George Mitchell, the former U.S. senator who served as President Obama’s special envoy for Middle East peace until last spring, delivers the keynote address during a weeklong celebration of international and interdisciplinary education at 乐播传媒 in October.

Mitchell speaks at 5:15 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 27, in the 乐播传媒 College Chapel, 275 College St. His talk follows the dedication of Hedge and Roger Williams halls, recently renovated by the college into academic facilities that are advancing the 乐播传媒 education still further across national and interdisciplinary boundaries.

Visit the Open to the World website.
More about the Hedge and Roger Williams renovations.
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During the 4:15 p.m. dedication, Paul Marks ’83, chairman and CEO of the aerospace materials maker Argosy International Inc., offers remarks about living as a global citizen. Mitchell’s talk and the dedication of Hedge and Roger Williams halls culminate Open to the World: 乐播传媒 Celebrates Unbounded Learning, the Oct. 24-28 series of events.

The week’s speakers also include Gary Hirshberg P’13, “CE-Yo” of yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm. The full Open to the World schedule will be announced later in October. For more information, please contact 207-786-6336 or arichard@bates.edu.

Here are events that have been confirmed to date:

Monday, Oct. 24: 乐播传媒 observes United Nations Day.

Tuesday, Oct. 25: opens with a 4 p.m. welcome, readings by international poets at 4:45 accompanied by English translations, and an evening reception at 6, all in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

This five-day event includes poets from around the world presenting their work, accompanied by translations created by 乐播传媒 faculty and students; and a conference on the art and practice of translation. For more information, please contact gdumais@bates.edu or 207-786-8293.

Wednesday, Oct. 26: At 6 p.m. is a screening of Food, Inc., the Academy Award-nominated documentary exposing the corporate-controlled, industrialized underside of American food production. Following the screening at 7:30 p.m., Hirshberg, a prominent figure in Robert Kenner’s 2008 film, offers remarks. Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Thursday, Oct. 27: Hedge and Roger Williams halls are rededicated at 4:30, followed by Mitchell’s keynote. The keynote will be simulcast in Perry Atrium, Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk). A reception in the atrium follows Mitchell’s speech.

Friday, Oct. 28: In “Global Possibilities,” five young 乐播传媒 alums discuss their experiences with initiatives that have both local and global consequences; at 4 p.m. in the Keck Classroom (G52), Pettengill Hall.

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the final days of the renovation of Hedge and Roger Williams halls.

On Monday, June 27, faculty in philosophy, religious studies and environmental studies will receive key-card access to the renovated Hedge Hall and be able to start settling into their spiffy new offices. ES will occupy the first floor, religious studies the second and philosophy the third.

Students head toward New Commons in this photograph taken from the fourth floor of Roger Williams Hall on May 23, 2011.

Garcelon Field and New Commons photographed from the fourth floor of Roger Williams Hall on May 23, 2011.

A power shovel leaves tracks in the mud outside Roger Williams Hall in this image taken May 23, 2011.

The Hedge Hall entrance plaza photographed from Roger Williams Hall on May 23, 2011.

Alumni Walk and Hedge and Pettengill halls, photographed from the fourth floor of Roger Williams Hall on May 23, 2011.

Four weeks later, July 25 is moving day for staff of the Language Resource Center and Off-Campus Study office and the faculty of the foreign-language programs that will occupy Roger Williams Hall.

In both cases, explains project manager Paul Farnsworth, the buildings will remain off-limits to the remainder of the campus community for some time yet. “The spaces still won’t be schedulable” through the online R25 room-reservation system, he explains, and general contractor Wright-Ryan Construction will still be around. “It makes life difficult for the contractor if there are people in the building while he’s trying to finish things.”

Still, installing 乐播传媒 inhabitants has to be one of the final milestones. The timetable is especially tight for the Roger Bill’s occupants, Farnsworth adds, because their former digs in Hathorn Hall are scheduled for
sprucing up, too.

At Hedge, the punch-list process rolls on, as the general contractor and then the architect inspect what’s been finished and flag things that fall short. As for new construction, there’s precious little left: expansion joints on the roof and between the new and old sections of the building and some flooring here and there — notably on the ground floor, where dampness in the floor slab has forced a change in plan.

