The college’s textbook buyer has purchased thousands of course materials for the fall semester, and he’ll be on hand to help students find them. A custodian makes sure she has a hammer and a screwdriver in case a dorm’s residents need them. An associate dean practices the pronunciation of students’ names, and a librarian anticipates an inevitable question.

Staff around campus are gearing up for the start of the academic year, excited to meet new students and, in their own way, enrich their experience on campus. See how seven of those staff members are getting ready, and how they hope to make connections with students.

Christina Bell

When students enter the Ladd Library, they can’t miss the reference desk in the middle of the first floor. Humanities librarian Christina Bell is one of the people behind that desk. Her job is to help with any and all library-related questions, from finding course reserves to using a book scanner.

Within the first two weeks of the semester, the most common question I answer is the location of the bathroom. A student comes up and says, “I have a stupid question.” I respond, “There’s no such thing.” When the bathroom location is where we start, nothing else is too “stupid.” That’s why I’m here, to answer the questions.

I love my job. I like working with students and with faculty, and the level of interaction. I’m the face that they see. Even though there are dozens of other people that make this whole operation run, I’m the one they meet to make their work happen. That may be a research paper; that might be primary sources; that might be data. It can be any number of things. It’s citations — I know my MLA and my Chicago forward and backward. If you can’t remember how to write citations, it’s my job to know these things.

Sometimes I have students who visit when they want to talk about the latest knitting pattern that they’re trying, because I knit, or they want to see pictures of my cat. We know each other as people, we see each other on campus. I go to events; I participate in things outside the library. That’s part of what it is to be a member of this community.

Doug Morency

Doug Morency joined �ֲ���ý as director of security and campus safety in November 2017. For him, the start of the academic year is a great way to meet and welcome the students he and his team keep safe.

This will be my first time on campus at the start of the academic year. My goal is go out into the community and be seen, be interactive, and to connect with as many students as I can, to let them know that they can always come to me and come to our security members, and to get through situations together as a community.

When the first-years move in, usually Security provides just traffic control or points folks in the right direction. This year, we’re going to get some of our Security team members out there to be part of the volunteers. We’re going to be out in various locations holding doors, carrying boxes, having conversations and getting to know our new first-year Bobcats.

Personally, I want to have conversations with the student body and to change the narrative of the perceived interactions between Security and student, to where we’re seen by them as a support mechanism and an approachable group. I think it will take both students and Security to keep on making efforts to get to know each other, hold each other accountable, while building in a communal way. We want to make sure that students understand that campus is not only a safe place to live their college experience, but it’s somewhere that they can be supported.

Rose Wilson

Each day in Kalperis Hall you’ll find custodian Rose Wilson, who takes care of students as much as she takes care of the building.

It’s nice to see the first-years come in. They’re all excited, and some of them are a little nervous. Sometimes the parents even thank me for being so nice and kind. They put shelves together, so I always make sure I have screwdrivers and a hammer for that. Sometimes they just want to talk. I think they’re homesick.

I always make sure the common areas and bathrooms are clean for them. I untie knots in their shoes if they can’t do it. I let them know that there’s an adult in the building, and if there’s anything that they need, they can let me know, and if I can help, I will. I hope they feel like they’re home; this is their home while they’re here. Whatever they do — within reason — is OK, because they live here.

Some of the students keep to themselves, pretty much, because they are so busy. It’s really nice to get to know all of them, especially when they come back and see me — and they do that. They come back and say hi. It’s nice when they come back and they holler down the hallway, “Rose!”

Flo LaFlamme

At Commons, dining room attendant Flo LaFlamme swipes students in, cleans, and stocks the dining hall’s different stations. Originally from Quebec, LaFlamme has worked in Commons for nearly 15 years, getting to know plenty of students along the way.

