Welcome to part two of our day in the life of Commons — Tuesday, March 12, 2024 — a day when we followed all the goings in the college’s beloved dining hall, from very early in the morning through to lunch, supper, and closing time.

In part one, we started at 4 a.m. with the arrival of the �ֲ���ý baker, then it was on to breakfast. Here is part two, from lunch to a long day’s journey into night.

We photographed and interviewed both the staff who create an awesome dining experience for students, and the students who, in unison, speak their appreciation for creating such a happy place on campus.

All along, the staff of �ֲ���ý Dining Services kept the campus Bobcats well-fed and ready for their next adventures, whether work or play. By day’s end, the work will span 17 hours, from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m.

11:22 a.m.

In a daily ritual, members of the rowing teams gather for a meal in their traditional spot, a corner facing Alumni Walk. Clockwise from top left: Maddie Kemp ‘25 (blue sweater), Finian Guinney ‘27, Oli Seline ‘24, Megan O’Donnell ‘27, Emily Everett ‘24, Wiley Anderson ‘26, and Olivia Szachta ‘25.

Anderson’s laptop is open to mathematical matrices, and in a couple hours the team would decamp to the Traquina Boathouse to put out their docks for the season — all suggesting the potential for wide-ranging lunchtime conversations among these seven friends and teammates.

“We love the corner of Commons,” says Seline. “We’re a large team, so it can be hard to get to know everyone on a more personal level, but Commons is the perfect place for great conversation. Whether 30 minutes — or sometime a few hours — it’s one of my favorite spaces on campus.”

11:26 a.m.

Upstairs in Commons, a variety of lunch meetings are already in full gear.

In the Penobscot Room, a half dozen faculty and staff who are involved in Short Term courses that travel abroad, including Associate Professor of Religious Studies Alison Melnick, seen here, are getting advice from the staff of the Center for Global Education and others.

At left is Director of Campus Safety Paul Menice. He chimes in with a promise to the faculty members that he is just a call away. “There are 10 to 12 deans on call in a rotation,” Menice said. “Our resources go well beyond campus and Lewiston. When in doubt, call us, and we can get the resources you need.”

11:29 a.m.

This student’s lunch creation includes falafel, braised red cabbage, cucumber, tomato, tahini sauce, and spicy potato wedges.

11:35 a.m.

Unless you’re an alum of the last decade or so, the term “tabling” sounds like something out of Robert’s Rules of Order. 

But in Commons, “tabling” is how students raise awareness of events and programs by setting up tables just inside the front door and trying to capture the attention of students streaming in for a meal.

Here, Owen Fox-Whelpton ’25 (seated left) of Washington, D.C., and Lauren Farrell ’24 (seated right) of Middletown, Conn., staff a table promoting Sex Week. They’re speaking to Jeremy Schrieber ’24 of Denver, Colo.

About a half-hour later, they turned the table over to Emma Erkkila ‘26 of Helsinki, Finland, and Julia Oliver ‘25 of Montpelier, Vt.

“Happy Sex Week!” the pair calls out to friends coming into the building.

Sex Week is sponsored by Well-Being at �ֲ���ý, a program that gives students information and resources about all dimensions of their well-being. “And I don’t see how sex wouldn’t be part of our well-being,” says Oliver. On this day, their table this day has pamphlets, stickers (“Consent Is Sexy!”), and condoms. 

“I love to call out people I know, but also just be really outgoing towards everyone about whatever we’re tabling about,” says Oliver. 

“It’s fun to see how they’ll respond to you. Some people have headphones on and keep going. But a lot of people will say, ‘Happy Sex Week to you, too!’ Which is fun. You’re like, ‘Woo-hoo!’” 

11:49 a.m.

The youngest diner at lunchtime is asleep right now. That’s 16-month-old Sunny Sue, the daughter of Jon-Michael Foley (right), a member of the Facilities Services grounds crew, and his wife, Rachel Nutting (left).

Rachel comes to campus once a week from her gym, CrossFit 196, where she’s the owner and head coach, to have lunch with her husband and daughter. 

“Sunny Sue comes from a long line of double first names,” quips Jon-Michael.

Today he’s eating Thai grilled chicken, and spaghetti from the pasta bar, plus some fruit salad. “Fruit, every time,” he says.

11:53 p.m.

Opened in 2008, Commons put much of the food prep — and the preparers — into full view of appreciative diners.

The Commons “servery” clusters a variety of stations, or “bars,” into a critical mass of temptation. Rather than a strict flow from check-in to serving line to chair, students enter, scope out the scene — who’s where, what’s to eat — then circulate through the marketplace.

The heart of the servery is the giant brick-and-copper oven, ringed by a counter offering the most popular eats: pizza, pasta, soup, salad, and deli. 

Here’s a partial accounting of what was offered at the various bars on March 12 for lunch:

• Bobcat Bar: Beef shepherd’s pie, breaded haddock, spicy potato wedges, steamed broccoli
• Grill: Thai grilled chicken, long grain white rice
• Brick Oven: Crunchy turkey melt
• Vegan bar: Jasmine rice, braised red cabbage, broccoli, and falafel.
• Pasta Bar: Pasta options with a variety of sauces
• Deli: Potato pesto soup, chicken noodle soup, plus sandwich fixings
• Bakery: Desserts including vegan pumpkin pie, key lime cheesecake bar, chocolate cake

11:56 p.m.

With bowls in hand, Nina Greeley ’24 of Scarborough, Maine, and Nick Gajarski of Dublin, Ohio, ‘24 pose for a portrait.

12:12 p.m.

In the large double meeting room upstairs in Commons, another lunch meeting brings together students who are members of the Residence Life staff, such as junior advisors or community advisors (formerly residence coordinator).

They’re meeting with Brandon Ouellette, one of the professional counselors from the college’s Counseling and Psychiatric Services.

Seen here is Aidan Riano ’24 of New York City, a community advisor team leader. Ouellette offered advice, took their questions, and welcomed tips and insights about how the student leaders manage various situations in the houses and residence halls where they work.

12:32 p.m.

The dining team is into its ninth hour on the job, and already it’s time to focus on the next day. Violet Bernard, cold kitchen supervisor, gets to work making to-go egg and cheese sandwiches for the following day.

Each will be wrapped in foil (seen at left), and if there’s a paw sticker, it means they don’t have cheese.

12:41 p.m.

Lunch is in full swing, both down below in the main dining hall and upstairs in the Gorayeb Mezzanine, at left.

There, first-year students Haley Ganzer of New York City and Braedon Parker of Kearney, Neb., relax at a table by themselves, having slipped the bonds of academia, if only for a moment.

Here, they wait for their friends, and their friends’ friends, relishing the idea that there may be some in the group they do not know — yet.

“We always sit up here, because it’s quiet,” Ganzer says. “My roommate introduced me to her friends, and we all kind of stuck together. It’s easier to hear people up here.”

12:42 p.m.

Ruby Haylock ’26 of Hartford, Maine, carves out a study spot on the second floor of Commons.

12:47 p.m.

Kendall Jones ’25 of Plymouth, N.H., and Britton Gorfain ’25 of New York City check in as lunch winds down; they are both teaching assistants for organic chemistry.

4:20 p.m.

At the vegan bar, Matthew Escorsio, a first cook, prepares samples of the food that will be served at supper. In the foreground is a yummy side dish that he prepared with carrots, yellow squash, kale, parsley, lime, red onions, red peppers, black beans, cherry tomatoes — among other goodies.

Part of Dining Services’ rigorous health-safety protocols is gathering samples of each food item at each meal in the event that testing is later required.

4:22 p.m.

The late-afternoon light spills into Commons as Molly Furman ’24 of Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., work on her laptop.

She’s been doing some people-watching in Commons, but with an academic purpose: a sociology project about student perceptions of Commons and its traditions, such as how students don’t use trays, or how, when someone drops a dish, everyone claps.

Are those traditions intimidating to newcomers, or merely folksy and fun? “One time I was eating with a professor and he asked, ‘Why are you not using a tray?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know!’ I think people don’t want to look different, you don’t want to stand out.”

5:09 p.m.

Inês Reis ’27 of Angra do Heroismo, Portugal, works for Dining Services in the evening. Here she gets frozen french fries ready for the deep fryer.

“Commons is a big part of the �ֲ���ý community,” she says. “I’m glad I get to contribute to it all. Everyone gives so much to provide the best experience, and being part of the behind-the-scenes is exciting, especially on busy days!”

Reis gets kudos from her bosses for handling the deep fryer, a deceptively challenging job, whether it’s fries or chicken tenders. The work is “hot and busy,” says Michael Staffenski, associate director of culinary and retail operations. 

5:10 p.m.

Dining Services staff members Diana Mba Oyana (left) and Sonia Roy finish their early dinner before the supper crowd arrives.

5:11 p.m.

When diners finish their meals, they return dishes and flatware to a conveyer system that delivers the dishes to the dishroom, where (from left) Dining Services workers Ryan Bouchard, Abu Guhat, and Ali Hamse take over.

The solid waste stream includes about 100,000 pounds of product that goes to compost annually, and an additional 140,000 pounds of food scraps that go to the Sourground Farm pig farm in Sabattus, Maine.

5:23 p.m.

Student worker Axelle Tougouma ‘27 of Fada N’Gourma, Burkina Faso, takes her position as a monitor at the exit door from Commons. Later on in the evening, she’ll pitch in to help the staff tidy up the dining room.

She’s enjoyed getting to know her dining colleagues, whether longtime Mainers or new Mainers who’ve immigrated to Lewiston.

Tougouma says she’s not a fan of the cold, but colleagues have taught her that some people love winter. “There is such a genuine bond within us carried by discussions around different topics. My favorite is talking about winter, which I am not a fan of compared to Mainers. What more valuable work is there than learning from each other?”

