Editor’s Note: This article and the above spread appears in the Spring 2026 edition of . See below for a web-friendly version.

David Omasombo ’26 and Chiwer Mayen ’26 have shared many basketball courts across their young lifetimes, including historic Alumni Gym, but the first one stands out in their memories for being the worst, in a technical sense. The surface was uneven, the rims inconsistent, and, most of the time, there were no nets.

“Terrible,” says Mayen. But at Lewiston’s Hillview apartment complex, it was a gathering place for the community, which made it a great place to be introduced to each other and develop a passion for hoops.

“Thirty kids on one court, 30 kids on the other court,” says Mayen, a sociology major.

“Just pack it and play basketball,” adds Omasombo, also a sociology major.

Omasombo would have been around 11 years old and Mayen 12 when their worlds first collided at the Hillview apartments, and both had already been on long journeys just to get to those basketball courts.

Omasombo was born to Congolese parents in a refugee camp in Tanzania. He arrived in the United States in 2010 via Indianapolis, as part of a church asylum program, and then lived in Nashville. Both American cities were tough on the young Omasombo.

“Back home, America is often described as the ‘promised land,’ like in the Bible,” Omasombo says. “But I didn’t know any English and I experienced a lot of bullying. It was hard to make friends as the little African kid in the group who dressed differently and spoke Swahili.” Omasombo spent long hours in Nashville working with his second-grade teacher Tee Hassold, learning English in one-on-one sessions after school.

Mayen was born in Jackson, Mississippi, to parents who had come to America from South Sudan. He lived in a house in Jackson built by Habitat for Humanity until he was in third grade. It was, he remembers, a great home, but not a great area. “The house had bars on the windows, and I mostly stayed inside,” Mayen says. “At the time I didn’t realize why, but it was for my own safety.” That’s when his father, who raised him and his sister mostly alone, moved the family to North Carolina. They stayed with family friends for about a year. Then Mayen’s father heard about opportunities in Lewiston, where there was a growing South Sudanese community. His family drove north to Maine and eventually moved into the Hillview complex.

In Nashville, Omasombo’s father had also heard about the growing community of African refugees in Maine and felt Lewiston would be a better fit for his family. That kind second grade teacher, Tee Hassold, helped Omasombo’s family raise funds to move north. “All 10 of us drove to Maine in 2012 in a 16-passenger van with all of our belongings,” Omasombo says. “Thanks to my teacher and the generosity of the community, we were able to move to Lewiston. I still keep in touch with Mr. Hassold. He is such an amazing human being.”

He was 10 when he arrived in Lewiston. After his first year at Longley Elementary, the Omasombo family moved to the Hillview apartments, and he enrolled at McMahon Elementary. That’s when the two boys met on the basketball court. The memory is fuzzy but Omasombo is pretty sure about one thing.

“I think my first impression of Chiwer was that he was a giant,” says Omasombo.

Mayen’s parents’ South Sudanese heritage is in the Dinka tribe, some of the tallest people in the world, and he is no exception. Today he is the tallest player on the Bobcats, standing at 6 feet 9 inches. Omasombo is the shortest player on the team, a full foot shorter than Mayen. But Omasombo had an edge in terms of basketball experience when they met. Growing up in the refugee camp in Tanzania, Omasombo only knew soccer and laughs about how when he first encountered basketball in America he tried to kick the ball through the hoop. Mayen was even newer to basketball. He hadn’t really liked sports growing up, but basketball started to grow on him.

“I was so bad at first,” Mayen says. “All I could do was pass the ball. In basketball, height is height, but you really need to have other attributes as well, such as strength. But I love the journey of getting better every day.”

The duo didn’t share the court in an organized setting until they attended Lewiston High School and started playing on the junior varsity team.

They both made varsity the next year and, under the leadership of then head coach Ronnie Turner, helped lead Lewiston boys basketball to one of their best seasons in recent memory. “I was tough on them, but Chiwer was great about taking my coaching to heart, and David would text me to open the gym for extra shots at night after games, and then again in the early morning,” says Turner. “He would be working on his game at 5 a.m.”

“Ronnie was the perfect role model that we needed to hear from,” Omasombo says. “He had grown up in Lewiston and knew what we were going through.”

Turner, whose mother, Tonya Bailey, is the director of �ֲ���ý’ Student Center for Belonging and Community, also had a sense, a belief, about where this hardworking pair with so much behind them might go next. Men’s basketball head coach Jon Furbush ’05 hired Turner as an assistant coach in 2021, and Turner made sure to alert him to the duo. “I had never had any players from Lewiston High School so I am grateful to Ronnie for helping me get in front of those guys,” Furbush says. “I remember watching both of them play and thinking to myself, ‘Maybe we have something here.’”

Mayen played one post-grad season at The Woodstock Academy in Connecticut, so he and Omasombo both enrolled at �ֲ���ý in fall 2022. They are the first Lewiston High School alumni to play men’s basketball at �ֲ���ý in five decades, since Bruce Campbell ’76.

Not that �ֲ���ý was a completely new environment for either of them when they arrived, as Omasombo and Mayen often snuck into Alumni Gym as kids to get shots up. They’d play pick-up with �ֲ���ý students. “Alumni Gym is where I threw down my first real dunk,” Mayen says. But when they first met, the notion of �ֲ���ý as a future alma mater was far from their minds.

Now, Omasombo and Mayen are recent �ֲ���ý grads, after making the most (and then some) of their time on campus. After four years steeped in academics, basketball, internships, community service, jobs, and further friendship, Omasombo and Mayen are well-aware of the example they set for future generations. Mayen was raised by an immigrant father, trying to care for his son and daughter on his own. Omasombo spent the first eight years of his life in the refugee camp before moving to America. “I didn’t have the privilege or opportunity to go to school and there were very few resources,” Omasombo says. “All we had was family. But that kept us alive.”

What might not seem possible is possible. It’s been done. Here they are.

And yet, when you look at what both of them do in the Lewiston community on top of their athletic and academic pursuits at �ֲ���ý, it definitely seems impossible for anyone to achieve as much as they do. There just don’t seem to be enough hours in the day.

“They redefine the meaning of hard work,” Furbush says. “Some people think they’re working hard, but if they actually spent some time with either of those guys they would quickly realize, ‘Oh, I am not maximizing my day.’”

For starters, both serve as substitute teachers in the Lewiston Public Schools.

“I’ve really enjoyed my time with the students and seeing my old teachers,” Mayen says. “I try to put myself in the kids’ shoes and try to have an impact on their psyche in a positive way.”