Zane Omohundro

Zane Omohundro is the college’s textbook buyer — he works with faculty to make sure all the materials they assign students are in print, updated, and ordered. This year, he ordered about 8,500 textbooks and course materials for 360 class sections. As the semester starts, he’s on hand to make sure individual students can find the materials they need.

When the first-years come in, this is really their first round, because in high school, you get your books and materials provided to some degree. Most of the time, nowadays they’re on their phones; they’ve got their course schedule, and I’ll approach them and say, “Hey, do you need help finding books?” Some of them say, “No, I just want to look around” or, “Sure, I’ll take your help.” We really try to engage everybody that walks into that area.

We make sure students are getting their questions answered, help them find their books and things like lab manuals, or auxiliary things like goggles and access codes. We say, “Hey, if we don’t have it on the shelf for some reason, you have other resources, like the library course-reserves program.” We spend a lot of time saying, “Talk to your professor. If any of this is unclear, or you feel hesitant about buying this, make sure it’s what you need.” We’re a resource for textbooks, and we’re here to help if students need us.

James Reese

After many hours or days of travel, many international students’ entry into Lewiston and life at �ֲ���ý is coordinated by James Reese, associate dean of students for international student programs.

In August, I start studying International students’ names, to try to get as close to the correct pronunciation as I perceive it. I review where the students are from, looking to see if something is going on in their society or city that I might be able to chat about — they’re building a new bridge, or there’s some conversation about the economy or the local government. If I have tapped into something that is pertinent, that identifies that I’m more interested in them than just, here’s your room on campus and I hope you enjoy the food.

This year, we have 53 first-years who are citizens of other countries and around 10 dual citizens. Of that number, we have about 20 planned pickups from the Portland airport or bus station. I coordinate all that, knowing that the families, naturally, are keenly interested. I often hear from them afterward.

We’re not just picking them up; we’re greeting them and introducing them to the school, to Maine, to Lewiston. We want to make those little pieces easy so that they can recuperate from their travels, to be who they really are and resume their questions and interests about classes, meeting the professors, starting to know this place, getting some exercise, joining the clubs they’ve been thinking about all along. My goal is to have everyone feel comfortable, welcomed, and affirmed.

Mike Milliken

Mike Milliken wears many hats — he oversees club sports and the B-Well program for employees, teaches physical education, and coaches the club rugby team. His overarching goal is to make sure the �ֲ���ý community is healthy and happy.

I’ll be involved with the club sports in the coming year, and I’m going into my sixth season as a rugby coach. I’ll also teach a physical education boot camp class for students this coming semester. Informally, I spend a great deal of my time kicking around Merrill Gym and Davis Fitness Center, so I’m seeing students in that capacity.

I hope that I can be a positive influence from the wellness side. An underlying mission of mine is to spread positivity but also influence students to make healthy choices that improve their quality of life — and that’s not just students, that’s for the �ֲ���ý community itself.

As I recall, it was between 7 and 8 p.m. when on the television I heard, “We interrupt this program to bring you a Special Report.”

In the ’60s, these announcements had a much more ominous quality than today’s frequent “Breaking News” alerts. A Special Report truly meant a significant, if not earthshaking, event had occurred. I was watching alone in this moment on April 4, 1968. My parents were away from our home. I sighed and waited for the impending report.

Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot in Memphis, Tenn. There were not many more details aside from that he had succumbed to the bullets.

I was not surprised. As a 12-year-old growing up in the U.S. South, I had seen King’s favor wane among some people from 1966 to 1968. Maybe it was his fair-housing marches in the North. Or maybe it was his position against the Vietnam War, announced in ’67 — a stance attacked by white and black people and the black and white press.

Or perhaps it was the Poor People’s Campaign he had initiated in an effort to critique economic conditions, which were less easy to pinpoint and change than the fight to enter public accommodations or gain voting rights.

