convocation – News

Opening Convocation at �ֲ��ý offers timeless and timely advice to the Class of 2028

Jay Burns — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 14:52:56 +0000

Sitting in the sun in front of Coram Library with their �ֲ��ý professors, the 491 members of the Class of 2028 who gathered for Convocation on Tuesday heard advice, both timeless and timely, about navigating their new college.

In his welcome, President Garry W. Jenkins invited the new students to take their place as the newest stewards of �ֲ��ý’ culture of being open to ideas and beliefs that might differ from one’s own. “It is the work we do together for the broadening and bettering of ourselves, our community, and our world,” he said.

Time-tested advice also came from two student speakers, Sivani Arvapalli ’26 of South Windsor, Conn., and Ethan Chan ’25 of Westborough, Mass., co-presidents of �ֲ��ý Student Government, who invited the incoming students to be unhesitant in seeking help from those around them.

Sivani Arvapalli ’26 (left) of South Windsor, Conn., and Ethan Chan ’25 of Westborough, Mass., co-presidents of �ֲ��ý Student Government, walk to the Coram Library stage to offer their welcome at Convocation on Sept. 3, 2024. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ��ý College)

“When you find yourself facing a new obstacle, considering a new perspective, or exploring a new path, reach out to those here to support you: Professors, advisors, staff, and peers are all here for you,” said Chan.

Along with the timeless, there was also timely advice and guidance reflecting current events, especially the U.S. presidential election just 62 days away.

“You begin your college careers in, shall we say, interesting times,” said Jenkins. “We have a hotly contested emotional presidential election coming our way. As a society, our commitment to openness and civil discourse will be tested as we struggle to meet across lines of discord and difference.

“It’s going to be a challenging time in the U.S., but I believe in this community. I believe in �ֲ��ý and that means I believe in each of you and in your commitment to openness, to engagement, to active listening, and to respect for those around you. This is the �ֲ��ý I know and love. This is the community into which I’m so proud to welcome you.”

In these challenging times, Jenkins said, it is crucial to “fight the urge to say or to think, ‘How could anyone think X or support Y or believe Z?’ I have. I’m not proud of it.”

“We need to commit to empathy when it comes to our treatment of others, both in person and online, and learn from our missteps,” said President Garry W. Jenkins during his Convocation remarks on Sept. 3, 2024. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ��ý College)

In resisting the urge to automatically nay-say what others believe, “we need to learn both how to listen and how to be heard, how to make an argument and how to really understand the arguments and feelings of others,” Jenkins said. “We need to learn how to relate and connect across differences — how to thoughtfully consider the ways our approaches and actions may be affecting others and how we use that information to pivot or reframe if necessary.

“We need to commit to empathy when it comes to our treatment of others, both in person and online, and learn from our missteps. We need to learn how to see and embrace the complexity rather than simply assert the certainty.”

The welcomes and offerings to the Class of 2028 during Opening Convocation — advice to seek connections, to be open to others, to try new things — reflect in part the deep history of �ֲ��ý’ annual back-to-college ceremony.

A century ago, the academic ceremony to welcome incoming students was known as “First Chapel,” as a bookend to “Last Chapel” exercises for the senior class held each spring prior to graduation. Now known as Opening Convocation, the fall event remains thematically tethered to Commencement, also held on the lawn in front of Coram Library.

“Rooted in a powerful sense of place,” the lawn in front of Coram Library, the site of Convovcaton and Commencement, is where “generations of �ֲ��ý have come to celebrate both the start and the summation of their studies,” said Jenkins. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ��ý College)

“So it’s here at the heart of this beautiful campus where generations of �ֲ��ý have come to celebrate both the start and the summation of their studies,” said Jenkins. Gathering together in a meaningful place helps us understand who we are, Jenkins added — the feeling of being “rooted in a powerful sense of place and being part of local, regional, and global ecosystems.”

The timeless power of place was also invoked by the event’s guest speaker, award-winning author Sonja Pieck, the Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies. Reflecting a �ֲ��ý tradition, Pieck was chosen by the graduating Class of 2024 to offer this year’s address to the incoming Class of 2028.

Pieck urged the new students to roam freely around their new home. “Open yourself to notice and appreciate what is here now,” she said. “There are so many quiet, lovely corners waiting to be discovered, like Lake Andrews and its inhabitants, memorials and markers,” she said.

“Find people from the groundskeepers to the archivists at Muskie Archives from your history and anthropology professors to those in ecology and earth systems to help you explore and understand this landscape more deeply.”

Sonja Pieck, the Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies, talked about the emotion of grief in her remarks, “an unusual topic for Convocation,” she said, but “as individuals, as a society, and as a planet we are awash in loss. So how do we honor grief when it comes, tend to it and grow from it?” (Theophil Syslo / �ֲ��ý College)

The search for beauty and joy “can radiate out into the community, too,” she added. In Lewiston, “appreciate the signs of care and solidarity, the graffiti art and the murals, the children playing in Kennedy Park, the laughter of friends meeting up at the Lewiston Farmers Market, the neighborhood flower boxes, or the Lisbon Street storefronts that someone lovingly tends.”

Pieck’s remarks were titled “Mind the Gap,” which refers to the recorded audio warning heard at train or subway stations in the U.K. alerting passengers to heed the space between the train and the platform.

In terms of a helpful metaphor for life at �ֲ��ý, “minding the gap” means to mind and tend to those “feelings, memories, and meanings” that tend to get pushed into the gap as we lead busy lives. New college students, especially, are susceptible to shoving important emotions into the gap as they forge ahead in their new community. Grief, she said, is one of those emotions.

In her 2023 book, Mnemonic Ecologies, Pieck explored the conservation of the once-militarized Iron Curtain borderland between the former East and West Germany. Violence and death, and thus grief, were part of the border’s history and legacy. During her research, Pieck saw how conservation on wounded land must engage with grief and memory.

“I know grief is an unusual topic for Convocation, but my field deals with loss and grief all the time,” she told the students. “As individuals, as a society, and as a planet we are awash in loss. So how do we honor grief when it comes, tend to it and grow from it?”

Here, Pieck recalled the mass shootings in Lewiston 11 months ago, and conversations that she had with her students in the course “The Politics of Wildlife Conservation,” which included studying species extinction.

Throughout the semester, “grief had been our constant companion,” she recalled. During a class session after Oct. 25, she asked her students to describe the difference between the two powerful human emotions of grief and despair.

Etymologically speaking, “grief” is related to the Latin gravis, meaning “weighty,” while the word “despair” comes from the Latin verb desperare, “to be without hope.”

But the class discussion that day “didn’t actually dwell on etymology,” she said. Instead, they talked about the dominant emotion — grief — that was everywhere in Lewiston after the killings. “Grief was everywhere. Despair, however, was not. A trip through Lewiston neighborhoods showed the living, changing facets of grief — fear, sadness, confusion, anger — and also love, connection, community care, courage.”

Those qualities triumphed in the days, weeks, and months after the killings. “People throughout Maine declared themselves ‘Lewiston Strong.’ The governor declared, ‘We will all help you carry this grief.’”

A �ֲ��ý football player’s cleats carry word “Lewstrong” during a November 2023 game, in solidarity with Lewiston after the Oct. 25, 2023, mass shootings. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College

“In contrast to despair, grief is alive,” said Pieck. “It breathes, it ebbs and flows and transforms within us, and it changes over time. Grief is born from the loss of something we love. Many have said that grief is a hallmark of care and the price we pay for the joy of loving. So grief can call forth some of the most noble and powerful human emotions.”

This is the “gift of grief,” she told the new students, offering three ways that grief can offer timeless lessons in how to be better and more effective humans.

First, grief teaches us to slow down, where “we become sensitive to even the tiniest magnificence: the breath of our own bodies, the rustling of the leaves above our heads today, or the indescribable magic of a new friendship.”

Second, grief teaches resilience. “Coping with loss makes us develop the capacity for dealing with change, with setbacks, with frustration — the uncertainty inherent to living,” she said, adding that “so many of us are eager to support and help you. As you build resilience in the face of challenges, you’re not on your own.”

And third, grief teaches the power of community, “opening us up to our common humanity and bringing us together,” she said. “In fact, shared grief is the inner core of most social movements, including #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, where people harness shared grief to make change. Their profound love for their families, their communities, for land, for place, fuels a vision of what can be imagined.”

Convocation concluded with the traditional tree-planting service, including poetry, music, a watering ritual, that is held in memory of �ֲ��ý faculty and staff who have died in the past year. The newly planted tree this year was a hop hornbeam, along the path between the Class of 1929 Gate and Hathorn Hall.

Students water a newly planted hop hornbeam along the path between the Class of 1929 Gate and Hathorn Hall during the annual memorial tree-planting service following Convocation on Sept. 3, 2024. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ��ý College)

Here, too, the emotion of grief was invoked as a path toward healing. “This complexity of emotions within grief is a beautiful thing, a truly human thing, a strength,” said the Rev. Brittany Longsdorf, the college’s multifaith chaplain.

