after four years at the Chicago Academy of the Arts and has been in many productions, but none like this. “It’s not like an August Wilson play where it’s very much grounded in reality,” Furr said. “You have to live in this world where there’s gods and there’s love, and there’s betrayal, and there’s curses, and it makes for a very challenging experience.”

Like most of the cast, she played multiple roles, most prominently the role of Alcyone, whose husband, King Ceyx, is lost at sea. “I’m lucky because I only had to go about knee deep in the pool,” Furr said. “But I know people who fully dived in and in each scene had to be completely wet.” 

Included among them was Jenny Liu ’29 of Suzhou, China, who plays Myrrha, daughter of King Cinyras, cursed by Aphrodite into falling in love with her own father. She’s tossed around the pool in a particularly intense scene. “I was so excited when I heard that we were actually going to be in the water,” Liu said. “And I actually enjoyed it. It was warm.” 

The everybody-in-the-pool experience brought the cast closer together, Furr said. “Because when 15 people are running around the stage with towels and having to dry off and change, and there’s a whole laundry system going on, it makes it chaotic but it also makes it really, really fun.”

+Click here to learn more about what was happening for Jenny Liu in this scene

For Smith, seeing this kind of student experience is a large part of what drew him to �ֲ���ý during the hiring process. “What I think that the department really does well is creating the space for students to learn the craft and do their thing.” That might be a common enough sounding goal in the liberal arts, but at �ֲ���ý it felt like a reality. “I really felt it. It was really obvious to me,” Smith said.

Though when Smith arrived at �ֲ���ý last fall, he did develop a wish list of things he wanted to improve. Reidy had been a master of keeping old resources and materials going but it was time for upgrades. “Some instrumentation was dated back as early as the ’70s,” Smith said.  It was held together by tape, or worse. “It had, oh gosh, it had asbestos wiring. I think most of it was probably from the ’80s, and that’s just not equipment that we use anymore.”

Rachel Wray, senior director of corporate and foundation relations at �ֲ���ý, worked with the George I. Alden Trust, based in Worcester, Mass., which generously provided a $175,000 grant for the necessary theater tech upgrades. �ֲ���ý contributed more funds, and now all three theaters — Schaeffer, Gannett Theater, and the Martin Andrucki Black Box Theatre — have new and improved equipment, including four big moving lights that were vital to making Metamorphoses glow, and a central control board (an ETC Ion Xe lighting control console) that can function as a true teaching tool. Some describe it as the guts of the whole operation.

For Smith, it was essential that �ֲ���ý graduates who want to work as professionals in the world of stage, lighting, and theater, be trained on current equipment. “Students in my classes, including Introduction to Digital Media, and in lighting projection design related courses, are learning on the tools they’ll see in the real world,” Smith said. “That was a huge lift to the program to be able to do that, and it was all because of that award.”

Furr’s first �ֲ���ý production left her with a deep appreciation for her new community. That includes the responsive audience. 

“It’s easy to kind of compartmentalize your work as an actor, and kind of separate it from yourself,” Furr said. “Part of that is healthy and it’s good, but it can sometimes make you unaware of the amount of work that you put in. So it is definitely very rewarding to hear people come up and say how much they liked the show. It makes me very proud of all the work that the entire ensemble put in and the directors and then each and every stage hand and the theater directors and the sound designers. Really, everybody put their maximum amount of effort in.”

For Mother Jones, in a Sept. 24 article headlined “,” journalist Evan Mandery named �ֲ���ý as an outlier — for its emphasis on meaning and purpose. Mandery writes that a focus on finding meaning “suffuses the �ֲ���ý curriculum,” unlike many other elite colleges that he covered in his story.

In looking beyond the classroom, Mandery points again to �ֲ���ý: “One notable exception is the Center for Purposeful Work at �ֲ���ý College, launched in 2017 and framed around principles of developmental psychology. The center’s work is predicated on a simple premise: ‘If you’ve got wellbeing in your career,’ explained director Allen Delong, ‘you are twice as likely to have wellbeing in all the other areas of your life.’”

The article points to the college’s commitment to supporting students seeking meaningful work, noting that �ֲ���ý subsidizes around 600 internships each year, “about as many as Harvard, though its endowment is less than 1 percent as large,” and notes that this commitment shows up in outcomes: “15 percent of its 2023 graduates went into education (five times the rate of Harvard grads), 16 percent entered the health field (more than twice the rate of Harvard grads), and 5 percent joined nonprofits.” 

