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My Last Year of Teaching: Jane Costlow’s departure prompts reflections on past, present, and future

Phyllis Graber Jensen — Thu, 11 Jun 2020 13:17:29 +0000

It was the Tuesday after Commencement, and Jane Costlow paced around her Hedge Hall office, up to her elbows in books, boxes, papers, and assorted memorabilia. The college’s Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies was nearing the end of her 34-year �ֲ��ý career, and the only thing left was to pack up and move out.

The scene is repeated each year, of course, but more often recently with the retirement of the baby boom generation of faculty members.

Costlow tosses some papers into a recycling bin outside of her Hedge Hall office. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

I’d seen historian Michael Jones and his wife, Judy Head, empty his Pettengill Hall office. I’d listened to poet Rob Farnsworth speak of plans for his beloved books piled high in Hathorn Hall. I’d learned how historians Dennis Grafflin and John Cole went door to door on their Pettengill corridor, asking colleagues to adopt tomes they themselves couldn’t take home.

“Don’t worry,” said the student, who had picked up a book. “Your old friends will make new friends.”

And I’d heard how my husband, historian Hilmar Jensen, had regretfully placed 200 of his volumes in boxes labeled “free books” in the lobby of Perry Atrium. All were eventually claimed. Pausing one day to unload a final armful, he remarked to an observant student, “This feels like saying goodbye to old friends.”

“Don’t worry,” said the student, who had picked up a book. “Your old friends will make new friends.”

For the generation of scholars and teachers who have painstakingly collected books by the hundreds, even thousands, the task of retiring and closing up an on-campus shop presents various emotional and practical challenges, not the least of which is, “What do I do with all those books?”

Costlow pauses for a moment with a stack of books she’s packing in her office. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

That vexing question, along with other rites of passage faced by baby boomers emptying the scholarly bench, planted the original seed for my interest in documenting the last year of somebody — anybody’s — teaching at �ֲ��ý.

In August 2019, Jane Costlow gamely stepped into that role. There could have been no more willing, insightful, nor patient subject.

When her classroom teaching career stopped abruptly and early, in March 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she gracefully transitioned to remote teaching. When the semester ended (Costlow did not teach during Short Term), she spent long hours in her Hedge office, clearing the space for her replacement, a recent Ph.D. who will move in when he arrives on the �ֲ��ý campus sometime this summer.

Costlow met that young scholar at a symposium last year, and she knows he will teach courses on climate change and fiction; to that end, she’s left an assortment of books and other materials that she hopes he’ll find useful, including a folder of papers about Lewiston and Auburn.

Costlow and her husband, David Das, discuss packing strategies during one of her moving sessions. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Costlow begins a yearlong sabbatical this August, after which she will officially retire in August 2021. And she leaves at a particularly difficult time as �ֲ��ý — administrators, faculty, staff, and students — confront the challenges of COVID-19 and the nation’s greater-than-ever awareness of systemic racism in U.S. society. “I really feel for people,” she said, knowing that she will no longer be an active participant in the coming struggles.

The pattern of sabbaticals, she said, “provides an incredible luxury that we have as academics to take periodic time off — having a kind of Sabbath in your life. That actually gives us a little bit of practice at shifting gears, so it’s not completely unfamiliar to no longer have the demands of teaching.”

What’s different now, she said, is no longer being driven by a need to complete this project or fulfill that obligation or stand for promotion.

Costlow began her office move-out in April by first reviewing its entire contents, deciding what to save, what to dispose of, and what to try to pass on to others. Some of her discoveries — such as two folders of correspondence — delighted her.

Costlow reviews the 34 years worth of accumulated files in her office filing cabinet. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

“Rather than pitching those things, I actually wanted to go through them,” she said. She read the approximately 100 letters, some of which she had written, others written to her.

She found an initial note from a young female graduate student, Jehanne Gheith (now an associate professor at Duke), writing her dissertation at Stanford on the Russian writer Evgeniia Tur, one of a number of women writers from the 19th century whose work and significance for cultural history has been retrieved by scholars over the past three decades, says Costlow.

“I was the only person, certainly in English, maybe in the world at that point, who had written anything about this woman writer. So Jehanne reached out to me, and we have since become very dear friends. It was cool to find the inaugural letter of our friendship.”

In undertaking that office audit, she rediscovered a younger version of herself: a new scholar emerging from graduate school.

Other surprises included a few missives from her late colleague, French professor Dick Williamson, a “hugely important person in the early years of my life at �ֲ��ý,” and a series of thank-you notes written by two other departed faculty colleagues when they were deans, Carl Benton Straub and Jim Carignan ’61, thanking her for moderating a panel or serving on a committee.

Costlow holds a grading ledger from 1999. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

In undertaking that office audit, she rediscovered a younger version of herself: a new scholar emerging from graduate school, at Yale, “a really wonderful graduate program, but one with a very traditional curriculum and entirely male faculty, which had been pretty much my experience as an undergraduate, as well,” she said; and then arriving at �ֲ��ý “interested in questions of women’s writing, feminist criticism, and different ways of thinking about cultural legacy and whose voices are heard.”

As she looked at all the books she’d acquired, all that she’d read, and what she’d written — unpublished and published — and conversations she’d had with others, she was struck by how much had changed over four decades.

In particular, she thought of the number of women who are faculty now and their positions within the academy, and the waves of various attempts to fundamentally open up and change curricula and syllabi. “I found myself looking back at the examples of how I have tried to do that, and the people that I’d worked with and leaned on.”

“Be gone slavery of the kitchen.”�� Costlow holds a�� reproduction of a 1931 poster by Soviet painter Grigory Mikhailovich Shegal. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

She leafed through documents from a seminar she’d participated in when �ֲ��ý was developing courses for its new women’s studies program, decades ago, her mind on the past and the present.

