From left, Convocation speakers Umar Khan ’13, professor Stephen Engel and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ President Clayton Spencer chat prior to Convocation 2012. Also shown are professors Sawyer Sylvester and Thomas Tracy. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College.

Telling the Class of 2016 that there is no higher reward than to work with passion and purpose, President Clayton Spencer offered as an example a mentor from her own past: the late U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy.

“He was meant to be a senator, and he was lucky enough to figure that out early and throw himself into a career that he approached each and every day with passion, diligence and joy, and with a lot of laughs — not all at my expense,” said Spencer, who worked for Kennedy as chief education counsel for the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources in the 1990s.

Read the full texts of Convocation remarks by President Clayton Spencer and Assistant Professor of Politics Stephen Engel.

Learn more about the Class of 2016.

Having moved into Lane Hall just two months ago, Spencer was among the newbies during Tuesday’s Convocation as she gave her first speech as president to the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community. She addressed 503 first-year students and 17 transfers, along with hundreds of upperclassmen, staff and faculty in Alumni Gym. (For the second year in a row, the ceremony opening the new academic year was forced inside by weather, this year by rain from the remnants of Hurricane Isaac.)

Assistant Professor of Politics Stephen Engel connected political compromise with the characteristics of a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ education in his Convocation address. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College.

Kennedy was an apt choice of subject for Spencer’s talk. Yes, the Massachusetts senator afforded her the opportunity to share a bit of her past with a community that’s just getting to know her. More importantly, though, the senator was renowned for his effectiveness in crossing ideological boundaries in the Senate in order to get things done — in short, he was a master of compromise. And compromise was the theme of Convocation 2012.

Both Spencer’s remarks and the Convocation address by Stephen Engel, an assistant professor of politics who started at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 2011, explored that theme. (The other Convocation speakers were Dean of the Faculty Pam Baker ’70, student government President Umar Khan ’13 and Multifaith Chaplain Bill Blaine-Wallace.)

Their words fell on receptive ears, or so it was hoped, as the new students’ summer reading assignment was the political study The Spirit of Compromise: Why Governing Demands It and Campaigning Undermines It, by Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson (Princeton University Press, 2012).

The book argues that political campaigns, on the one hand, and governing, on the other, require antithetical mindsets and skill sets. In particular, the art of compromise is essential to effective governance, as it must satisfy diverse stakeholders. But the political establishment has lapsed into a “constant campaign” mode, a sort of wartime mentality whose extreme and unwavering positions leave no room for compromise, making good governance next to impossible.

Quoting columnist Robert Kuttner, President Spencer described Kennedy as a politician who “would work with the Devil to produce progressive legislation to better the condition of regular Americans.” In other words, he practiced what Gutmann and Thompson are preaching, and Spencer offered three anecdotes illustrating how “compromise played out in the legislative process before my very eyes.”

A little rain didn’t dampen student spirits on Convocation Day 2012. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College.

In two of her stories, Spencer played the zealous policy analyst raring to bend the Senate to the inevitability of her expertise — until Kennedy showed her a better way that would honor the sensibilities of their opponents and lead to legislation that would still advance the cause, while minimizing wounded feelings and keeping a light in the window for future collaborations.

Effective compromise, she told the Alumni Gym audience, “involves personal relationships, flexibility and a sense of timing” — when to press a point and when to wait. Moreover, because all people construct personal narratives that help them make sense of their lives and work, Spencer said that “part of working effectively with people is understanding that, and respecting the narratives of others.”

Spencer’s third vignette seemed especially relevant as, 830 miles away in her native state of North Carolina, the Democratic National Convention was getting under way. She recalled the aftermath of the elections of 1994, the year of the Contract with America and the Republican ascent in Congress. As Kennedy sought to preserve education funding in the face of budget-cutting pressure, he eschewed dialogue in favor of hardball tactics (such as importing Bay State students for a demonstration on the Senate floor) not to advance a specific bill, but to reframe the dialogue itself.

The lesson for the Class of 2016? “Always keep your larger goals in mind. And remember that you have to step back sometimes to reframe a problem in order to make progress.”

Making some historical detours to remind listeners that, though American politics seem dire right now, they’ve actually been worse, Engel related lessons of the assigned reading to the rewards of a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ education.

If ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ isn’t a legislature, he said, it shares with such bodies the imperative of engaging actively with ideas. “To do so successfully, to make good on the promise that the college makes to you, our community requires the very same foundation underlying the spirit of compromise, most notably mutual respect” — a concept that he took pains to distinguish from tolerance.