With the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art’s Ralph Steadman exhibition due to close on Oct. 11, interviewed co-curator Andrea Harris about the exhibition. Harris co-curated the exhibition, “And Another Thing”, with Steadman’s daughter, Sadie Williams. Not quite a retrospective, the exhibition spans 65 years and is drawn from 15,000 works of art. The reporter asked Harris, “How did you get this to come to little old �ֲ���ý College in Lewiston, Maine?”

“Well, Ralph is all about collaboration and he gets around,” Harris said. “He’s been to the United States several times and has been meeting people throughout his career. One of the meetings he had, he was up in Aspen, Colorado, where he met with Dan Mills, who was the director of the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art. And Dan was always a fan of Ralph’s, had always had a great feeling that bringing the art to Maine would be an incredible experience for the community. “

Initially the exhibition was slated to open in 2020 but was delayed because of the pandemic. “And here we are having this incredible opportunity in Maine and it’s been wonderful,” Harris said. “The �ֲ���ý Museum of Art is this beautiful space. It’s just absolutely incredible for the college students, for the community, and again, available to everyone to come out and enjoy.”

The exhibition opened in June and will close on Saturday, Oct. 11. Harris will offer a lecture to the public on Friday, Oct. 10 at 4 p.m. and will be present on the closing day to engage with visitors. The �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano, professor of rhetoric, film and screen studies, was featured on The Chronicle of Higher Education’s podcast College Matters, a series that examines “how higher education pushes students to wrestle with big ideas.” Kelley-Romano’s popular course, “Conspiracy Rhetoric: Power, Politics and Popular Culture,” was highlighted in the podcast episode “” as one of  “the most intriguing and popular courses on the nation’s college campuses.”

 “Conspiracy Rhetoric,” which Kelley-Romano is teaching again this fall, focuses on the ways that rhetoric — the art of effective (and often persuasive) communication —  shapes conspiracy theories. Kelley-Romano explains that “when students understand how things function rhetorically, then they can see and create rhetorical campaigns.” She told the Chronicle that the course often helps students understand that “when more people have more rights and more support, the entire society does better.” 

Leigh Weisenburger, vice president for institutional affairs and secretary to the Board of Trustees, was featured in a Portland Press Herald article about �ֲ���ý dropping its application fee for all students. (In the past, students could ask for a waiver for the fee based on their financial needs). In , Weisenburger, who played a role in the elimination of the application fee, said, “It just seemed like the right moment to press play on something that we know to be a barrier and will provide relief, economically for families, but also de-escalating any stress a student might have in the process.” �ֲ���ý anticipates more applications in the coming year, following a record 10,029 applications in 2024, and is prepared to accommodate the potential increase with a higher number of adjunct readers. 

Vice President for Finance and Administration and Treasurer of �ֲ���ý College Geoff Swift was recently featured in the Sun Journal’s .” Swift was interviewed about Lake Andrews, his role in nurturing the campus’ physical environment, and �ֲ���ý’ responsibility for the wildlife that makes its home around the Puddle. “We’re stewards of this place,” Swift said. “�ֲ���ý sits on 133 acres, much of them occupied by residential buildings, sports fields and academic facilities. But the green spaces, from the quad to the wooded areas, are also under our charge and we take that seriously. Respecting wildlife is part of that. There are limits to what we can or should do.”

Sports Business Journal of Jeff Price ’87 ��’29 as the inaugural CEO of the Heisman Trophy Trust. Prior to this role, Price served as chief commercial and philanthropy officer for the PGA of America. “I see plenty of opportunity to build a larger commercial enterprise and support the Trust’s charitable goals, which were also a passion of mine at the PGA,” Price told Sports Business Journal. Price, who played football at �ֲ���ý — as quarterback and wide receiver — is also a parent of a student in the Class of 2029. Price was recently on campus for the 150th Football Celebration at �ֲ���ý. 

News of Associate Professor of Art and Visual Culture Carolina González Valencia’s grant of $50,000 to finish her film How to Clean a House in Ten Easy Steps was covered in . The Sundance Institute funded 32 projects this year.

In August, Deadline covered Gonzalez Valencia’s , which supports filmmakers in developing their pitches, and invites them to present their works in progress to a panel of funders and distributors at Camden International Film Festival. The film, which is being shot in the U.S., Colombia, and Mexico, is a “hybrid documentary” in which a domestic worker and her filmmaker daughter co-create the fictional character of a writer to uncover the slippage between truth and fantasy. It tells a story about immigration, labor, dreams, and the power of fiction to spark emancipation.