乐播传媒 is committed to using construction products that don’t emit toxic vapors, which means that the flooring adhesive is a benign water-based product. But it needs a dry surface to stay stuck, so a water barrier needs to be laid over the ground floor concrete
to keep the moisture at bay.

Meanwhile, moving day looms ever larger. “I just took the classroom committee through the building,” Farnsworth says. “These are people who deal with room scheduling, and we walked them through so they can get a visual on the spaces.”

Previously, we had asked Farnsworth what Commencement visitors could expect to see on the construction site. This time around, unable to let go of a good premise for a question, we wondered what would greet alums and families returning for Reunion, just days away.

One thing that will greet them is the opportunity to tour both buildings, at 11 a.m. Friday, and 1:30 and 4 p.m. Saturday. Tour groups will meet up outside the main entrance of Hedge on Alumni Walk.

For passers-by, meanwhile, there won’t be anything as dramatic as the instant lawn that materialized around Hedge Hall during Senior Week. In fact, Farnsworth says, the construction fence will stay up around the Bill and no grounds work will take place till after Reunion. The continuing need for cherry pickers on the site necessitates both those conditions.

Aside from landscaping, though, the Bill will show marked progress since just late May. On the outside, the roofing slates will likely all be in place, and workers should be nearly done installing the dark-gray ContinentalBronze sheet metal on the walls of dormers and other non-brick faces.

Inside, drywall is virtually finished, with the stairwell inside the new addition being the last stand for the wallboard hangers. Plenty of primer paint has been splashed around, too, and the first color coats have been applied through much of the building. Ceiling grids are going up and ceiling systems being installed — lights, sprinkler heads, etc.

“The pace of work has greatly accelerated” at the Bill because of experience gained at Hedge, Farnsworth says. “A lot of the questions that were unique to the installation here at 乐播传媒, we’ve answered in doing Hedge. So people don’t need additional instruction, they just march on.”

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes your questions, reminiscences and comments about campus improvements. Please e-mail staff writer Doug Hubley at dhubley@bates.edu, stating “Construction Update” in the subject line.

Note: Campus Construction Update returns the first week of July.

How a tradition of learning inside, outside, and around the classroom influences 乐播传媒 facilities growth

By President Elaine Tuttle Hansen

The unstaged photograph below shows history professor Hilmar Jensen and his honors thesis advisees, Ariela Silberstein 鈥�10 and Anthony Phillips 鈥�10, enjoying late-night ice cream in their Pettengill Hall history lounge amidst the implements of their academic trade 鈥� computers, texts, a cell phone, Diet Coke, and some Chex Mix.

Through the photo, we feel the energetic blend of old tools and new approaches. We appreciate the complex process that fuels the scholar鈥檚 mind and body, and the way that academic work connects to external sources and destinations across space and time.

The sight of 乐播传媒 learners and teachers in dialogue is familiar to us, yet it captures an intentional educational ideal 鈥� one that privileges a rich mix of study and interaction 鈥� 155 years in the making here at 乐播传媒.

While reputed to be utterly demanding, 乐播传媒鈥� earliest professors welcomed students to their homes (sometimes by necessity, for those who didn鈥檛 have campus offices) with a style that George Millet Chase, son of President Chase, once described as relentlessly 鈥渟imple and informal.鈥�

As they guided each new generation of students, the earliest faculty also seemed to embrace the concept of a changing world. It was said of philosopher, theologian, and botanist Benjamin Francis Hayes that his 鈥渄octrine never petrified.鈥�

Quaint as such language sounds today, that approach 鈥� meet students where they are, then carefully push them further than they imagined possible 鈥� is still alive and formative.

Take the renovation and expansion of Hedge and Roger Williams halls, for example. By fall 2011, each will offer thoughtful juxtapositions and intersections of classrooms, lounges, offices, and common spaces where students and faculty will meet formally and informally. Inside, outside, and around the classroom, they will learn with and from each other.

Moreover, the denizens of our newest academic buildings reflect our long resistance to fragmentation and factionalization.