James Reese has been a �ֲ���ý dean since 1977. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Over the next 50 years, those issues would, fortunately, rise in prominence. But that night, his murder made me wonder whether the dream was deceased or just deflated. In my sadness was a loneliness, an uncertainty about whether our society would drift backward to division and unfairness, or if his campaign’s efforts had enough momentum. Fifty years later, as we talk about that night and the commemoration of Dr. King, I still reflect upon and debate the answer.

That night, when my parents returned, I shared that Dr. King was dead. They looked at me as if, surely, our son would not make this up. I looked at their faces and saw in their expressions, deep and strong, that we all would need to work forward together — which we would do after mourning.

The next days moved quickly: the shock of the event; the fear of racial backlash; the disturbances in many cities; the forlornness of another great man struck down. The funeral saw Benjamin E. Mays, �ֲ���ý Class of 1920 and King’s primary mentor, give the final eulogy.

Martin Luther King Jr. with his mentor, Benjamin Mays ’20, who delivered King’s final eulogy on April 9, 1968, at Morehouse College.

We can see, in the years that followed, society’s response: the impact of the civil disturbances; the increased enrollment of students of color in schools that formerly discouraged it; the expansion and controversy of affirmative action; opportunities and setbacks for people of color; a deserved review of Dr. King’s personal flaws; and an increased understanding of the histories and horizons of many groups of people amid campaigns to slow them.

The last 50 years have led to multiple interpretations of what’s improved or not, and how quickly or slowly.

Demonstrators with signs, one reading “Let his death not be in vain,” march in front of the White House after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968. (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, U.S. News & World Report Magazine Collection)

But that night was still.  We went to sleep early, sad — not bewildered, but vastly disappointed. The morning brought more sadness, feelings of defeat, and much thought about how to maintain King’s spirit. These days, the spirit is present in his film clips and in the deep analysis of his ample writings. But we miss much of it and him. Many outcomes — positive and negative — that he identified, warned of, or concluded in his writings are present today.

He did much of his work on civil rights and humanity between the ages 26 and 39. Many forget he died very young. Some have said he was the most important American in the last 100 years. If so, how? And why?

And if not, what does the last half-century say of his impact and of society? The question looms, still, on the anniversary of MLK’s assassination.

James Reese has a museum’s worth of gifts in his Roger Williams Hall office, all from �ֲ���ý students he’s mentored during his 40 years as a �ֲ���ý dean.

Seeing an office filled with objects often prompts visitors to ask, “What’s your favorite item?” But Reese doesn’t like to pick out just one, preferring to share why and how students offer him various tributes.

Take the story of Mari Smith ’85, an honors studio art graduate, and the painted self-portrait she gave to Reese.

After he asked during her sophomore year, Smith quickly promised to give him a piece of her art. But it wasn’t until the Friday before her Monday graduation that she walked into his office, then in Chase Hall, and offered him the painting.

A self-portrait by Mari Smith ’85, an honors studio art graduate, sits among other gifts from �ֲ���ý students. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

He thought she had forgotten. “She said, ’I told you I was going to give you a painting, and here it is,’” he recalls. “I appreciated the level of thought she put into honoring the request. She decided to bring in something that was significant to her, and I love that.”

Reese is especially known for his support of international students, and that’s why his office has a global feel. In fact, he’s accumulated so many tributes that he can display only about a third of them at any one time.

Some are on permanent display, while others are rotated in. Like a true curator, Reese has designated a spot to showcase new objects.

We recently found him installing an origami sculpture. “Hanging this is one of those important moments for this new office,” he says, recalling the student who, after suffering the death of a grandparent, had created the artwork to thank Reese for his support.

James Reese, associate dean of students for international student programs, turns toward Shelley Palmer, administrative assistant in the Center for Global Education, as he hangs an origami sculpture in his Roger Williams Hall office. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The sculpture moved with Reese from his prior office, in Lane Hall, where it had a prominent place, and Reese wanted a similarly special spot for it in his Roger Williams office, where he is associate dean of students for international student programs in the Center for Global Education, formerly the Off-Campus Study Office.