“I invite you in this shared moment of remembrance to feel those layers, those tangles of emotions. This is a moment of spaciousness for those complexities, those tangles to settle in. We can breathe into that space, we can name how much we miss our departed colleagues and friends, feel the depth of that sadness — and also creatively dream of the way they live among us in memory and impact.”

The names of these late �ֲ��ý faculty and staff were read at the service:

Albert Fereshetian, Athletics
Frank Ford, Facility Services
Normand Gagne, Facility Services
David Gaynor, Facility Services
Sue Houchins, Africana
Pamela Johnson, Art and Visual Culture
Frank Lyons, Campus Safety
Dana Mulholland, Athletics
Eric Polley, Facility Services
William Pope L., Theater and Dance
Kenneth Smith Sr., Dining, Catering, Conferences, and Events
Richard Spalding, Facility Services

At Convocation, an embrace and promise for the Class of 2027: ‘You get to be who you want to be’

Deirdre Stires — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 14:08:58 +0000

From the Bobcat cheers coming from the women’s soccer team to President Garry W. Jenkins’ promise to the Class of 2027 that �ֲ��ý is a place where “you get to be who you want to be,” the resounding message at Opening Convocation on Sept. 5 was that �ֲ��ý is a community centered on caring and kindness.

Associate Professor of Biology Andrew Mountcastle put a fine point on that message in his Convocation address, inviting the Class of 2027 to “embrace the process of learning in all of its messy imperfection” and then promising: “You are not alone. You see all of these folks up front in colored robes? We are literally here for you.”

The academic procession marches by Hathorn Hall on its way to Coram Library for Opening Convocation on Sept. 5, 2023. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

As the 509 students in the Class of 2027 paraded across the Historic Quad on Sept. 5, they walked past the Mouthpiece, a gift from a class that graduated exactly 100 years before them, the Class of 1927 — a telling reminder that they were taking part in a �ֲ��ý ceremony in a �ֲ��ý place that is steeped in history and traditions, old and new.

On a hot and humid Convocation day, where the morning temperature soared to 80 degrees, the academic procession stepped off from Alumni Walk on its way to Coram Library, led by Jenkins, his senior leadership team, and faculty members including mace bearer Professor of French and Francophone Studies Mary Rice-Defosse, and followed by first-year students.

The Class of 2027 walks past the Mouthpiece — a century-old gift from the Class of 1927 — to take their seats on Sept. 5 at Convocation. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

The ceremony opening the college’s 169th academic year was the first for Jenkins, who took office on July 1. “I’m Garry Jenkins. My pronouns are he/him, and I’m the new president at �ֲ��ý,” he said, prompting one of the biggest cheers of the day.

He noted how the terrace of Coram Library is the site of bookend �ֲ��ý ceremonies.

“I love that this ceremony takes place in the same spot every year. It’s also the same spot where �ֲ��ý holds its Commencement each year. So, it’s here…at the heart of this beautiful campus, where generations of �ֲ��ýies have come to both celebrate the start and the end of their studies.”

The women’s soccer team has their own Convocation tradition: getting dressed up, assembling on the steps of Hathorn Hall, and cheering their first-year teammates as they walk onto the Historic Quad for Convocation. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

It’s a campus spot, he said, that “reminds us of what a rich, rich legacy we are all a part of, one that is grounded in the liberal arts as a dynamic force for public good, in the affirmation of human potential and the power of embracing and celebrating our differences, that’s grounded in the opportunity, in the value of open inquiry, of dialogue, and the power of ideas, that’s grounded in seeing and growing and developing the whole person in all of our humanity, all of which is rooted in a powerful sense of place and being part of local, regional, and global ecosystems.”

But Jenkins also promised the first-years that the �ֲ��ý ethos is grounded in compassion.

“We can pledge to be gracious to one another, and we can expect to be treated graciously. We can commit to kindness, and expect others to hold the same commitment.”

Jenkins asked the Class of 2027 to “please treat each other with kindness and a generous spirit.” The new president’s request drew a few claps, to which Jenkins, with humor in his voice and a nod, responded: “You can clap for that.”

With that, the audience of students, faculty, and staff burst into applause.

To help them on their journey, Jenkins offered a few of his “strategies for success.” But the president also counted himself among those who would be learning in the year ahead.

Garry W. Jenkins, the ninth president of �ֲ��ý as of July 1, welcomes students, staff, and faculty gathered on the Historic Quad. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

“And, by the way, I’m right there with you,” Jenkins said with gusto. “I’m totally plunged into the newness of �ֲ��ý and, because of that, I feel a special connection to the Class of 2027.”

Jenkins suggested the first-years “set expectations, but know that they won’t always be met and that’s okay.” He advised them to “be a learner and a leader” and to “find ways to be part of the solution.”

�ֲ��ý is a place of high ideals, but because it is a community of humans, it is hardly perfect, Jenkins said. “We do not always achieve these ideals. But as a community, we work together to do better…There’s no us versus them at �ֲ��ý. There’s only us. And each of us is part of the solution.”

Jenkins concluded his welcome with the down-to-earth advice his mother would give: “Learn, care, share, and enjoy.”

Mountcastle’s presence at the lectern reflected another relatively new tradition: a gift from the newly graduated Class of 2023, which chose him to give the Convocation address. He recommended the first-years be patient and compassionate — particularly to themselves.

Associated Professor of Biology Andrew Mountcastle gives the Convocation address to the Class of 2027, having been selected by the Class of 2023 as the Convocation speaker, a gift from the outgoing class to the newest �ֲ��ý class. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Mountcastle delivered his message through the story of the famous rock climber Alex Honnold, who became the first to successfully execute a free solo climb of the roughly 3,000-foot-high vertical rock formation in Yosemite National Park called El Capitan, so named by the California state militia that in 1851 forcibly relocated the Indigenous population there, though Mountcastle noted the First people first named the monolith Tutokanula. This remarkable climb of the half-mile high rock face, completed without ropes or anchors, was captured in an Oscar-winning 2018 documentary, Free Solo.

During Honnold’s amazing climb, Mountcastle explained, neuroscientists performed an fMRI scan of his brain to observe the brain’s activity in real-time. They concluded that the area in his brain associated with processing emotions responds differently to fear than it does for most.

The scientists theorized this was because Honnold was born with a unique brain that gave him an edge in free climbing, but Honnold contested their theory, pointing to the 25 years he spent conditioning not only his body to ascend daunting rock faces, but also his mind.

In fact, Mountcastle explained, Honnold at first feared free climbing the famous rock face, but discovered a way to train his brain in a process neuroscientists are now studying called “brain growth.” Mountcastle asked the Class of 2027 to embrace the possibilities suggested in this amazing story.

“Let’s take a moment and appreciate just how profoundly liberating and empowering this knowledge is. Each and every one of us has a 3-pound bundle of nerves between our ears that we are free to mold however we like. We all have the potential to excel at math, or learn Chinese, or understand Kantian deontology.”

Charles Nero, the Benjamin E. Mays ’20 Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies, applauds Mountcastle during his Convocation address. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Then he reminded them: “Here’s the rub, to realize this incredible potential, we have to put in the work.”

Such work, he acknowledged, may bring frustration, even doubt. Mountcastle urged the first-years to have faith. To help on their journey, he asked them to remember three things: “You are doing it right,” “you are not alone,” and “every single one of you belongs here.”

“Learning is not a steady, linear progression. It’s disorderly and tumultuous,” Mountcastle promised, and added: “You will learn how to ask questions, how to construct arguments, how to develop and test theories. You will learn how to critique and how to create. You will learn how to learn.”

Student Government co-presidents Rebecca Anderson ‘24 of Boone, N.C., (right) and Dhruv Chandra ‘25 of Kolkata, India, address the first-years from the podium in front of Coram Library. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Student Government co-presidents Rebecca Anderson ‘24 of Boone, N.C., and Dhruv Chandra ‘25 of Kolkata, India, also encouraged the first-years to try new things, talk to everyone, say hi to people on your floor, and to “form relationships with people from across campus.”

As they shared their speech, alternating back and forth throughout it, they promised, “you will soon realize that �ֲ��ý is a community of collective support.”

The day’s hopeful, supportive welcome struck a chord with Ella Blum ‘24 of South Salem, N.Y., who, with classmate Emma Upton of Amherst, N.H., served as senior class marshals, reprising the role they had last spring as junior class marshals at Commencement.

After she listened to the advice and encouragement from the speakers, she felt buoyant.

“It gave me a sense of security in not knowing exactly what I want to do with my future, to know that’s OK,” Blum said. “I think that can be true for the rest of your life: You don’t have to know where you want to go or what you want to be and still be at peace with that.”

Indeed, she added, “whether you’re a first-year and you don’t know what your major will be or a senior and you don’t know where you’ll be in the next 10 months, there is a joy in that, and an excitement in that.”