6:05 p.m.

Emma Upton ’24 (right) of Amherst, N.H., and Jackson Quinn ’24 of Falmouth, Maine, are nearly finished with supper.

Upton is a studio art major, and she spent some on a project for her print-making course: “carving linoleum to make a self portrait through relief block printing.” One of eight studio art majors who exhibited in this year’s Senior Thesis Exhibition, she used sketched self-portraits to create mixed media abstractions.

6:18 p.m.

Calvin Capelle ’25 of San Juan Capistrano, Calif., displays his supper meal: beef pastrami sandwich on white bread, macaronic and cheese, and some greens.

6:27 p.m.

Dinner is in full swing. Upstairs, members of the ultimate team Cold Front and friends have dinner together. On the menu tonight is:

• Bobcat Bar: chicken stuffed with broccoli and cheese; salmon picatta; Israeli couscous; chateau blend.
• Grill: beef pastrami, shoestring fries.
• Vegan Bar: vegetable Chili, tofu tikka masala, brown rice, caponata siciliana.
• Brick Oven: pizza
• Pasta Bar: Pasta options with a variety of sauces.
• Deli: potato pesto soup, chicken noodle soup.
• Bakery: dinner rolls, carrot cake, Lucky Charms marshmallow bar.

6:51 p.m.

Maggie Gill ’27 of Tenants Harbor, Maine, finds a quite spot in the Fireplace Lounge.

7:39 p.m.

In the Renyi Meeting Room on the second floor, Dan Barsky ’03, via Zoom, engages a room full of student entrepreneurs during a meeting of Bobcat Ventures, the student entrepreneur program supported by the Center for Purposeful Work.

Barsky is an intellectual property attorney in Miami who is active in South Florida’s entrepreneurial and startup community. Joined by Pranav Ghai ’93, a �ֲ���ý trustee, the two alumni shared insights on crafting compelling pitch decks and presentations and took student questions.

8:04 p.m.

Cristina Salazar ’24 (right) has some fun catching up with dining staffer Sonia Roy.

“I love being able to go into Commons and saying hi to everyone,” says Salazar. “At this point, they feel like family to me and have provided me with a huge sense of belonging and home.”

Roy is originally from Peru, and Salazar, who is from San José, Costa Rica, values their shared Latin American heritage. “I am able to connect with her so closely through language and culture! I feel like she’s a mom for me while being so far away from mine.”

8:15 p.m.

John Haelsen, a first cook, cleans and closes down the grill, which began the day making omelets and ended the day grilling beef pastrami.

8:42 p.m.

One of the last, lingering diners in Commons were two first-year students who had just met: Rahaa Jeagar “RJ” Nikzat (left) of Mashhad, Iran, and Josh Ezerioha from Lagos, Nigeria.

They engaged in conversation about their experiences as international students at �ֲ���ý and their impressions of life in the U.S.

They came together thanks to a conversational matchmaker, of sorts: Tracy Stevenson, a cook’s assistant, who suggested they might enjoy each other’s company.

8:46 p.m.

Jackie Robert scans in some of the last diners of the evening.

8:58 p.m.

Billie Coburn, the board plan manager for Dining Services, is on the phone with Associate Director of Dining John Lajoie, briefing him on a mini-emergency. A gasket blew on the soft-serve ice cream machine, creating a huge mess that the staff cleaned up. A repair will take two hours, which Lajoie and his team will tackle in the morning.

9:20 p.m.

Right before closing up the dining operation, Coburn (second from left) checks in with colleagues, from left, RJ Loring, Nick Bolduc, and Abu Guhat.

Coburn says he always tries to looks around to see who needs help. For the dining team, pitching in is a big part of the culture.

For example, Ramadan has just begun, which means that anywhere from several to a dozen colleagues who are Muslim will break their daily fast with Iftar and prayer just after sunset.

At that time, other staff switch jobs for the hour that their colleagues are praying. Coburn picks up a sheet with the time of sunset in March and April that he printed earlier, so he’s certain when it occurs. “Today it was 6:43 p.m, and there were seven people. We’ll get it done. It’s the holiest month in the Islamic calendar.”

In terms of language diversity, about 17 percent of the 120 dining staff speak English as a second language; interpreters who speak French or Spanish are often part of staff meetings.

9:23 p.m.

After doing one final check-in with his crew, Coburn heads to the front of the building to lock the doors. By 11 p.m., all cleaning and closing down will be done, and the building fully put to bed — some 19 hours after the �ֲ���ý dining team began their day.

Writing and reporting by Deirdre Stires, Jay Burns, and Hannah Kothari ‘26.

Just a few ticks past 4 a.m., when most �ֲ���ý students are sleeping, unless powering through an all-nighter, Dining Services staff member Jane Herrick arrives at Commons to begin her day. 

We’re dating ourselves with the old Dunkin’ Donuts catch phrase, “Time to make the donuts.” But that’s Herrick’s life as head baker.

Herrick is the first of a Dining Services team that will number 70 on Tuesday, March 12, 2024. From morning till night, they will serve 4,789 meals and provide a top-shelf, caring, and community-oriented dining experience focused on students. 

Christine Schwartz, �ֲ���ý’ indefatigable associate vice president for dining, conferences, and campus events, was away on March 12, but the operation of the building, kitchens, and dining room she entrusts to her crackerjack staff ran like a top.

As students and alumni can attest, �ֲ���ý dining operation is seamlessly integrated into the entire �ֲ���ý student experience. “The work we do is integral to the educational mission of the institution and the success of our students,” says Schwartz. “That’s what drives us: helping students succeed.”

She and Cheryl Lacey, director of dining services, sweat the small stuff (such as sourcing sriracha sauce when it became scarce) and bigger stuff, like recognizing the wide variety of dining traditions, cultures, and needs presented by today’s �ֲ���ý students, and supporting their own large team of workers.

Some Commons workers are multigenerational Lewiston citizens with long French Canadian heritage. Some are new citizens from African and other nations. For about 28 percent of the entire Dining, Conferences, and Campus Events staff, English is a second (or third) language. 

They serve �ֲ���ý students, and in turn the students serve them heaping helpings of appreciation and respect.

In the hours and initial days after the Lewiston shootings of Oct. 25, 2023, �ֲ���ý had to ensure that students had food in the midst of a shelter-in-place order. “We still came in, because the kids had to be fed,” said Michael Staffenski, associate director of culinary and retail operations. 

Afterward, students made their appreciation clear and visible. “The whole wall at the Napkin Board was full of thank-yous,” said Staffenski, referring to the cork board where �ֲ���ý students offer feedback by writing comments on napkins that are pinned to the board.

Here, in the first of two parts, we present a day in the life of Commons.

4:04 a.m.

The first to arrive at Commons is baker Jane Herrick, right around 4 a.m., when she gets to work preparing frozen dough and the ingredients needed to make dozens of pastries, rolls, and desserts. Herrick lives in Lewiston near campus; other staff live in Auburn, while others travel from surrounding towns like Sabattus, Turner, Minot, Greene, and Lisbon Falls. 

4:10 a.m.

Herrick has worked in Dining Services for 26 years — including for the last 18 as the baker. She takes immense pride in her work.

While putting cinnamon rolls in a proofing box, she stops for a moment to show off the vegan frosting used on breakfast rolls. It was her creation, and it’s been a hit. “They call it ‘Jane’s Vegan Frosting,’” she says with a smile.

4:20 a.m.

Herrick is no nonsense as she explains the specific protocols for mixing ingredients, freezing the dough, and cutting baking sheets of goodies made the previous day. She moves quickly, and doesn’t look up as she talks.

4:53 a.m.

Gerry Villeneuve and Violet Bernard carry coffee and drinks to their work stations. Even at this early hour, smiles and camaraderie are everwhere.

5:02 a.m.

Food vendors make deliveries through the course of each day. Some deliveries are small, like donuts from the Italian Bakery located downtown.

The biggest delivery is the day’s first, from NorthCenter food service. They deliver everything from cereal to tea, plus milk, chicken tenders, vegetables like cauliflower and broccoli florets, and products for the soft serve machine. That’s upwards of 600 cases in all.

5:12 a.m.

Ryan Blake, a member of the Dining Services sanitation team, puts down anti-fatigue kitchen mats behind all of the stations. And at the end of the day, a team member will remove and clean them for the next day.

5:15 a.m.

Gerry Villeneuve works the Tomcat Sport heavy duty floor scrubber outside the Chu Dining Room, which is no small job, particularly during a Maine winter or the state’s famous mud season.

5:22 a.m.

Ryan Blake stores his coat in one of the 52 lockers available for staff, many of them adorned with stickers celebrating equity and inclusion, vegan food, and �ֲ���ý.

5:24 a.m.

Michael Staffenski, the associate director of culinary and retail operations, stops for a moment after a meeting with a cook to share with a visitor what he’s most proud of in Commons. 

The first pride point is the students. Second is the consistent great reviews from various professional organizations. “We’re good at what we do. Yes, we’re busy. But we have systems in place to manage the flow,” Staffenski says.

5: 31 a.m.

Violet Bernard has worked in Commons for 12 years at the bakery, in the serving counters, in catering, “pretty much everywhere,” she says. 

She’s proud that some of her own recipes have been used, such as her baked pasta dish and her grandmother’s Greek lentil soup, the Yai Yai’s Lentil Soup, a fan favorite because it is both vegan and gluten free.

But Bernard’s greatest joy at �ֲ���ý is connecting with students, including student workers. She offers as proof a text from a former student from Ghana — Nerissa Brobbey ’15 — who had a flair for dressing in stylish, hip outfits. Bernard looks up and shows off Brobbey’s Facebook posts of her posing in fashionable dresses.