Reese’s origami sculpture was given by an appreciative student. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

When Reese arrived at �ֲ���ý in 1977, he met two first-year international students. “They gave me items for the office on the first day that I met them, as is the custom in several societies around the world. I was familiar with that, so I thanked them and put them on my desk,” he says.

When some older international students met Reese the following week, they saw the gifts and decided that they, too, wanted to participate. And so the ritual began in earnest. “Whether it’s a small item or not, something that’s heavy or light, something that’s expensive or not at all — I do want to make sure the representations continue,” he says.

What the students say, and what they don’t, as they offer their gift speaks volumes. Often, it’s an exchange made in silence, not unlike Smith when she arrived with her painting, or one made with just a few words. Reese interprets each message, spoken or not, this way:

“’This object is very important to me. I hope you understand that it’s an important item, and I can’t make you understand that. But I hope you do understand it.’ And then they give it.”

And he glows.

Connections among generations of �ֲ���ý people have strong presence here. And that’s what we will talk about today — about the “Rivers and Roads” connecting us, as the senior a cappella voices have just sung.

For four years, you have lived in a place of much history and meaning. Much of that comes from the place where you are, quite literally. Scan the Quad from the Gomes Chapel to Parker, Hathorn, Coram, and Carnegie. Where you sit right now — and where you will graduate tomorrow — carries great meaning.

Here on this step, I talked to a grad who was passing by. She recalled how her father wanted her to go to a great school to match her talents. So while she was at the Admission Office for her interview, her father found his way to the �ֲ���ý steam plant — his profession at another college — and talked to the employees there. He did this at every school she visited.

When she nervously encountered him after her interview, she was relieved and thrilled to hear him say, “You can go here.” He had learned, he told her, that the students “say hello to everyone and treat the staff with respect. It’s OK for you to apply here.” That’s the story she tells about �ֲ���ý. Her mother, also excited to have returned to campus, was standing with us as she told me. It was a powerful moment, and it happened right here.

Associate Dean James Reese delivers the Baccalaureate address on May 27. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

You sit facing Coram, where plays were conducted on this platform in the 1920s and 1930s framed by the building’s features designed with performances in mind. One graduate in the Class of 1936, Owen Dodson, was known as a great student director, as several of you are.

He went on to become the celebrated chair of the Howard University drama department, and he was anthologized in many works for his plays and poetry. We now know that renowned author Toni Morrison considered him a primary mentor. He walked this Quad and directed on this stage, and we wonder if inspirations from this place went on to become conversations that he and Morrison shared.

The entry for Owen Dodson ’36 in the 1936 Mirror.

Benjamin Mays, Class of 1920, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had such a close connection that they agreed that whoever passed away first, the other would deliver the eulogy. Sadly, it came to be that Dr. Mays

had to do that for his close mentee. It has been said that King’s work — and history itself — may have been a bit different without Mays presence in King’s life. Benjamin Mays and he encouraged King to make that same connection in his young life for purposes that would benefit us all.

I love the story of the 1963 �ֲ���ý graduate from New Hampshire who asked permission of his Army sergeant to leave his post to go downtown in Washington, D.C., in August 1963 to listen to this young black minister who was going to speak at the Lincoln Memorial. That was the “I Have a Dream” speech. He said that conversations at �ֲ���ý prompted him to make that decision to ask to go. And he said it changed his life.

All these people are connected here. It is a spirit, and a set of sentiments, and a set of expectations of engagement that pervade the place.

Justice, participation, equality, honor, and connection indeed fill �ֲ���ý. When we struggle with circumstances, as we have recently, we are stretched and sometimes we are not sure what to do or think. Stand by the thoughts you are continuing to discern, and be genuine in what you say. And be an interested and careful listener.