Maple Buescher ‘25 of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, performs during the memorial tree planting service following Convocation, playing “Ashokan Farewell” to a crowd gathered around a newly planted maple tree. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Convocation was followed by the memorial tree planting service, a tradition started by the college’s Multifaith Chaplaincy in 1997, offering the �ֲ��ý community the chance to gather and remember those members of the campus community who died in the past year.

The short service included live music, including “Ashokan Farewell,” performed on the violin by Maple Buescher ‘25 of Cleveland Heights, Ohio. The musical offering was “from a Maple to a maple,” quipped the Rev. Brittany Longsdorf, the college’s multifaith chaplain, referring to the gifted performer and the newly planted maple tree.

The ritual of watering the tree with water from Lake Andrews drew nearly 50 who lined up to share in the practice, with some getting down on their knees.

With water from Lake Andrews, Associate Dean for International Student Programs James Reese waters the newly planted maple tree at the conclusion of the tree-planting service. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

The closing reading was “grandfather: a dialect of water,” an award-winning poem by Assistant Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies Ian Khara Ellasante, inspired by Ellasante’s late paternal grandfather, which ends with the line, “cry with me, walk with me.”

These members of the faculty and staff were remembered this year:

Vincent J. LePage, Dining Services
Issack A. Barrow, Dining Services
Donald J. Smith, Facility Services
Michael A. Landry Jr., Dining Services
Lewis Afton Turlish, English faculty
Theresa N. Giguere, Facility Services
Pauline C. Benjamin, Dining Services
Victoria M. Devlin, Advancement
Gerald G. Dawbin, Information and Library Services
Stephen Hasson, Campus Safety
Dolores “Del” Preo, Facility Services
William Quenga, Information and Library Services
Pauline E. Longtin, Dining Services

‘Your footprints are the only road,’ and other advice to the Class of 2026 at Convocation

Fri, 09 Sep 2022 14:26:59 +0000

In 2021, the new �ֲ��ý year kicked off on a cautious note, as the Class of 2025 was obliged to walk to Convocation masked-up: COVID was still too close for comfort.

When Convocation rolled around a year later, on Tuesday, Sept. 6, that pandemic precaution was gone, replaced by meteorological protection: rain ponchos decorated with a big �ֲ��ý seal — and the show went on under sprinkling skies.

Convocation marks the official start of the academic year, and as the 520 members of the Class of 2026 took those steps into their �ֲ��ý future, they followed Alumni Walk onto the Historic Quad, passing Hathorn Hall before arriving at their seats in front of Coram Library, where President Spencer and other speakers welcomed them to �ֲ��ý.

Sporting all sorts of rain gear, including ponchos with the �ֲ��ý seal, the Class of 2026 makes its way to Convocation. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

It’s a well-traveled path, which thousands of future �ֲ��ý grads have made their way down. So the newbies were in the right place at the right time. But paths can also confine us, said Professor of Economics Daniel Riera-Crichton, who delivered the Convocation address. Don’t always let predetermined paths determine your route through life. Try to create your own route through �ֲ��ý.

Riera-Crichton quoted his favorite poet from his homeland of Spain, Antonio Machado: “Caminante, son tus huellas el camino y nada más; Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.” Translated to English: “Traveler, your footprints are the only road, nothing else; Traveler, there is no road, you make your own path as you walk.”

In his talk, Riera-Crichton connected the goal of a �ֲ��ý education to the message of this early-20th century poetry, saying that “Machado, probably referring to life itself, told us that there is no predefined path ahead of us, but just the one we weave ourselves with our choices. This, I believe, also applies to the spirit of a liberal arts education.”

In Spencer’s welcome, her final as �ֲ��ý president, she thanked �ֲ��ý staff, faculty, and friends for their efforts through the past two and a half years, saying they have “repeatedly gone above and beyond to keep our students on track and moving forward in their education and their lives.”

Traditionally, the senior member of the faculty leads the academic procession at Convocation and Commencement. Mary Rice-DeFosse, professor of French and francophone studies, is �ֲ��ý’ new mace bearer, succeeding now-retired Michael Murray, the Charles Franklin Phillips Professor Emeritus of Economics. (Phyllis Graber Jenbens/�ֲ��ý College)

About a half-hour earlier, the Class of 2026 began lining up along Alumni Walk, sporting a mix of �ֲ��ý-branded ponchos, raincoats, and umbrellas; some resourceful folks carried towels to dry their seats. The couple days of rain was slowly winding down; the excitement of a new �ֲ��ý year was winding up.

They began the day with breakfast in Commons with their Junior Advisors. Student Government leaders, including co-presidents Ali Manning ’23 of Sydney, Australia, and Kush Sharma ’23 of Delhi, India, went from table to table greeting the students.

With six days of Orientation in the rear-view mirror, the new students were clearly “eager to start the academic part” of their �ֲ��ý experiences, said Anna Brown, coordinator of residence life for First-Year Experience. “And to set that tone for the year.”

And they were unfazed by Tuesday’s rain. “They’ve had a great sense of humor about it,” said Molly Newton ’11, associate dean of students for residence life and health education. “They’re talking about saving the ponchos and wearing them again at graduation.”

As the newest �ֲ��ý students walked in front of Hathorn toward Convocation, members of the women’s soccer team half-serenaded, half-cheered the class — a vivid display of the “beautiful cycle” of support at �ֲ��ý. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

As the first-years walked in front of Hathorn, members of the women’s soccer team half-serenaded, half-cheered the class — a vivid display of what Tommy Holmberg ‘13 once described, in a famous Commencement address, as “the beautiful cycle we’ve got here” — a welcoming spirit, willingness to deliver hard-won advice, and, as Spencer related, small but meaningful gestures, like simply holding the door open for someone coming after you.

“I noticed this practice when I first came to campus, and it blew me away,” said Clayton. “I think we would all agree that there aren’t many places you go these days where people hold the door for someone they don’t know.

“So it is meaningful that it happens here, because the simple gesture of holding the door for someone is a gesture of openness and connection.”

Complete video of Convocation on Sept. 6, 2022:

Achieving more than a gesture of openness and connection is difficult, she said, in a world where “polarization and intolerance are too often the norm.” Even within the �ֲ��ý community, it is “easy to notice difference without engaging it, and default to hanging with people who look like us and think like us.”

Spencer’s advice? “You’ll get a lot more out of the next four years…if you focus on being open and looking for connections where they may be less obvious.” She suggested using “two powerful tools” along the way: curiosity and grace.

“It is your day job as students to ask questions in search of truth and understanding, and receive with grace and further curiosity the answers, whatever form they take.”

In this sense, “grace” is about how one goes about having a conversation with someone whose beliefs are opposed to one’s own, such as different political beliefs.

“It is your day job as students to ask questions in search of truth and understanding, and receive with grace and further curiosity the answers,” said President Clayton Spencer (left) in her Convocation welcome. At center is Professor of Economics Daniel Riera-Crichton, and at right is Professor of French and Francophone Studies Mary Rice-DeFosse. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

If two people take the “time to open themselves up and dig below the surface…they may learn that, regardless of their specific political affiliations, they are both obsessed with politics, love to debate policy issues, and share a deep concern about the state of our democracy.

“In short, if they follow their natural curiosity to probe and learn, and give each other the grace to move beyond surface differences, they may well find common ground. These tools and habits are equally powerful when an issue comes up in class, or student government, on a team, or in a friend group.”

Manning and Sharma, the Student Government presidents, also greeted the Class of 2026, and shared what they’ve found can make the first year of college a little better, a little easier, and a lot more fruitful.

Student Government co-presidents Ali Manning ’23 (left) of Sydney, Australia, and Kush Sharma ’23 share the lectern to offer greetings to the Class of 2026 at Convocation. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

“You should always lead with compassion, forgiveness and care. And this holds true for yourself as well as all the people around you,” said Sharma. “Call your mum, dad, or whoever has helped you get here today. Gratitude is not only grounding but also necessary for success at �ֲ��ý. Be thankful to those who have helped you be the best you, even if you’re only thanking yourself.”

Gratitude, the grace to accept the fact that mistakes will happen, and the courage to admit to those mistakes — these are some of the most important building blocks for creating that community of growth, the student leaders said.

And most important of those building blocks is the willingness to question your experience, said Manning.

“Now is the time to question without much consequence. Never stop asking yourself uncomfortable questions that may dislodge your place in the world. That is when we learn and that is when we become �ֲ��ý College students.”

Riera-Crichton, chosen by the Class of 2022 to deliver the convocation address as a parting gift to the incoming class, explained that he has deep experience watching economics majors’ careers “start, develop, grow and flourish.”

As its gift to the incoming class, the Class of 2022 invited Professor of Economics Daniel Riera-Crichton to deliver the Convocation address. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

He got a laugh by recounting a typical conversation with an aspiring first-year economics major. Often, the student breathlessly professes having loved econ since forever, and that they plan to study international finance and to write a thesis on “the role of the dollar in the world economy.”

To which Riera-Chrighton has only one response, “Cool!”

