Sponsored by the sociology, politics and psychology departments, the event is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact this fduina@bates.edu.

A professor of political science and sociology at Boston University and director of the university’s Institute for Advancement of the Social Sciences, Greenfeld is internationally renowned for her research into issues of culture, mental illness and modernity. Her talk addresses the growing epidemic of mental illnesses such as depression and schizophrenia among Americans. Specifically, she will discuss the forces driving these illnesses and why we are falling prey to them.

The lecture is aimed at a general audience. As ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ associate professor of sociology Francesco Duina explains, her “approach is interdisciplinary, and it not only directly challenges established wisdom in the social sciences, but also preconceived notions of the medical community.”

Duina predicts that Greenfeld’s lecture “will provide us with answers that are certain to be illuminating, provocative and profound. Anyone eager to learn more about these illnesses and our modern world, more generally, should come and listen to Professor Greenfeld. They will not be disappointed.”

Greenfeld is also a University Professor in Boston University’s University Professors Program, an initiative for gifted students designed to “build bridges between disciplines.”

She is the author of several books including “The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth” (Oneworld Publications, 2001), for which she won the 2002 Donald Kagan Best Book in European History Prize, and the first volume of her collected essays, “Nationalism and the Mind” (Roxbury Pub Co., 2006).

The lecture is open to the public at no cost. It is sponsored by the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College psychology department.

Smith is an assistant professor of management and strategy at the at the University of California, San Diego. Her talk will reflect her research into ways that having or lacking social power affects low-level mental processes, particularly power’s nonconscious effects on basic cognition, motivation and interpersonal behavior. She also studies how particular cognitive styles are perceived as signs of power.

Smith believes that individuals with greater social power are obliged to view the world in a higher-level, abstract fashion than individuals with less power. Having power requires one to plan ahead and think about the world in “big picture” terms. Similarly, greater power increases the psychological distance one feels from others, and this distance should lead to more abstract information processing.

Smith received her Ph.D. in social psychology from New York University in 2004. From 2006-09 she was a postdoctoral researcher, then an assistant professor at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. During her graduate work she was awarded the Society of Experimental Social Psychology Dissertation Award and the New York University Stuart Cook Award in Social Psychology. Previously she was an assistant professor at Leiden University and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam.

A higher-education reporter recently posed a question to a listserv for college magazine editors. Had we noticed a change in the tone of class notes during the recession?

While ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ class notes are freewheeling (you all can say almost anything as long as it doesn’t frighten the horses), the self-selected content may not be the best barometer of Bobcat Nation. Even so, I asked class secretary Katie Tibbetts Morello ’91, who produced a 6,300-word class letter last spring, what she thought. She was struck by how many classmates have made significant life changes “to do something that they enjoy. It sounds like our alums are willing to be flexible to find happiness.”

Reunion is another venue where you can gauge alumni attitudes, though it’s like testing New England’s mood during a Sox game at Fenway: Most everyone is on the ecstatic side.

Ebullience aside, it’s worth mentioning a pair of Reunion class discussions this year — two days and 25 years apart — that were both introspective and direct in addressing how we face good and bad times. On Friday, the Class of 1959 talked about “Success Redefined.” Peggy Montgomery ’59 summed up the class mood by quoting the Rev. Forrest Church of the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York City. “Want what you have; do what you can; and be who you are,” wrote the author and theologian.

Speaking to his classmates in Keck Classroom, Jack Keigwin ’59 said, “I don’t need to talk to you about being relevant. All of you are involved in something important beyond yourself. Discussing relevancy is irrelevant.” That line drew a laugh.

For Burton Harris ’59, a turning point came in the 1990s. He was enjoying his corporate law work but one day he realized that “Boston lawyer” had become his sole identity. “It was time to get out,” he said. So he enrolled in the North Bennet Street School to chase a passion: woodworking.

“All of you are involved in something important beyond yourself,” Keigwin said.

The next morning, classmates from 1984 shared “Stories of Change” from their midlife perspectives. Chris Lynch ’84 worked on Wall Street, where every day, 5:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m, was a “fight to the death — and I loved it.” One evening his young daughter, seeing Dad at home for once, asked, “Are you here for a sleepover?” Chris and his family have since decamped to Maine for a new career in luxury real estate.