“Right at this moment, I feel just how enormous the rock is that so many different people are trying to push up the hill of fundamental change,” she said — people “working to bring all kinds of diverse voices and perspectives into the classroom and the academy.”

“You sometimes wonder: Where is the arc of the universe heading?”

But then she has a troubling realization. “My high school experience in rural North Carolina was my most diverse educational experience as a student — everything got whiter (and much more male)” as she went on to college (Duke) and graduate school.

In high school, Costlow had African American teachers in math, and chemistry, and in homeroom. “I particularly would love to be able to find out if they’re still around, to thank them for the work that they did.”

As her mind flashes to the past and back to present, Costlow now is on the edge of tears. “It’s that moment where you’re thinking back over your career and how much has changed” — and how much hasn’t. “You sometimes wonder: Where is the arc of the universe heading?”

Jane Costlow on changes in higher education. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

And all those books. Some she already handed off to students at the end of the fall semester or as they stopped in to say goodbye before departing suddenly in mid-March. With the help of the building’s academic administrative assistant, Jeanne Beliveau, Costlow has distributed more volumes to students. Still others will go into boxes to be picked up by students as freebies.

Costlow has also arranged to send boxes of books of American nature writing to her friends and colleagues in the English department at Turgenev State University in Orel, Russia, with whom she’s had great interactions over the course of 30 years. “Who knows what students will pick up and read in the future to get a broad sense of not just the American classics, but of diverse voices on the natural world?”

A pile of titles Costlow has selected for her successor sits on one of her office shelves. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

She mentioned a friend, Professor Emeritus of History Dennis Grafflin, who is assembling his own archive of the teaching books of �ֲ��ý faculty as they retire. She gave him her copy of The Brothers Karamazov, falling apart, filled with notes and Post-its. “I think it’s a fabulous idea,” she said. “There is something really precious about all of those marks that you leave in a book.”

What will she miss most — or least — about �ֲ��ý? That’s ironic, she said, since the campus has already emptied, and she’s already longing for all kinds of things: “The salad bar in the Den for those days when I don’t bring anything from home; talking to colleagues; or surprising moments with students; the energy of 20-year-olds.”

She will miss “the focused attention to writing and being able to engage with students about writing because I love thinking about what makes good writing.”

She’ll miss encounters with all sorts of colleagues, some in Ladd Library, others in Beliveau’s office in Hedge. “I’ll miss that a great deal, just being able to go down and chat with her for three minutes and maybe run into David Commiskey [professor of philosophy] or somebody else in Hedge.”

What she won’t miss: “those days when everybody is low-energy, including me, but somehow I have to crank it up to try to get the students going.” She will not miss teaching at 2:40 in the afternoon. “I always found that an impossible time to teach. I guess it’s my body rhythm.”

She will not miss grading. She will not miss having to sit down with a stack of papers and contemplate “how it’s humanly possible for me to get through these papers and help students with their writing.”

But she will miss “the focused attention to writing and being able to engage with students about writing because I love thinking about what makes good writing. I’m always happy to talk with students, and a fair amount of what we do in a class is talk about what makes this work, what makes it powerful? Or why doesn’t this communicate with us?”

Costlow shares a moment with Academic Administrative Assistant Jeanne Beliveau in Beliveau’s Hedge Hall office at the start of the fall 2019 semester. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College).

Although she’ll miss her colleagues, she will not miss their departmental meetings. “The wonderful kinds of conversations that you can have with people are the ones that are sometimes extemporaneous and unpredictable.” And faculty meetings? She views them as “a necessary evil,” although “there are times that faculty meetings are where we get to say really important things to each other — that’s at least as important now as it’s ever been.”

Nor will she miss multitasking. But there are probably ways she will continue to multitask in retirement because, after all, “it’s a constant in modern life, but it’s horrible.”

“There’s this paradox: being in a super busy job, then these moments when the beauty of the campus takes your breath away.”

Then, she’ll miss her time alone on the �ֲ��ý campus, particularly those years when she worked in Hathorn Hall and would walk from Campus Avenue up the central path on the Historic Quad to her office. “How beautiful it was, these moments of quiet,” she said. “It’s the counterweight to multitasking. I love working at a place where you have to walk around to get to different places.”

It can be a healthy work environment, she said, one that allowed her time for reflection and an opportunity to admire the landscaping designed by now-retired Bill Bergevin and others. “There’s this paradox: being in a super busy job, then these moments when the beauty of the campus takes your breath away.”

And finally, she will really miss the chance to travel with students, something that she has already missed this year, as have many of her colleagues. “I’m being optimistic,” Costlow said, but she imagines she will continue to travel to Russia and other countries that she has not yet visited. “But in all likelihood, I won’t travel with students, and I’ll miss that.”

A Russian keepsake awaits packing. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

She anticipates her future with hope and pleasure, imagining it as a continuance of, not an end to, the last 35 years of her life at �ֲ��ý.

She loves to read and write. She stays in touch with friends and colleagues in Russia. She maintains connections in Lewiston and Auburn “with groups of people that I love talking with.” She’s been part of a book group for 25 years that continues to meet on Zoom during COVID-19.

One thing’s for sure: “I just want to slow myself down. And the pandemic is oddly good for that.”

“I love this community. And I’ve been restrained in the extent to which I’ve had time to give to the community because of how all-consuming �ֲ��ý can become. So I’m looking forward to having a little bit more time to give there, although a lot of people warn you as you approach retirement, not to get yourself committed to too many different things at the beginning. That seems like really good advice.”

Because of the coronavirus, some of the things she had imagined doing at the beginning of her sabbatical — such as taking a road trip to see family and friends in Virginia and North Carolina — are no longer possible, at least for the immediate future.