Mayen enjoys working with elementary school kids, while Omasombo has worked more with the middle and high schoolers. It’s not always easy, given the challenges in the aftermath of the pandemic, particularly behavioral issues. “I think it helps that the teachers can point to us as examples of people from the Lewiston Public Schools who are doing well. You don’t have to misbehave or fall into the wrong crowd,” Omasombo says.

Omasombo remembers what it felt like when he was in high school.

Violence in the community was a problem. So when he was a senior at LHS, Omasombo and a friend of his started an after-school club where young men could discuss issues impacting their lives and how to address them.

“Our goal was not to fix everything. We just wanted to give the boys in our community something we didn’t have growing up,” Omasombo says. “We talked about leadership and not following the crowd. Most importantly, we focused on staying away from potentially dangerous situations that could alter people’s lives forever.”

In addition to working in the heart of the city, Omasombo is an organic farmer. His dad, whose first name is Omasombo, grew up farming with his father in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The elder Omasombo was able to secure a parcel of land in Lisbon designated for refugees and started OK Community Farm. “My dad is an inspiration, getting up at 4 a.m. every day to work on the farm and support our family,”Omasombo says. “We sell our vegetables down by Kennedy Park. I really look forward to the days that I can go to the farm and help out, working side-by-side with my dad.” Omasombo is entrepreneurial, giving haircuts and starting a pressure-washing business with his girlfriend. Since eighth grade, when he traveled to Texas with his church group to help with hurricane relief, he’s been deeply vested in community service.

Being there for others makes him feel closer to God. He jumps at every opportunity to pay forward the assistance he’s gotten through the years. “I know what it feels like to need help, and not know how to ask,” Omasombo says. “I know what it feels like to feel lost and alone, especially as a kid. I had people step into my life when they didn’t have to, so I feel the responsibility to be that for someone else.”

Mayen is a direct support professional, providing caregiving services to people with disabilities, working in a group home in Augusta. There is also a national shortage in this field, so it’s a job that provides Mayen with a lot of opportunities. As a junior at �ֲ���ý, he worked overnights, sometimes going directly from basketball games to the group home. He isn’t doing that anymore, but still works long hours.

He doesn’t mind. “Working as a direct support professional can be hard but it is amazing, eye-opening work,” Mayen says. “I love the individuals I work with. One client I work with is a huge fan of Walker, Texas Ranger, so we watch that a lot together.” Mayen also connected with the Harward Center for Community Partnerships at �ֲ���ý, where the mission is “to weave together campus and community for the enrichment of both student learning and public life.”

Through Harward’s community work-study program, which gives students who receive Federal Work-Study funds the chance to work off-campus and engage with the community, Mayen secured an internship with The Third Place, a network that connects Maine’s Black professionals, students, and entrepreneurs to both professional and social opportunities. Mayen collects data on Black professionals in Maine and helps plan various events. It’s a job that allows him to work remotely, critical when one is as busy as Mayen is every day at �ֲ���ý and beyond. “My schedule is very hectic, so it was great to find such a flexible internship through them,” Mayen says.

“David and Chiwer are prime examples of what Lewiston is capable of,” says Mohamed Awil, associate director of volunteer programs and community partnerships at the Harward Center and leader of the community work-study program. Like Omasombo and Mayen, he is a Lewiston High School alumnus, having graduated in 2014. He coached track and cross country at LHS while Mayen and Omasombo were there as students. “I hope they inspire people to stay in the community,” Awil says. “Or come back to help uplift us all. I am excited to see the �ֲ���ý and Lewiston connection continue to grow.”

Mayen is driven by the desire to help his dad and his sister. “My father raised us as a single dad, and I want to give him all the props in the world,” Mayen says. “I work so much because I want to provide for him back in South Sudan, and also my sister, who is figuring things out as a young adult in Mobile, Alabama.”

Their coach, Furbush, is in awe of Mayen and Omasombo’s values.

“Chiwer and David are maybe the most unselfish people I’ve ever met, not just at �ֲ���ý, but in my life. They rarely put themselves first. They’re always thinking, ‘How can we give back?’”

After graduation, Omasombo’s plan is to go into commercial real estate, while Mayen’s goal is to continue playing basketball after college. He’s never been to South Sudan and would like to go in the near future and meet members of his extended family. Likewise, Omasombo hopes to one day be able to go to the Congo for the first time. But for now they are making it in America, despite facing obstacles along the way that most people can’t imagine.

“This country provides a lot of opportunities,” Mayen says. “America is great at times, and it’s terrible at times. But the goal is always upward mobility. Struggle and perseverance is a great teacher. You need to go through difficult times to succeed in this world.”

Since its founding in 1996, Lewiston’s Maine Museum of Innovation, Labor, and Learning (formerly Museum L/A) has engaged in a decades-long educational partnership with �ֲ���ý College. That’s no surprise, given that the museum called the �ֲ���ý Mill Complex home for the last 30 years.

In recognition of that relationship, �ֲ���ý is making a $75,000 gift to Maine MILL’s new, stand-alone building, which opens June 27. Visitors to the new museum at 1 Beech St. — housed in another mill, most recently known as the Camden Yarns Mill — will enter through the �ֲ���ý College Welcome Center.

“We are delighted to partner with Maine MILL as it starts a new chapter in its new home,” said �ֲ���ý President Garry W. Jenkins. “Both institutions share a commitment to education and access that makes this collaboration a perfect fit. And we love the thought that �ֲ���ý will be one part of the rich and complex Lewiston story that guests from around the country and the world will learn about during their visit to Maine MILL.”

The Maine MILL gift is the most recent example of the college’s investment in the region. Since Rachel Ferrante ’10 joined the museum in 2021 as executive director, the �ֲ���ý-Maine MILL partnership has only expanded.

“�ֲ���ý is an enormous asset for Lewiston, as Lewiston is an enormous asset for �ֲ���ý,” Ferrante said. “We’re thrilled that �ֲ���ý is deeply invested in the partnership with Maine MILL and connection to Lewiston.”

This partnership reinforces �ֲ���ý’ longstanding and deep commitment to Lewiston. For decades, the Harward Center for Community Partnerships has brought campus and community together to enrich the learning experience for �ֲ���ý students and the lives of our neighbors in Lewiston and Auburn.

“At �ֲ���ý, we examine what it really means to join — as equal participants — within a community’s self-led work, however the community is defining it,” says Darby Ray, director of the Harward Center. “This goes beyond superficial forms of place-based engagement. It’s not just, ‘We’re located here so let’s get involved.’ We are committed to doing the deep listening to understand what is really happening in the community and how we might join the community’s work. And we’ve tried to model that kind of accompaniment or presence over decades, which has fostered relationships of trust and accountability.”