Sarah Hammond Creighton ’84 offered this thought: “You can have it all but not at the same time.” The comment prompted Heidi Lovett ’84 to talk about leaving Florida for Washington, D.C., to take a federal fisheries management position that she really wanted. What she lost was a community she loved. “I helped to start a farmer’s market there,” she said. “It was hard to leave.”

Burton Harris circled back to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and back in time. He posed a question that any reader might consider. “In our hearts,” he asked, “do we still have the feeling of being a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ freshman and willing to try something new?”

By H. Jay Burns, Editor

In September 2008, Sowell Professor of Economics James Hughes speaks to a standing-room-only crowd in Pettengill Hall’s Keck Classroom about the ongoing financial crisis. (Jay Burns/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Earlier in the fall, Jared Levy ’09 of Ardmore, Pa., tried to fathom the worldwide financial crisis by reading online news stories. But the webscape, “littered with vague and threatening headlines,” only compounded the confusion, he says.

The ongoing financial meltdown left a lot of students, like the public, both anxious and bewildered. They were “alarmed without knowing why they should be alarmed,” in Levy’s words, and confused by events occurring in a sector far removed from their experience. “We didn’t have the language to comprehend what the news was telling us,” says Katie Conkling ’09 of East Chatham, N.Y.

Hence one of the largest turnouts for an academic talk in recent memory, when a few hundred students headed to Pettengill Hall on Oct. 1 to hear nearly the entire ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ economics department discuss the crisis.

In the process, the professors offered students what the media did not: a plainspoken explanation of the crisis, its causes, and whether a $700 billion infusion into the credit markets would work.

It’s rare at any college for nearly an entire academic department to turn out, ad hoc and on a day’s notice, to discuss a single issue (of the full-time economists on campus, only one professor, dealing with a family emergency, did not attend). Some disciplines are more attuned to current events than others, and some are more amenable to team presentations.

Part of what made the Oct. 1 event possible, says Jim Hughes, the Sowell Professor of Economics, is that “we have great respect for one another as individuals and as economists. This gives us great space to bat ideas around without fear of being ‘wrong’ and, especially, without fear of people engaging in one-upmanship.”

The event’s genesis was unusual, too, prompted as it was by non-econ majors: philosophy majors Anne Sheldon ’09 of Brookline, Mass., and Danny Bousquet ’09 of Savannah, Ga., along with the aforementioned Levy (philosophy) and Conkling (double major in French and women and gender studies).

They’d been talking about the crisis one night in the library, noting how it was playing out with a lot of “finger-pointing and assigning blame,” says Levy. So they e-mailed economics chair Lynne Lewis asking if the department might help explain the crisis.

Lewis and her economics colleagues, after a hallway huddle on Pettengill’s second floor, readily agreed to speak the following day. “As educators, we should respond during major events,” says Lewis. The subject line of her campuswide e-mail captured the event’s on-the-fly nature: “WTF??!! ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Economists on the Economy!!”

After filling the Keck Classroom’s 125 seats, attendees pulled more chairs from nearby rooms. Others lined the walls, while a few lay on the floor. “It was outrageous how many people attended,” said Conkling.

Moderating the event, Lewis got one of several nervous laughs by noting that “of course” the “WTF” in the talk’s title stands for “What’s The Future?”

The 90-minute presentation was essentially academic skinny-dipping, as the professors talked in unadorned language about issues they, too, were trying to learn about. They deferred to each other at times, and offered corrections at other moments.

“At crucial times like these, students and the public need to see us not in the role of the distributors of truth — if ever they should,” says Hughes, but “as informed citizens who are, like them, trying to process this flood of information to decide what they believe.”Ìý(For the record, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ economists supported the concept of the $700 billion rescue plan while noting that opinions might differ on its mechanics.)

For the students, the event succeeded, says Molly Nelson ’11 of Albuquerque, N.M., if only because she now understands “what [the government] is trying to save.”