Four years later, however, Riera-Crichton typically encounters a student who has evolved and grown, and is more likely to be presenting their “brilliant thesis on impact evaluation of climate change in Caribbean communities, about water level rise, prevalence of natural disasters and the policies, infrastructure, and insurance needed to help the local communities affected.”

Sharing an umbrella: a time-tested way to make a connection. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

The detour from the dollar happened because the student chose to take what turned out to be “fascinating and impactful course in climate and environmental change that highlighted the potential devastating and unequal effects of climate change on small island communities.” That experience allowed the student to “marry her love for macroeconomics” with a new interest in environmental studies, which led to an “amazing thesis in a newly redefined passion.”

“So, to recap, your path is not preset,” he said. “Take this opportunity to be adventurous, to explore, find your academic passions and then follow them. To me, that is the clearest path for academic success at an institution like �ֲ��ý College.

A student listens to the multifaith benediction by the Rev. Brittany Longsdorf, who invited the Convocation audience to “please adopt a posture of meditation in whatever manner is most comfortable for you.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Convocation concluded with a multifaith benediction from the Rev. Brittany Longsdorf, the college’s multifaith chaplain. She expressed the community’s hope for the new class, that they would find kind and open hearts, a place to rest and find joy, and space to be and discover themselves, from their own dorm rooms, to their classrooms, to the tables of Commons.

“On these sidewalks soon canopied with the brilliance of autumn leaves, may you be reminded of all that is bigger than you, remember those that hold you close in this moment of transition, and slow down to pause and breathe.”

Following Convocation was the annual Memoriam Tree Planting Service. Melani McGuire, director of HRIS for Human Resources, pours a cup of water on the roots of a newly planted maple tree outside Gomes Chapel. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Afterward, Longsdorf and Associate Multifaith Chaplain Raymond Clothier led the annual In Memoriam Tree Planting Service, a gathering that honors the memory of �ֲ��ý people who have died during the past year.

Held in Gomes Chapel, the service included sweet musical interludes performed by guitarist Giancarlo Carlucci ’24, a Multifaith Fellow from New York City.

Afterward, attendees walked outside and each poured cups of water from Lake Andrews onto the roots of a newly planted sapling, a maple. The ritual, said Clothier, honors the unending cycle of “dying, embodying memory, and nurturing new life.”

The annual In Memoriam Tree-Planting Service began in Gomes Chapel, with sweet musical interludes performed by guitarist Giancarlo Carlucci ’24, a Multifaith Fellow from New York City, before concluding outside. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Picture story: Convocation and Memorial Tree Planting at �ֲ��ý College

�ֲ��ý News — Fri, 03 Sep 2021 17:01:31 +0000

Photographs by Phyllis Graber Jensen of two academic rituals of a new academic year, Convocation and the Memorial Tree Planting, on Aug. 31, 2021.

10 pieces of advice, for all of us, from a wisdom-filled �ֲ��ý College Convocation

Jay Burns — Fri, 03 Sep 2021 15:53:08 +0000

In May and in August, Commencement and Convocation bookend the �ֲ��ý experience.

Held in the fading warmth of a Maine summer day, Convocation marks a beginning, the newest class’s “formal induction into the �ֲ��ý community of scholars,” said President Clayton Spencer at this year’s edition on Aug. 31, the day before the start of classes for the 2021–22 year.

As bookends, they share a look: pomp and circumstance, rows of chairs in front of Coram Library, and an academic procession from Alumni Walk to the Historic Quad. Both typically come packed with good advice for the next monumental step toward building a future, first on the Lewiston campus and then beyond.

This year, Convocation included one valedictory element that might have been stolen from Commencement, the celebration of a job well done as Dean of the Faculty Malcolm Hill introduced a new group of students to the newly opened Bonney Science Center. With the dramatic brick building at stage right, Hill called it “a building that will serve all disciplines to generate innovative teaching for years to come.”

The Class of 2025 passes by the Class of 1927 Mouthpiece featuring a photograph and quote from late John R. Lewis, the 2016 Commencement speaker, who urged the graduates to be bold and fearless in pursuing social justice. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

But the main focus of Convocation 2021 were tips and insights into navigating the �ֲ��ý experience, offered by Spencer; Kush Sharma ’23 and Marcos Pacheco Soto ’24, co-presidents of �ֲ��ý College Student Government; and Katharine Ott, associate professor of mathematics, who delivered the Convocation Address.

Along with advice, they received a blessing from the college’s multifaith chaplain, the Rev. Brittany Longsdorf. “May you be blessed by this place,” she said in her Benediction. “May you be blessed this new year, with authenticity, deep caring, wisdom and kindness, inspiration and affirmation, and the beauty of belonging.”

Ott’s perspective was a gift from last spring’s Class of 2021, who selected her to speak to the Class of 2025 at Convocation, and she began by thanking the recent grads and saluting them for their perseverance in the face of the pandemic. Recalling their accomplishments and their “incredible resilience during such a tumultuous year fills me with hope.”

The same goes for the Class of 2025, said Ott.

“You pivoted, you followed through with your plans and dreams, adjusting a lot when necessary. You made a major life decision — where to attend college — entirely over zoom and so much more. So I congratulate you and your support networks for arriving here. Your arrival and journey have been challenging. There was pain and suffering, and for some, trauma.”

Katharine Ott, associate professor of mathematics, delivers the Convocation Address. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

With all that has preceded the class’s arrival, she said, “it’s hard to think about where to begin the next chapter” — there’s that book metaphor again — “after all that has happened, all that is still happening. Where do we even begin?” And that’s how she titled her address, “Where Do We Even Begin.”

Referencing the title, she said she made it “big and vague on purpose,” precisely because she wanted to show �ֲ��ý’ newest students that you begin to answer a big question by tackling smaller ones first.

“Like the mathematician that I am, I will try to offer something useful on just one small part of the big question: Where do we begin…in our college classrooms?” Ott urged her audience of students to remember they are “building more than a transcript. They’ll be creating their own narrative, a journey where they are the main character, set within a community they hold the power to build.”

Her suggestions, and those from others, offer insight into classrooms, yes, but also how we live our lives.

Build judgment-free relationships where it is always OK to ask questions

Ott has a Ph.D. in mathematics and regularly publishes scholarly papers with other math Ph.D.s. “We work on theoretical mathematics, partial differential equations, and harmonic analysis, and the papers appear in international journals.”

That all sounds dauntingly high level. But, she said, when she’s at work with fellow scholars, the relationships are defined by humility.

“Do you know what kind of questions occur regularly?” Ott asked the audience. “Me, during a research meeting with collaborators: ‘Hold up. Where did that zero come from?’ My collaborator, slight frown, maybe a pause: ‘We added a two up here and then subtracted two down here. So that makes zero.’”

“There is no judgement, and we move on. No one is keeping track.”

Don’t wait to ask questions

“It’s a heck of a lot easier to start asking questions like that from the get-go, when you’re in the midst of a problem, than waiting 20 minutes before asking, then you’re buried under more and more lines of calculations.

“I’m not advocating that you interrupt your professors and classmates with questions unless invited to do so. I’m encouraging you to be honest and forthcoming about where you are with your understanding and meet your peers where they are with their understanding. Don’t let questions or confusions get buried.”

Make play out of your work

Ott’s 4-year-old son just started pre-K. Each day, she asks him what he did in school. “And so far six days running, he gives the same exact answer: ‘Play.’”

“Four-year-olds need play,” said Ott. So do the rest of us. In math, “play” might mean tinkering with the numbers in a graph and “seeing what happens to your solution.”

In a broader academic context, “play” means “changing your perspective, looking at a problem from a different viewpoint, creating a new scenario, putting things in a different order.”

So it’s highly likely, said Ott, that math students will hear phrases from their professors, like “play with the numbers in this example,” or “play with the graph and see what happens to your solution.”

Professor of French and Francophone Studies Kirk Read performs his duties as faculty marshal as the academic procession departs Alumni Walk for the Historic Quad. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Mainers, and perhaps folks in other states, have a phrase for this kind of play, “dubbing around,” where you’re working around the house and trying a new way to solve a problem, like stopping that gopher that gets into the garden.

That kind of play “is meant to be low stakes. Play allows us to explore and learn separate from the validation of a grade or a checkbox,” Ott said. “Between pre-K and college — and most definitely in the last year — I think many of us lost this connection between play and learning. So let’s try and rekindle it.

Talk to people about your work

Developmental psychologists tell us that we create our personal narratives, discovering who we are and where we want to go, by talking with others.

Mathematicians like Ott know that too. She encouraged �ֲ��ý’ new students to “talk about your work. Share what you were doing in class when you check in with your family and friends from home. Work in study groups — and yeah, talk out loud with your classmates about what you’re doing. Make what you are doing in class a part of your everyday conversations with friends, teammates, roommates, coworkers, and so on.

“Inevitably these conversations will spin outward from the academics and that’s not only okay, that’s awesome. Talking about what we’re doing in class is a great launching point to conversations that we need to be having, conversations about identity, community, society.