To summon further understanding, we must be genuine and hope that others know we are — and hope that they are, too. And abide by what we all have come to know in life: You can’t judge a book by its cover, or a student by where they are from, or a person by their appearance. We know this, especially at �ֲ���ý.

�ֲ���ý was one of the schools to accept students. “Because of that, I have never forgotten �ֲ���ý,” she said.

In the early 1990s, famed author James Michener came to �ֲ���ý for a tour of the Olin Arts Center and the campus. With him was his third wife, Mari Yoriko Sabusawa, who happened to be of Japanese ancestry. On the tour, it was reported that she asked many questions about �ֲ���ý, and at the end of the tour she was asked about her interest in the college.

She explained that her parents were Japanese immigrants, and that when the U.S. entered World War II, her family was moved to an internment camp in California. There, the elders of the camps asked the U.S. government if college-aged individuals in the camps could be allowed to leave and enter college, if accepted.

Much to my surprise, I learned that the government said yes, thanks to strong urging from some college presidents in the West and from Quakers, among other groups. Then she said that �ֲ���ý was one of the schools to accept students (�ֲ���ý enrolled five). “Because of that, I have never forgotten �ֲ���ý,” she said.

I was almost transfixed: They were speaking as if they could have been right here on the �ֲ���ý campus.

We have high expectations at �ֲ���ý. They were put in place, along with other defining principles, by our founder. I visited with a group of older people from another college a few years ago, and they were talking about life on their campus and their love of their school.

They said they enjoyed how men and women attended school together, how all the organizations were open to everyone, and how there were no fraternities or sororities. They enjoyed having the engagement of faculty and staff, including exchanges after evening lectures, and how that was the spirit and nature of their campus. I was almost transfixed: They were speaking as if they could have been right here on the �ֲ���ý campus.

�ֲ���ý founder Oren Cheney also had a major role in the founding of Storer College, in 1867.

I was visiting a campus in Harpers Ferry, W.V., and speaking to some of the remaining living graduates of the Alumni Association of Storer College, an institution founded for freed slaves in 1867 thanks to the influence of Oren B. Cheney, the founder of �ֲ���ý. That institution held on until 1955, and they will have their 150th anniversary in October. Importantly, several �ֲ���ý grads over many decades went there to teach, and as I engaged more with the graduates that day they started to recall how several teachers and administrators were from �ֲ���ý.

Storer had its glory days. One was May 30, 1881, when Frederick Douglass visited the campus and delivered his speech on John Brown and freedom. Another was Aug. 17, 1906: the second meeting of the historic Niagara Conference — which would become the NAACP in 1909.

During that meeting, W.E.B. Dubois led a moving commemoration of John Brown. Importantly, �ֲ���ý people were there that day. I also have identified that Storer has a stained glass window in their chapel that says, “Lewiston.” Every �ֲ���ý grad must see and be moved by that window.

Frederick Douglass and Oren B. Cheney were close friends, and Cheney attended Douglass’s funeral and was reputed to have offered some of the highest remarks about Douglass at that occasion.

A slave who escaped the South, John Dungee later studies at Maine State Seminary.

Douglass was friends with abolitionist , who once helped an escaped slave, John Dunjee, travel the Underground Railroad to Canada, where Dunjee remained until after the Civil War. (Dungee escaped from the plantation of John Tyler, the 10th U.S. president, and Dunjee’s children have said that he was Tyler’s grandson. In his presidential campaign, Tyler had to answer questions about fathering boys to sell in slavery.)

By September 1866, Dunjee was here on this Quad, enrolled as a student in Oren Cheney’s new school, the Maine State Seminary. I’m sure that Dunjee arrived here due to the close connection between Douglass and Cheney.

My own family has a story about being descended from John Tyler’s plantation in Virginia. When I was 12, a great aunt told me the story, and I chose to ride off on my bike rather than listen to her wild tale. But after reading the story of John Dunjee and his bona fide connection to Tyler and his trek to freedom and to here, I decided to return to pursue our family story, and now we seem to be just one bill of sale away from demonstrating that Aunt Alma was speaking with accuracy about being from that same plantation.