“It’s hard to see them graduate. I think of these kids as my kids,” Bernard says. “They need comfort food. But I want them to eat healthy. It’s a place for them to hang out together and keep their bellies full.”

5:29 a.m.

Josh Lajoie, a first cook in Dining Services, brings more than muscle power and culinary artistry to Commons each day.

“Josh has positive energy, is a team player, and has an incredible skill set. He’s just so good at spreading love around,” said Christine Schwartz. 

Lajoie said working in Commons is more than a job. What he loves best about the experience is “the feeling of belongingness and being a part of something you know well with others.”

5:37 a.m.

From one tray or counter to the next, Herrick works patiently, carefully, and on any given day could be baking 80 to 300 muffins, around 14 loaves of banana bread, nearly 500 ginger-brandy cookies, and about 700 dinner rolls. There’s also sheets of key lime cheesecake to cut up and wrap, danishes and cinnamon rolls to prepare — all of it made from scratch. 

Enter: Gerry Villeneuve, a veteran of 20 years, who works in sanitation. Villeneuve likes to joke around with the 5-foot-2 Herrick about how the short counters and kitchen carts were custom made for her (which is not true, but hearing Villeneuve say it in a booming laugh, it’s easy to believe). 

“We are always moving here, but it’s nice to stop and visit,” Villeneuve says with another dose of laughter.

6:25 a.m.

Part of Dining Service’s rigorous health-safety protocols is making certain that well before the first bite is taken in Commons, the staff has gathered samples of each food item in the event that testing is later required.

6:40 a.m.

Mohamud Osman used to work on a hospital maintenance staff cleaning windows, so he aims for perfection when he cleans the windows on the front and back doors of Commons.

Osman helps the �ֲ���ý crew in many ways: cleaning the floors, cleaning pots, cleaning the dishwasher, breaking it down and reassembling it, to name just a few. Osman waves to everyone in greeting and pitches in where he’s needed. 

“I like working in Commons, I like the people, I like my managers. They’re good people. They always ask me what I need, and they ask so nicely. Whoever needs help here, I help them,” he said.

6:53 a.m.

Osman vacuums the Fireside Lounge immediately before the students arrive for breakfast on omelet day, which always promises a happy rush of guests.

7:00 a.m.

Dining Services staffer Linda Ritchie admits the first student diners to Commons breakfast.

7:02 a.m.

A student hands a cup with her selected omelet ingredients to cook Brad McArthur, “the Omelet Man.” Rather than pointing out ingredients for McArthur to place on their omelet, students now dish out their toppings themselves.

7:08 a.m.

Tuesday is omelet day, which means that McArthur, a 28-year veteran, is a welcome sight to students.

McArthur makes each omelet to order with whatever students want: cheese, bacon, spinach, peppers, onions — and extra hamburg for those who want it.

7:15 a.m.

�ֲ���ý sports teams often gather together during breakfast at Commons, such as the field hockey team above. At a window nearby, the rowing teams sat together and on this day had good news to report: Later in the day, at their boathouse on the Androscoggin River they would participate in the age-old rowing ritual of putting in the docks. 

“It marks the start of our season,” said Quinn Gleason ‘26 of Wayland Mass.

Gleason had finished an egg bowl. “Spinach as a base, red onions, cheese, sometimes beans, then two eggs, and then any kind of protein I can find. Delicious!” She has her eggs over-easy. “Always. The yolks kind of freak me out.”

7:32 a.m.

Bobcats, the student kind and the frosted-glass kind, face a new morning in Commons.

Having exited his room at Page Hall, Liam Friedlander ’27 of Pittsburgh is walking along Lake Andrews toward Commons for breakfast before his 8 a.m. class. 

His routine of listening to music, a Spotify mix that has served up Taylor Swift at this moment, having been interrupted for the moment, Friedlander explains that he’s coming off his first year as a varsity swimmer.

Ordinarily, he’d be up this early for a swim workout, then class. With the season over, he has a lot more time on his hands, which is taking some getting used to. “It feels weird,” he says.

After breakfast (eating “whatever”), he’ll head to his hydrogeology class with Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences Beverly Johnson. “She’s great,” he says.

7:35 a.m.

Cameron Frary ‘24 making a waffle in classic-�ֲ���ý style with all the trimmings: strawberries and syrup.

7:47 a.m.

Josh Lajoie, working with Brad McArthur at the omelet station, tosses cheese onto yet another omelet.

Lorenzo Songsare-Shevy ’27 of Uttenreuth, Germany, says his favorite omelet has “various meats, spinach, and tomato,” he says. “I’m Italian — I have to like tomato.”

He has never been an early-morning person. “But I’m trying to change that now.” He sees the benefits, at least when it comes to breakfast. “The lines are shorter now, and my friends are here. I’m relaxed.” 

Noa Hart ’27 of Hastings on Hudson, N.Y., describes her wake-up times as “airport times.” She’s a rower, and they get up very early for workouts. “I woke up at 4:20,” she says.

“Tuesdays are my favorite day because of omelet day. I live for omelet day. My favorite part about the 5 a.m [workout] is that we get to be first for omelet day.”

7:52 a.m.

Marc Begin ’27 of Jacksonville, Fla., talks with his teammates on the men’s basketball team after breakfast. It’s common in Commons to find members of Bobcat teams sitting together enjoying not only meals, but Bobcat camaraderie.

7:59 a.m.

An hour into breakfast, it’s nearly as quiet as it was when the dining room opened at 7. The rush to eat before 8 a.m. classes has come and gone. Only a handful of people are left.

Two are Pat Schoknecht (left), the college librarian and vice president for information and library services, and Leigh Weisenburger, dean of admission and vice president for enrollment and financial aid.

They’ve both been up for hours: Schoknecht because it’s how she rolls. “Already been to the gym,” she says. And Weisenburger because she’s up early with her two young children, one of whom, a 6-year-old boy, hits the ground running each morning. “Very early,” she says.

Nearby Schoknecht and Weisenburger is Jackson Quinn ’24 of Falmouth, Maine, who was using the last few minutes of his breakfast to finish a reading for his 8 a.m. class in behavioral economics, taught by Sandra Goff, associate professor of economics, a short walk away in Bonney Science Center. 

On the table before him is the course textbook, A Course in Behavioral Economics, and he was reading a chapter on intertemporal choice, which is how we make decisions that involve trade-offs between costs and benefits that occur at different points in time.

We asked him how many pages he had. “Maybe five more,” he said, thumbing the pages. And with just seven minutes left before 8 a.m., that was a clue to wrap up our interview. (Postscript: Quinn finished his reading on time.)

8:02 a.m.

In this view from the upstairs Gorayeb Mezzanine about an hour after sunrise, the early morning sun illuminates parts of three �ֲ���ý buildings, from left: Chase Hall, Carnegie Science Hall, and Ladd Library. 

In the foreground are the brick pillars of the Class of 1910 Gate, once where fans paid to enter Garcelon Field for football games and now the ceremonial entrance to the plaza that fronts Commons.

8:54 a.m.

Sometimes, the secret sauce is not in the ingredients.

“The omelets that come at the end (of the shift) are the best, after you get the grill seasoned with other flavors from the vegetable juices, from the meat juices. It enhances the flavor,” McArthur convides. “It’s the same principle as a cast-iron cooking pan.”

9:06 a.m.

Upstairs during the monthly gathering of the Presidents Council, a group of staff members who direct college programs gather. Leana Amáez, vice president for equity and inclusion, directs the discussion about bias in hiring practices. She has just asked who among attendees has had formal training in bias-free and inclusive hiring practices.

9:26 a.m.

Meanwhile, downstairs the flow in and out of Commons continues.

“The line is tragic,” says a good-natured Josh Ezerioha ’27 of Bowie, Md., as he waits for the first of two omelets. He arrived in Commons after class at 10. “I have just enough time to get here before my next class.”

The first-year football player never misses the omelet bar. Never. He waited 25 minutes for his first of two on March 12. But as a 200-pound linebacker at �ֲ���ý, Ezerioha needs more than one.

Xinchen Zhong ’24 of Shanghai also never misses the omelet bar. She also likes the pho and food at the vegan bar, all of these choices, she says, are aimed at a healthy diet. 

“I like the omelets because they’re mostly protein. It limits the carbohydrates,” Zhong says.

9:49 a.m.

After attending the President’s Council meeting upstairs, President Jenkins heads downstairs to the dining hall.

“There’s Garry. He’s the chillest president ever,” Ezerioha says. “I had three presidents at the (prep) school I went to, and he is the most chill.” 

As Jenkins moves around the beverage bar before heading to a morning meeting, he take his time and looks out at the dining room, where students talk with friends, cram for classes, or eat breakfast. In Commons, Jenkins rarely intrudes on these moments, but, instead in his body language and demeanor, he lets the students know: “They can chat with me, if they wish.”

Then he ticks off his favorites in Common: the tofu pad thai and the waffles. “But those are a treat,” Jenkins adds. 

“To be honest when I first heard about the reputation of the food in Commons was, I thought, ‘How great can it be? It’s institutional.’ But it really is a reputation well-earned. It’s something to be proud of and make an enormous difference for the college,” Jenkins says.

That, of course, is because much of the food in Commons is prepared by hand, even made from scratch and favorite family recipes shared by both the staff and students.

10:10 a.m.

Brown Cow yogurt, made by Stonyfield, has a high cream content and is made with maple syrup, which is a student favorite.

Students are famous for creative concoctions, and one recent trend is mixing Brown Cow maple yogurt with cocoa powder, peanut butter, and honey!

10:13 a.m.