The museum was founded in 1996 to preserve artifacts and stories from Lewiston-Auburn’s once-prosperous textile mill industry. When Associate Professor of History Joe Hall first took students to Maine MILL — then called Museum L-A — in 2003, there were weaving looms still threaded and covered with “dust fiber hanging like Spanish moss from trees,” Hall said. They sat exactly where they had been when the mill was operating. He quickly realized how valuable it was for students to physically observe the industries they were learning about in his courses. It was a way, he said, to show that history doesn’t just happen “in some imaginary cloud world.” 

Not long after, trips to the museum became a regular part of Hall’s “U.S. Environmental History” course. Numerous other �ֲ���ý faculty have also brought their students to the museum to supplement courses on everything from economics to Japanese textiles to Francophone history. 

“It’s been great as a way of grounding their learning, but also showing what it is that people here want to teach other people,” Hall said.

Students appreciate, Hall said, that the museum is led by a �ֲ���ý graduate. Ferrante oversaw the 2023 rebranding to Maine MILL, a name that aligns more closely with the museum’s subject matter and reflects the institution’s goal to tell more wide-ranging stories from the region. �ֲ���ý faculty have supported that effort; Associate Professor of Sociology Marcelle Medford, for example, led an extensive project collecting oral histories from Black Mainers, now included in the museum’s collection.

“We are focused on making sure that as a community history museum, we are telling the broadest version of our area’s history,” Ferrante says. “That also means what history has looked like here over the last 20 or 30 years since the mills have closed. Of course, Black voices have been incredibly important before that time, but are a huge part of Lewiston’s more recent history. Having that represented in the collection felt like a critical missing piece.”

�ֲ���ý also connects with the museum through student interns, like Tristan Seavey ’26 of Calais, Maine, who has interned at Maine MILL off and on since his first year on campus. During his last Short Term at �ֲ���ý, he completed a full-time internship at the museum funded through the Harward Center for Community Partnerships. A double major in history and German, Seavey is also Hall’s student. 

As an intern, Seavey has led museum tours, done archival and operations work, helped with event planning, and 3D-scanned the gallery. He developed a passion for telling stories about people who have been underrepresented in popular history, inspired by Ferrante and Hall’s work. 

The internship “changed the way that I approach history,” Seavey said. “Before �ֲ���ý and before working at Maine MILL, it was really just listing off dates and doing timelines. But working with Rachel and also working with Joe and doing my own research, I’ve really had this new perspective on how we tell history in a compelling way.”

Seavey’s senior thesis, which Hall advised, retraced the steps of a Black family living in his hometown of Calais in the mid-19th century, ultimately arguing that the impact of the Black community on that area was more important than previously discussed.

Hall watched as Seavey applied what he was learning at �ֲ���ý to work that needed to be done in the community, and then returned to the classroom, enriched by the experience. “It was really helpful to see how one person can use what they learn to offer new lessons to others,” Hall said.

Additional partnerships between �ֲ���ý and Maine MILL include the museum’s annual fundraiser, Soirée en Blanc. �ֲ���ý Dining, Conferences, and Campus Events handles catering for the events, and many �ֲ���ý dining staff members are from Lewiston-Auburn, Ferrante said, turning the fundraisers into full-circle moments.

“This museum is their museum, and what excites me is that they are helping make their own museum possible,” she said.

This year’s Soirée en Blanc will be held in the new museum building on Friday, June 26, the evening before the museum officially opens, meaning that �ֲ���ý will have a hand in welcoming the public to the new space for the first time. 

“One of the things that makes this place so special is the relationships and the community that exists here,” Ferrante said. “It’s a huge part of what drives what we do and why we do it and who we do it for.” 

�ֲ���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.”

Her electric violin at the ready on her right shoulder, Mavy Ho-Le ’26 started to slowly tap her foot on the stage at Olin Arts Center. It was Saturday Oct. 25 and the first strains of Radiohead’s 2016 song “Daydreaming,” were beginning to emerge from Fitter Happier, a Radiohead tribute band based in Portland. Ho-Le, of Gorham, Maine, was one of five �ֲ���ý students and community members with string instruments grouped stage left, ready to join in on cue.

There was at least one aficionado of Radiohead among the �ֲ���ý musicians, Xucheng Zheng ’27 of Shanghai, China. Sitting in front of Ho-Le, Zheng likely recognized the song before lead singer Jeff Beam sang a single melancholy note on that Saturday night. Zheng, who is used to playing with an orchestra, was particularly eager to play “Daydreaming,” a favorite Radiohead song. 

But Ho-Le, a neuroscience major who has been playing electric violin professionally for years, had to feel her way into the song. She’d had less than a day with the sheet music to practice, and even though she works regularly as a professional musician when she’s not focused on her neuroscience major, it was almost all new to her. “I only know ‘Creep,’” she said later, referring to Radiohead’s breakthrough single from 1992.

That didn’t matter; the beauty of the event was that Radiohead expertise wasn’t required to be swept up in what happened on stage at Olin between Fitter Happier, made up of Beam, Sam Peisner, Scott Nebel, Elliot Heeschen, Rob Cimitile, and Pete Dugas, and the �ֲ���ý musicians. “It was electric,” Ho-Le said afterward.

The audience of more than 100 seemed to agree, from the little boy dancing wildly on his mother’s lap to the young person who shouted “you guys sound amazing” after Beam expressed his pleasure at playing in Olin, saying “it’s kind of the Carnegie Hall of Lewiston.” 

The collaboration was put together by Stuart Gurley, who manages both Olin Arts and the applied music program at �ֲ���ý. His goal was to give �ֲ���ý students a taste of the life of a professional musician as well as a chance to “take their skills that they learn in their lessons and their ensembles, and see how active working musicians utilize those in different professional environments,” Gurley says. Artists come to �ֲ���ý regularly, and work with students in master classes, Gurley said. “But this is different. It puts them on a more equal footing with the artists themselves.” And in perhaps a different genre. 

He’d done something similar before, bringing Beatles Night with Spencer Albee to �ֲ���ý in early 2020. Albee is known regionally (and) for his Beatles tribute band, Spencer and the Walrus, which for the last two decades has been selling out two and sometimes even three nights at the State Theater in Portland each Thanksgiving. Ever since Gurley coordinated with Albee to bring that Beatles experience, backed by student musicians, to �ֲ���ý, he’d been looking for opportunities to do something similar.