Bob Moses is a noted civil rights figure, and many would say his work matched that of King’s. When Bob Moses came to �ֲ���ý to speak of his experiences in the 1960s, I asked him how he had chosen to go to Hamilton College. He smiled and said that when he graduated from high school in New York, he only applied to two colleges: Hamilton and �ֲ���ý. “The only reason I went to Hamilton was because they offered me $300 more than �ֲ���ý.” So �ֲ���ý was only $300 from playing an even larger role in the civil rights movement.

On a Reunion weekend some years ago, an African American graduate of the Class of 1938 asked if I could gather some students so she could chat with them. I did as she asked, and we had a nice conversation.

Forty-five minutes into the chat, I could not wait any longer — I had to ask about her name, Ellen Craft Dammond, because there’s a famous slave-escape story of a fair-skinned woman, Ellen Craft, who dressed as a white man and, with her husband, William, as her attending “slave,” took a train and a ship to freedom in Philadelphia. Was she, Ellen Craft Dammond, related?

“Yes,” she said, “Ellen Craft was my great-great-grandmother.”

The 1938 Mirror yearbook has this portrait of Ellen Craft Dammond ’38.

Ellen Dammond loved �ֲ���ý and immersed herself in the place and in the debate program. Googling her alongside a student a couple years ago, there she was in a picture from 1936 sitting with a great smile and spirit. Seated next to her in the photo was none other than Owen Dodson ’36.

She went on to work in civil rights activities after �ֲ���ý and raise a family. Her daughter, who is very fond of �ֲ���ý, said that her own civil rights contributions connected with Bob Moses and they became great friends and did significant work for our society.

Baccalaureate is about the spiritual. Our �ֲ���ý spirit, drawn from the various global philosophical practices and beliefs, forms the connections we feel toward each other. Some experiences even touch on the nearly divine, as this next story illustrates.

I was in Honduras, and four days into my stay, I started yearning for oatmeal. So my wife and I went to a store, and since I speak a little Spanish, I found the oatmeal after five minutes. As I reached up, someone grabbed my arm. I turned to my right, and there was a �ֲ���ý graduate. “Dean Reese, what are you doing here?” she asked. I looked at her and said, “Heidi, what are you doing here?” She said that she was in the Peace Corps, working in a village two hours away. “This morning, I decided to get on the van and come in to the city so that I could get some oatmeal.”

I have nephew who graduated from Harvard. He said to me, “Uncle James, Harvard is a good school.” (Let me pause and let you know that I am sharing, to you who have been there, that Harvard is a good school.) He said, “Uncle James, Harvard is a good school, but it does not have the Spirit of �ֲ���ý.”

So here we are, and we know the �ֲ���ý spirit in its many vivid forms. In 1973, a �ֲ���ý team was set to depart town after a loss in a holiday basketball tournament in Connecticut. But then, the tournament directors paid the �ֲ���ý pep band to stay for two more days.

I encourage you, as alumni, to continue your �ֲ���ý conversations with spirit of interest, engagement, and cooperation. One �ֲ���ý grad stated that she misses the �ֲ���ý conversations, the ones, she said, where you intentionally try to get the thoughts, insights, and feelings of everyone in the group, and where you continue to try to meet people.

I have enjoyed all of my conversations with the students over the years and with those many exchanges, some stand out each year.

Mary Grace Schwalbe ’17 will recall that during the opening of the Senior Thesis Exhibition at the Museum of Art, I could not help but stare at her work. I asked her about a particular painting, specifically where she got the wood frame. “Chase Hall,” she said. “I saw it just sitting there in a room, ready to be thrown away.” She asked to have it and decided to use it as a part of the show. The frame had been a part of a billiards cue rack for decades, and she recognized that this age-old, spirited piece and expression of history needed to be preserved.