In the next four years, you aren’t just building a transcript: You will be building a story, a journey narrative that has you as the main character.”

In seeking truth, seek what’s true about you

In her welcome, Spencer talked about the liberal arts and truth-seeking.

At �ֲ��ý, students learn how to discover what’s true in the world through the “knowledge you will gain and the connections you will make across multiple kinds of problems and ways of knowing,” she said.

But truth-seeking is not always outward-focused, she said. “It also means figuring out what is, and isn’t true for you — who you are, what you’re interested in, what you value and how you plan to move through the world.

“Only you, following your interests, thinking things through on your own terms, and discussing your theories and ideas in the classroom and in conversation, can develop an authentic and coherent view of how you want to live your life.”

Mace bearer Michael Murray, Charles Franklin Phillips Professor of Economics, leads the academic procession, followed by President Clayton Spencer and Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty Malcolm Hill. For certain large outside events, �ֲ��ý implements a face-covering policy. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Put big questions on hold

Big questions, like “What should I do with my life?” or even “What should I major in?” can wait, said Spencer, because at this stage “they are downright paralyzing.”

Keep it simple. The Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu said “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” But the right question to ask yourself is not, “Is this the right step for me?” Instead, ask yourself, “Does this feel like the right next step for me?”

Don’t measure your success against the lives and careers of people you admire

Impressive, compelling life stories, those of Michelle Obama, Lin-Manuel Miranda, or Dr. Fauci, “only emerge when you look backward over a life,” Spencer said.

The enterprise of college, however, is about helping students ”look forward, not backward.” As a student, you’re on the bow of a ship, looking ahead toward uncharted waters. You’re not in the stern looking at the wake.

Your path forward is not clear — nor should it be. “As a famous scholar of religion and myth, Joseph Campbell, once said, ‘If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.’”

Use your curiosity, thirst for connection, and courage to take risks

A student admitted to �ֲ��ý has already displayed at least some of those abilities, said Spencer. Use those talents to “explore courses in fields you’ve never been exposed to before,” said Spencer. “Sit at a table in Commons with people you don’t know and introduce yourself, or try out for a play even if you’ve never been on a stage in your life.”

With understandably pensive expressions, members of the Class of 2025 move toward their seats at the start of Convocation on Aug. 31, 2021. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College

In turn, Spencer promised the students that their courage will be met with a promise from �ֲ��ý, that all students will be “seen and valued” so that, in turn they feel they “belong at �ֲ��ý and �ֲ��ý belongs to them.”

The work of “creating an educational community that is equitable and inclusive, and producing graduates who have experienced college this way, is, I believe, our best hope for making progress toward a more just society.”

Disrupt your own narrative

Spencer encourages the first-year students to “try to stop holding fast to the things that got you here — the narrative that you are pre-med, or will major in history, when you haven’t even taken your first college course; the identities that have defined you throughout high school; the assumption that if you don’t hurry up and find a small group of like-minded peeps you are doomed to a life of social isolation.”

Instead, “think of these next four years as a time to try new things, to step back and broaden the frame. As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke put it, ‘The point is to…live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.’”

Create community while you search for what excites you

Sharma and Pacheco Soto, the �ֲ��ý Student Government co-presidents, offered student-to-student advice.

First-years might have questions like, How do �ֲ��ý students pursue what interests them individually, whether a major field or a club activity, while at the same time engaging in collective efforts to achieve social justice?

How do the 555 individuals in the Class of 2025 with 555 different ideas become a community? How does one pursue your own wishes while also navigating a sea of difference?

Co-presidents of �ֲ��ý College Student Government Kush Sharma ’23 (right) and Marcos Pacheco Soto ’24 greet the Class of 2025.(Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Definitely, “pursue what you are excited about — and then also think of a way we can come together and support each other in living that,” said Sharma.

“Offer compassion. Be each other’s voice in the work to fight for a society where every idea, thought, and individual has an equal opportunity. And as you try to find something that you’re excited about, each day for the next four years at �ֲ��ý, try to embrace and create a culture where collaborative excitement matters.”

The rhetoric of a �ֲ��ý Convocation reminds us why we’re here

�ֲ��ý News — Fri, 04 Sep 2020 15:59:52 +0000

After a summer where endless rounds of pandemic planning and announcements seemed to define the college enterprise, �ֲ��ý’ Opening Convocation on Sept. 1 offered welcome reminders of what we’re all about.

Presented via livestream, most of the event’s speakers delivered their remarks from otherwise mostly empty Olin Arts Center Concert Hall.

At the lectern, there was President Clayton Spencer, using the moment as a bully pulpit to affirm the power and purpose of the liberal arts in the face of rolling national crises.

Two student leaders, Perla Figuereo ’21 and Lebanos Mengistu ’21, shared the stage, from a safe physical distance, and spoke candidly to their fellow students about how to be their best selves at �ֲ��ý.

Professor Stephanie Kelley-Romano and Professor Charles Nero, two senior members of the faculty, shared personal stories and hard-earned wisdom in service to the institution and its students.

And, at the end there was a gentle reminder of the daunting shared challenge �ֲ��ý faces this fall as Multifaith Chaplain Brittany Longsdorf, told the community that “we are called to care for one another and this �ֲ��ý Community in ways never asked of us before.”

President Spencer

In past years, only rain has driven Opening Convocation indoors. This year, the pandemic drove the event not only inside, to the Concert Hall, but its viewing audience to their laptops, phones, and desktop computers around campus and the world.

President Spencer

Spencer offered greetings to faculty and staff, thanking them for months of “extraordinary work…to adapt literally every aspect of life and work at the college.”

To returning students: “We have missed you terribly.”

And to the Class of 2024, she shared a “fervent hope that when you graduate in May 2024, we will all be gathered in person with your families and loved ones on a glorious sunny morning on the Historic Quad.”

“If we substitute ideology for expertise, we lose our bearings.”

Then it was on to brass tacks: “the liberal arts in the age of COVID” and her thoughts on a summer that confronted us all, “repeatedly and relentlessly, with police killings of Black people and the ongoing devaluation of Black lives.

“These are deeply distressing times for anyone who cares about our country and our fellow human beings. But these are particularly heavy times for the Black, Indigenous, and Brown students, faculty, and staff who are members of our community.”

The stumbling national response to the pandemic, she said, has forced us to learn yet again, “through bitter experience, that if we don’t get the science right, we won’t get the economics right. If we substitute ideology for expertise, we lose our bearings. Without a commitment to facts and evidence, we abandon the fundamentals of discourse, debate, and meaning making.”

“This causes us to get policy wrong and hurt people. It causes us to substitute violence for persuasion. Dealing with the challenges posed by the wicked problems we are up against depends on highly specific expertise, but it requires, in equal measure, the ability to take in information from various domains and form integrated frameworks to guide policy and action.”

Charles Nero and Stephanie Kelley-Romano

Reflecting tradition, the faculty speakers at Opening Convocation are selected by the prior year’s graduating class. It’s a “gift from the Class of 2020 to the Class of 2024,” said Spencer, adding that the 2020 graduates “chose brilliantly.”

Both members of the Department of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies, Nero is the college’s Benjamin E. Mays ’20 Distinguished Professor who studies race and American cinema, queer studies, and African American literature. Kelley-Romano is an associate professor who studies television, conspiracy theories, and presidential campaign rhetoric.

Delivering a recorded Zoom-style talk (Nero from his Pettengill Hall office, Kelley-Romano from home), the pair spoke about the importance of being able to pivot in challenging times, “with adeptness or adroitness” said Kelley-Romano.

Charles Nero and Stephanie Kelley-Romano

Nero described his own pivot as a student. He was drawn to speech communications, specifically rhetoric and public address as he came of age in the American South in the era when the Civil Rights and Black Power movements “transformed the meaning of citizenship for African Americans.”

“White supremacy and anti-blackness metaphorically slapped me in the face every semester.”

Yet, he recalled, he was guided away from elevating Black voices by teachers while he was doing graduate work. A “leading professor of American public address and oratory asked me, ‘Why are you interested in writing about Blacks? Hasn’t everything been written about them?’”

Another professor discouraged Nero from writing about African Americans in 20th century progressive politics because “he was only encouraging his graduate students who were ‘mainstream and central.’”

Seeing how the traditional field of speech communication was aligned with “white supremacy and anti-blackness…metaphorically slapped me in the face every semester.”

Nero pivoted away from traditional speech communication studies, “to African American studies (he is a member of the college’s Africana program) and, especially toward literary and film studies. I embraced Audre Lorde’s famous pronouncement that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

Though he never left speech communication completely behind — “I still believe that language and its performance are crucial for a democracy” — democracy also requires a commitment to social justice that strives to be inclusive and equitable. “The majors I have been most involved in here at �ֲ��ý emphasize social justice as crucial components for an undergraduate education.”

Kelley-Romano talked about her experience as a first-generation college student and feelings of shame that initially haunted her during her journey.