If you want to get �ֲ���ý students to light up, just have James Reese (standing right), longtime associate dean for international student programs, stop by a table in Commons at mealtime.

The beloved dean is with Allison Brown (left), the associate director of �ֲ���ý Counseling and Pyschological Services (left), and they’ve stopped to chat and share a laugh with Tamaki Hashiramoto ’24 (seated left) of Tokyo and Britton Gorfain ’25 of New York City.

Writing and reporting by Deirdre Stires, Jay Burns, and Hannah Kothari ‘26.

At the dedication of Olin Arts Center in 1986, the late Carl Benton Straub, then dean of the faculty, said that “none of us will ever know the countless moments of discovery and self-discovery which will occur in and around this place.”

We won’t know them all, but here are a few — images and sounds of artists and their art, musicians and their music, captured over three days in early February by �ֲ���ý writers Emily McConville and Doug Hubley and photographers Phyllis Graber Jensen and Theophil Syslo.

The home of the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art, Olin Arts Center also houses the Department of Music and the Department of Art and Visual Culture.

Dedicated in 1986, the Olin Arts Center has been a home to art and artists, music and musicians, who “cut through pretense and presumption to fresh, new beginnings.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The building features classrooms and faculty offices; practice rooms for musicians and art studios including a ceramics studio and kiln room; a slide library of digital and film artwork and photographic darkrooms; and the signature 300-seat concert hall.

In the spaces of Olin, as Straub promised more than three decades ago, �ֲ���ý artists and art, and musicians and music, will “cut through pretense and presumption to fresh, new beginnings.”

With that, we begin:

Wednesday, Feb. 5

Experimentation with Intent

If Bugs Bunny with his banjo or Bart Simpson with his skateboard seem so free and wild, the art that goes into their cartoon antics is anything but.

This is clear from watching Carolina González Valencia, assistant professor of art and visual culture, show a class in Olin 321 how an animated film is made.

8:48 a.m.

Michael Hogue ’20 of Chicago works on a project before joining his classmates for an animation course taught by Carolina González Valencia, assistant professor of art and visual culture. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The course is “Animation II: Experimental Methods,” part of the animation track launched by the arts and visual culture department when González arrived in 2016. The animation lab, a former painting studio that still has a rail around the walls to support canvases, is tucked up under the sloping art center roof. The ceiling lamps are off.

Under the eyes of six students, González stands in a pool of light at an animation stand. At the bottom of the stand is a brightly lit baseboard marked with a grid, and at the top there’s a downward-aiming camera that can be moved up and down.

9:21 a.m.

Zhao Li ’21 of Guangzhou, China, watches the animated short film ��𳦲⳦�������in Carolina González Valencia’s experimental animation class. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

González is demonstrating the use of cutouts and layers in a technique called under-camera animation. On the grid, she has created a scenario from a drawing of two open windows and a few cutouts — a banana, a paper plane, a dancer.

You know the drill: González snaps a few frames of the composition, which go into software called Dragon in an iMac. She moves something slightly and snaps a few more (the standard frame rate for animation is 24 per second). She creates illusions of distance by separating the visual planes with a sheet of glass, or by changing the camera height, or by substituting the paper plane with a smaller version.

9:23 a.m.

Carolina González Valencia, assistant professor of art and visual culture. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“When there are multiple things that I’m moving at different times, I like to keep a log,” González tells the students, who will soon be creating their own trial animations. In essence, her message is to bring the methods of science to this art form. Restrict the variables, she says. “Experiment with intention. Don’t move things in a random way.”

She plays back the frames she’s been recording, and a paper plane flies in one window and back out the other.

9:47 a.m.

González works at the animation stand. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

‘One Really Cool Detail’

As they begin a visit at the �ֲ���ý Museum of Art, education curator Anthony Shostak gives a class of seventh-graders from Lewiston Middle School two tasks as they take in the exhibition Miracles and and Glory Abound by Pittsburgh artist Vanessa German: Come up with at least one question about the art, and find “one really cool detail.”��

There’s plenty to choose from. German’s work is immense, expansive, intricate.��The middle schoolers are quick to point out the details, and their feelings about them. “That’s scary,” one observes about a pile of plaster baby legs adorning one sculpture. “There are keys everywhere,” says another.��

10:55 a.m.

Lewiston Middle School student Michael Caron, 13, notices an unexpected part of a sculpture by Vanessa German: himself, reflected in one of the mirrors scattered throughout German’s exhibition at the �ֲ���ý Museum of Art. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

This field trip is a kind of “field work,” says social studies teacher Jennifer Hudner. Later in the semester, the students will pick out a Lewiston landmark to personify. Hudner wants to show her charges that ordinary objects and structures can have great meaning.

“This” — Hudner gestures toward the whole exhibit — “has a lot of stories to tell.”��

Museum education fellow Elizabeth Boyle gathers the students around the exhibit’s centerpiece, a sculpture of a boat and its passengers. The sculpture reimagines Emanuel Leutze’s iconic painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” depicting all of the boat’s passengers and the first U.S. president as Black women: “LaQuisha Washington Crossing the Day Aware.”

Boyle explains the characters in the sculpture — including a blue figure personifying water — and challenges the students to think about the importance of depicting Black women as part of a story from which they are often excluded.��

Boyle says most tour groups catch recurring motifs like boxing gloves, keys, and mirrors. But German’s sculptures are so detailed, the symbolism so layered, that visitors often notice things before museum staff do.��

Case in point: One student points out that LaQuisha Washington and the figure next to her look like a couple.��

Practicing ‘Pathétique’

11:07 a.m.

The sounds of piano, a constant on Olin’s second floor, mix with that of a vacuum cleaner running on carpet. Alek Zelbo ’23 of New York City waits for a moment outside a practice room for his piano lesson to start.��

Zelbo started piano about a year and a half ago, during a gap year before college. He took to the instrument so well that he hopes to major in music performance, as well as chemistry.��

He’s on his way to reaching that goal — �ֲ���ý students can take applied music lessons for credit — with the help of Chiharu Naruse, an accomplished pianist and piano instructor who studied under renowned �ֲ���ý pianist Frank Glazer.��

Vignettes from the Olin Arts Center practice rooms by Theophil Syslo.

In the practice room, Zelbo runs through some scales before resuming a piece he’s been learning, Beethoven’s “Pathétique” sonata.

Naruse guides him through a section of the sonata, having him pay attention to volume, speed, and articulation — the clarity of touch. Both use pencils to make notes or tap out rhythms.��

Several minutes into the lesson, Zelbo starts to play through several bars. “Yes!” says Naruse. “You can do it.”��

11:16 a.m.

Alek Zelbo ’23 and piano instructor Chiharu Naruse use pencils to make notes and tap out rhythms. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

A Piece of the Puzzle

11:32 a.m.

Stay in the Olin Concert Hall for a week, and you see a revolving door of rehearsals; performances by students, outside artists, and artists in residence; and other events, with audiences of varying sizes.��

Now, though, Olin is still and empty except for the hum of the auto scrubber, which custodian Bruce Audet uses to clean the stage about three times a week. He starts at an outer corner and works his way in; later he’ll need to move the piano that’s now in the middle of the stage.��

Custodian Bruce Audet cleans the Olin Concert Hall stage. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Working in Olin is “like a puzzle, fitting everything together,” Audet says. There’s standard cleaning and maintenance, plus a carousel of events to set up and take down. Audet likes it that way.��

He also likes being around students and employees, and the music and art they make.��

‘Ohm’ in the Museum

The lower level of the Museum of Art is currently home to Ralph Meatyard: Stages for Being, an exhibition of the Kentucky photographer’s eerie, enigmatic images.

12:16 p.m.

Costume Shop Supervisor Carol Farrell performs a “downward dog” during lunchtime yoga in the �ֲ���ý Museum of Art. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

It’s also the home of Wednesday lunchtime yoga for faculty and staff, including Costume Shop Supervisor Carol Farrell, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics David Haines, and custodian Mark Truitt. Surrounded by surreal black-and-white photos of children and adults in masks, yoga regulars roll out their mats.��

Instructor Heidi Audet puts on some music, and the session begins. Roll shoulders. Straighten spine. Roll head, drop chin. Exhale — “hah!” Then cross legs, and, if you like, three rounds of ohm.

12:16 p.m.

Professor Emeritus of Mathematics David Haines, front, and custodian Mark Truitt reach up during lunchtime yoga in the �ֲ���ý Museum of Art. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Duke’s Musical Dialogue��

12:26 p.m.

Olin 105 is set up as a small auditorium or movie theater. There are descending rows of seats, a raised stage with a piano on it, a sound booth in the back, and a wall-to-wall projection screen up front. Tucked away in a corner is an old overhead projector on a cart; nearby, a skateboard leans against the back wall.��

In a course on the history of jazz, Associate Professor of Music Dale Chapman explains an upcoming writing assignment before starting a lecture on jazz in the Great Depression. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

Associate Professor of Music Dale Chapman, teaching his jazz history course, is explaining how “exoticized, racialized” jazz performances gave way, during the Great Depression, to public dances, the audience becoming part of the entertainment instead of just watching it.��

Emerging from this milieu was Duke Ellington, whose orchestra’s polished and sophisticated sound was thanks in no small part to trumpeter Cootie Williams.

Chapman plays a recording of “Concerto for Cootie,” an Ellington composition that gave Williams the spotlight.��

Students in the class point out the dynamics of rhythm and loudness. Chapman adds that the piece contains internal harmonies, and that the rest of the band answers Williams’ melody — a musical dialogue, he says.��

12:37 p.m.

Associate Professor of Music Dale Chapman discusses Duke Ellington’s “Concerto for Cootie.” (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

All Together Now��

Wednesday afternoons are among the few times when the senior studios — rooms where studio art majors complete their thesis work — are full.