“Live and let live” is one thing, but mutual respect is more: It’s a consideration based on active engagement with the ideas of others, and on the willingness to re-examine our own ideas.

“So what we at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ ask of you — what we challenge you to do; what we give you the support to achieve — is that you seize opportunity to scrutinize the ideas and values you hold today, to test them against others and to listen intently to people different from yourselves,” he said.

“At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, you have the freedom to develop your ideas, to speak and to write with conviction and depth. But that freedom demands a simultaneous commitment to be responsible for the consequences of that speech, for the impact that your ideas and actions have on those around you.”

Vladimir Munkhanov, a teacher, historian and lawyer from Siberia, visits ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College to present the lecture Buryat Traditions and the Modern World: Siberian Lives in Post-Soviet Russia at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 16, in Room 204, Carnegie Science Hall, 44 Campus Ave.

Presented by the environmental studies program at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ with support from the Mellon Innovation Fund, the event is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-6289.

Munkhanov is ethnically Buryat, a Mongolian people of the Lake Baikal region of south central Siberia near Mongolia. His talk will explore the cultures of this region and how ancient place-based traditions are responding to contemporary challenges in post-Soviet Russia.

Professor of Environmental Studies Jane Costlow, who invited Munkhanov to campus, first met him when he spoke to her students at a Lake Baikal biological station during a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Fall Semester Abroad program in Russia in 2009.

“He spoke with us about the history and culture of that region,” she says, “and also about how his own life and choices reflect the challenges and possibilities of Russian life today.”

Munkhanov, she says, in a way personifies the tensions between past and present that underlie life in Russia. “The tension is about understanding yourself through the past — a past that in the Soviet era would have been repressed or heavily manipulated — and working within emerging structures to try to forge a new future.”

In his case, the tensions are both civic, because both the structures of Russian society and its self-identity remain in flux, and cultural, as Munkhanov tries to situate his Buryat culture within a modernizing Russia.

“Will young Buryat people continue to learn Buryat, for example?” Costlow says. “I think he’s pretty realistic about the reasons young people might choose to turn their face toward the city.”

The real Siberia, Costlow adds, remains unknown to many Americans. “This region is stunningly beautiful, and is deeply beloved by all Russians — a kind of iconic spiritual landscape, vast and in many ways untouched.” Lake Baikal, the deepest and oldest lake on Earth, holds more fresh water than all the Great Lakes combined, and remains relatively unharmed by human activity.

“There’s a rich mix of cultures in this part of Russia,” Costlow says — Mongolian, Buryat and other native peoples in addition to Russian — and a corresponding mix of spiritual beliefs.

“I want anyone who is interested to know more about this part of the world. And to realize that Russia is a country whose people are working in a variety of ways to both confront contemporary challenges and stay faithful to traditions that were violently interrupted in the Soviet era.”

Bob Hatch, who became director of athletics in 1974, speaks with Bryant Gumbel ‘70, then an LA-based NBC sports reporter, for a 1977 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Magazine story on Bobcat athletics. Talking about the need for excellent facilities, Hatch said, “Looking down the road, I think people are going to be as fussy picking a college as they are picking a new suit or automobile. They are going to shop â€�

At a 2005 football game at Garcelon Field, Bob Hatch (right) enjoys the company of, from left, Dean Emeritus of Admissions Milt Lindholm ’35, Brian Flynn ’57, Paul Planchon ’66 and Chick Leahey ’52, former longtime baseball coach.

Bob Hatch and Jim Murphy ‘69, who played quarterback, show off Murphy’s football jersey, retired on Nov. 20, 1968. Murphy is the current women’s soccer and basketball coach. Photo courtesy ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library.

Bob Hatch coaches the Bobcat football team, circa 1967. Hatch served as head football coach from 1952 to 1972 before becoming athletics director.

Bob Hatch in 1977.

Professor Emeritus of Physical Education Robert W. Hatch, an icon of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ athletics whose contributions  encompassed innovation and opportunity, died Feb. 13, 2010. He was 85.