Levy, meanwhile, is “proud that so many people took a stake in their political and economic lives,” while fellow event instigator Sheldon gives props to the professors for their “amazing job clarifying a complex issue” — adding thanks that “confused humanities majors” were taken seriously.

“As ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students, we are taught to be conscious citizens. We also realize that to create change we need to understand what is happening,” adds Conkling. “The panel was a wonderful depiction of what ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is all about.”

And how’d the professors grade their performance? “We had fun,” says Hughes. “It was a great teaching moment. Seeing how someone trained in a discipline approaches a new problem can give great insight into how a discipline works.”

Ironically, the sense of engagement that prompted the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ panel is quite the opposite of what precipitated the crisis, according to the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ economists: the failure of many people to take responsibility for what they were doing. The list includes the homeowners who didn’t try to understand their mortgages, the lenders who knew they were making bad loans, and the financial wizards who bundled the risky mortgages into securities so arcane that no one knows what they’re worth today.

“What brought on this mindset?” George Perkins, a former banker and visiting associate professor, asked during the panel discussion. “That’s where I would point the blame.”

Ìý

Linda Pogue, a professional management development and sales training specialist, will lead a workshop at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ titled “Presenting Well” at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 9, in Pettengill Hall, Keck Classroom (G52).

Sponsored by the Office of Career Services at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, this workshop is open to the public free of charge. Space is limited to the first 100 reservations, which can be made by calling 207-786-6232.Formerly a marketing and promotion director at Harper’s Bazaar and W magazines, Pogue has more than 15 years’ staff experience in sales and marketing. An independent sales training specialist since 1989, she has provided workshops, individual coaching and lectures on interpersonal and communication skills for corporate clients including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Yahoo and Time Warner.

In her ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ workshop, Pogue will offer strategies for effective communication and presentation, and for facilitating relationships and advancing productivity in a professional setting. The workshop will demonstrate how to be comfortable in stressful professional situations such as interviews and corporate social events.

The workshop will be highly interactive and provide behaviors, systems and strategies that can be observed, adapted and duplicated.

U.S. Rep. John Baldacci will discuss “Economic Implications of Entrepreneurship” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 12, in the Keck Classroom of Pettengill Hall on the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College campus. The public is invited to attend this ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Seminar Series in Entrepreneurship lecture free of charge.Baldacci’s talk will focus on how the state of Maine has addressed the challenges of developing successful new ventures for state economies. Born and raised in Bangor, Baldacci worked in his family business while serving in the state legislature and earning a B.A. in history from the University of Maine, Orono. Through his experience in the family restaurant business, Baldacci learned much about the opportunities and challenges facing Maine’s small businesses.

Baldacci was first elected to public office in 1978, when he won a seat on the Bangor City Council at the age of 23. In 1982, he was elected to the Maine State Senate, where he served until his election to the United States House of Representatives in 1994. Re-elected to Congress in 1996, 1998 and again in 2000, he serves on the house agriculture and transportation and infrastructure committees. Through this committee work, he has been involved in decisions important to the second district’s natural resource-based economy.

For more information, call the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Office of Career Services at 207-786-6232.

The new academic building will include a 125-seat lecture hall, known as the “kaleidoscope” classroom because of its multiple and flexible seating arrangements complemented by computer-controlled capabilities, including state-of-the art video conferencing and computer display.

“The college is honored to receive this distinguished award which enables ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to build a critical component in its new academic building,” ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College President Donald W. Harward said.

A five-level structure of 91,000 square feet, the new academic building will provide teaching spaces, faculty offices, laboratories and other facilities required by 11 departments and interdisciplinary programs. The building will link programs and departments now physically dispersed and inadequately housed on the outskirts of campus, promoting a new level of faculty and student interaction.

W.M. Keck established the W.M. Keck Foundation in 1954 as a philanthropic institution that would apply creativity and imagination to provide far reaching benefits for humanity in the disciplines of science, engineering, medical research and higher education. Since its creation, the Los Angeles-based foundation’s top priority has been identifying and supporting endeavors which, if successful, could lead to breakthrough discoveries and the development of new technologies.