Gurley understands that the ensembles and coursework and lessons that happen at �ֲ���ý are essential, but he also knows what it means to work in the music industry in 2025. It’s not easy, but it might be easier if he can help students find intersecting commonalities between academia and the music industry.

“You can have all your experience here at �ֲ���ý and go out and get a gig in an orchestra or, if you’re really lucky, in a jazz band,” he said. “But there are unfortunately just fewer and fewer of those opportunities these days.” The best chances to make a living playing live music are in the realm of popular music, he explained. “And there’s a lot of groups from Radiohead right on down to very small acts that need violins and horns to tour with them.”

The genesis for bringing Fitter Happier to �ֲ���ý actually took place at one of his own musical gigs. As Gurley told the audience in Olin as he was introducing Fitter Happier, he’d been talking to a good friend and musician he was working with at a wedding gig. Long breaks (and waits) are typical of such gigs, Gurley said. And during one of those breaks, the friend made the argument that Radiohead was the most significant and important band out there.

Gurley had his doubts, but pondered this, considering his own past as a teenaged fan, and the band’s use of electronica. “They were one of the first bands to really integrate electronica in modern production ways, with new technologies, and new modalities of thinking,” he said. “And now it’s everywhere.” Radiohead easily fits into the spectrum of music studied at �ֲ���ý, he said. 

Moreover, a lot of students might already have the band on their playlist. TikTok has played a role in the resurgence of Radiohead and other musical acts, including Sade and Kate Bush, often leading to chart-topping hits years (even decades) after the initial release of the song. In the case of Radiohead, the Hulu series The Bear used “Let Down,” a Radiohead song from OK Computer, in the show’s Season 1 finale. In August of this year, 28 years after its release, the song charted on the Billboard Top 100 for the first time. 

Zheng, who described herself as a Radiohead fan before the concert, was energized by the collaborative nature of the opportunity. “Now I really want to try playing with a band,” Zheng said. 

Aidan Buck ’29 of Arlington, Mass., said he was only a “moderate” Radiohead fan before the Fitter Happier concert. “I haven’t listened to their catalogue in full, but what I’ve heard I really enjoy. I’m a big fan of experimental music as a whole.” Most of his musical training came by ear or was based in improvisation, he said.

“I wanted to be part of this concert because it sounded like a cool opportunity to play experimental music at �ֲ���ý with peers, faculty, and the greater L/A community.” 

He’s played instruments his whole life, from the trumpet in his middle school’s jazz band to bass in a rock band in high school. Typically he plays string instruments, but for the Fitter Happier show, he played the flugelhorn.

“I didn’t know much going into the first and only rehearsal on Saturday afternoon,” Buck said. “And as someone who can’t sight read music very well, I turned to my ear training and figured out my flugelhorn parts by listening to the original recordings of my assigned songs. Once I was able to get my parts down pat, I think the horn and string sections sounded really nice and made a great addition to the already awesome band.”

There was also something in the collaborative experience for Fitter Happier. As Beam, who considers Radiohead “the Beatles of this generation,” explained before the show, the �ֲ���ý musicians allowed Fitter Happier, which was touring in Vermont and New Hampshire, to do some songs they couldn’t do as a five-person band, including the many songs that Radiohead recorded with strings and horns.

“Not full orchestra stuff,” Beam says, “but songs that we can’t necessarily replicate without extra players.” After the accompanying horns and strings left the stage of Olin for the last time, Beam asked the audience to give the students a hand. And then paid them a high compliment: “I wish we could have them out here the whole time.” 

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.

President Garry W. Jenkins has received the 2025 Maine Black Excellence Compass Career Award from , a network that connects Maine’s Black professionals, students, and entrepreneurs to opportunities across multiple areas, from social to professional. 

The Third Place gives its Compass Career Award in recognition of “outstanding professional achievement, principled leadership, and a commitment to equity and excellence in one’s field.” The nonprofit, which was founded in 2017 by Executive Director Adilah Muhammad, noted that Jenkins, the ninth president of �ֲ���ý, is also its first Black president.

“From the courtroom to the boardroom to the college green, Garry Jenkins has led with integrity, brilliance, and heart,” the group said, citing his record spanning higher education, law, philanthropy, and public service. “His career is a compass for those navigating the intersections of leadership and justice.”

“I’m deeply touched by this honor, and for this award to be tied to my new home state of Maine,” Jenkins said as he accepted the award at a dinner celebration on a beautiful August evening outdoors at the Caswell Farm and Wedding Barn in Gray. “It carries special significance because it comes from a community that understands both the challenges we face and the excellence we represent.”

“Our democracy and our institutions succeed and flourish when everyone has a seat at the table and has the support and encouragement to shine brightly,” he added.

Jenkins was one of . He spoke of his pride at leading �ֲ���ý, citing its rich and unique history of inclusion and legacy of producing remarkable Black leaders through the 20th century and into the 21st century. Specifically, he mentioned John P. Davis, a debater at �ֲ���ý who graduated in 1926 and would go on to be a lawyer and pivotal figure in the Harlem Renaissance, and civil rights icon Benjamin Mays, a member of the Class of 1920, as well as pioneering television journalist Bryant Gumbel ’70 and Val Smith ’75, the president of Swarthmore College. 

“I want to make sure that we continue to produce alumni, of all backgrounds, who go on to make a difference to their communities, fields, and institutions,” Jenkins said.  

His remarks ended with an invitation to attendees to come to �ֲ���ý, walk on the beautiful campus, visit the museum, and attend theatrical and musical performances as well as athletic competitions.

Among the �ֲ���ý community members who joined Jenkins at the event were recent graduate Davina Kabantu ’24, who is a trainee in a bank management development program, Professor Emerita of Politics Leslie Hill, and Morgan Kinney and Mohamed Awil of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships. The Portland Press Herald .

In the greenhouse atop Carnegie Science Hall, a green seedling peeks up from an unassuming black pot. Small but storied, this plant has traveled the world to put down roots here in Lewiston.

The ginkgo tree seedling, not even a foot tall, is the child of a ginkgo tree in Hiroshima, Japan, one of 170 hibakujumoku or “survivor trees” that miraculously lived through the atomic bombing of Aug. 6, 1945 — 80 years ago this August — and still stand in the city today.

“We are looking at a piece of something that survived the bomb, and that’s what’s really magical,” says Alan Wang ’24, who coordinated the effort to bring the seedling to �ֲ���ý in partnership with the .