“In high school, my guidance counselor told me I was ‘not college material’ primarily, I think now, because my family didn’t have the ‘means’ of many of my classmates. So, my academic journey started in community college.”

“Maya Angelou has a quote: ‘We do the best we can with what we know, and when we know better we do better.’ But at that point, I didn’t know any better.”

Like Nero, Kelley-Romano “did a lot of pivoting”: away from sports, away from one major to another and then another. “I made myself dizzy pivoting between loving lip-gloss and all things pink and simultaneously hating the mass-mediated messages about how I ‘should’ behave and what I ‘should’ want as a woman.”

Her identity, or what she called the performance of her identity, was under scrutiny by multiple audiences “and for the life of me I could not get it right. Maya Angelou has a quote: ‘We do the best we can with what we know, and when we know better we do better.’ But at that point, I didn’t know any better.”

It wasn’t until graduate school that this shifted. Studying rhetoric and the power of language “prompted me to pivot my attention to critique not only the consequences of calling someone a ‘victim’ vs. a ‘survivor’ but the larger systems and their entrenched histories that put the onus on girls to ‘not distract’ boys with tight clothing, to act ‘like a lady,’ and accept that ‘boys will be boys.’”

Looking back, she said, the ability to “pivot between text and context, between exigence and audience, has made me a better scholar, teacher, and citizen.”

Kelley-Romano also spoke as a person in recovery, who has cringed “watching the invariably oversimplified depiction of alcoholism and addiction on television and in film.”

But over the years, she’s seen and continues to track the role of language in reframing addiction, “from a ‘moral weakness’ to ‘chemical dependency’ and now to ‘a person with substance mis-use disorder.’” Each iteration of naming, she said, “redefines the agent and attempts to decrease stigma.”

As they concluded their shared talk, Nero and Kelley-Romano offered a Convocation staple: advice to the first-years. She urged the Class of 2024 to get out of their comfort zones, while Nero told them not to be afraid of getting messy as they venture into the unknown.

“Messiness is the beginning of what the late Congressman John Lewis called ‘good trouble,’” Nero said. “We know you have been taught how to write the best five-paragraph essay ever. We know you can recite facts and follow formulas. But now we want you to follow your heart, informed by your head to create new ways of thinking and being in the world.”

Perla Figuereo ’21 and Lebanos Mengistu ’21

“We want to address how difficult this year has been for many folks,” Mengistu said. “Especially for Black people. We want you all to know that we see you, we hear you, and we stand with you. The injustice that Black folks have faced and continue to face is a challenge on and off campus.”

Perla Figuereo ’21 and Lebanos Mengistu ’21

Student to students, they gave advice.

About academics: “Take a class that interests you, one that you could have never imagined yourself taking,” said Figuereo.

About social life: “Although it can be overwhelming at first, try to connect with your classmates and peers. Try to learn something from everyone you meet. Everyone has a story,” said Mengistu.

And about personal life: “Be comfortable with failure,” said Figuero. “Seek a balance. Be OK with saying no and yes to things when you feel it’s right. Let yourself fall in love with the new things in your life.”

Brittany Longsdorf

Whew. After all that advice and insight, it was time for the benediction and a “collective, centering breath, ” said Multifaith Chaplain Rev. Brittany Longsdorf. “Let us sense the sacred, deep togetherness that only pilgrimaging through unknown territory such as this can bring.”

The Rev. Brittany Longsdorf

Her final words: “We are called to care for one another and this �ֲ��ý Community in ways never asked of us before. May we rise to the occasion with compassion and courage.

“May it be so.”

Lining up for Convocation, five �ֲ��ý professors share what they’re excited to teach

Emily McConville — Thu, 05 Sep 2019 19:34:12 +0000

As faculty lined up on Alumni Walk in full academic regalia before Opening Convocation, we asked some of them to look ahead to the courses they’re most excited to teach this fall.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Geneva Laurita. (Theophil Syslo)

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Geneva Laurita chatted with colleagues under one of Alumni Walk’s many birch trees. She’s excited to teach “Descriptive Inorganic Chemistry,” which deals with carbon-free materials like metals.

Long required for majors, the course will have a lab component this year.

In fact, the new lab component was designed last spring as part of a Short Term program known as “Course (Re)Design,” which gives faculty the chance to create a new course or redesign and existing one.

In Laurita’s case, she and students under her guidance worked together to develop the course’s new lab experiments, giving her future students the opportunity for hands-on experience and exploration of research techniques.

Across the way, Lecturer in Theater Cliff Odle and Associate Professor of Theater Chris McDowell waited on a cast-stone bench for the Convocation procession to begin.

Odle is teaching an introductory playwriting course — one step, he says, toward building up the college’s playwriting program. He wants students to submit plays to the prestigious Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.

In addition to his playwriting course, Lecturer in Theater Clifford Odle (center right) teaches a First-Year Seminar, “Politics and Performance on Stage and Screen,” shown in the Fireplace Lounge of Commons, as well as a beginning acting course. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

The class is where budding playwrights start to shine. “We’ll find out who the drivers are,” Odle said.

Last year, one of Odle’s students sent an original play to an important playwriting conference.

McDowell, meanwhile, is teaching “Pattern Drafting and Draping” to aspiring designers.

“It uses a part of the brain that students don’t always get to tap into,” she said. “It’s analytical and mathematical, but it also involves creation.”

As the 11 a.m. start of Convocation approached, more and more faculty filled Alumni Walk. Stephanie Wade, a lecturer in humanities and assistant director of Writing at �ֲ��ý, is teaching “Feed Your Mind: Food Justice and Community Gardens,” a First-Year Seminar where new students will work in — as well as write about — local community gardens.

“I love seeing my students learn about community and about each other through food,” Wade said.

“It’s exciting and frightening how much is relevant.”

Professor of Politics Stephen Engel. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ��ý College)

Finally, the academic procession stepped off toward the Historic Quad.

Professor of Politics Stephen Engel walked and talked about his upcoming course on constitutional law, which will examine timely topics like presidential pardon power, and how it might or might not apply to a president pardoning himself.

“It’s exciting and frightening how much is relevant,” Engel said.

Convocation speaker Dolores Huerta to the Class of ’23: ‘We have the power’

Doug Hubley — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 20:04:05 +0000

Not every Opening Convocation at �ֲ��ý ends with a legend of the American labor movement leading a chant of “Yes we can! ¡Sí, se puede!”

But that’s what happened on Sept. 3, as �ֲ��ý began its academic year with a ceremony featuring social justice icon Dolores Huerta, the 89-year-old co-founder of the United Farm Workers, as the keynote speaker.

The Opening Convocation address by legendary labor leader Dolores Huerta energizes the group on the Coram Terrace as well as the audience on the Quad. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

�ֲ��ý had invited Huerta to receive an honorary degree in May; she accepted, but at last minute was unable to attend. Instead, the Doctor of Humane Letters degree was conferred during her visit Tuesday.

Also speaking during Opening Convocation (and competing for air time with cicadas keening in the trees) were President Clayton Spencer; Malcolm Hill, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty; Multifaith Chaplain Brittany Longsdorf; and Student Government President Ryan Lizanecz ’20 of Portland, Maine.

If “Yes we can” was the emphatic answer concluding Huerta’s talk, what was the question? She had several: Can we get our schools to teach young children anti-racism and the real history of the labor movement? Can we fight incipient fascism in the U.S.? Living in the richest country in the world, can we share the wealth more equitably?

And, crucially: Can �ֲ��ý students, including the 501 members of the Class of 2023, become the activists to make those reforms?

Shortly before the start of Opening Convocation, members of the Class of 2019 find their places on Alumni Walk for the ceremonial procession. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Huerta likened the moral urgency of the present moment to the advent of World War II, when the fight against fascism in Germany and Italy was accepted as a universal obligation. “Well, I think that’s kind of the crisis that we have right now in our country,” Huerta said. “We have got to support an effort to get rid of racism, to get rid of bigotry, get rid of misogyny and sexism [and] homophobia.

“Because we know that the majority of the population in our country are people of good heart. They’re people of goodwill.”

Huerta and her UFW co-founder, Cesar Chavez, stepped into the mass consciousness in the 1960s with their involvement in a grape-workers’ strike in Delano, Calif., and a subsequent national boycott of non-union grapes.

Since then Huerta has not stopped advocating for immigrants, people of color, women, and the environment. (On Aug. 20, she was arrested in California during a union protest calling for better pay for home-care workers.)

Urgent and blunt, Huerta’s address offered a number of prescriptions for the social ills that are cramping the national psyche. Education about racial equality needs to begin at the kindergarten or pre-K levels, she said. And it needs to begin with a simple truth: There is one human race and it began in Africa, she said, to applause.