Some of you are matched up with other �ֲ���ýies. That’s fine. But the rest of you are not safe just because you will walk across this stage tomorrow.

Spirit — do as my father does and wear a �ֲ���ý hat in the airports, and experience the joy of someone stopping you and asking how you know �ֲ���ý. �ֲ���ý people are everywhere.

Some of you are matched up with other �ֲ���ýies. That’s fine. But the rest of you are not safe just because you will walk across this stage tomorrow. I have been to three �ֲ���ý weddings of alumni who did not attend �ֲ���ý at the same time: They met at �ֲ���ý club meetings and activities!

I love sharing with our international students the metaphorical meaning of Dorothy’s line in The Wizard of Oz, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” They love to learn the explanation, and say that they understood its meaning once they arrived here.

But there’s another line from the film that I will share for today’s theme of circular connections: “It was a place. And you…and you…and you…and you were there.”  Yes, it’s you — gathering and sharing among each other, in a strength and manner that’s been one over the ages and, indeed, has made you feel that this is much like home. A student from Saudi Arabia told me that “bayt” in Arabic means home. As she was making her decision about college, she thought of that, and it led to her choice.

Dodson, Craft Dammond, Douglas, Moses, King, Mays, Cheney, and now you are intertwined with each other in this home. All were drawn here, or have been informed by conversations and exchanges conducted and strengthened right here.

I conclude by asking you to give the best of yourself, just as you have these past years at �ֲ���ý. Giving our best is the spirit that prompts everyone to perform well on this stage today. It connects with Dr. Mays, who said, “Whatever you do, strive to do it so well that no person living, and no person deceased, or no person not yet born could do it any better.”

�ֲ���ý: Freedom, brilliance, strength…add your adjectives to the list, go forth, and do all that you wish and know you can achieve from all of the sharing and the connections you have made and will continue to make.

�ֲ���ý President Clayton Spencer and James Reese, associate dean of students, shared a moment of deja vu Monday morning, July 2, as the eighth president of the college began her first week in office. The two were high school classmates.

More than four decades after meeting a kid named James Reese on her first day of eighth grade in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., schools, Clayton Spencer greeted her former classmate Monday morning en route to Lane Hall. That’s where Reese serves as longtime associate dean of students and Spencer began her first day as the eighth president of �ֲ���ý College.

Spencer also greeted her new faculty and staff colleagues with a morning email. “I am thrilled to be here and very excited to be getting down to work – full-time and for real – on behalf of �ֲ���ý,” she wrote. “I have spent enough time on campus to know what wonderful colleagues you will be, and I have a profound sense of optimism about what we will accomplish together over the next months and years.”

The new president’s optimism was echoed by �ֲ���ý alumni, who voiced their pride in alma mater— and their excitement about her leadership — with a historic 55 percent participation in the 2011–12 �ֲ���ý Fund, ten points beyond last year’s 45.2 percent. �ֲ���ý now joins distinguished company with regard to alumni giving. In 2010-11, just nine national colleges and universities surpassed 50 percent participation.

Joining Spencer in the president’s office are two new members of the �ֲ���ý team. Michael Hussey will serve as chief of staff and secretary to the Board of Trustees. A graduate of Middlebury, Hussey joins �ֲ���ý from Harvard, where he has worked for 10 years, most recently as a senior project manager in the provost’s office and previously in the Harvard College Office of Admission and Financial Aid. John Baughman continues in his role as adviser to the president, while also teaching in the politics department, and Jessie Govindasamy, who will continue to serve as an administrative assistant.

Nancy Cable, who led �ֲ���ý as interim president in 2011-12, rejoins the college’s leadership team in a vice presidential position.

While Spencer will be making many new friends in the coming weeks, it was nice to begin her day seeing a familiar face. “I knew �ֲ���ý would be a great place for me, but crossing paths with James on my first morning made me feel right at home.”