But one thing’s for sure: “I just want to slow myself down. And the pandemic is oddly good for that.” She has “deep, heavy, intense academic” projects that she’s working on, but she’ll take a break from those. “I kind of want to drift for a while, quite frankly,” she said. “Read whatever comes to mind. Go for walks. Garden.”

Her neighbor gave her some sourdough starter, so Costlow, a longtime baker, is growing her repertoire. And she’s returned to the piano, an instrument she played often while growing up. “It was symbolic,” she said, to clear the papers, library books, and COVID-19 masks from the piano to make space for the sheet music that has allowed her to get slowly back into Bach’s “Two- and Three-Part Inventions.”

Mostly, she says, to the extent that it’s currently possible, she wants to go on really long walks. She and her husband, David Das, assistant director for the Center for Global Education, do a lot of walking together. And she walks, socially distanced, with friends. But there’s something about solitary walking that she truly likes, and there are some great places, including conservation lands, in her neighborhood.

Costlow pauses to consider how to move these framed 1950 aerial photographs of Shackleford Banks from her office to home. “They’re images of a place I love – a really wild, undeveloped island you can only get to by boat. But they’re also images of islands that ‘drift’ — they get reshaped by water and storms. They remind me of climate change and sea level rise. How much longer will they be there?” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

“I am not going out to exercise,” she said, taking guidance from Thoreau in his essay “Walking,” in which he talked about the mindfulness that should come with a good, long walk — famously saying, “I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.”

Mind and body together on a walk — “I’ve done a little bit of that, which is really kind of wonderful,” Costlow said, describing a long exchange of looks she had with a chipmunk. “But we don’t do that when we live lives where we internalize our clocks so intensely, and you have to go on to your next meeting. One doesn’t do that. And it’s really not healthy.”

If anyone can start out on a long walk, and do it well, Jane Costlow can. Here’s to her continued good health.

My Last Year of Teaching: ‘I really love the one-on-one interaction’

Phyllis Graber Jensen — Fri, 06 Mar 2020 15:38:20 +0000

Various shelves and closets, both in and around Jane Costlow’s office in Hedge Hall, are filled with bound senior theses from years gone by.

Costlow selects one and reads the acknowledgement. The senior thanked Costlow for “an enlightening process” during a time when Costlow was “dealing with hard times herself. She made herself available and helped me through my own.”

Costlow wonders about the “hard times” reference. Checking the date, 2009, she remembers: “That was the year my father died.” Such touching acknowledgments are a “reminder of these wonderful students I’ve had,” Costlow says.

Jane Costlow reads the acknowledgments from a former student’s senior thesis. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

The college’s Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies, Costlow is now in her 34th and final year in the �ֲ��ý classroom. Adding it all up, she’s advised well over 100 thesis students in her career.

“The heart of the thesis experience is having a student who comes once a week and sits in your office and talks with you about this topic that they’re having the pain and the pleasure of getting to know a lot better, that they’re really diving into,” she says.

In that sense, it’s timeless, no different from when Costlow first began. “I really love the one-on-one interaction.”

Jane Costlow meets with thesis student Erin O’Farrell ’20, environmental studies major from Burke, Vt., who is writing on the photography from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico with an environmental perspective. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

The one-on-one model is also intensive, making the month of March a notorious crunch time for both seniors and professors, coming in like a lamb and going out like a lion as seniors generate reams of thesis pages for their advisers in advance of the April 10 submission deadline.

As March progresses, says Costlow, faculty “get more bleary-eyed just because of how many pages they have to read.”

Easing the load somewhat in recent years is a new thesis option for environmental studies majors. Instead of a traditional independent thesis, they can choose to take a seminar course called “Environmental Writing in the Public Sphere.”

Environmental studies major Hermione Zhou ’21 of Shenzhen, China, speaks with Costlow about possible thesis topics for next year. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Costlow taught the seminar last year, guiding students in major projects including documentary film and long-form digital journalism, such as podcasts. “They’re really useful formats and genres for students to learn about producing work for which they still have to do all of the deep research” required for a traditional thesis.

One of her 2019 seminar students, Hugh Kenny ’19, produced a film about the Auburn, Maine, agricultural zone; now he’s working as a communications fellow and videographer for the Piedmont Environmental Council, a land trust in Virginia.

This semester, Grace Ellrodt ’20 of Lenox, Mass., started as one of Costlow’s thesis advisees then switched to the thesis seminar, a better fit for a project that grew out of work she’d done in Chile and Colombia investigating the public health issue of loneliness among older people. Ellrodt’s project includes a photography exhibit and website — a launching pad, she hopes, for a career in digital public-health journalism.

Grace Ellrodt ’20 discusses her thesis in Costlow’s Hedge Hall office at the beginning of the fall 2019 term. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

It’s no coincidence that many of Costlow’s thesis advisees are interested in film and photography. Costlow, who for many years taught in the college’s Russian program, teaches courses in environmental literature and over the years has expanded her interest in visual culture.

“It’s something I always did when I was teaching Russian because it’s such a fabulous way to give a rich, complex sense of the culture. And our students are really visual,” she says. “In environmental studies, we do a lot of class work in looking at documentaries and photographic traditions that have been really important in American environmentalism.”

For example, one of her current thesis students, Ava Gulino ’20 of Wilmington, Del., is focusing on the island of Antigua to explore the connection between tourism and photography. “She’s looking at how Antigua gets represented and marketed as a ‘paradise,’ and what that marketing tends to obscure or erase,” Costlow explains. “And then, within that context, she’s also looking at what it might mean to be a mindful and responsible visitor.”

Ava Gulino ’20 of Wilmington, Del., meets weekly with Costlow in her office. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Costlow herself has just finished writing a paper that is, in part, about contemporary Russian photography. “It’s a good example of how my own work and student work can overlap in some ways.”