From left, Noelle Chaddock, vice president for equity and inclusion; Michael Hussey, vice president for institutional affairs; Professor of Psychology Georgia Nigro; Assistant Professor of Biology Lori Banks; and Professor of Biology Donald Dearborn join Dolores Huerta’s address-ending “Yes, we can” chant. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

“We are all Africans of different shades and colors,” she pointed out. “So we can say to all of those white nationalists, people in the KKK, the neo-Nazis — get over it, you’re Africans. Okay?”

“We didn’t cross the border. The border crossed us.”

The United States “was a brown country to begin with,” she pointed out. “I was born in the state of New Mexico. My great-grandparents were born there. My great-great-grandfather was in the Civil War, on the Union side.

“And so when they say to us, ‘Go back where you came from’ — hey, we are where we came from. We didn’t cross the border. The border crossed us.”

When it comes to injustice, she reminded the audience, “we can end it. And the one thing we have to remember is that we have the power to do it. And the power is in each and every single one of us, each and every single one of us.

“If we do not engage, if we do not participate, if we do not go out there and become the missionaries of truth, then nothing will change. So I’m going to ask all of these students here to, please, get engaged.”

Huerta ended her talk — and launched “Sí, se puede” — with a demand for economic justice. “There is no reason why the richest country in the world should not have universal health care,” she said.

“Why we should not have free education for every single student like they have in Cuba, like they have in Europe. There’s no reason why we should have homeless people on the streets of the United States of America.”

She said, “We have the resources, but they’ve got to be shared equally. Can we make this happen?”

President Clayton Spencer begins the Convocation ceremony by welcoming the Class of 2023. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

In her welcome, President Spencer told the new class that theirs was an active, not passive role in the �ֲ��ý education. She quoted convocation advice from writer and feminist Adrienne Rich: “You cannot afford to think of being here to receive an education; you will do much better if you think about yourselves as being here to claim one.”

This involves the strength to say “yes” even when “no” might be easier. Helpfully, the �ֲ��ý style of education, Spencer continued, “is set up precisely to provide you with solidarity as you move through the joys and challenges of the next four years. And solidarity is a powerful source of courage.”

Lizanecz, too, urged the new students to take a pro-active approach, academically and socially — especially in terms of rocking one’s own identity. “Embrace what sets you apart from the rest of your classmates,” he advised. “The transformative power of our differences will enrich your time both at �ֲ��ý and throughout your life.

“You will find that people appreciate authenticity, uniqueness, honesty and kindness in all aspects of your college years and throughout your life. … Great communities get their strength through diversity, in equality, and mutually respecting all its members.”

“Embrace what sets you apart from the rest of your classmates,” Student Government President Ryan Lizanecz ’20 tells the new students. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

With a memorial tree planting ceremony and then lunch al fresco to follow, Multifaith Chaplain Brittany Longsdorf offered a parting benediction to close the Opening Convocation:

“You are on the cusp of a pilgrimage of the heart,
Where you will meet yourself,
Over and over again
In the challenging classroom,
Under the canopy of rustling trees on the quad,
and among the chattering hallways of this hallowed place.”

Video: For Walter Washington ’19, “it started with taking an opportunity”

�ֲ��ý News — Wed, 20 Mar 2019 15:09:23 +0000

“I came here with so many different interests,” says Walter Washington ’19. “I wanted to do music, I wanted to get into politics, I wanted to study the law more.

“I wanted to do all these different things, and also to become a person who can make things happen and make change happen. And I found all of those interests here at �ֲ��ý.”

Video by Theophil Syslo.

Today, counting down to graduation, Washington of Fleetwood, N.Y., is one of the best-known faces on the �ֲ��ý campus.

A politics major, he has served as president of student government for two years. A letter-winning defensive lineman for the football team all four years, he received the Stephen B. Ritter Award, given to football players with the highest GPAs. He has also sung with the Deansmen, the oldest of �ֲ��ý’ beloved a cappella ensembles, throughout his �ֲ��ý career.

“I was able to carry things out that I never imagined myself doing. And it started with just taking an opportunity,” he says.

Washington’s advice to new �ֲ��ýies? “Don’t be scared to branch out — don’t be afraid, because you never know what great things can happen from something so small.”

Convocation 2018 remarks: Associate Professor of History Joseph Hall

�ֲ��ý News — Fri, 07 Sep 2018 14:24:23 +0000

Text of the 2018 Convocation address, “Questions for �ֲ��ý,” by Associate Professor of History Joseph Hall, delivered on Sept. 4:

Good morning. Happy New Year.

I want to begin with a few words of thanks, first of all to Walter for such wonderful remarks. You have a gifted classmate.

I want to also thank the Wabanaki peoples and the homelands that we sit and stand on, and the people whose labor has made our conversation today possible, including the sign language interpreters who are turning the words that you hear into words that you can see.

I’d like to thank the Class of 2018 for nominating me for this opportunity to speak with you all. I’m sorry they’re not here for me to extend my thanks in person, but it is truly an honor, and I am grateful to them for it.

I’d like to thank two students in particular, Tim Larson from the Class of 2005, and Emma Soler, who’s from the Class of 2020, both of whom have done important research that makes a lot of what I’m going to be talking about today possible.

To Caitlin Lampman, Michelle Belden, and Pat Webber, who all work in the �ֲ��ý Muskie Archives and Special Collections, for providing access to the history that I’m going to be talking about. And last of all, of course, to you all for being here. It’s a pleasure to be here with you. I want to extend a warm welcome to all of you who are new, whether you’re in the Class of 2022 or new faculty or new staff. I hope your time here at �ֲ��ý is much more than you expect.

Although I am certainly grateful for the chance to be here to speak with you all, I have to admit that I’m a little bit frustrated by the conventions that bring us here.

We all decided to come to �ֲ��ý because it’s an institution that prides itself on small scale conversation, whether in our classrooms, dormitories, or departments and programs. Yet you as the Class of 2022 are going to begin and end your academic careers here dutifully listening to people garbed in velvet robes, standing behind large wooden lecterns, and not really having much of a conversation.

It’s not that I’m really opposed to velvet and wood. It’s not even necessarily that I’m opposed to lectures with large audiences. The problem is that what really excites me about being here with you all is the chance to actually to get to know you and to talk with you. The reason those conversations are particularly interesting is because within that intimacy, we have the opportunity to learn from each other but also, as in our mission statement, “to engage the transformative power of our differences.”

This kind of lecture, frankly, is not the kind of format where I’m expecting that we’re getting much in terms of intimacy or engagement. Let me just say right at the beginning, I don’t really care what you think about what I’m about to say. I am very interested in hearing what you want to do with what I have to say. What I want to do is think about questions, which are at the heart of any good conversation.

I’d like to think about what a question is — at its heart, it’s about a quest; that’s at the root of the word. The Latin quaerere, or quest, is at the heart of a number of words that we think about with questions, such as “query” or “inquiry.” The Latin quaerare means to seek or to inform oneself, to ask, but I want to think about “question” in terms of that idea of quest. When the Middle English used that word, they were invoking a certain kind of judicial understanding. You see that in the way we use the word “inquest,” or even “Inquisition.”

I’ll bet no one was expecting that. In asking questions, it’s incredibly important that we remember that a quest for knowledge should not simply be a quest to prove yourself right, a quest to conduct an inquisition that seeks to stamp out ideas that differ from your own. To be inquisitive, not inquisitorial, is what I’m talking about here.

I also want to make clear that I think every question has the potential to lead to something big, to have something big at stake. I’m a firm believer, as I think are almost all of my colleagues, that there is no such thing as a stupid question. I’m sure many of you have heard that injunction many times. Many of you might, in fact, not believe it, because you think you’ve heard stupid questions and maybe even asked a stupid question. But let me ask you to think about it this way: If a question is an adventure or a journey, if it’s a quest, and if every journey of 1,000 miles begins with one step, then the converse means that every step has the potential to begin a journey of 1,000 miles — which is to say, every question has the potential to hold some much bigger questions at stake.

Let me put this in terms of a question that I’ve been thinking about for a while. I’m going to need you to use your hands here.

How many of you have heard that �ֲ��ý College was founded by Oren Cheney, who was an abolitionist?

All right, so many of you have. If you haven’t, that’s totally fine, but now you have. Oren Cheney was an important founder of �ֲ��ý College. He was a Free Will Baptist. He believed deeply in the equality of all people, such that he believed that anyone should be admitted to what was, in 1855, the Maine State Seminary, regardless of their racial or gender backgrounds.

A second question. How many of you know that �ֲ��ý College is named after Benjamin �ֲ��ý, an industrialist who established the textile mills in downtown Lewiston?

All right, you guys are warming up. This is good. It’s in 1864 that Benjamin �ֲ��ý is going to give the first $10,000 of what would eventually be a $200,000 set of gifts to Oren Cheney, so that the Maine State Seminary could become a liberal arts college named after Benjamin �ֲ��ý.

Third question. How many of you know that the cotton textiles that Benjamin �ֲ��ý and others are weaving in Lewiston are going to be made, until 1865, from cotton that is grown by enslaved people in the south of the United States?