Green Legacy Hiroshima tends to the surviving trees in Hiroshima and their legacies, collecting their seeds and sharing them with institutions of higher education and botanical gardens. The offspring of the survivor trees are now growing at 146 partner institutions across 41 countries, bringing their message of hope and survival to communities around the world. 

As a junior at �ֲ���ý, Wang, who is originally from Henan, China, studied abroad in Japan through the Associated Kyoto Program. As part of the program, he traveled to Hiroshima to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, where Green Legacy Hiroshima gave Wang and classmates a tour of the hibakujumoku. 

From a watch that stopped exactly at the moment the bomb detonated, to a shadow created by someone instantly vaporized by the heat of the atomic blast, what Wang saw in Hiroshima left a lasting impression on him.

“You can just see the devastating impact that the nuclear weapon caused,” Wang says. 

When he learned that Green Legacy Hiroshima had no partners in Maine, Wang became determined to make �ֲ���ý the first. He imagined a survivor tree planted on campus, its presence encouraging discussion about the effects of nuclear weapons.

“I envision it as a platform to get people to talk about this,” Wang says.

But before he could bring the seeds to �ֲ���ý, Wang had to secure the support of campus partners and then apply to join Green Legacy as a partner institution. Though it would be a long process, Wang was committed. 

As a senior back on campus, he started by bringing his idea to Assistant Professor of Japanese Language and Asian Studies Hanna McGaughey and Lecturer in Japanese Keiko Konoeda, who were both eager to support Wang’s efforts. Impressed by Wang’s persistence, Raymond Clothier, the interim multifaith chaplain at �ֲ���ý, also joined the project.

“When somebody is willing to dedicate that amount of time to a project like this and to not let it go when he encounters bumps on the road, it is inspiring,” Clothier says.

Finally, Wang was left with finding a biology professor who was willing to take on a multi-year responsibility. A young tree needs a lot of tending before it is sturdy enough to plant outside. Wang eventually connected with Daniel Slane, a visiting assistant professor of biology, who immediately agreed to help.

With the four faculty and staff members on board, Wang submitted the application for partnership to Green Legacy Hiroshima during the holiday break between semesters of his senior year and heard back within a month: �ֲ���ý was approved as a partner.

In summer 2024, seven ginkgo seeds arrived from San Diego, where all Green Legacy Hiroshima seeds for U.S. partner institutions are stored. Slane first sanded their hard exteriors to make it easier for them to germinate. He then refrigerated two of the seeds for cold stratification, a process which mimics winter by exposing seeds to cool weather and encouraging germination. After a couple of months, he removed the seeds and planted them in pots in the greenhouse high above the Historic Quad.

But, those first two seeds did not germinate. Slane suspects that the soil conditions were too moist. Back to square one, Slane refrigerated and planted three more seeds. A couple months later, one seed germinated. Now, Slane heads upstairs almost daily from his office to check on the seedling.

One of the oldest tree species on Earth, ginkgo trees are known for their resiliency. Konoeda says there is a message there for all beings about enduring through the impossible.

“The mother plants survived and watched the experience — the fire and the wind and the heat. And still, we see this green and the tree,” Konoeda says. “So, we don’t know what is going on in the world right now, but we will survive.”

�ֲ���ý’ seeds are from a 200-year-old ginkgo tree in the lush Shukkeien Garden, created in 1620. The garden is a little less than a mile from where the bomb exploded. Its blast spread outward and then the force of air, rushing back toward the hypocenter, pushed the tree inward, leaving the tree with a permanent slant toward ground zero. 

The fact that the hibakujumoko are able to reproduce is impressive, Slane says, because high radiation can cause plants to become infertile. The ginkgo seeds’ DNA may even be altered due to epigenetics, the way in which heritable traits in offspring are changed by a parent’s life experiences. 

“If you have seeds from a tree that has been impacted by a natural event or something like a bombing, they will have certain epigenetic changes that allow the offspring to probably deal better with those changes,” Slane says.

Though it will be at least two years before the tree is large enough to plant outside, the ambition, or hope, is that the ginkgo will eventually be planted on campus, joining the ranks of the bright yellow tree standing guard outside of Carnegie since 2003 and the new ones at Bonney Science Center. Once the tree is planted, Clothier and the Multifaith Chaplaincy will be in charge of maintaining it. 

“It’ll be meaningful to me to see the tree when it’s in the ground, to have a place, a marker on campus for peace, for the intergenerational work of peace,” Clothier says.

Like the seeds themselves, each of the people contributing to this project have a personal tie to the atomic bombings or the brutal history of World War II, and most have traveled across oceans to end up at �ֲ���ý. Konoeda, for example, grew up in Kitakyushu, Japan, the original target for the second atomic bomb. The city narrowly avoided complete destruction when clouds obscured its skyline on the planned day of the bombing, and American planes headed toward Nagasaki instead.

Growing up in Independence, Mo. — the hometown of President Harry S. Truman, who authorized the atomic bombings — Clothier interrogated the history of the bombings at a young age. 

In middle school, he and his peers put Truman “on trial” for a school assignment, attempting to answer the question, was authorizing the bombings the right choice? Thinking through these questions in a shared hometown contributed to Clothier’s interest in peace and ultimately led to his anti-nuclear weapons activism.

McGaughey and Slane both have a German background, which instilled in them the importance of never forgetting the atrocities of the war. Both also spent years living in Japan.

Growing up in Germany, “I was brought up with, ‘Remember, remember, never forget what happened back then,’” Slane says. “For me, that’s in a way connected, and that’s why my heart is there.”

At the intersection of these varied identities and backgrounds are differing narratives about the story of World War II and the relationship between countries like Japan, Germany, and the U.S. The ginkgo trees do not declare one narrative right or another wrong, the project contributors say; they simply open up a space for listening and thinking beyond preconceived notions. 

“Japan tells a story that is very much about its big victimhood and not about what it has done or how it has come to that position in the history,” Konoeda says. “And the U.S. tells its own narratives. And only by stepping outside of those stories, you see a bigger picture. And we are stuck now looking at this contemporary world that’s so divided in different ways, but we need to step back.” 

As a living reminder of both the past and the potential of the future, the ginkgo tree will offer students the opportunity to reflect on their own lives while perhaps exploring these differing historical narratives, McGaughey says.

“The past isn’t necessarily a blueprint for how we should do things. I think we are free to decide for ourselves what should come next,” McGaughey says. “That’s what I hope that the tree can be — a place where people can reflect on, ‘So what is the right thing to do here?’” 