At �ֲ��ý, the thesis experience varies enormously from one academic division to another. In the social sciences and especially in STEM disciplines, for example, thesis topics often reflect a faculty member’s research, with students becoming integral members of their adviser’s lab.

“And that’s really exciting,” Costlow says, noting how meaningful it is for students of environmental studies colleague Holly Ewing to do field research on water quality on Lake Auburn, read the literature, and then make sense of it.

For majors in the humanities, the experience and approach is different, Costlow says. “It almost always involves letting the student become the expert,” she says. “The student becomes the person who, in a way, is teaching you.” The student, in a way, becomes the “sage on the stage.”

Jane Costlow describes the joy of senior thesis advising and how she helps seniors develop their topics. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Often, her advisees will choose a subject about which she knows very little; in that situation, Costlow’s approach as adviser is to ask good questions and push back against assumptions. “It’s up to them to develop expertise and read broadly within the relevant literature.”

She worked with one thesis writer who was investigating the treatment of elephants in northeastern India. Costlow knew little about the topic and learned a lot — an experience, she says, that can mean “really stretching yourself as a teacher to think about how you can be helpful.”

The theses on the shelves in and around Costlow’s office don’t just sit there. She pulls out certain ones to show current seniors how past writers have approached a certain topic.

Costlow inspects thesis binders stored in an environmental studies area in Hedge Hall. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

One favorite was a thesis written by Patricia Noto ’12, now a landscape designer at G2 Collaborative, who explored how colleges and universities developed farms and gardens on campus. After writing an outstanding thesis, she wrote a proposal for how �ֲ��ý could develop such an operation.

Of course, there are the infamous bumps, if not complete washouts, on the thesis road.

There are the advisees who, week after week, refuse (or say they forgot) to try a new approach or resource. Costlow recalls asking a student to consult with one of the college’s research librarians. “Our librarians are incredibly valuable sources of insight — not just information. They give student tools they’ll use all their lives.”

But week after week, the student reported that he’d not yet done so. Finally, in the dying days of the semester, the student had the meeting. “Wow!” the student exclaimed to Costlow afterward. “I should have gone to see him months ago!”

Costlow chuckles at the memory. “My only regret was that I didn’t have him on video, so I could show all my thesis students.”

When it comes to evaluating and grading this pivotal capstone, the thesis is “completely unlike any other grading experience,” Costlow says.

Costlow discusses thesis ground rules with fall semester thesis advisee Lars Schuster ’20 as he embarks on his study of offshore wind farms in New England. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

With each student, she tries to have an initial conversation, an up-front opportunity to discuss what’s involved in writing a thesis and what she expects a student to do in terms of source materials and bibliography, so that she has something to return to when she needs to say, “This is really not adequate.”

That rarely comes to pass, partly because, she finds, the students are really grading themselves, “sort of playing against themselves. They’ve set a standard of what they’re capable of, and you hope they live up to it. And you hope they set high goals for themselves.

“That’s my way of saying that I have different expectations for different thesis students based on my understanding of who they are as a student.”

Costlow opens a senior thesis by Colin Schless ’04 titled “Two Roads Maine: A Study of the Nature in Healing.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

And then there are the students who blow off their regular meetings. At that point, Costlow isn’t going to play games. “I say, ‘You know what? You’re close to graduating. You’re grown up. If you think you can pull this off without my input, give it a try.’”

One student never came in to see her and spent the last 10 days of the semester camped out in the program’s lounge writing day in, day out. “He handed in an amazing thesis — for the first chapter and a half. Then it just fell completely apart.”

And then there are the big kahunas: the year-long honors theses. A memorable advising experience transpired last year with an advisee who investigated the concept of dignity and migrant labor in her home state, North Carolina, where Costlow also grew up.

“It was just a sheer joy to work with her,” she says, because the thesis embodied the powerful interdisciplinarity of environmental studies, incorporating political and intellectual history, ethnography, and nonfiction creative writing. The alumna has gone on to work with migrant laborers in the South.

Costlow reads a thesis acknowledgment. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

As the month of March marches toward the end of the winter semester, Costlow approaches the conclusion of her thesis advising. She opens another black binder and reads the acknowledgment: “I enjoyed our meetings where we not only discussed subjects pertaining to my thesis, but also current events, activism, and personal stories. I will miss those meetings.”

So will Costlow.

My Last Year: Jane Costlow encourages young faculty to be themselves

Phyllis Graber Jensen — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 22:24:43 +0000

It’s Friday afternoon, Jan. 10, and for professor Jane Costlow, a difficult moment.

She has just arrived at Pettengill Hall’s Perry Atrium, where an informal campus gathering will honor the memory of Carl Benton Straub, Costlow’s predecessor as the Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies. Straub died at age 83 in his Lewiston home on Nov. 15.

“Losing Carl is really hard,” she says. “He was just a dear, dear friend.”

A matted photograph provided guests with a glimpse of the young Carl Straub at the informal memorial gathering in Pettengill Hall’s Perry Atrium. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Costlow knew Straub for all of her 33 years at �ֲ��ý, first as the dean of faculty who hired her, then as the faculty colleague who invited her to join the environmental studies program, and, ultimately, as a good friend and inspiration, if not quite a mentor.

“He was somebody I really treasured getting to talk with every couple of months,” she says. “I feel his absence, and as time goes by I’m going to feel it even more acutely. I need a Carl fix. I need to talk to Carl.”

And Straub thought so highly of Costlow that, before his death, he identified her as one of three individuals he wanted to eulogize him at his formal memorial service, to be held Oct. 10 in the Peter J. Gomes Chapel.

Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College

For Jane Costlow, the recent gathering for in memory of Carl Straub had pensive moments (left photo) and also laughter (right photo), where she’s flanked by Professor Emeritus of History Dennis Graflin, left, and David Das, her husband, right. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

“I’m really kind of glad I have a long time to think about what I want to say,” she says, “because it’s a daunting responsibility.” At the same time, “it also feels like a fabulous invitation from Carl to reflect on his life and what he gave to �ֲ��ý.”