Okay, so maybe not as many. That is, in a sense, an indication of some of the ways we talk about our history in this country.

These three questions are at the heart of what I think is perhaps, by now, an obvious question: If Oren Cheney was an abolitionist, deeply opposed to slavery, and Benjamin �ֲ��ý was making his money weaving cotton grown by enslaved people, why was Oren Cheney taking �ֲ��ý’ money?

And what does that mean for us?

�ֲ��ý founder Oren Cheney

We can start with Cheney’s own diary, which, fortunately, you can find in the Muskie Archives. It’s really a wonderful little artifact. It’s about three inches by five inches, a small leather-bound thing that he could stick in his pocket. When you open it, on each page would be the seven days of the week — Monday through Wednesday on one side, then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday on the other page.

There’s only one year of this diary that still exists, which for me, is a fascinating question. For a man who keeps a diary so often — and we know that he did keep other diaries — why is there only one still remaining? The fact is, because it’s 1864, we have a chance to find out a little bit of what he thought when he first talked with Benjamin �ֲ��ý about that first $10,000 gift that would make the seminary into a college. I want to read to you from that important day when Cheney and �ֲ��ý first talked about that gift, March 4, 1864.

“Have had a long and pleasant call on Mr. �ֲ��ý—says he will give $10,000—would rather have had another name—he cannot act as our agent as well as if on another name—but said it might be as well for us in the end—said should at some future time make us a donation. I asked, ‘Before your death?;’ He replied: ‘Perhaps so, I cannot say.’ Said now is the time to start subscription in Boston. Went to Concord, N. H. Stop with Bro. E. P. Prescott. Carrie and I called at the Millett’s.”

Hearing these words might seem rather unremarkable, but it’s extraordinary when you look at the diary, because here’s this incredibly small page, and Oren Cheney’s trying to fit all of these words on one third of it. You can see, as he’s writing, the penmanship gets tighter and tighter and smaller and smaller until he’s finally wrapping the words up around the page because he doesn’t have room to fit all the important things that Benjamin �ֲ��ý is telling him on March 4th, 1864. Cheney, in what looks like fairly spare prose, is really, really excited. $10,000: He was going around very happy when people would give $100 or $10, and here’s a man giving $10,000 and offering the prospect of much more.

But he doesn’t say anything about slavery.

We know that Cheney had opinions about slavery. He was a member of the Free Will Baptists, which was one of the denominations so radical as to believe that God offered salvation to all people. If that was true, then slavery was, as Cheney put it in an opening editorial to the abolitionist newspaper Morning Star, “a giant sin against God and an awful crime against man.” Cheney was so deeply committed to abolitionism that he left Brown University because, as a student, he did not see it as abolitionist enough. Cheney believe deeply in abolitionism.

It’s worth noting that abolitionism was something of a fringe at the time — it’s easy to say we’re all abolitionists now, but roughly 2 percent of Americans living in the north of the United States were abolitionists in the 1850s. Just so you understand, the Libertarian Party polled 4 percent in the national election in 2016.

When it comes to talking about money made, at least indirectly but still fundamentally from slavery, there is silence.

There was controversy surrounding �ֲ��ý’ establishment of this gift to make a college. The controversy lay not with slavery and money, at least as far as Cheney would remember it. The controversy lay in the fact that Cheney was accepting money to make a college in the first place. When Cheney established the Maine State Seminary in 1855, there were a number of Free Will Baptist seminaries in other parts of northern New England. All of them were thinking about becoming a college at some point, in a sense stepping up from being a post high school kind of school to being one that dealt more deeply in the liberal arts. Cheney actually assured a number of people, “Don’t worry, I’m actually looking into just establishing a seminary.” Yet here he is nine years later, looking for the money to make a college. A lot of people were incredibly unhappy with this. They were so unhappy that decades later, in 1907, when Emmeline Cheney, Oren’s wife, wrote a biography of her now-dead husband, she took an entire chapter to explain why it was that he had done what he did and to defend those decisions.

Cheney and his colleagues were also aware of the limits on the kind of money they could accept. Cheney’s successor and second president of �ֲ��ý, George Chase, recalled in the 1880s that Free Will Baptists, when they were thinking about establishing �ֲ��ý College, would have been reluctant to send their children to a college, “maintained by the fruits of slave labor.” What he was referring to specifically was that there had been a southerner, a plantation owner, who had offered money to an institution in New Hampshire. He had not actually followed through on that, but Chase was acknowledging that plantation owners, perhaps strangely, were interested in supporting an abolitionist institution, and that �ֲ��ý College would have probably been very uncomfortable with that fact, had that plantation owner been interested in giving a donation here.

Here we have a college that is aware of some controversial elements of a decision to become a college, and is aware that slavery is actually a controversial piece of a foundation of a college — and yet when it comes to talking about money made at least indirectly but still fundamentally from slavery, there is silence.

I find that silence intriguing because it suggests just how deeply this nation — not just south but north, south, and west — depended on the enslavement of millions. Abolitionists, including mill owners, failed to disassociate themselves from ties to slavery. Emma Soler has done some wonderful research on this fact, to show that even a mill owner in Rhode Island would be anxious about how he was going to continue being an abolitionist, while he continued to weave cotton grown by the people he wanted to be free.

This failure to acknowledge or at least directly address these compromises raises for me another set of intriguing questions, and I want to take another moment to think about it etymology. “Intrigue” is a wonderful word. It comes from the Latin intricare, to entangle or to confuse. It’s worth thinking about intriguing questions, because it is those kinds of questions that are questions in which you find yourself entangled. To put it differently: In what ways are you inextricably tied to the questions that you pose?

It’s with that idea of intrigue that I point out that I did not title this talk “questions for Cheney” or “Questions for Cheney and �ֲ��ý,” but instead, “Questions for �ֲ��ý.” My real interest is not questions for them, although I would love to sit down in a room with both of them, but it’s for us.

When it comes to slavery, abolitionism, and racism, there are many contemporary entanglements for us to consider. As Bryan Stevenson, the director of the Equal Justice Initiative, pointed out in his Commencement address last May, “I don’t think we’re free in America. I think we’re burdened by our history of racial inequality. It’s in the air in Maine, just like it’s in the air in Mississippi. It doesn’t matter where you go, there is this contaminant that we’re all breathing in.”

You can see some of that contamination in the life of someone like Julie Lythcott-Haims, the author of the Common Read for this year, who, in many instances, recounts how she was silenced by the racism of others. That silence is not something that she bore alone or something that she suffered alone, even though I think she suffered it more than the other people around her. Everyone who was with her suffered it for not being able to benefit from the wisdom that she could offer, the trust that she could build, with those who instead were inflicting great pain on her.

It’s in the face of these problems that people like Lythcott-Haims and Stevenson point out that I wonder, can talking more fully about Oren Cheney, his vision and his compromises, and also his silences, help us see a little better this contaminated air and perhaps even hear a little better our awkward silences?

There’s a problem with this, and that’s that my question, at least for what I want to do right now is just too big. The amplification is too loud. You’re all sitting here very quietly, nicely regimented in your rows, and I’m stuck behind this big wall of wood. I would so much rather talk with you all in a smaller group, as I was able to do in April, when I talked about this with a group of prospective students.

I would like some of you to ask me, as some of them did, “What role did African Americans play an abolitionism?” “Why are you talking just about white men?” And for that matter, “What role do you play? What role does your background play, as a white man, in asking these questions and seeking these answers?”

Associate Professor of History Joseph Hall urged the Class of 2022 to ask the questions that intrigue them. ”Your quest, your development, depends on your questions.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Of course, there’s another big problem here, and that’s that these are only my questions. Your quest, your development, depends on your questions. I hope you get some of those questions and answers from the people around you.

Consider, for instance, asking Frankie Urueta, a custodian in the basement of Pettengill — when he gives you a fist bump, you’ll know who he is — why he wants �ֲ��ý to host a powwow. Ask Michael Sergeant what he thinks about ranked-choice voting, or go and then ask him. Ask research librarian Christine Murray anything. If you have time, ask her about how birds communicate. Let’s talk about what intrigues us, and remember, there really are no stupid questions.

Perhaps just as important, let’s find the space to do this. it’s so easy to say to stand here and say, “be curious, ask questions” when that does not help you get your homework finished. The dreams of September frequently wither under the obligations of October. If you are going to ask questions, ideally you’re going to have the space to do so in your classrooms. But there might be other questions that intrigue you that don’t fit in those spaces. I hope you do the work to make those spaces.

For my part, if you have a question for me, I’ll cut corners on my committee work right there. I might even cut some corners on my lecture for class tomorrow. For those of you who are in either of my classes tomorrow, you might see some of the effects of these questions in your syllabi. That’s not quite as much of a joke as I’d like it to be right now.

What it’s really about is you and the questions you want to ask. I hope I’m part of them. I hope others here are part of them. We have this wonderful opportunity in this wonderful environment to ask them.

I’d like to close with one last question: Does anyone have time to talk over lunch next week?

Thank you.