Hedge will house the religious studies and philosophy departments as well as the environmental studies program 鈥� and we鈥檙e not yet tired of joking about a building that embraces 鈥渉eaven and earth鈥� on just three floors. In doing so, Hedge brings together the Western academy鈥檚 oldest disciplines with one of the newest, future-oriented, and global 鈥渋nterdisciplines,鈥� an arrangement that embodies an important theme of liberal arts colleges in the 21st century.

Whereas the earliest colleges and universities trained clerics in religion and philosophy in order to save our eternal souls, today these institutions promote research and problem-solving 鈥� by humanists, artists, social scientists, and natural scientists 鈥� who work across traditional boundaries to improve life on this endangered planet.

Meanwhile, the Bill welcomes our non-English-language study programs as well as the technology-rich Language Resource Center and the Off-Campus Study Office. Among our peers, only 乐播传媒 has gathered under one roof the programs that teach and practice the cross-cultural competence that our students and our world need today.

The faculty and students working within the Bill will, in effect, extend the reach of 乐播传媒 as they learn to transcend some of the boundaries that divide and endanger us. They will look outward through multiple cultural lenses and use, quite literally, different words to describe, understand, and design solutions for the world鈥檚 common problems.

Like the initiatives outlined in our academic plan, our facilities improvements will continue to encourage learners and teachers to cross paths, challenge boundaries, and connect and collaborate.

And this brings us back to the deceptively casual scene of a professor and his students, 155 years in the making.

Beaupr茅 has written 11 books. Among his notable earlier works is Le Petit Mangeur des Fleurs (“The Little Flower Eater”; Les Editions JCL, 1999), a novel based on the author’s early life in Biddeford, Maine.

For La Souillonne, monologue sur sc猫ne (Llumina Press, 2006), Beaupr茅 created a dramatic monologue by a character adapted from Le Petit Mangeur.

“The Souillonne reveals, through her stories, a life full of setbacks, low self-esteem and friendships preserved in the depths of her very soul,” a publisher’s description notes. “Rooted in unshakeable common sense, much like the people who are used to daily toil (such as mill workers), the Souillonne’s way of telling things is direct and, at times, harsh.”

The piece was performed in Paris, Dijon and Angers, France, by Maine actress Marie Cormier, as well as in Lam猫que, N.B., and Lewiston and Biddeford, Maine.

Beaupr茅 followed “La Souillonne” with the sequel La Souillonne, Deusse (Llumina, 2008) and The Boy With the Blue Cap 鈥� Van Gogh in Arles (Llumina, 2008), a history-based novel.

In 2009, Beaupr茅 edited Voix Francophones de Chez Nous, a contemporary Franco-American anthology of tales in French.

Beaupr茅 taught Francophone and world literature for 30 years at the University of New England, retiring in 2000. An avid traveler, he spent two sabbaticals in Europe, an important source of inspiration for his writing. He earned a bachelor’s degree as a double major in French and English at St. Francis College, an institutional forerunner to UNE. He received a master’s and a doctorate in French literature from Brown University.

He was decorated with the Order of Arts and Literature by the French government in 2008 for his outstanding contribution to French culture.

A professor of Spanish, a poet and an authority on Mexican citizens of African descent, Marco Polo Hern谩ndez Cuevas offers a talk titled Afro-Mexico 1519- at 乐播传媒 College at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 17, in the Benjamin Mays Center, 95 Russell St.

The following day, Hern谩ndez Cuevas is guest speaker at the college’s Creole Table, a series of communal meals whose discussion and menu relate to one of the world’s many Creole cultures. Open to the public strictly by RSVP, due to limited seating, the event takes place at 4:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 18, at the college’s Multicultural Center, 63 Campus Ave.

Open to the public at no cost, the Sept. 17 talk is part of the 2009-10 Arturo Schomburg Afro-Latino Speaker Series, now in its second year. For information about both events, please call 207-786-8376. To RSVP for the Creole Table, please contact this ttaylor@bates.edu by Monday, Sept. 14.

Hern谩ndez Cuevas is associate professor of Spanish at North Carolina Central University, Durham. He describes himself as an Afro-Mexican native of Mexico City’s inner ghettos.