In Perry Atrium on that Friday afternoon in early January, Costlow was not among those who spoke about Straub, choosing instead to listen to others.

Though it was held for a sad reason, the gathering had moments of levity, notably recollections of Straub’s pointed observations about �ֲ��ý life, everything from campus landscaping to the Commencement processional.

As a whole, the event was “a fabulous reminder of how much of a role Carl played at �ֲ��ý and various other communities,” Costlow says. “He was a man of extraordinarily varied interests and friendships.”

Costlow, then professor of Russian and East Asian languages and literature, speaks with Straub and music professor Mary Hunter. The 2001 occasion marked Costlow’s appointment as the inaugural Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies. (Courtesy of Jane Costlow)

The gathering reflected that eclecticism, with friends attending from �ֲ��ý; from the rural town of Sumner, where Straub owned property and made many friends; from the Shaker community, which he researched to understand that religious community’s connection to the land; from Maine environmental and arts organizations to which he belonged; and from the Lewiston-Auburn community where he lived.

Costlow recalls that she and Straub hit it off from the start. Like her, he was fascinated by Russian culture, and because he traveled to Russia, the two had that point of connection. “There were a number of different things that we shared, interests that we had in common.”

Carl Straub, in an undated photograph, visits Moscow’s Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed, commonly known as St. Basil’s Cathedral. (Courtesy of the Carl Straub estate)

There were differences, too. In the classroom, Straub was a huge presence with a broad philosophical approach. “It was clear to me that I wasn’t going to be able to teach that way,” she recalls. “But it’s wonderful to have friends strikingly different from you.”

Straub’s being a larger-than-life �ֲ��ý figure made it “almost too intimidating for him to be a mentor” to Costlow. Which made us wonder about the concept of mentoring: Who has mentored Costlow in her career? Who is a role model? And how is she mentoring younger faculty today?

You attended Duke as an undergraduate and Yale for graduate school. Who were your mentors or role models?

There were very few women as professors at Duke or Yale. For me, leaving high school meant leaving behind seeing women in the classroom, essentially. I went to a small high school in eastern North Carolina, where I also had African American teachers! None at Duke or Yale.

And when I was a graduate student in the mid-1980s, none of my professors, in the classroom, struck me as teaching how I would want to teach. They were world-famous, Ivy League scholars, and I don’t think they were that interested in what it would mean to teach at a liberal arts college like �ֲ��ý.

Jane Costlow discusses her academic role models. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

In that day and age, nobody got any training in being a teacher. It was, “Okay, here you are, here’s the deep end of the pool, now swim.” When I came to �ֲ��ý, the people that I learned from were colleagues closest to my age, people like Georgia Nigro and Mary Rice-DeFosse.

And it was a very different age when it came to being a woman, having children, and staying at work.

I remember having a conversation in the library with Carole Taylor right after my first child was born. It had become impossible for me to write. And I was kind of freaking out because I was still untenured. She reassured me: “That’s completely natural. Don’t worry about it too much. You will be able to write again.” Those kind of short encounters made a huge difference to me.

And I remember potlucks for women on campus, staff and faculty, once a month, with those kinds of informal conversations — just debriefing, venting, and sharing. What was going on in class? What wasn’t going well?

Joyce Seligman, who founded the writing program at �ֲ��ý, was extraordinary. It wasn’t that Joyce was mentoring or necessarily teaching us, although she had materials and insights about how to teach writing in the classroom. But she consistently gathered people together and created frameworks in which people could just share their experiences. Those were mentoring situations that for me were really, really helpful.

Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies Holly Ewing joins her environmental studies colleague Costlow on an afternoon walk. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Now that you’re a senior member of the faculty, how do you think of mentoring? Do you actively seek to mentor young faculty? How does that play out?

It’s somewhat informal. Occasionally somebody I know will seek me out, and we’ll have lunch or sit down and talk about a classroom situation, or balancing teaching, writing, and life activities — those kinds of things.

I think listening is the most important piece of mentoring, just being able to really give the person that you’re talking to a sense that they can say whatever is on their mind, in their heart, and to focus on listening to them, not giving advice too quickly.

Costlow greets Visiting Assistant Professor of Africana Cassandra Shepard in November. They share academic interests in issues around disasters: Shepard teaches about Hurricane Katrina, Costlow about the Chernobyl nuclear plant meltdown. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

But like anybody who’s been teaching for a while, I can make some concrete, tangible suggestions. And that’s certainly a form of mentoring, passing on what I’ve got in my bag of tricks. The language teachers at �ֲ��ý have always been fabulous about doing that because language teachers think about that stuff: “Okay, how are we going to get our students to learn vocabulary? Well, here’s this bunch of stuff that you can do.”

Do you have an overriding philosophy for helping younger colleagues?

I want to just affirm people in being the teacher that they are. Early in my career at �ֲ��ý, I had to come to terms with the fact that I was not going to be a teacher like the late Dick Williamson. His persona in the classroom was incredibly vibrant and big, with his amazing sense of humor and energy. I could not be Dick.

Costlow visits with Associate Professor of German Jakub Kazecki and Associate Professor of German Raluca Cernahoschi in Kazecki’s Roger Williams Hall office. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

But as I’ve matured as a teacher and become more experienced, I’ve realized that what’s important is to be the person that you can be. Let your personality become a persona in the classroom that works for you, and that makes you comfortable and makes other people comfortable.

And then you occasionally throw in a joke. Every once in a while I imitate a Russian babushka. And my students look at me like, “Oh my God, what has happened to her?” But it’s a moment of levity in the classroom.