Seniors have 24-hour access to the building, and while each has times when they feel most productive and inspired, today’s the day when they meet together with Pamela Johnson, associate professor of art and visual culture, for their weekly thesis class.��

E.B. Hall ’20 of Boise, Idaho, works on her pieces — grand sculptures and figurines made of donated clothes, Goodwill rejects, and even dryer lint — in a ground-floor room with wall-to-wall windows looking out on the field toward Russell Street.��

A floor above, Mayele Alognon ’20 of Louisville, Ky., uses a wash technique to make semi-transparent figures on cardboard, many of them locked in embraces. “I’m juggling a lot with this idea that there are multiple authentic versions of self, rather than one objective version of oneself,” she says.��

3:35 p.m.

E.B. Hall ’20 reflects on her senior thesis project — making sculptures and other artworks out of discarded items. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The studios are shared spaces, and among Alognon’s studio-mates is Philip Wu ’20 of New Taipei City, Taiwan, who across the room is using ink pens and brush markers to make intricate, dystopian cityscapes. Whereas Alognon likes to work in the afternoons (“I’m definitely with the light,” she says), Wu is more of a night owl, coming into the studio after dinner and working past midnight.��

“I kind of like it to be quiet and peaceful,” he says. “That’s the environment I enjoy working in.”��

“The energy’s always fluctuating.”��

Alognon spends a lot of time in Olin, between the studio, her job at the front desk, and an independent study in animation. In the rhythms of the day, there’s “this friction between being a lot of noise in here and not a lot of noise,” she says.��

“Sometimes it’s a really great place to concentrate on your own work and be by yourself, and sometimes there’s so much going on. The energy’s always fluctuating.”��

It’s invariably nice, though, to come into the studio and see not only her own work, but that of her classmates. “It’s motivational to come in here and see what everyone else is working on. It makes you want to work harder and do better-quality and more work in general.”��

3:53 p.m.: For her thesis, Grace Smith ’20 is working in a variety of media and styles. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

3:26 p.m.: Celia Feal-Staub ’20 of Putney, Vt., does ceramic work during her senior thesis class. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

3:41 p.m.: Grace Smith of Williamstown, Mass., works on a piece for her studio art thesis. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

3:42 p.m.: In E.B. Hall's studio space, a disembodied Barbie and sheet from a sketch pad. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

3:50 p.m.: Otis Klingbeil ’20 of Powell, Ohio, contemplates before he paints. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Shedding Light��

3:59 p.m.

As the late-afternoon light causes shadows to descend on the Olin lobby, Myron Beasley, associate professor of American studies, offers advice about summer jobs and art spaces to Ollie Penner ’22 of Pasadena, Calif., an art and American studies double-major.

(Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Coming to Life��

Live figure drawing starts at 6 p.m., and many artists arrive several minutes early. The nude model will pose on a small platform in Olin 259, with participants set up around her in a semi-circle — so where they place their easels will determine the angle at which they can draw her.��

6:01 p.m.

A model poses during a weekly life drawing session in Olin Arts Center, sponsored by the �ֲ���ý Museum of Art. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Sponsored by the Museum of Art, the three-hour session attracts both �ֲ���ý students and community members — including noted landscape artist Joel Babb.��

The model starts with a short five-minute pose. Using pencil or charcoal, the artists work quickly. Bodies take shape on paper within the first minute, followed by rough details and, for some artists, shadows.��

6:16 p.m.

Landscape artist Joel Babb sketches quickly — the model’s first pose only lasts for five minutes. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

‘Got a Little Something’ to Play��

7:24 p.m.

Tucked in a narrow room on the first floor, the 15 or so members of the �ֲ���ý Steel Pan Orchestra play through “Got a Little Something.” It’s the ensemble’s first rehearsal of the semester. “Beautiful,” says director Duncan Hardy. “Wow.”��

For the most part, each ensemble member is in charge of two steel pans, the Trinidadian percussion instruments. Made out of 55-gallon drums, the pans are marked along the rim with the note that will ring out if hit in that spot.��

Watch the �ֲ���ý Steel Pan Orchestra practice “Got a Little Something.”

It’s time to practice the next song, “Iron Have Me So,” and the room fills with the cacophony of musicians practicing their individual parts. Hardy circles the room giving instructions. Like steel pan music itself, the atmosphere of the rehearsal is lively, fun.��

Bringing the group back together, Hardy has individual sections — high pans, low pans, bass — play parts of the song. Panners click their sticks as applause.��

7:50 p.m.

From left, Sam Onion ’20 of Wayne, Maine, Emmy Daigle ’20 of Portland, Ore., and Steel Pan Orchestra director Duncan Hardy learn a new song. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

Thursday, Feb. 6

Chipping Away��

Alex Paton ’21 of Charlotte, Vt., breaks up snow and ice behind the outdoor soda kiln to make space for the kiln burners. This kiln creates a particular ceramic glaze.��

2:25 p.m.

(Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

What Practice Is For��

“We want the sound to be dense,” Alan Carr tells the low-end contingent — three trombonists and a euphonium player, plus a drummer — of the �ֲ���ý Brass Ensemble. “Imagine the sound oozing through the wall, out under Russell Street.”

2:53 p.m.

Nick White ’21 of Brunswick, Maine, is one of three student trombonists in the �ֲ���ý Brass ensemble. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Hidden in the back of Olin’s ground floor, the rehearsal room was built big but looks small, jammed with musical instruments. The musicians sit on folding chairs in a small clearing anchored at one end by two pianos. Carr, brass ensemble director and a trombonist himself, is conducting the students through an angular, propulsive passage from Martin Fondse’s “Low End HiFi.”

“There were four different E-naturals going on there,” observes Carr, unperturbed. This is what rehearsal is for, after all. When he adds his bass trombone to the ensemble, the sound densifies considerably. Trumpeters wander in or hang around, muttering in the hall. Drummer Christian Bradna ’20 of Guatemala City riffles his high-hat and pumps the kick drum.

2:54 p.m.

Trombonist Alice Li ’21 of Bellevue, Wash. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“How about we sing our parts?” Carr says. He claps the tempo, the men sing the dominant line, trombonist Alice Li ’21 of Bellevue, Wash. — despite her earlier claim that she’d forgotten the whole thing — negotiates an ornate counter-melody.

“Alice, that was perfect,” Carr says. He pauses. “Wouldn’t it be fun if we spontaneously sang like that during the concert?”

3:07 p.m.

Alan Carr, brass ensemble director, also plays bass trombone with the group. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Photograph Tasks��

There’s an hour left in a three-hour photography course taught by Senior Lecturer in Art and Visual Culture Elke Morris; a special guest, Maine fine arts photographer Jack Montgomery, has offered to stick around and chat with students, including Jake Choi ’20 of Seoul.��

3:19 p.m.

Jack Montgomery sits with Jake Choi ’20 of Seoul. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Otherwise, students in this upper-level class can consult with Morris about their assignment on photographing the human figure, or they can hang their finished work on the walls of the ground-floor hallway for the next day’s Arts Festival. The students scatter to their individual tasks.��

Nick Charde ’22 of Concord, Mass., plans to showcase a series of photos he made during a gap year, mainly focusing on architecture. “I love the way a setting — the buildings, the trees, the people — comes together to form a composite,” he says.��

3:23 p.m.

Cate Day ’20 of Montclair, N.J., talks with senior lecturer Elke Morris about her photography projects. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

An art and visual culture on the art history track, Charde has a class in Olin every day.

“I love the ambiance of this building,” he says. “You hear the pianos, people singing. It’s a good, cozy atmosphere. It’s away from the rest of campus, too, a nice alternative study spot.”��

Johnny Loftus ’22 of Palo Alto, Calif., heads across the hall to the darkroom. The “film guy” in the class, he likes how film constrains his choice of settings and number of shots; his photos come out better in the end, he believes.

Loftus works late at night, sometimes coming in as the late-shift custodian is leaving. “You do your own thing in here,” he says — which helps his art.��

3:26 p.m.

Johnny Loftus ’20 displays a binder of a classmate’s contact sheets in the Olin Arts Center darkroom. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

3:33 p.m.

Loftus uses a loupe to examine black-and-white negatives that he’s spread out on a light table in the Olin darkroom.

3:36 p.m.

Anna Gouveia ’22 of Jenkintown, Pa., hangs up her photo of a young boy in Lewiston’s twin city of Auburn. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“I usually hear of it, and I’ll come.”

On evenings and weekends, when Alexandra Hood, the center’s operations supervisor, is away from the front desk of Olin, a battalion of capable student workers takes over. Sandia Taban ’22 of Changsu, China, likes the job because she gets to interact with lots of different people.��

6:23 p.m.

Sandia Taban ’22 chats with �ֲ���ý Communications employees during her shift at the front desk of Olin. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Among her duties: giving students keys to the ceramics room, helping people book concert tickets, scanning said tickets, answering prospective students’ questions. One time, a woman walked by the office, stopped, turned around, came in, and complimented the office plant. But Taban also has plenty of time to do schoolwork.��

A nice side effect of working the front desk is that Taban is familiar with the arts calendar, so she goes to almost every concert. “Sometimes my friend will be in the choir, or my friend will be playing the violin in the orchestra,” she says. “I usually hear of it, and I’ll come.”

Percussion and Peace��

Walking into the �ֲ���ý Gamelan Ensemble rehearsal room, one feels a sense of tranquility. The wood and bronze of the Indonesian instruments cast a warm aura.

Even when the student and staff players are practicing individual parts of Sundanese songs all at once, the melodic percussion has, well, a nice ring to it.

6:36 p.m.