For Wang, a �ֲ���ý politics major and Japanese minor, the relationship between his home country of China and Japan is storied and complicated. Fighting between China and Japan during World War II exacerbated the two countries’ fraught political relationship and, for many, established an enduring resentment between the two populations, a feeling only complicated by the devastation Japan experienced during the atomic bombings.

With this historical context, some people, Wang says, may be surprised to see someone from China advocating so strongly for something like the preservation of the hibakujumoku seeds.

But, after studying Japanese for two years at �ֲ���ý and studying abroad in Japan, Wang holds two things to be true at the same time: the relationship between his home country and Japan has been a difficult one, and the atomic bombings in Japan were unequivocally devastating.

“All of that has some nuanced influence on my opinion of the seed,” Wang says. “But at the end of the day, it came from something that survived the bomb. The wonders of life, the resilience of this being, I think, deserve celebration.”

Ginkgo trees can live for thousands of years. �ֲ���ý’ tree may live on to see the next generation of people, and the next, and the next, its legacy of survival and hope enduring for centuries to come. 

On a recent Thursday, Jose Carmona ’25, a politics major from Chicago, walked a few blocks from campus to see Carmen Thibodeau at her home. He’s been doing this throughout his four years at �ֲ���ý, visiting the woman he considers his Lewiston grandmother. 

Thibodeau gives him everything from life advice to lemonade on these visits. He does his homework on her couch, and then they might catch up on whatever show they’re watching together (Brilliant Minds is a current favorite) while her 14-year-old dog, Sally, circles around them both. It’s cozy, like family. 

And at this point, the Thibodeaus and the Carmonas practically are family, because Jose is not the first of this Chicago-to-�ֲ���ý family to visit the tidy green house near campus. This relationship spans 11 years and three more Carmona siblings: Jose’s brother and two sisters. 

On Sunday, May 25, Jose will be the last of the Carmona siblings to graduate from �ֲ���ý, following in the footsteps of Christopher, age 29, and Alanis, age 28, both members of the Class of 2018, and Carolina, who graduated in 2022. Each of them, during their journey through �ֲ���ý, formed deep bonds with Carmen Thibodeau, her daughter Kristen, and, before his death in 2022, Carmen’s husband, Richard.

The highlights of their times together fill a few pages of the notebook sitting on the kitchen table in front of Carmen. She’s jotted them down in preparation for an interview. They’ve hit all manner of Maine hot spots, from lighthouses to apple orchards to Height of Land, near Rumford, where she and her husband grew up, and the Fryeburg Fair (the draft horses were a big hit). Her daughter, Kristen, took Jose to see Stephen King’s place in Bangor last fall. Mother and daughter bought Jose his first legal drink on his birthday at Mac’s Grill in Auburn.

There have been Easters and Thanksgivings together. There’s a Mexican restaurant in South Portland that Kristen found which made the siblings feel like they were experiencing something akin to their mother Rosa’s legendary cooking. A shelving unit in the garage was devoted to summer storage for the Carmonas. Through these years there have been many airport runs. Farewells, but always greetings again in the fall because there has been at least one Carmona attending �ֲ���ý since 2014 and a spot on the couch for them. Roommate problems? Starbucks cravings? Call Carmen. 

She’s retired, having started her career at the Oxford Paper Mill in Rumford out of high school, taking a break when she had her daughter and son, then working at Liberty Mutual insurance in Lewiston for 30 years. She keeps very busy, helping neighbors with a multitude of errands and appointments. She’s got a 9-year-old grandson. But the last of the Carmonas graduating from �ֲ���ý is a landmark.

 “And when they leave, it’s not going to be good,” Thibodeau says. 

Then she smiles and her eyes light up. “One of the kids one time said, ‘Well maybe we could send one of the dogs.’” (Back home in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, the family has four dogs.) At least one Carmona will still be relatively close by; Alanis is just finishing her third year of a Ph.D. program in cancer metabolism at the Harvard School of Public Health and she pops up to see Thibodeau when she can. 

Just how did this relationship come to be? As far as Thibodeau is concerned, it’s not particularly complicated. “They are so special and so nice, and the parents are so appreciative, how can you not? You know what I’m saying?”

But the story actually goes back to 2011, when Richard was a regular visitor to the �ֲ���ý campus to walk their Siberian husky, Wyatt. Early one spring day, he struck up a conversation with a student named Uriel Gonzalez, a senior from Texas. Gonzalez had been noticing Richard and the beauty of the dog for years (“it’s just not a dog you see anywhere”) and exchanging casual hellos. But that day they talked, and Richard mentioned he was looking forward to seeing the Senior Thesis Exhibition, particularly so he would see artwork by a senior he’d read about who wove indigenous influenced themes into his work. “And I said, ‘Well, I’m the artist,’” Gonzalez remembers.

“My husband runs home with the dog,” Carmen Thibodeau says. “My cousin Linda was visiting from California and we were sitting here in our PJs and having tea. And he comes in, ‘Hurry up, hurry up, we got to go to the museum right now because we’re going to see this artist’s work and he’s coming over for a visit after.’”

Richard, a licensed practical nurse, worked in eldercare in Lewiston and, prior to that, at one of the state’s psychiatric hospitals, in Augusta. He was an avid reader, Carmen says, and “he could talk to anyone about anything.” 

Gonzalez and the Thibodeaus became fast friends. After graduating, Gonzalez took a job in �ֲ���ý Admission and stayed in Lewiston for nearly two years, stopping by the Thibodeaus’ regularly. “They had a garden going and they’d send me home with jalapeños and tomatoes,” he recalls. And sometimes he stayed for dinner. “Commons is obviously great food but sometimes you need a little bit of a changeup.” They became close. “They’re just very genuine, sweet people.” Gonzalez was in the process of becoming a U.S. citizen at that time — Richard had urged him to do so — and the Thibodeaus were there for the citizenship ceremony when it became official.  

In 2013, Gonzalez left Admission and took a job as a college counselor at a charter high school in Chicago. There he made sure he introduced families to the idea that a small liberal arts college, like �ֲ���ý, could be accessible to topnotch students regardless of their financial status. Because the Carmonas had two siblings in the same class year at the school, this message had particular resonance. After Christopher and Alanis were both accepted to �ֲ���ý, they came to tell Gonzalez. “Obviously I’m over the moon,” he said.