Costlow meets in the Den with Emma Conover ’16, visiting campus to participate in a Purposeful Work panel about environmental careers. Conover works in the water program at Ceres, a sustainability-focused nonprofit. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

The other night you moderated a Purposeful Work panel of alumni from the last 30-plus years whose careers are related to environmental work. Some of these alums you’ve known and mentored. What were your thoughts as you saw them addressing current �ֲ��ý students in environmental studies?

It was wonderful to see former students who have made their way, in very different ways, into interesting and fulfilling work.

It’s wonderful to see how they’ve grown, since we knew them in our somewhat protected classrooms, to become flexible, resilient, creative, and imaginative — and then where they’ve gone with that after graduation.

Costlow moderates “Purposeful Work: Spotlight on Environmental Careers,” an alumni panel discussion in Commons. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

The variety of things that they’re doing is really inspirational, and I was delighted to hear��so many of them talk about the importance of storytelling and communication in their work. Everybody in every classroom at �ֲ��ý is teaching these skills, and they’re clearly important once they’re out in these very different jobs and settings.��

Look What We Found: A photograph of a Russian protester raising her voice

Phyllis Graber Jensen — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 16:18:17 +0000

In the Hedge Hall office of Jane Costlow, the Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies, hangs a framed photograph of a Russian woman holding a protest sign in one hand and her snacking child in the other.

The woman in the picture had joined others to protest a construction project in St. Petersburg, explains Costlow, who took the photo in 2009 while co-leading a �ֲ��ý Fall Semester program in St. Petersburg.

In their fight, citizens were trying to “use what available legal processes there existed in post-Soviet Russia to try to protest and stop the project,” says Costlow — hence the message on the woman’s sign: “All Power to the Laws.”

The slogan is a play on words, Costlow says, because it “echoes the Bolshevik slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets.’ She has re-appropriated it, by putting bars over the word ‘power’ and making the word ‘laws’ so prominent.”

For Costlow, the photograph “resonates with other situations in Russian and Soviet history, where women have been the bearers of conscience. I love that it’s a picture of this woman holding her child and maybe symbolically hoping for a better future.”

Costlow’s co-leader of the �ֲ��ý semester abroad was Áslaug Ásgeirsdóttir, associate professor of politics, and the subject in her photo was the homestay mother of one of their �ֲ��ý students.

Above a selection of works by Russian writer Ivan Turgenev, a photograph of a Russian woman holding a protest sign hangs in the office of Jane Costlow, Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

During their stay, a conflict erupted over plans by the Russian energy giant, Gazprom, to build a huge skyscraper — the tallest in Europe — in the center of St. Petersburg, an extraordinary city that has retained its 18th- and 19th-century architecture.

The protest that Costlow photographed “was really lively and really creative.” In retrospect, she adds, it was like some of the post-inauguration protests in the U.S. “because of the creativity and the spirit, the humor, irony and parody that were displayed in the signs that people were carrying.”

The 2009 protests worked, and Gazprom decided to move the proposed building to a different site, though it has yet to be built.

“I was really excited to see people acting as citizens and publicly raising their voices.”

Costlow’s academic training is in Russian literature and culture, and she has traveled extensively to Russia and the Soviet Union. Her publications include the book Heart-Pine Russia: Walking and Writing the 19th-Century Forest.

Beyond the creativity she witnessed in St. Petersburg in 2009, something else grabbed her. “I was really excited to see people acting as citizens and publicly raising their voices and trying to do what they could as citizens to protect a city that they love.”

They spoke up in part to preserve a historical and culture treasure, in part to protect their neighborhoods. “They were really fed up with corruption and money controlling everything,” she says.

Alumni panel to discuss work experiences in Latin America

�ֲ��ý News — Fri, 26 Sep 2014 14:10:53 +0000

Sydney Hare ’12.

Three recent �ֲ��ý College alumni return to campus to discuss how their experiences in Latin America have influenced their working lives in a panel presentation at 4:15 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 2, in the Keck Classroom, Room G52 of Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk).

Refreshments will be offered. The event has been organized by the Latin American studies program, in co-sponsorship with the Alumni Engagement office, the �ֲ��ý Career Development Center, the interdisciplinary studies division, the departments of politics and anthropology, and the Purposeful Work Initiative.

In a related event, the Latin American studies program, in collaboration with the Spanish department, presents an evening of Latin American music for guitar performed by Gregoíre Pearce, of Portland, Maine, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 1, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

Both events are open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-8204.

Alberto Means ’10.

The panel will discuss “purposeful work in Latin America by students who have engaged with the region through their �ֲ��ý educations,” explains Sonja Pieck, an associate professor of environmental studies and chair of the Latin American studies program, and one of the panel’s organizers.

“As a new major in the college curriculum, we want to raise awareness of the diversity of opportunities in the working world for LAS majors, and also see how an engagement with Latin America in the liberal arts tradition shaped these alumni.”

The panel speaks broadly to how young people can engage the world at large, in their intellectual pursuits, their volunteering, their activism and, finally, their careers.

The panelists are:

Sydney Hare, a member of the class of 2012 who studied extensively in Chile during her �ֲ��ý education and now works in institutional equity sales at Deutsche Bank
Securities in New York City;

Hannah Rae Porst ’11.

Alberto Means, a member of the class of 2010 who studied in Brazil and now works in public engagement technology for Purpose, a New York City consultancy;
Hannah Rae Porst, a member of the class of 2011 who has continued a project she started during her junior year at �ֲ��ý, working to support the indigenous culture of a Quechua community in Peru.

Hare majored in anthropology and Latin American studies at �ֲ��ý. She spent half of her junior year in Arica, Chile, where she worked closely with the transgender population in the city, and eventually wrote her thesis on the complexities of gender and citizenship in Chile.