In 2003, he received the National Endowment for the Humanities certificate in Afro-Hispanic Literature from the Afro-Romance Institute, University of Missouri-Columbia. He has written five books in English and Spanish, including examinations of African Mexican history and culture and a forthcoming poetry collection.

The Schomburg Speaker Series, sponsored by the Office of Multicultural Affairs, celebrates the legacy of Puerto Rican historian and activist Arturo Alfonso Schomburg and his efforts to preserve African cultures in the Americas. The series highlights contemporary Afro-Latin scholars and artists who focus on topics including Afro-Latin identity, politics, culture, literature and history.

The Creole Table is a language and cultural program that meets on selected Friday evenings. Each meeting combines dinner and discussion about a particular Creole society. “Creole” refers to, variously, language, race, cuisine, religion and culture.

Creole societies, which exist throughout the world, are defined by their multicultural, multi-racial/ethnic and polyglot populations, and by similar histories of forced migration, agricultural labor, plantation economies and the creation of new languages.

These meetings explore the diversity of such cultures, their histories and current conditions. One or more attendees take responsibility for leading the discussion, and the meal reflecting the culture at issue is prepared collectively by students, faculty and staff.

Past programs have examined Haiti, Cape Verde, Martinique, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Barbados, Dominica, Brazil and Cura莽ao.

Alexandre Dauge-Roth, an assistant professor of French at 乐播传媒 College, is one of three Maine college professors to receive a 2009 Maine Campus Compact award for infusing public service and civic engagement into their teaching. Dauge-Roth will receive a Donald Harward Faculty Award for Service-Learning Excellence in the Maine Campus Compact’s eighth annual faculty and student awards ceremony April 16聽 at the Maine State Museum.
Dauge-Roth researches the Rwandan genocide of 1994, exploring personal, literary and film narratives created since Hutu extremists massacred as many as a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu. In the four years since he came to 乐播传媒, Dauge-Roth has fostered a correspondence between 乐播传媒 students and survivors of the genocide.

During a 2006 trip to Rwanda, he established a network of genocide survivors who have corresponded in French with students in his seminar “Documenting the Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda” to document survivors鈥� stories.

In 2007, Dauge-Roth’s students created the organization 鈥溊植ゴ� Students for Peace in Rwanda,鈥� which received a $10,000 Davis Projects for Peace award to support a home for street children in Rwanda. Also in 2007, Dauge-Roth assembled an international conference that brought scholars, human-rights advocates and genocide survivors to 乐播传媒 to discuss the 1994 events.

Of his research into the narratives created by genocide survivors, Dauge-Roth says that “I’m examining how these authors use an aesthetic of haunting. These testimonies and documentaries find ways to haunt the reader and the viewer, so that we cannot go back to our usual business and forget about it.”

He adds, “I hope students will reflect on what it means to listen to a survivor. There’s a lot to learn from them about the ability to struggle and to live on despite horrific loss.”

In May, during 乐播传媒’ five-week Short Term, Dauge-Roth will take 13 students to Rwanda for three weeks to conduct an oral history project with members of “reconstituted families” 鈥� families made up of genocide survivors who lost their siblings and parents. One such orphan is elected as the head of the household and acts like a parental figure for the others.

The MCC’s Harward Award this year recognizes three Maine faculty members who have made public service an integral part of their teaching and have successfully advocated for civic engagement. In addition to Dauge-Roth, they are Christina Bechstein of the Maine College of Art and Nancy Ross of Unity College.

The award was named for Donald W. Harward, who retired as the sixth president of 乐播传媒 College in 2002. Harward championed service-learning and other programs designed to make 乐播传媒 a more active and valuable partner in the community life of Lewiston and Auburn. He is a founding president of Maine Campus Compact and former member of the board of directors of Campus Compact at the national level.

The Maine Campus Compact is a statewide coalition of college and university presidents established to encourage and enhance campus engagement in the community. The student Heart and Soul Award and the Donald Harward Faculty Award are presented annually.

Four writers from Equatorial Guinea, the only Spanish-speaking nation in Africa, visit 乐播传媒 College to give a joint presentation titled “Writing Africa in Spanish: Four Equatorial Guinean Writers Speak of Exiled Dreams” at 4:15 p.m. Tuesday, March 31, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

Writers Justo Bolekia 叠辞濒别办谩, Donato Ndongo Bidyogo, Remei Sipi Mayo and Francisco Zamora Loboch will give their talks in Spanish, with translation provided. Sponsored by the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, the event is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-8293.