Staff at the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library love giving walking tours of the campus. They function like walking �ֲ���ý encyclopedias, dropping tidbits about everything from which building was the first one on Frye Street to which are the oldest trees on campus.

But the tours only happen a handful of times a year, and for Caitlin Lampman, the education and engagement archivist who works alongside Pat Webber, the college archivist, and Sam Howes, the reference and digital initiatives archivist, that had started to feel like too small a window to share all the knowledge they hold. “It felt like a lot to be just living within Sam and Pat and me,” Lampman said. “We wanted it to be more than just three walking tours a year. And we wanted to make it so people could access the information all the time.”

So Muskie Archives, which celebrated its 40th birthday last month, set out to build a time machine. Or rather, a digital time machine. Working with Jake Paris, senior web developer and designer, they stuffed all of that knowledge (plus GPS coordinates and archival photographs) into something that might not fly, but is transporting: a new digital map that provides users with an annotated snapshot of what �ֲ���ý looked like at every stage of its 175-year history.

Layered and interactive, the map dates from the present back to 1855, when the college was founded. For now it’s available only if you’re on campus using �ֲ���ý wi-fi (including if you’re on campus for Back to �ֲ���ý this weekend) but by early 2026, it should be available from anywhere. Scroll through time and see what �ֲ���ý looked like in 1878, when there were just a few lonely looking buildings in a lot of wide open space or 1940, when there were barracks housing student sailors for the Navy’s V-12 program.

As is appropriate for a map that already shows hundreds of changes big and small to the �ֲ���ý campus over 175 years — including the location of every Ivy stone — the new historical map is built for further evolution and flexibility. That flexibility is intended to accommodate the campus of the future, but also to account for all the nuggets of information the archivists expect to learn when the map becomes available to a wider audience. They’ve been uncovering new things about old �ֲ���ý practically every day since the project got started. Take the plethora of tennis courts for instance. 

“Step into my time machine,” said Sam Howes, typing away at his keyboard to pull up an early 20th century map of �ֲ���ý. “There were tennis courts all over the place.” It’s not that �ֲ���ý had huge tennis teams in the past; these were courts that offered recreational opportunities for all. They’d be displaced by new buildings, including Dana and Commons, and would be relocated. “I keep finding more in random spots,” Howes said. 

“You do,” said Jake Paris, “Every week, it’s ‘I found another tennis court!‘”

To build the map, Paris used Google maps as the base and relied on a number of modern web app technologies, all very standard. “But the way the map is managed by the Archives office is unique, and intended to be very archivist friendly,” Paris said. “The team at Muskie can control the content simply by updating a Google Sheet and adding photos to a folder in Google Drive.” The app fetches the data from the sheet and then assembles it. “And at the same time, all the photos from the drive are downloaded and compiled into the app,” Paris explained.

Ideally, users will start suggesting and or submitting material to enrich it, because there are still some mysteries to �ֲ���ý’ past. Take the Turner annex for instance, a building on Wood Street which was something between a carriage house and a garage. In 1988, for just one year, it was a residence, and Howes would like to know more about what it looked like. 

“That’s the kind of thing where it would be nice if we could have someone who maybe lived there contribute some information,” Howes said. “They might even have a photo.” 

One highly useful  feature of the map is, when you click on a location — even something as small as  an individual Ivy stone — you’ll be taken to historical, archival information, including vintage photographs of the building, feature or place. 

Crowd-sourcing is one way to keep the historical map, like the campus itself, ever-evolving. And the archivists keep finding more layers they’d like to add. Lampman says historical trees, including trees planted by a particular class, or ones named in recognition of faculty members, will eventually be included. “We’re working on that,” she said. 

The project took 18 months because of the level of detail — and accuracy — the archivists were going for. And they learned as they went. Take two trees between Ladd Library and Carnegie, a hemlock and a red oak. “We think they have been here the whole time,” Lampman said. The evidence? Photos from the 1880s and 1890s. “And for some reason, they have just never been cut down. They’re right between the two buildings.”

The trees are so wedged in between the two buildings, Lampman says, that it’s almost a surprise they survived construction. “We don’t know who made the choice to leave them there.” Other trees that haven’t survived, like the Stanton Elm, planted in honor of Johnny Stanton, professor of Greek and Latin, debate mentor and ornithologist, will eventually get a spot on the map. “We have a pretty good idea of where it was.”

“We think this map is a great product,” said Krystie Wilfong, who is associate college librarian for collections and scholarly communications and oversees the Muskie team. “It’s something that people can really interact with, from alumni and parents to local people from the community. It holds something.” Namely history, and the desire to share it.