At Deutsche Bank Securities, she focuses on delivering global research and products to U.S.-based clients. She credits her liberal arts background for distinguishing her in an industry where most of her peers come in with technical training. Her interest in international relations attracted her to an industry where she is constantly analyzing how world events inform financial conditions and policy.

Means’ early interest in Brazilian music and culture inspired him to study there during his junior year. While living in home-stays in Sao Paolo and Salvador, this politics major studied Portuguese, international economics and music, and worked with local musicians at a youth cultural center in Saramandaia.

In 2011, Means joined Purpose. That firm incubated Minhas Cidades, a cutting-edge Brazilian mobilization platform, and in 2013 Means worked in Rio de Janeiro advising a local social entrepreneur on mobilizing Brazilian youth on environmental justice issues. He is now developing strategy for a multinational food company that hopes to mobilize its global customer community to take action against tropical deforestation.

Since graduation, Porst has lived in Cusco, Peru, supporting the indigenous people of Q’eros, a remote region high in the Andes whose people are recognized as a “national living patrimony” because of the continuity of their ancient traditions. This work began in 2010 when she lived there while doing research as a junior majoring in Spanish and in art and visual culture.

As a senior, she received a Davis Projects for Peace grant to build the first primary school in the Q’eros village of Ch’allmachimpana. Porst founded the nonprofit Willka Yachay (“sacred wisdom” in the Quechua language) to develop programs enabling the Q’eros people to preserve their culture and develop their communities sustainably. She founded, built and administers a preschool, two primary schools, high school and adult school, in addition to other projects that support the community in myriad ways.

Makman ’14 among first nationwide to receive new language scholarship

Doug Hubley — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 18:10:09 +0000

Isabel Makman ’14 at the Peterhof Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia.

A �ֲ��ý junior studying in St. Petersburg, Russia, is among the first recipients of a new scholarship offered by CIEE, an organization based in Portland, Maine, that provides international education and exchange programs.

Isabel Makman of Kalispell, Mont., is one of 13 recipients of CIEE’s Language Intensive Focus Track (LIFT) scholarship, and is the only one attending a Maine college.

The scholarship supports Makman’s goal of staying in St. Petersburg through spring 2013. A Russian major and Spanish minor, she’s studying the Russian language through a CIEE program, as well as literature and culture.

“I was very honored to hear that I would be one of the first recipients of this scholarship,” she said.

“My experience in Russia has been wonderful so far. I have been living with a host family, attending classes at St. Petersburg State University, volunteering as an English teacher and interning at an English-language newspaper.”

She adds, “Russia has certainly changed the way I think about the world. For example, there are people in Russia who seem to think communism was not such a bad thing, contrary to what I’ve always been taught. This new perspective has certainly been interesting and enlightening.”

CIEE’s goal for the LIFT program is to enable serious, academically focused students to pursue deep language acquisition. The inaugural LIFT scholars were chosen from a highly competitive pool of current CIEE students pursuing intensive language development in Arabic, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese or Portuguese, in addition to Russian.

“The caliber of students who applied for a LIFT scholarship is truly remarkable,” said CIEE President and CEO James P. Pellow. “Each recipient is clearly dedicated to internationalizing their education.

“It is our privilege to be able to provide these impressive students with important financial assistance that will allow them to continue to pursue their personal and professional passions in another country.”

Beginning in fall 2013, LIFT scholarships will be available to students on all year-long CIEE language programs. .

A nonprofit, nongovernmental organization, CIEE is a world leader in international study and exchange programs.

Open to the World: Spain, ‘down the Plains’ come to Maine as poetry fest begins

Doug Hubley — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:23:05 +0000

From left, Mary Rice-DeFosse, Francisca López, and Jane Costlow listen as Rhea Coté Robbins reads one of her poems.

It had to be said: Sometimes, “something gets found in translation, too.”

This truth was stated during the opening of Translations: Cross-Cultural Exchange Through Poetry, the second edition of an innovative festival dedicated to the translation of poetry, a creative act every bit as demanding as the making of a new poem.

The speaker was Jane Costlow, professor of environmental studies, who welcomed the listeners filling Chase Lounge late in the afternoon of Oct. 25. If poet Robert Frost felt that poetry gets lost in translation, Costlow said, what gets found is “the beginning of wisdom”: a glimmering of our own places amidst “the vast variety of human creativity.”

Poet Rhea Coté Robbins reads.

The session was the first of five readings during the , which runs through Oct. 29 (and includes a conference on the practice of translation). Most of the poets write in languages other than English, and the festival’s format is the simultaneous presentation of poems in both the author’s voice and English translations, created by �ֲ��ý faculty and students and projected as text on a screen.

Following Costlow’s welcome were readings by poets Rhea Coté Robbins, a Franco-American writer, editor and teacher from Brewer, Maine; and Francisca López, �ֲ��ý professor of Spanish.

Costlow established a helpful conceptual landscape for the listeners. She situated the festival in the context of the week’s Open to the World: �ֲ��ý Celebrates Unbounded Learning events, marking the renovation of two academic buildings that are, as she said, “devoted to the study of language, culture and our complex ethical relationships to each other and to the more-than-human world.”

And Costlow suggested that the meanings of poetry are not always textual. “I invite you, for at least part of each poet’s reading, to forget about what it means, and just submerse yourself in the music.”

The music began with Coté Robbins, whose early life in “down the Plains” — a Francophone neighborhood in the Maine mill town of Waterville — resonated through her work. She was one of the festival’s two poets reading in English (the other being �ֲ��ý senior lecturer in English ). Reading quickly and undramatically, she delivered more than 20 poems animated by the tensions of unattainable dreams and of class and gender conflict.

From left, poets Naomi Otsubo and Polina Barskova listen attentively.

In her father’s mill the papermaking machines cook, gas, electrocute and eat the workers. The bosses in her mother’s shirt factory urge the women to work “Faster, Faster, Faster.” Women — Coté herself, Peyton Place author Grace Metalious — negotiate the visceral conflict between creative and family needs.