Christopher was ready to pack his bags for Lewiston, but it wasn’t an automatic yes for Alanis; “I was very very attached to my mom,” she says. “And very scared of leaving.” Gonzalez understood. His visit to �ֲ���ý at age 17 for the college’s fly-in Prologue program was his first time on an airplane. “We talked a lot about the transition, being away from home,” he said. “And I knew I wanted to connect them to the support network I had there.” 

“It was almost like that instant connection — you could tell they wanted grandkids as much as we wanted grandparents.”

Alanis recalls getting an email from Carmen and Richard during her and Christopher’s first couple of weeks on campus. Would they like to come over? Richard could pick them up. “And I was like, OK, we’re putting a lot of trust out there.” But as soon as they met Richard at Commons, any fears disappeared.

“He was just instantly such a funny character,” Alanis said. “He gave me grandpa vibes.” When they walked into the Thibodeau house and met Carmen and the new husky, Nikita, the good vibes continued.

“They didn’t have grandkids at the time, and our grandparents had already passed,” Alanis said. “So I think it was almost like that instant connection — you could tell they wanted grandkids as much as we wanted grandparents.”

Being from the Midwest, the brother-sister duo, born 10 months apart and dubbed the “Chicago twins” by the Thibodeaus, didn’t know much about Maine. “Other than it’s a vacation land and �ֲ���ý is there, and there’s water, and Portland,” Alanis said, laughing. “So like dutiful grandparents, they really just showed us all around Maine. And soon enough we fell in love with Maine.”

It was on a trip to L.L.Bean, where Carmen first heard Christopher speaking Spanish. His dad, Jose, had called while they were inside the store. “I just wanted to follow Christopher around,” she said. “I loved listening to him speak Spanish. It was just beautiful.” 

Christopher majored in economics and Alanis in biochemistry. Both minored in Chinese. “The semesters came and went. But the Thibodeaus were always there,” Alanis remembers. “They kind of just became our family.”

By the time of their Commencement, their younger sister, Carolina, after a flirtation with another NESCAC school, was committed to coming to �ֲ���ý that fall. But unlike her older siblings, she’d be coming solo. At a party to celebrate graduation, Carmen remembers Rosa Carmona trying to express her gratitude for all that the Thibodeaus had done for Christopher and Alanis, and would do for Carolina. “We were kind of all crying,” Carmen said. “And she was just saying, ‘You don’t know how happy and good I feel to know that you and Richard are here for the kids.’” 

During that weekend in 2018, Jose, just 15 at the time, put on his big brother’s graduation gown in a hallway in Chu. He remembers thinking, “I’ll recreate this moment someday, in my own robe.”

In fall 2020, he applied to �ֲ���ý early decision. He and Carolina, who like Christopher majored in economics, overlapped on campus for one year, when she was a senior. “I would go to her dorm all the time.” She, along with her friend group, helped with his transition to life away from home. So did one of his first professors, Scott Balcomb ’75, then a lecturer in mathematics.

“I would always go to his office hours, even when I didn’t have class with him anymore,” Jose said. 

“You can feel the goodness in him,” Balcomb says. “He was just so incredibly open. If I asked him a question or if he asked me a question, he really wanted to know whatever I thought. It was not like he was just being nice to the old man.” 

Jose went on to take two more courses with Balcomb, both in calculus, not the easiest subject. This made Balcomb reflect on something essential he had learned himself as a �ֲ���ý student arriving in 1971. “�ֲ���ý provided the challenge that if I would work really hard, I could learn far more than I ever thought I could. But to do that, you had to take the challenge. It wasn’t a one-way street. They presented the challenge, and you had to accept it. That’s been my experience with Jose. I presented the challenge to him, and he accepted it and met it. That is just lovely to see. To me, that’s what �ֲ���ý should be about.” 

The other day, when Carmen found out how Jose did on his thesis (A+) she texted a few emojis. Exclamation points. Astonished face. Prayer hands and then a big thumbs up. In a few days, he’ll be bound for Chicago and a job as an analyst at J.P. Morgan. If you ask Carmen if she might take on another �ֲ���ý student as an informal host grandmother, she’ll shake her head. The Carmonas were special.

If you ask Jose, he has another take:

“I think after we go, she’ll probably find another student that needs help, just because she’s so helpful. And I would want that for someone else. I would want someone to have someone they can rely on and go to for advice. Maybe not completely depend on her, just because she is also a very busy lady. But if she does find a student that needs it, I would love that.” 

For two days each semester, Assistant Professor of Economics Kyle Coombs’ “Data Science for Economists” students are laser-focused on one goal.

They hole away in a reserved space on campus for a 48-hour “hackathon” to test their problem-solving skills and apply code, economics, and data science to real-world issues in the local Lewiston community.

Coombs’ goals for the class are to teach students the skills needed for real-world project management and to tackle problems which harm society as a whole. Knowing how to work with data can be a great tool for justifying, evaluating, and addressing socioeconomic concerns. 

“The motivation is around using data to get at social issues, inequality issues, and how it manifests around race, gender, income inequality, economic opportunity, and whether that’s equitable,” Coombs says.

During the fall 2024 hackathon, Coombs’ students tackled a project to examine the efficacy of the city of Lewiston’s efforts to address lead-paint hazards. Like many other cities around the country with aging housing stock, Lewiston has faced problems of lead paint exposure and poisoning in the home.

The Lewiston–Auburn area’s rate of childhood lead poisoning incidents is the highest in the state, according to Healthy Androscoggin, a public health initiative focused on wellness and disease prevention in Androscoggin County.

“We’re the second largest city in Maine, and we have per capita the highest number of young people in the state,” says Jacqueline Crucet, a former city of Lewiston neighborhood development planner who has worked with Coombs and his students. “It’s very important that we have healthy homes for these young people to grow in.”

Through a partnership set up by the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, Coombs connected with Crucet, who provided the hackathon students with information about the city’s lead program.

The data included comparisons of lead paint prevalence with home age and socioeconomic indices, statistics about the kinds of homes that the city has targeted for lead mitigation programs, how the programs are implemented, whether through grant-subsidized or fee-based models.

Coombs’ students analyzed the data and found that the city’s efforts to reduce lead exposure are mostly meeting their goal of targeting homes with the greatest risk of lead exposure, suggesting that during upcoming efforts, the city focus its attention on homes built between 1920 and 1940.

Coombs’ other hackathons thus far have focused on the correlation between streetlights and decreased crime rates and designing rental assistance pilot programs to support local renters.

In recent years, the verb “hack” has shifted away from its nefarious meaning — anonymous computer geniuses working to steal data — to mean solving a problem or creating a shortcut. To wit, a hackathon is a fast-paced, collaborative gathering, with suitable high-tech overtones, to solve a problem in a short period of time.