• View reporter Dan Hartill’s story about Hatch in the
• View ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ story about Hatch and the 1956 Maine State Series football champions
• View published after his retirement in 1991
• View ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ tribute to Hatch on his induction to the Scholar-Athlete Society in 2005
• Visiting hours: Feb. 19, 4-8 p.m., Fortin Funeral Home, Auburn; memorial service: Fortin Funeral Home,  Feb. 20, 11 a.m., with a reception in New Commons afterward.
• Friends are sharing their memories

Appointed instructor in physical education and freshman football coach in 1949, Hatch’s head coaching assignments included varsity baseball (1951-53) and football (1952-72) as well as golf. He became assistant director of athletics in 1959 and succeeded Lloyd Lux as director in 1974, serving until 1991.

Considered an innovator as a coach, Hatch once deployed an unusual spread formation in football versus the much larger University of Maine team in 1961, stunning the undefeated Black Bears with a 15-15 tie.

In 1955, he wrote a suggesting that traditional RBI statistics could be misleading and urging greater use of on-base percentage, twin notions that are central to the modern “sabermetric” approach to evaluating baseball talent developed by Bill James and others in the 1980s.

“There was no bravado. He thought of it as just the right thing to do.”

As director of athletics, he oversaw the creation of a women’s varsity athletic program in the 1970s. “At a time when few schools were doing anything, he created opportunities for women athletes,” sad his immediate ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ successor, Suzanne Coffey, to the Sun Journal. “There was no bravado. He thought of it as just the right thing to do.” Coffey is now AD at Amherst.

Kevin McHugh, Coffey’s successor as director of athletics at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, says that Hatch’s “right thing” ethos endures at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ today. “The current ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ athletics program reflects Bob’s idea of quality: good people who care about the institution and its student-athletes. Aside from wins and losses, there’s a social conscience and education-centered philosophy here. To me, that came down from Bob.”

William Manning, one of Maine’s leading abstract artists, shows more than four decades’ worth of works on paper at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art in an exhibition that opens with a lecture and reception at 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 10. Admission to “William Manning: Works on Paper 1961-2002” is free and the public is welcome at the museum located in the college’s Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

“The work of William Manning, rich in imagination and associations, defies easy categorization in terms of subject matter, style or even medium,” Kenneth Wayne writes in the exhibition catalog. (Wayne is the curator of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, in Buffalo, N.Y.). Indeed, Manning has experimented constantly with medium and approach, even turning to such concepts as three-dimensional paintings in his pursuit of a richer painted image.

Manning cites Cubism and Abstract Expressionism as important influences on a style that transcends both. In the former, he found both the collage technique pioneered by Picasso and Braque and the freedom to divorce his images from objective nature. As Manning told Wayne, he seeks to render not what he sees but what he feels.

From the Abstract Expressionists, Manning synthesized the two dominant directions, Wayne explains in his catalog essay: the color planes explored by such painters as Mark Rothko and the gestural approach of people like Jackson Pollock. For Manning, Wayne writes, each of these “gives a different effect: the color planes convey depth, contemplation and spirituality, while the gestural movements display spontaneity, movement and action.” Similarly, Manning has mastered the difficult process of harmonizing organic and geometric elements.

Manning is a Maine artist throughout. Except for a brief interlude in New York, he has always lived here: He was born in Lewiston in 1936, studied and then taught at what is now the Maine College of Art and today resides in Portland. Maine’s natural setting is central to his work. Every autumn Manning spends several weeks on the island of Monhegan, and it is the works on paper created during these visits that inform his paintings.

It’s also the works on paper, of course, that constitute the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art exhibit. Including drawings, collages, paintings and mixtures of media, the 37 works demonstrate Manning’s progress over 40-plus years from minimalism and a vestigial realism to today’s robust colors and evocative imagery.

“Everything about Manning’s work is subtle and delicate,” Wayne writes. “All of the works are intimate and personal in scale.”

“William Manning: Works on Paper 1961-2002” runs in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art’s Upper Gallery through March 21. Opening concurrently and running through Feb. 28 in the Lower Gallery is an exhibition of photographic portraits of noted Maine artist Marsden Hartley made by photographer George Platt Lynes. For more information, please call 207-786-6158.

The film’s location makes it exotic, says Abikeyeva, “but at the same time it will be the journey of your own childhood. That is why the film will be very close to your own heart.”

The production is the first post-Soviet feature film produced in Kyrgyzstan, one of the smallest nations in Central Asia, and bordered by China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The size of Minnesota and dominated by towering mountains, some as tall as 24,000 feet, the country has a population of 4.5 million people, most of whom are Sunni Muslims.