Nicole Recto ’21 of Laredo, Texas, plays kenong during the �ֲ���ý Gamelan Ensemble rehearsal. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

6:37 p.m.

Of course, the group’s skill and practice really show when they master their individual sections, and are able to put it all together.

Watch a gamelan piece come together.��

7:12 p.m.

It’s a familiar view to anyone who spends time in Olin Arts Center in winter: snowy Keigwin Amphitheater and an iced-over Lake Andrews.

(Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Friday, Feb. 7

Handle with Care

“Our rule,” says Anthony Shostak of the �ֲ���ý Museum of Art, “is that art objects are really safe when they’re not being handled.”

Fair enough. But inevitably, the museum’s Marsden Hartley drawings or pre-Columbian ceramics or Yvonne Jacquette prints, etc., actually do sometimes need to be handled. There’s a right way to do that and lots of wrong ways, and teaching the museum’s collection-management student interns right from wrong is an important part of their training.

1:19 p.m.

Anthony Shostak, education curator at the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art, shows intern Helen Pandey ’22 how artworks on paper are stored. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

This afternoon Shostak is giving that training to intern Helen Pandey ’22 of Nashville, Tenn., in the museum’s collection room, on Olin’s ground floor. Some precautions are self-evident.

For instance, gloves are worn to protect art from skin secretions, and they should be textured gloves for a good grip. Also, says Shostak, “If you have to cough or sneeze, definitely turn away.”

A so-called conveyance — in this case, a rolling table with an enclosed top — is used to, er, convey items from Point A to Point B. Three-dimensional objects like those old ceramics are swaddled in felt to protect them on the ride. Both hands are needed to carry an object, and don’t lift that ancient jug by the handle — it doesn’t need any more stress.

“Just be slow and crazily obsessive.”

Other art-handling tenets have a sort of “it takes a village” quality. Shostak always lets his co-workers know when he’s about to roll a loaded conveyance out of the collection room.

And if you’re up on the rolling ladder plucking a piece from an upper shelf, always hand the art down to a helper. Why? If you use both hands to hold the piece, you could stumble down the ladder. And if you use one hand to hold the railing, you won’t be using two hands to hold the piece.��

“Whenever you’re moving art,” Shostak says, “just be slow and crazily obsessive.”

1:54 p.m.: Helen Pandey demonstrates the right way to pick up art on paper: Use your fingers like clamps and don't bend the piece. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

1:31 p.m.: This pre-Columbian ceramic depicts a being that's half-human, half-jaguar. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

1:27 p.m.: Two hands are required for handling three-dimensional art objects, Shostak explains. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Encore, encore��

4:46 p.m.

It’s the start of the �ֲ���ý Arts Festival, a new student arts showcase and whirlwind of displays, demonstrations, workshops, and, of course, performances.

The senior art and visual culture majors are back in their studios together, showing friends and strangers what they’ve created. Students lead discussions of photography and poetry. The �ֲ���ý circus club teaches curious passers-by how to juggle.

And the Olin Concert Hall features performances big and small, classical and modern, sung and spoken. The Robinson Players perform a song from their recent musical,��The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.��The Crosstones bust out contemporary hits a cappella.��The �ֲ���ý Arts Festival is a showcase of student artistic creativity in its every manifestation — nurtured, in so many cases, in the Olin Arts Center.

4:46 p.m.: Students gather for food and conversation during the �ֲ���ý Arts Festival. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

6:25 p.m.: Violinist Mathieu Moutou ’22 of Vacoas, Mauritius, is another member of the orchestra quartet. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

6:18 p.m.: Clarinetist Nick White ’21 of Brunswick, Maine, performs with a �ֲ���ý orchestra quartet. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

5:59 p.m.: Khadeeja Qureshi ’23 of Princeton, N.J., performs a spoken-word piece during the �ֲ���ý Arts Festival. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

5:24 p.m.: The a cappella Crosstones perform at the 2020 �ֲ���ý Arts Festival. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

Academics at �ֲ���ý is an aerobic activity, and we’re still catching our breath after spending 17 hours in Pettengill Hall following the lickety-split pace of professors, students, staff, classes, and, yes, two pugs.

Dedicated 20 years ago and designed to spectacular effect by Shepley Bulfinch, Pettengill is home to the college’s social sciences and related interdisciplinary programs.

The design of academic spaces can either “restrict or liberate how well we teach.”

And it’s really big: four levels, plus the rooftop Moody Room, and 91,000 square feet containing 70 faculty offices, 15 class and seminar rooms, eight department or program lounges, and the three-story jewel, Perry Atrium, lovingly known as “the snow globe” by students.

Twenty years ago, then-President Don Harward said the design of academic spaces can either “restrict or liberate how well we teach.” With Pettengill, the result was liberation — the liberal arts writ huge.

From 4:12 a.m. to 8:39 p.m. on Jan. 31, we roamed all around Pettengill Hall to share with you a day in the life of �ֲ���ý academics. Onward!

4:12 a.m.

In Pettengill Hall — four hours before the start of classes, three hours before the dining hall opens for breakfast, and two hours after Chase Hall closes to students for the night — custodian Randy Maxwell begins his shift.

Elsewhere in the country, temperatures are plummeting to record lows and universities are shutting down, but in Lewiston it’s a balmy zero degrees Fahrenheit. An ordinary day.

4:36 a.m.

For most of the day Maxwell covers the second and third floors, each with two long hallways, a large computer lab, lounges, and seating areas near the stairs.

But he likes to start on the first floor, vacuuming carpets and wiping down chalkboards and tables in the classrooms. His custodial and faculty colleagues will arrive later in the morning.

“I like to give them a good start,” he says.

In the Perry Atrium, with its vast expanses of carpet as well as nooks and crannies between tables, Maxwell finds a pair of mittens and deposits them in a lost-and-found. As he vacuums a long black carpet in the building’s entryway — these carpets can hold several dustpans’ worth of sand in the winter, he says — the sun begins to rise.

5:24 a.m.

It’s still more than 90 minutes until sunrise, but it’s the dawn of another day in Perry Atrium.

6:02 a.m.

This office door belongs to Associate Professor of Anthropology Elizabeth Eames. The bin has a “short prof alert”: She won’t find anything that’s dropped off but not placed in the folder.

6:52 a.m.

It’s 5 degrees below zero, and the boilers at the Cutten Maintenance Center chug right along. That steam is not from burning fossil fuels but from Renewable Fuel Oil, made by vaporizing wood feedstock (e.g., sawdust) at a very high temperature.

7:13 a.m.

Catie Moran and her pug, Teddy, arrive at their office on the first floor of Pettengill. Moran is an academic administrative assistant who supports faculty in anthropology, digital and computational studies, history, and politics.

7:21 a.m.

Every…single…day. Associate Professor of History Joe Hall, who lives in Auburn, arrives at Pettengill on his bike.

7:37 a.m.

It’s chilly on the ground floor and downright frigid outside, around 10 degrees and windy.

But a big window at the end of a Pettengill corridor distills the visual beauty of this January morning: sun just beginning to strike the tops of buildings and the tops of trees — including these two larch tamaracks between Dana and Hedge — blue shadows, and windblown snowflakes making a slight sparkle in the breeze.

7:42 a.m.

Jack Culver ’22 of Bellevue, Wash., arrives before 8 and settles into a second-floor stairwell nook to study for a cultural anthropology course.

He’ll stay for several hours, until he goes to another anthropology class later in the day.

7:47 a.m.

“We got a quiet morning, so we decided to go in,” says groundskeeper Jon-Michael Foley, running a hose to one of two ficus trees that reach two floors high in the atrium.

There’s enough air circulating in the 8,000-square-foot room for the leaves to blow in the breeze.

Michael and horticulturist Michael Fox are preparing to resoil the trees, possibly for the first time in the 20 years the trees have lived in the atrium. The two add the soil, then water the trees. An earthy smell fills the atrium, creating a sense of tranquillity before students arrive for class.

7:55 a.m.

If you don’t count the silo-esque mechanical space on the roof, the crown of Pettengill Hall is the Moody Room, a big elegant conference chamber occupying most of the fourth floor.

Given by James L. Moody Jr. ’53, a former chair of the �ֲ���ý Board of Trustees, the room is named in honor of his late wife, Jean Pratt Moody, and is used for trustee meetings.

Moody is dominated by its sole source of natural light — but what a source: a large eyebrow window, comprising three sections and dozens of panes, that provides an expansive view of central campus and as far southeast as the cupola on Lewiston Middle School.

Once you can pry yourself away from that panorama, the Moody Room presents a much different feel. The room is all but silent and its edges where the ceiling dips low are in shadow. Forty stately wooden swivel chairs are lined up snug against the expanse of the cherry-wood Thomas Moser conference table.

Microphones that enable people to hear each other around the big plush room stand at attention on that table. The Moody Room is poised and waiting for the next meeting — which in fact takes place the day after next.

8:17 a.m.

Professors Anelise Shrout and Matt Jadud, members of the Program in Digital and Computational Studies, begin their class on data visualization by checking their 40 students’ understandings of various programming concepts.

So, does everyone understand functions and variables?

The class takes place not in a computer lab but in Room G52, the Keck Classroom, where Shrout and Jadud use one of the room’s two projector screens and an old-school chalkboard to review what they taught in previous sessions. Students work on their laptops, using the programming language Python.

After the review, the students break into pairs to work on their latest assignment: creating animated visualizations of temperature, wind speed, and wind direction data collected around Lake Auburn last fall by Holly Ewing, Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies.

8:38 a.m.

Jadud, who is the college’s inaugural Colony Family Professor of Digital and Computational Studies, works with Christine Cho ’19 (center) of Novato, Calif., and Jamie Siegart ’21 (right) of Manchester, N.H.