The West African nation of Equatorial Guinea marked the 40th anniversary of its independence from Spain last October. The writers’ visit to 乐播传媒 is one in a series of cultural activities at different U.S. universities preceding an international conference at Hofstra University titled “Between Three Continents: Rethinking Equatorial Guinea on the 40th Anniversary of its Independence from Spain.”

In the early part of the 20th century the territory known as “Spanish Guinea” became notorious as a place where slave labor was practiced. In mid-century, Equatorial Guinea was the world麓s leading cocoa producer.

When the movement towards African independence forced Spain’s Franco regime to grant its colony political freedom, the process became a bizarre series of political contradictions: A European dictatorship was trying to conduct a democratic process in a country that until 1959 had systematically denied citizenship rights to its black inhabitants.

After independence, in 1968, relations between Spain and its former colony deteriorated rapidly. A third of the population was either killed or fled into exile under the dictatorship of the first president, Francisco Mac铆as, who banned churches, schools and even the word “intellectual.” After Mac铆as’ ouster and execution in 1979, another member of his clan, Teodoro Obiang, proclaimed himself president and has remained in power ever since.

Independence gave exiled Equatorial Guinean intellectuals the opportunity to speak up not only about the deterioration of civil society in the country, but also about the Spanish colonial era.

Writers like Ndongo, Zamora, Bolekia and others brought events in Equatorial Guinea to the attention of an increasingly large international public. At the same time, they cast a critical look at Spain’s colonial past, and by extension all European colonial adventures in Africa.

In the years since the end of the Mac铆as regime, younger intellectuals and artists have built on these foundations, exploring Equatorial Guinea’s role in relation to both Europe and other African countries, Latin America, and the United States. Equatorial Guinea is now Africa’s third largest oil producer, which has opened up new opportunities and challenges as well as close ties and visibility within the United States.

叠辞濒别办谩 is a professor of French at the Universidad de Salamanca, in Spain. He is a linguist, essayist and compiler of traditional narratives of the Bubi people, as well as the author of the first comprehensive grammar of Bubi, his first language. He has published three books of poetry, as well as the study Lengua y poder en 脕frica (“Language and Power in Africa,” Mundo Negro, 2001). He is an active opponent of the current undemocratic regime in his country.

Ndongo is a journalist, essayist, historian and novelist. He denounced the Mac铆as dictatorship in his early work Historia y tragedia de Guinea Ecuatorial (“History and Tragedy of Equatorial Guinea,” Cambio, 1977). He also published the first anthology of Equatorial Guinean literature in 1984 and wrote what is considered the foundational novel of Equatorial Guinea after independence, Las tinieblas de tu memoria negra (“Shadows of Your Black Memory,” Editorial Fundamentos, 1987; an English translation appeared in 2008).

Sipi, a writer and essayist, works with issues related to gender and African women, with particular emphasis on immigrant women in Spain and Europe. Her latest book, Inmigraci贸n y g茅nero: El caso de Guinea Ecuatorial (“Immigration and Gender: The Case of Equatorial Guinea,” Gakoa, 2004), advocates for the rights of Equatorial Guinean women who migrate to support their families. She lives in Barcelona.

Zamora studied journalism and has written many articles in the Spanish press. He is the author of C贸mo ser negro y no morir en Aravaca (“How to be black and not die in Aravaca,” Ediciones B, 1994) and two books of poetry, Memoria de laberintos (“Memoir of Labyrinths,” SIAL Ediciones, 1999) and Desde el Viyil (“From Mount Viyil,” SIAL Ediciones, 2008), among other works.

Three times a year, I receive a packet from the editor of this magazine, a packet that no one else receives. In it are the stories of 50 or 60 people, all part of the 乐播传媒 community in some way: alumni, faculty, staff. But they are united by more than being part of this community. They have all recently died.