The author of two books, The New Kazakh Cinema (1998) and Central Asian Cinema: 1990-2001 (2001), Abikeyeva has published more than 100 newspaper and magazine articles about film. She received a doctorate from the All-Union Institute of Cinema in Moscow where she wrote a dissertation on The Interaction of Cultures of the East and the West in Modern Cinema Process.

Abikeyeva has directed arts and culture programs in Kazakhstan for since 1997. Between 1992 and 1994, she was editor-in-chief of the critically acclaimed film magazine Asia-kino. Since 1995, she has taught film at the Kazakh Academy of Arts.

During her Fulbright visit, Abikeyeva is based at Bowdoin College. The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ event is co-sponsored by the German, Russian and East Asian languages departments and the Office of the Dean of Faculty.

The endowed ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Class of 1997 Scholarship Fund, established by the 1997 graduating class, gives preference to children of hourly employees in secretarial services, Facility Services, custodial services, security and dining services.

Deschaines, a junior at Syracuse University in the College of Arts and Sciences, will use her $500 award to help defray the cost of tuition. She is the daughter of Martha Deschaines, who works in the chaplain’s office at the college’s Center for Service-Learning, and Marcel Deschaines of Auburn.

Houston, a junior sports-medicine major at Lyndonville State College in Lyndonville, Vt., will use her $500 award to help defray the cost of tuition. She is the daughter of Joan Houston, a secretary in the college’s Facility Services department, and Homer Houston of Poland.

The Class of 1997 Scholarship Fund was established through the traditional Senior Gift effort undertaken by each graduating class at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. The Class of 1997 raised $19,000, the largest Senior Gift ever, which was matched by Dr. Helen A. Papaioanou, a 1949 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ graduate and former college trustee. Seventy percent of the class participated in the gift effort, also a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ record.

The Class of 1997 Scholarship Fund supports a broad range of learning opportunities including tuition support for secondary or post-secondary education at the institution of the designee’s choice. Eligibility for a Class of 1997 scholarship is limited to children of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ staff with priority given to hourly employees in secretarial services, Facility Services, custodial services, security and dining services. Nominations for scholarships are directed to a committee composed of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ employees that makes one or more scholarship awards annually.

Total bachelor of arts degrees conferred: 280
Men: 133
Women: 147

Total bachelor of science degrees conferred: 105
Men: 61
Women: 44

Number of seniors graduating with honors in a major: 72

Number of seniors graduating summa cum laude: 15

Number of seniors graduating magna cum laude: 48

Number of seniors graduating cum laude: 70

Chase Pray, a 25-year veteran of dining services and a long-time runner, decided that he wasn’t going to cool his heels for the worst ice storm in New England’s history. Unable to drive to work from his home in Greene because of the ice-caked roads, Pray donned thermal polypropylene, spandex tights and his spiked cross-country racing flats and ran to work at 7 a.m. on Thursday, Jan. 8. He covered nine miles of nearly impassable roads in about an hour and 20 minutes before grabbing a cold shower in Merrill Gymnasium and working a regular eight-hour shift in Commons.

“It was too boring to stay at home. No power, no lights, no nothing,” joked Pray, 53, who logs at least 40 miles each week. “I figured things would be shorthanded, and I’m not one to stay still too long.”

After work on Thursday, Pray spent the night at a friend’s house in Lewiston. Early Friday, he hoofed it back to Greene to make sure his home hadn’t been damaged by downed power lines and tree limbs.

Teaching by propane lantern was the order of the day on Friday for Michael Jones, professor of history. Five of his seven students in a junior-senior seminar showed up in darkened Canham House for an apropos discussion on the decline of the Roman Empire. When asked why he didn’t yield to the adverse teaching conditions, Jones chuckled and said, “Some of it was just perversity.”

Jones had planned to use an overhead projector in the class, but said teaching without power made him realize how much reliance there is on technology to present a class. “I felt like Diogenes holding the lantern up to the blackboard,” he said.

Above the din of roaring hair dryers, Bert Tardif, a plumber in Facility Services, took a short break from thawing pipes at 141 Nichols St. (Office of College Relations) to say that time for sleep had been scarce since the storm’s onset. Between thawing pipes, helping electricians to string cable and checking on gas-powered generators, Tardif and his compatriots worked shifts that defied circadian rhythms. Despite the long hours, he said that their heroic labors weren’t going unnoticed.

“Anytime we came around the corner with a generator, we made a lot of friends,” he said.