Siegart has chosen to represent the temperature on the lake over the course of September and October using moving bar graphs, while her partner represented windspeed with a stoplight.

A few rows behind them, partners Nicholas Lambert ’19 of Snellville, Ga., and Sam Huebschmann ’19 of Lynnfield, Mass., are comparing their visualizations.

Huebschmann has also made a bar graph, while Lambert has made a sort of pinwheel, which spins faster or slower depending on wind speed. The large data set might mystify the non-expert viewer; Lambert is excited to have written code that makes the numbers more accessible.

“When I first started learning Python, I didn’t imagine this application,” he says.

8:51 a.m.

On the third floor, Professor of Psychology Amy Douglass’ psychology and law class is deep in a discussion about Perry v. New Hampshire, a U.S. Supreme Court case that gets at the heart of her research interests: how suggestion can influence eyewitness testimony to the point of getting something wrong.

At the moment, sitting at the head of a rectangle of tables and chairs in the small seminar room, Douglass and her students are asking questions about the role of juries in evaluating eyewitness testimony. Juries often aren’t aware of the psychological research surrounding memory, suggestion, and eyewitness testimony, meaning they themselves might be unduly swayed by a witness’s inaccurate memory.

So why doesn’t every defendant elect a bench trial, in which a judge delivers the verdict instead of a jury? someone asks.

Some kinds of cases require a jury trial, Douglass replies. And juries tend to be more lenient anyway. It depends on the case.

9:02 a.m.

There’s being asleep. There’s being awake. And there’s that fantastical, if frustrating, state of being, well-known to generations of college students, that’s somewhere in between.

Pieter Cory ’22 of Dublin, Calif., is dozing and studying in the Perry Atrium, trying to prepare for a politics class on states and markets taught by Jason Scheideman, a lecturer in politics.

9:09 a.m.

In Perry Atrium, Ned Moreland ’19 of Monkton, Md., chooses a table close to the windows to sort out the logistics for a series of upcoming job interviews.

In an armchair nearby, Grace Warder ’20 of New York City reads an article about the normalization of nature for an evening politics course. Just outside, snow amplifies natural light.

Students call Perry Atrium the “snow globe.”

While it’s not snowing right now — there was a light dusting last night — snow covers the bushes just outside and the Puddle beyond. It’s gathered in banks along sidewalks, and in crusts on cars in the nearby Lane Hall parking lot.

9:19 a.m.

Facility Services custodian Paul Butler attempts to keep the Pettengill lobby clear of tracked-in sand, a big challenge during an icy winter.

9:24 a.m.

The 10 minutes between class sessions in Pettengill is like a tide. Students and faculty spill from classrooms and into stairwells and the atrium, exiting through the front doors or one of many side doors on the first or ground floor.

The next batch of students at first trickles in through the front doors one or two at a time, heading towards the lecture rooms in the basement or the seminar rooms upstairs.

Then it’s a flood. Dozens of students stream across Alumni Walk and into Pettengill. Soon the just-buffed floors are gritty with sand. The atrium echoes with shuffling feet, opening doors, conversations.

Just as the clock strikes 8, or 9:30, or 11, silence falls and traffic stops, leaving some students sitting in the atrium or in the stairwell nooks. You can hear the tap of keyboards and the rustle of turning pages. The ding of an elevator. The unzipping of backpacks. The muffled chatter over custodians’ radios. Quiet good-mornings.

10 a.m.

Exactly on the hour, Professor of Sociology Francesco Duina pivots to a discussion of Thomas Hobbes’ conception of human nature.

His course on the theoretical foundations of sociology is held in Room G65, a large ground-floor classroom that leaves plenty of space to move at the front of the class, or sit at the back. A full audiovisual system is available, but Duina only needs the chalkboard.

Hobbes, a 17th-century philosopher, assumed that humans form societies and behave themselves only because they fear retribution from an authority figure.

His philosophy is in part about our primal fear of a violent death — but the lesson, structured as a back-and-forth between Duina and the students, is lighthearted.

Duina picks random students as hypothetical Hobbesian authorities. Stealing from the cookie jar is their main example of breaking the social contract. The students validate each other’s childhood fear of getting pulled under the bed by their feet as they sleep.

10:06 a.m.

Caffeine and water: the elixirs of morning academics.

10:19 a.m.

Sarah Douglas ’19, a history and English double major from Bryn Mawr, Pa., meets with her thesis adviser, Associate Professor of History Joe Hall, the professor who pedaled his way to campus.

Douglas is studying the development of federal policies of Indian removal in the 1820s and 1830s, with a particular focus on Andrew Jackson, “who is at the heart of that story,” Hall explains.

She’s also using what she learned from another Andrew, a colleague of Hall’s, Andrew Baker. “She is examining the ways that the nation as a whole built itself on the ideas of white supremacy.”

10:49 a.m.

In her office, Professor of Sociology Emily Kane meets with Eliza Statile ’19 (center) of Ipswich, Mass., and Sydney Howard ’19 of Ashland, Mass., about plans for the sociology club they founded this year.

11:21 a.m.

“Our predecessors dutifully kept everything,” says Assistant Dean of the Faculty Kerry O’Brien.

O’Brien is our guide into what’s long been called the “bomb shelter”: a series of underground chambers created in the early 1960s during construction of Lane Hall and the maintenance building, where Pettengill Hall now stands.

Stored in one section of the bomb shelter, the files for the Office of the Dean of Faculty include resumes, applications, journal articles, correspondence, travel receipts, grant documentation, course evaluations, event programs, etc., spanning the entire �ֲ���ý careers of just about everyone who has ever taught here.

11:47 a.m.

As if awaiting further instruction, these cranium casts sit on a table in Room G17, the anthropology lab, where they’re used in an introductory course on human evolution.

11:57 a.m.

A person could get lost in the Googlesphere trying to find the correct geometric names to describe some of the room shapes on Pettengill’s ground floor.

One such space is Room G21, where Lecturer in Anthropology Kristen Barnett — here sitting cross-legged on a table as she leads the class — is teaching a session of “North American Archaeology and Colonial Entanglement.”

The back door of the classroom opens into a sort of shallow alcove. From there the walls splay outward, not dramatically, toward the front of the room where Barnett sits. Her posture emphasizes her face and gestures. She’s saying, “Talking about settler colonization is really, really hard.”

On either side of that door are a few small panes of glass, a typical Pettengill feature, affording the only views out of the room. You can’t see campus, but you can see the world: two world maps, and one of Europe, are posted on a bulletin board.

Barnett’s students occupy small desk-chair combos that nearly fill the remaining space. Three or four coat hooks by the door are in use and the rest of the coats are draped or heaped or stuffed wherever. The muffling effect of the bodies and outerwear, plus a whine from the HVAC system, lends a subdued or even intimate quality to the acoustics.

12:17 p.m.

The ebb and flow of Perry Atrium is at an ebb.  Natural light illuminates the room, adding to the atrium’s feeling of great openness.

The floor-to-ceiling windows offer a view of the Puddle, coated in a fresh layer of snow. Students sit and sprawl on couches and chairs, headphones in, catching up on their reading or editing papers.

Then there’s a faint jingle of metal.

Louder now, a squeaky toy nearby. Then, a clatter of paws and heavy breathing. Chaos ensues. Two small furry bodies fly through the atrium. Jumping onto a couch, they collide, ricochet, and then bound back onto the floor, where they return to their owners.

One is Teddy, Catie Moran’s brindle pug. His companion, 2-year-old Coco, belongs to politics professor James Richter. Coco doesn’t come into work every day, but she and Teddy have play dates about once a week.

12:26 p.m.

Several students, including Elise Lambert ’22 of Amherst, N.H., Elise Grossfeld ’21 of Bethesda, Md., and Saylor Strugar ’21 of Boulder, Colo., take a break from their studies to take their phones out and record the dogs’ escapades as they scamper from one end of the room to the other.

“Oh wow, the snorting!” a student exclaims as the pugs happily wheeze about the atrium.

Charlotte Lynskey ’21 of Costa Mesa, Calif., looks up from her statistics homework to watch Teddy and Coco frolic.

“I don’t come here often, I’m more of a Ladd girl,” she says. “But I like it. It’s very bright and open, which elevates my mood.” She adds, “I think I’m going to work here more often.”

After their 15 minutes of play time is up, Teddy and Coco are put on their leashes and made to say goodbye as they are ushered back to their owners’ offices. The quiet resumes.

12:38 p.m.

Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty Malcolm Hill talks with Kelsey Professor of Neuroscience Nancy Koven during a regular meeting of the faculty’s Academic Affairs Council.

Comprising the faculty chairs of the college’s four academic divisions (Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Humanities, Interdisciplinary Studies), the council is like a cabinet. As a group, it’s responsible for setting long-term priorities, allocating resources, and providing oversight of the curriculum.

12:58 p.m.

From the vantage point of the Moody Room, it’s easy to see Pettengill’s geographical advantage: Students stream directly from breakfast or lunch in Commons, hands in pockets, just a couple hundred yards to their morning classes.

1:02 p.m.

Ursula Rall ’20 of Kent, Ohio, works on an application for a summer fellowship while seated on the third-floor landing.

1:13 p.m.

In Room 116, a smallish space, 20 or so students have gathered for the class “Black Resistance in U.S. History.”

Leading the class is Andrew Baker, assistant professor of history. He’s an upbeat and energetic teacher who asks the class to break into groups for peer reviews of an assignment in progress — “whatever it takes to get you from Point A to Point B” with the assignment.

Baker’s students sit around a rectangle of tables, a setting that makes plain the impact furniture choices can have on interaction: Tables promote it, while single desks discourage it.