It is my job to read through this packet and write obituaries for this magazine. I read through the factual material that the College records: academic majors and athletic awards, postgraduate degrees and marriages or divorces, places of employment and number of children. I read the newspaper articles and Class Notes and other bits of information the College has collected over the years. I search the Internet for any additional material I can find.

And then I try to read between the lines, try to figure out who this person was, what 乐播传媒 meant to them, and what they meant to 乐播传媒. It is my job to capture all of that in just a few paragraphs.

I picture them hurrying across the Quad to class, watching the Hathorn clock tick off another minute. I see them climbing the stairs in Parker or Roger Bill or Rand. I know that each of them sat beneath the elms at least once during their years at 乐播传媒, and walked down College Street in search of off-campus sustenance. I wonder if any of them lived in the same rooms I did in Page or Mitchell or Rand.

It always surprises me to read about the different lives people with a degree from 乐播传媒 lead. A math major works on the Manhattan Project. A French major ends up doing disaster relief for the Red Cross. The big jock is moved to write poetry. We walked the same path to shake hands with the College president and receive our degree, but after that our common path led us in thousands of directions.

Some of us lead lives of quiet contentment on a farm in rural Maine only a few miles from where we were born. Others thrive on the pulse of Wall Street. A teacher who never married amasses a small fortune, which he wills to 乐播传媒 for scholarships. Another amasses a small army of children and devotes her life to volunteering at their schools.

Usually, there are people whom I wish I had known, people who shared my interests or who did something so interesting that it sparks my curiosity. I have to remind myself that I have lost the opportunity to learn from him or her, or to share our interests. I wonder if our paths ever crossed.

It is my job to set aside my ruminations and concentrate on summarizing a life in a way that is meaningful to the 乐播传媒 community and to the deceased’s family.

The hardest obituaries to write are those of people I knew, people with whom I sat under the elms or climbed the stairs, or walked down College Street. I’ve learned to write those first, before I am paralyzed by their deaths.

Almost as hard to write are those about people for whom I have little or no information. Sometimes I gather my courage and call one of the deceased’s survivors. I hastily assure him or her that I’m not asking for money, that instead I am asking for some details about the person they loved. The call then turns into one of joy and relief, an opportunity for the bereaved to talk again about someone they have lost.

Only once have I been rebuffed, by a man’s mother. I knew the deceased had been a gardener and a cook, and that he was predeceased by his dear friend, a man. There was a hint of a hidden life there, but his mother refused to acknowledge it. And that is all that I have: only the barest details. I stare at the two or three lines I have managed to extract from those details, and only reluctantly move on.

But I have found that usually it doesn’t matter how much material I have about a person. It is the details in the material that matter. A pile of newspaper clippings gives me a fact or two, but a note scribbled in the deceased’s hand 鈥� “Now that the kids are grown, I have finally learned to sail” 鈥� tells me so much about the person.

Another packet just arrived. I sigh in relief that there is no one I know. But soon I will come to understand a bit about all of the people whose lives I will summarize, and I will find a few I wish I had known.

It is my job to write these obituaries. And it is my privilege.

By Christine Terp Madsen ’73, illustration by Marty Braun
Chris Madsen 鈥�73 is a writer who lives in Olympia, Wash., but dreams of Maine.

All-American Nordic skier Sylvan Ellefson '09 wears a St. Christopher medal for a bit of good luck to complement a rigorous training regimen.

While Sylvan Ellefson 鈥�09 hasn鈥檛 banished sweets or Commons crispitos from his diet, he鈥檚 honed an understanding of what his body needs to perform at peak level.

“I was definitely not conscious of eating a balanced diet my first year here,” says Ellefson, a Nordic skier from Vail, Colo., who won All-America honors at last year鈥檚 NCAA Skiing Championships. “But in the past two years I鈥檝e really realized what it means.”

Now, he and his teammates consider 乐播传媒 Dining Services to be part of their team. “Commons does a great job of providing us with the food we need for how we train,” Ellefson says.

For example, when the Nordic team travels during carnival season, their van carries Commons-provided food like granola, breads, fruits, and yogurt. Not for the skiers鈥� major meals 鈥� they get meal money for that 鈥� but for quick post-race nutrition. “Your body recovers more quickly if you get food right after a race,” explains Sam Evans-Brown 鈥�09, Ellefson鈥檚 teammate.