The hackathons showcase the students’ emerging “creativity and technical skill,” Coombs says, “which is a lot of what you use in workplace scenarios.” 

Each semester, Coombs collaborates with the Harward Center to reserve a campus space for the hackathon; there, students hunker down to work, though the “hackers” come and go for classes, sports, and sleep. While they hack, Coombs fields takeout requests and delivers favorites like Mother India and Pure Thai.

Nick Brown ’25 of Hopkinton, Mass., arrived at his hackathon last fall straight from track practice and settled in to work with a burrito in hand. He says he spent six to ten hours each day working on his team’s project.

“That was with fully comped, really good meals, and working with a great team of people,” Brown says. “It never felt at any point that I was not going to finish or felt rushed. It overall was a very positive experience.”

Like a team of coworkers, the students were responsible for independently dividing up group work and coordinating their schedules.

“I did a lot of the data cleaning and then the regressions, other people did a lot of visualizations or worked on the presentation itself,” Brown says. “It felt very natural, and we also felt like we were communicating very well.”

“Data Science for Economists” is cross-listed as both an economics and a digital and computational studies course. The hackathon is the culmination of a semester spent, for many of Coombs’ students, learning to code for the first time, an often-frustrating process of trial and error. 

“You will make constant mistakes,” Coombs says. “It’s about learning how to get through the mistakes, push through, address the problems, help yourself find creative solutions to a technical problem.”

The students organize their work in GitHub, a software storage program, and code in the language “R,” which is free and open source, meaning any student can access the code from their personal computer. An economics and history major with a minor in math, Brown used the R skills he learned during the course to complete his senior economics thesis. 

“In terms of raw skill building, this was probably the number one class I’ve taken at �ֲ���ý,” Brown says. 

After each two-day hackathon, the students present their work to city partners and make recommendations based on what they discovered. The city partners can then use the analyses in their own evaluations and projects. 

“It was really cool to be able to present to community members and see them actually derive insights from what we found and think about how those could be used to actually benefit people,” Brown says. “That was really insightful for me, how you can leverage your skills to create meaningful impacts.”

Each hackathon subject ties directly into greater city plans. In 2020, Lewiston received a $1.3 million federal grant to develop a resident-led transformation plan, “Growing Our Tree Streets,” for its downtown neighborhood, which has nine goals that will be accomplished across 25 years. (“Tree streets” is the nickname of the neighborhood where many streets have names like Oak and Maple.)

Based on the strength of the transformation plan, the city was awarded a $30 million Choice Implementation Grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Lewiston is the first small city in the country to receive the competitive grant, which is intended to help cities revitalize and transform neighborhoods. “We are like this beautiful experiment,” Crucet says. “We’re the right size for this kind of major investment where we’re taking some risks and trying to be as innovative as possible to meet the goals that we’ve set out in the transformation plan.”

Crucet was attracted to Lewiston because of that very “go getter” mindset that led residents, including �ֲ���ý alumni, to lead the charge for the transformation plan. 

“We have this amazing cadre of �ֲ���ý alumni,” Crucet says. “They’re doers and they’re taking all of their knowledge and all of their life experience and investing in Lewiston, and they see a future.” 

By tackling subjects included in the city transformation plan and making suggestions to the city, Coombs’ students are able to join in on these real-world efforts. 

“The exercise of the hackathon enables them to have the opportunity to inform actual policy and the business of the municipality in which they live,” Crucet says.

Commuter traffic rumbled past the homey building on Main Street, but out back, the vibe was considerably more melodious. Instead of revving engines, live classical music was the soundtrack for an early October day at the Looking Ahead Clubhouse in Lewiston.

Two �ֲ���ý students and a newly appointed professor of music helped to bring the soothing beauty of music, through piano and voice, to an audience at the vocational center for adults living with mental illness.

The �ֲ���ý musicians performed as part of the , who is visiting various towns and cities to perform for audiences who may not typically have access to live music.

Sawada performs in intimate, inclusive spaces such as community centers, shelters, and public schools, rather than traditional concert halls. At the clubhouse on Oct. 4, she and the �ֲ���ý students and their professor performed outside on the patio behind the building, located just a mile from campus. Clubhouse members gathered close by.

Jahan Baker-Wainwright ’25, a biochemistry major from Cottage Grove, Wis., played Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata. Marrich Somridhivej ’26, a biology major from South Windsor, Conn., and Sawada performed Amy Beach’s “Summer Dreams” for four hands.

Chris Gepford, the director of the Looking Ahead Clubhouse, said that the event hit some important notes. “We had recently started a relationship with �ֲ���ý,” through the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, he said, “and this was a wonderful way to start our partnership.” 

Hosting the Gather Hear visit and events like it can help raise awareness of the clubhouse’s programming in the Lewiston-Auburn community, he added, “so that individuals with mental health needs have a program where they are colleagues, and their unique talents and abilities are utilized [so they can] grow into the best version of themselves.”

For the students, the Gather Hear performance was a meaningful opportunity to connect through music. “Classical music often lies behind a barrier that many people struggle to overcome,” said Baker-Wainwright. “My job as a classical musician is to share music, and I’m happy to have contributed to a more inclusive experience.”

Somridhivej, who has been playing the piano since age 6, noted how he has “typically performed in front of judges or a competition jury, where the focus is on technical precision and evaluation. My performance became less about perfection, and more about connecting with people and sharing the beauty of music.”

Gepford said, “We loved having the opportunity to be a part of individuals’ academic journey.”

 Zen Kuriyama, who joined the �ֲ���ý faculty this fall and directs the College Choir, sang two pieces by Franz Schubert: his emotionally charged “Der Doppelgänger” and the uplifting “An die Musik.” Choosing contrasting selections was intentional, said Kuriyama. “We wanted songs that represented a binary of mental states — one ecstatic and joyful, the other frenetic and dark.”

While Gepford said classical music is not the go-to listening choice of clubhouse members, “we had a lot of positive feedback from our group. Everyone agreed that the music was wonderful, enjoyable, and calming.”

As one of the clubhouse members told Kuriyama afterward, “The negative voices in my head stopped for the first time in months while listening to your music.”

That response speaks directly to the sentiments expressed in of one of the pieces Kuriyama sang, Schubert’s “An die Musik.” The title means, simply, “To Music,” and the opening lyrics are: “In how many a bleak hour, when I am enmeshed in life’s tumultuous round, have you kindled my heart to the warmth of love, and borne me away to a better world.”