Even with the tables, the physical configurations of the teams reflect the internal dynamics. The groups whose members can all face each other seem livelier and more productive. In contrast, members of another group are aligned along the table edge, making it harder for the students at either end to take part.

1:27 p.m.

An Admission tour stops on the first floor of Pettengill Hall outside the lounge serving the Department of History and the Program in Latin American Studies.

1:31 p.m.

Ben Pinkham (center) an audio-visual analyst for Information & Library Services, arrives in Room G67 to straighten out a video-conferencing issue during a class that Assistant Professor of History Patrick Otim (right) team-teaches with Associate Professor of Anthropology Elizabeth Eames.

Others on the course’s teaching team are Leslie Hill (politics) and Alexandre Dauge-Roth (French and francophone studies).

The course is “African Perspectives on Justice, Human Rights, and Renewal,” and it seeks to introduce students to some of the experiences, cultural beliefs, values, and voices shaping contemporary Africa.

2:20 p.m.

Seated in one of the Perry Atrium overlooks, a student is engrossed in his academics.

2:29 p.m.

Working in the Lindholm Sociology and Economics Lounge, Peri Brookman ’21, an anthropology major from Los Angeles, works on a paper for a course in queer and trans sports studies taught by Professor of Art and Visual Culture Erica Rand.

2:56 p.m.

No need to turn on the lights in Lynne Lewis’ economics course on water resources and fisheries economics — in Pettengill 257, a west-facing seminar room, mid-afternoon sunlight streams through the windows, brightening and dimming as clouds blow through.

The tragedy of the commons is a social science concept that assumes that if everyone has access to the same resource, they’ll take more than they need and deplete the resource.

The first thing the class does today is discuss how the concept relates to bluefin tuna fisheries and illegal fishing, the subject of a film the students watched a couple days ago.

Lewis, the Elmer W. Campbell Professor of Economics, leads the discussion before handing it off to a student, who presents on a reading about the extent of illegal fishing. Projected for the class is the course website, where the students have contributed to an online discussion of the article.

3:17 p.m.

Like all �ֲ���ý students, psychology students have the opportunity to conduct research, often in a suite of laboratories on the third floor of Pettengill, where Gabe Siegel ’19 of Bethesda, Md., is studying eyewitness identification. 

In the hallway is fellow psychology major and research assistant Ahimy Soto-Garcia ’21 of Trenton, N.J. 

The labs have seating and computers for experiment participants; some have dividing screens so that participants doing solo tasks don’t get distracted, and one has a colorful carpet and toys. There’s also a small observation room, complete with two-way mirrors and cameras.

The subjects of student research are often fellow students, who participate for credit in psychology classes or a small payment. For this experiment, Siegel asked his classmates to sign up with a friend — once they get there, they’ll go through the tests together or swap partners with another pair.

Siegel — whose adviser is Amy Douglass and who was in Douglass’ psychology and law class this morning — finished his senior thesis on eyewitness identification last semester; he’s continuing to collect data through the spring. 

4:12 p.m.

At this time of day, most of the tables and chairs in Perry Atrium are occupied. Studying together at a table near the window wall are, from left, first-years J.D. Glenn of Carbondale, Colo., Seren Parikh of Bedford, Mass., and Anna Reaman of Hingham, Mass.

Parikh works on a chemistry assignment involving crystalline structures, Glenn studies for a chemistry test tomorrow, and Reaman watches lacrosse highlight videos.

The three agree that the atrium is a great place to study, right up there with the library. “It’s really open and comfortable,” Reaman says of the atrium. “You have the opportunity to look out the window, take a little break.”

Nearby, seniors Katie Allard of Ridgewood, N.J., and Catie Spaulding of Huntingtown, Md., study the historical economics of Northern Ireland and apply to the Peace Corps, respectively. Pettengill is “home,” Spaulding says; she spends so much time here.

Allard, a lacrosse player like Reaman, says Pettengill is the first academic building she shows first-year players. She adds that the 24/7 computer labs are a godsend. If something is due, “the entire class will be there, everyone helping each other,” she says.

The college’s administrative hours conclude at 4:30 p.m., but the students follow the circadian rhythms of college life. Among tonight’s activities are classes, squash, and a cappella. They might find themselves back here, late at night.

4:25 p.m.

Back in the expanse of Keck Classroom, a 4:30 talk on the politics of charter schools, by John Kosinski of the Maine Educational Association, is about to begin.

It’s a public event in the Harward Center’s Theory into Practice series, which affords an “opportunity to learn more about important policy debates, and how to have a voice in them,” says organizer and Harward Center executive Peggy Rotundo.

Keck has a PA system that Kosinski doesn’t use (“I have a voice that carries,” as his mother used to point out). And Keck just looks elegant even at age 20: Wood paneling in two shades of blond, studded with eye-catching decorative acorn nuts (the fasteners, not the tree seeds), covers much of the wall surface, with serene gray-brown acoustic treatment over the rest.

Unlike most of its sibling ground-floor classrooms, G52 also boasts stunning northward views toward Lake Andrews and the Olin Arts Center. But with so many of the room’s features steering your attention toward the front — the converging light fixtures, the chevron arrangement of the seating, the massive screens — it takes some effort to crane around and watch the daylight fading from the sky and snow.

5 p.m.

Seen from one of the atrium’s overlooks, Saylor Strugar ’21 of Boulder, Colo., who earlier joined the pug party in Perry Atrium, takes a break from studying in the Lindholm Sociology and Economics Lounge.

A double major in biochemistry and environmental studies, Strugar hopes the nap is rejuvenating: “I’m working up the energy to keep studying.”

5:22 p.m.

A child’s homage to Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” hangs on the office door of Professor of Psychology Amy Douglass.

5:47 p.m.

Jasmine Nutakki ’21, a biochemistry major from Augusta, Maine, studies in the lounge serving the Program in Latin American Studies and the Department of History.

6:56 p.m.

Custodian Franky Urueta likes working the late shift on the Pettengill’s ground floor — the schedule permits him to take his kids to and from school. Right now, he’s cleaning the floor with a scrubber, pausing to give his signature fist bump to passing students.

7:10 p.m.

Two economics teaching assistants gather in Room G10, ready for all comers.

They’re Mark Russell ’20 of Westford, Mass. and Jason Lu ’20 of Westborough, Mass, first and third from left. Will Zimmerman ’21 of Weston, Mass., and Andrew Berg ’20 of Titusville, Fla. have arrived to go over concepts for an upcoming test.

Attendance is light today because the TAs’ potential clients, students in an econometrics course, turned in a lab assignment yesterday.

“Before assignments and before tests, this place is packed,” Russell says. “The day after, we debate whether we should have it.”

But the test is a couple of weeks, and Russell and Lu help Zimmerman and Berg review, using previous exams as a study guide.

Pettengill’s location next to Commons lowers barriers. “It’s a central location,” Russell says. “It’s easy for students to pop in after dinner.”

7:30 p.m.

Room G54 is a seminar room tucked between the lecture-hall giants of Keck and G65. Unlike other classrooms, it boasts a few C-shaped tables in addition to standard rectangles, allowing the class to form a proper oval.

As students arrive for their evening seminar on the politics of nature, a few students move two rectangular tables to the side — they know their instructor, Lecturer in Environmental Studies Ethan Miller ’00, likes to have a shorter oval. Once he gets there, Miller notices the modified setup and thanks the students.

7:35 p.m.

For the first few minutes of class, Miller reviews the philosophical concept of subject-object dualism. On a chalkboard, he writes a series of interrelated terms — subject, object, things, reality, naturalization, exploitation — and draws lines to reflect how they connect. The resulting diagram looks like Pac-Man, which is what Miller has named it.

7:48 p.m.

Next door, Room G65 is a whirl of nervous energy. Dozens of students have an organic chemistry test tomorrow, and the twice-weekly Peer Assisted Learning session is jam-packed.

Ernestine Whitaker ’20 (left) is a PAL student leader from San Luis Obispo, Calif., and she moves around the room to help, stopping to work with Wuyue Zhou ’21 of Beijing.

Packets of handouts and worksheets with diagrams of various carbon-based molecules are available. Some students work on them solo, earbuds in; others confer in groups. Student PAL leaders circulate to answer questions — the sessions are meant to be noncompetitive and inclusive, promoting learning strategies as well as course content.

7:55 p.m.

Whitaker moves to a group that’s seated together.

“It’s going,” says Brittany Seipp ’21 of Glen Head, N.Y.,

“There’s a lot of material to review,” concedes Devin Russell ’21 of Falmouth, Maine.

“These packets are my lifesaver,” says Sofia Esquibies ’21 of Rocky Hill, Conn.

This kind of studying is easier in Pettengill than in a place like Dana Science Hall, says PAL leader Nathan Frederick ’19 of Orono, Maine. “People can sit around tables and actually work with each other,” he says.

Jag Lally ’20 of Yuba City, Calif., offers some advice for the exam: “Get a lot of rest, eat well, know the mechanics — don’t memorize them, but understand them.”

8:17 p.m.

Franky Urueta tries to make all students feel welcome, especially international students. “They have come in from far away,” he says. “I like to make them comfortable here, a second house for them.”

In various ways, such as notes left behind in study spaces, the students and faculty show their appreciation to Urueta. He keeps some of these mementos on his cart, others in a room near G65.

When Urueta’s shift ends at midnight, he’ll go to the students who are still in the building. He’ll tell them he’s leaving and to have a good night. “Before you leave, please turn out the lights. Be careful outside.

“See you tomorrow.”

8:39 p.m.

Deep into a dark January night, Pettengill is alight with academic life.

Text by Emily McConville, Doug Hubley, and Eleanor Vance ’21.
Photography by Phyllis Graber Jensen and Theophil Syslo.