When it comes to establishing healthy food routines, the teammates support each other, says head coach Becky Flynn Woods 鈥�89. “It鈥檚 about getting into the right habit. For example, the skiers racing later in the day will take time in the morning to prepare food, like PB&Js, for everyone to eat right after the races.”

These days, the Nordic team鈥檚 training is especially motivated, what with For Ellefson, a Colorado-raised skier not recruited by any Division I schools out West, his competitive cup runneth over. “I鈥檓 proud to race as a Bobcat,” he says. “I love it in Maine.”

An alpine enthusiast growing up, Ellefson and his Vail Mountain School soccer buddies took up cross-country skiing to stay in shape during the winter. As a high school sophomore, he won skimeister as the best performer in Nordic and alpine events. By then, he knew his forte was Nordic so he dropped alpine, comparing it to choosing soccer over baseball when, as a little kid, he “couldn鈥檛 hit the ball off the tee.” But as a relative latecomer to Nordic skiing, Ellefson came East for college when Division I schools passed him up.

Highly competitive by nature, Ellefson describes his mother, Tashina, as a “tremendous” athlete. His late father, Lyndon, who helped found the sport of skyrunning 鈥� high-altitude, long-distance running 鈥� died in 1998 when, on a training run near Cervinia, Italy, he fell into a hidden snow crevasse, dropping 75 feet to his death.

Sylvan Ellefson is well-aware of his father鈥檚 reputation as a highly motivated competitor who pushed himself hard. “I feel that if I can do something really well, I can carry on his legacy,” he says. “In my case that鈥檚 Nordic skiing.” Looking ahead to his post-乐播传媒 racing career, he wants to “get to that level,” referencing the accomplishments of Nordic alums like Justin Freeman 鈥�98, a 2006 U.S. Olympian, “and then do better.”

Ellefson鈥檚 specialty is freestyle, like skating on skis, and he earned trips to the NCAA Championships in both 2006 and 2007. Last year was a breakthrough season, as he won freestyle races at the season-ending carnivals at Williams and Middlebury, the first-ever wins for a 乐播传媒 Nordic skier on the Eastern Collegiate Skiing Association circuit. At the 2008 NCAA Championships, Ellefson finished fourth in the 10K freestyle, one of only three Americans, and the only Division III skier, in the top 10.

While Ellefson targets another top-five finish, teammate Evans-Brown, a Spanish major from Gilmanton Iron Works, N.H., is so eager to qualify for his first NCAAs that he spent last summer in Argentina, living with a government official who鈥檚 a cross-country enthusiast, so he could train on snow. “I had easy access to skiing and was well-fed,” he says. “Lots of meat, for breakfast, lunch, snacks.”

There, he earned a reputation as “the kid who always eats,” and Evans-Brown estimates that he and Ellefson will take in 6,000 to 9,000 calories a day while training hard. That鈥檚 more than triple the typical daily diet of 2,500 calories 鈥� if not quite the famous 12,000-a-day regimen of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps.

While the Nordic team tends to frequent Italian restaurants on the road for a good balance between protein and carbs, “what you eat right before a race is not so important, I think,” Evans-Brown says. What鈥檚 critical is “fueling yourself well while you鈥檙e training.”

At a recent campus meal, Ellefson and Evans-Brown are joined by Nicole Ritchie 鈥�09 of East Dummerston, Vt. Twice an All-American rower as well as a skier, she has begun to avoid processed food. “A friend is doing a thesis that focuses on corn syrup,” she says. “I鈥檝e been reading over her shoulder. The amount of energy going into producing corn syrup is pretty disgusting.”

In the new dining Commons, Ritchie gravitates toward local products: apple cider from Greenwood Orchards, chocolate milk from Oakhurst Dairy, and hamburgers from grass-fed, Cold Spring Ranch beef (see page 16) for her training fuels. She also frequents the vegan bar.

“Making your own food choices takes a lot of different economic and environmental issues into your hands,” says Ritchie. “It鈥檚 really cool that Commons supports us in making these decisions.”

By Andy Walter, photograph By Phyllis Graber Jensen