Landscape Coordinator Bill Bergevin was seen striding purposefully across the limb-strewn Quad, bearing an ax in each hand. Given the grim determination on his face and his choice of implements, it was decided that questions about the health of campus flora should wait. Bergevin later said that the magnolia next to Hathorn suffered serious wounds during the storm. He plans to wait until spring to determine if the much-beloved landmark must be uprooted. Ninety percent of campus trees sustained significant damage and six more were taken down in the days following the storm as a safety precaution.

On Thursday morning, Pone Vattasso, of dining services, faced a chef’s worst nightmare — no power and a hoard of hungry students, staff and faculty craving a hot breakfast. A Maalox moment? Not for Vattasso, who broke out five 12-inch by 12-inch propane-powered hot plates and — with the help of colleague John Jordan — cooked 2,000 two-egg omelets to order.

Gloria Chadburn, a 15-year veteran of dining services and the Den, holds the unofficial record for the most days holed up at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ because of the storm. Friday, Jan. 16, marked her ninth day away from her home in Greene because of power outages and frozen pipes. After working 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. shifts in the Den, she retired to makeshift living quarters set up for stranded students and employees at 207 Wood St., the Den or Hirasawa Lounge. “Hirasawa has been my presidential suite,” laughed Chadburn.

After Keith Pray and Owen Keene, both of dining services, finished preparing hundreds of pounds of ham, egg and turkey salads for Commons diners, they packaged up quart-sized containers for any staff or faculty member who couldn’t prepare food at home.

Bob Volpi, the environmentally conscious director of dining services, had but one regret about how the storm affected his operation. “Without hot water to wash the dishes, we had to use about 6,000 pieces of paper and plastic. That’s way out of line with our usual environmental standards,” he said.

Director of Facility Services Pat Murphy, like many area residents, found that gas generators were even more scarce than D batteries and lamp oil. Fortunately, four samaritans from Facility Services added their own generators to the power-restoration effort. After using their generators to heat their homes during nights, Clifford Arnold (electrician supervisor), Ron Landry (electrician), Mike Adams (equipment operator) and Rick Lacasse (grounds team leader), hooked theirs up for several full day’s work at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

Neither Bill Bergevin nor Bill St. Pierre, a roofer from Facility Services, had power or heat at their homes. Nonetheless, they asked security for 2 a.m. wake-up calls so they could tend to generators throughout the night. Joining Bergevin and St. Pierre in the round-the-clock gas-and-oil brigade were painting supervisor Dan Sands, painter Steve Morin, mason Wilfred Chouinard and carpenters Tom Winslow, Frank Roy and Brad Gagne.

Aside from devoting long hours to the College, several employees kept a keen eye out for each other and area residents in need. Elaine Freeman, associate director of Facility Services, stopped to offer a ride to Lorraine Brochu, dining services, who — en route to work — was struggling to maneuver across icy Pettengill Street on her hands and knees.

Director of Security and Campus Safety Larry Johnson offered the county United Emergency Management Agency the use of Merrill Gymnasium as a shelter site for anyone without power and heat. But, by the time power was restored to Merrill, Peter Van Gagnon, director of Androscoggin EMA, had selected Lewiston High School and Lewiston’s Multi-Purpose Center as shelter sites. Mattresses were made available to the Lewiston High School shelter, several students volunteered at the Auburn Middle School shelter and the Deansmen and Merimanders sang a cappella at area shelters.

When Laura Biscoe, assistant coordinator of student activities and volunteer coordinator, received a call for help from emergency services in New Gloucester on Thursday, Jan. 15, she mobilized Bob Volpi, Christine Schwartz and Brad Slye of dining services to check on several of the town’s elderly who had been without heat and electricity for more than a week.

The following day, Biscoe and Schwartz took time out from their busy schedules to deliver ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ firewood to local residents. Electrician Paul Szott and painter John Snyder delivered a cord of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ firewood to needy Buckfield residents, and maintenance coordinator Bob Leavitt did the same for some South China denizens. When the Red Cross contacted Associate Director for Service-Learning Peggy Rotundo for information on sources of seasoned firewood, she and husband Danny Danforth, professor of anthropology, donated half a truckload of their own supply.

Overheard words from Mary Risko, dining services production team leader, revealed the reflex among ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ employees to help others. When Bob Volpi asked her if she needed bottled water or firewood, she said “Make sure everyone else gets what they need first.”

(This story originally appeared in a special issue of the employee newsletter, ReÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, in January 1998.)

— Marc Glass ’88