“We Spread the Dirt” depicts Coté Robbins and family bringing to her parents’ graves soil from France, in lieu of the homeland visit they could never make:

we are priests
without ritual—
Eiffel Tower pink-tinted dirt and rocks
for her
France-on-the-Loire brown
country farmer’s soil
for him

A native of Andalusia, in southern Spain, López writes poetry in Spanish. The festival translations of her 13 poems were created by departmental colleague and festival organizer Claudia Aburto Guzmán.

Francisca López speaks with a member of the audience after the reading.

López described herself as a rational person for whom poetry is a way to address the questions that rationality can’t touch. Where Coté’s work was markedly social and political, López’s poems were more abstract, organic, inward-looking, intimate. Her reading style, too, was softer, closer.

“Jump to the Abyss” was an attempt to make sense of a student’s senseless death:

you greet, joke, toast with someone
in the distance

and get closer . . .
to the wings of glass

for your flight
toward the encounter.

“The Soul’s Rags” could be about the people of our past who become like ghosts: “you lay dozing with me / in the silence of eternity.” “The Kiss” may describe the imbalance of power in a passionate encounter:

You keep the air
the hunger and thirst
the joy and sorrow
the need to move on

A senior from Pomona, Calif., double-majoring in Spanish and in women and gender studies, Jeanette Mariscal was running the Translations slide projection for the second year. Last year, she said, hearing German poet Lothar Quinkenstein gave her a whole new sense of the expressive capability of the German language.

Hearing poetry as opposed to simply taking it off the page, she said, “gives it life. When they read it, you get a better feel for their thinking.”

“In truth, poetry is as much a performance as anything else,” Aburto Guzmán remarked after the readings. “All these poets are good at that.”

Professor of Environmental Studies Jane Costlow welcomes Chase Hall listeners. Google Earth presentations showed the poets’ journeys.

Open to the World: Foreign becomes familiar in Roger Williams Hall

Doug Hubley — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:03:43 +0000

French professor Alex Dauge-Roth gestures during the faculty conversation about global citizenship held prior to the dedication of Hedge and Roger Williams halls. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen.

�ֲ��ý’ global reach has been a driving theme behind , a celebration of new academic spaces including Roger Williams Hall, home to the college’s foreign language programs and Off Campus Study Office.

So the foreign language faculty took an hour or so during the afternoon of Oct. 27, the day the newly renovated Bill and Hedge Hall were dedicated, to present a sampling of courses and projects in their repertoire.

Dedicated to the idea of educating students for global citizenship, here are a few highlights from the presentation in the brand-new Language Resource Center:

Alex Dauge-Roth, associate professor of French, talked about his course “Border and Disorders in French and Francophone Literature and Films.” An apt choice for a week of �ֲ��ý programming devoted to breaking down borders, the course examines representations of inclusion and exclusion — for example, two opposing political ads that use, in nearly identical ways, the symbol of a black sheep among white ones to support either openness to immigration or rejection of it. “The idea is to complexify for students how they define their borders,” Dauge-Roth said. “You cannot be at home without excluding others.”
Against a backdrop of Central European images taken last year by Rachel Morrison ’13, Professor of German Craig Decker offered a capsule history of �ֲ��ý Fall Semester Abroad programs in Vienna and Berlin. Noting that all FSA programs, not just the German-language trips, are interdisciplinary by design, he said, “It’s interesting to see how students combine what goes on in the two courses.” It’s a kind of synthesis “that doesn’t always happen on campus.”
Sarah Strong, professor of Japanese, cut to the heart of cross-cultural exchange in describing her course “The Fantastic in Modern Japan.” Looking at comics, fiction and anime film, the course encourages students to discover what’s common among cultures — but more important, to “encounter what is unfamiliar that they can learn about and bring into their sphere of understanding.” For example, how the young heroine in the manga and film Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind comes to terms with the toxic fungal forest that is consuming a post-apocalyptic world.
A fascinating translation project undertaken by Professor of Spanish Francisca López, Lecturer in French Laura Balladur and others: Students in certain foreign-language courses have translated work by the poets participating in the college’s annual international poetry festival (taking place concurrently with the Open to the World events). During the festival, the student translations have been projected on a screen while the poets read them in the original language. For the second part of the course, the students translate into French and Spanish poems written by students in a poetry course taught by Senior Lecturer in English Robert Farnsworth — and all the students, translators and translated, meet to discuss the linguistic and cultural issues that are gained in translation.

�ֲ��ý presents second annual Translations international poetry festival and conference

�ֲ��ý News — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 13:41:56 +0000

During the first Translations poetry festival at �ֲ��ý College, in 2010, organizer Claudia Aburto Guzmán had an encounter that seemed to crystallize the event for her.

This innovative festival presented international poets reading their work in the original language, with English translations prepared by �ֲ��ý faculty and students. Working with Somali poet Omar Ahmed, “it struck me that I was involved in the true practice of communication,” says Aburto Guzmán, associate professor of Spanish.

.
Note: The time for Rafael Carpintero’s talk has been pushed back to 7 p.m. Friday.

“He and I had to communicate through layers of cultural expectations — his Somali culture and my Chilean culture, in addition to U.S. culture. I had to be so clear with language.”

Taking place Tuesday, Oct. 25, though Saturday, Oct. 29, this year’s festival celebrates cross-cultural communication with readings by poets from the Americas, Europe and Japan. New to the event is an Oct. 27-29 conference, organized by Visiting Assistant Professor of German Raluca Cernahoschi, exploring the art and practice of literary translation.

The festival is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact 207-786-8293 or gdumais@bates.edu.

The festival begins at 4:15 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 25, with a welcome, readings and a reception in Chase Hall, 56 Campus Ave. Readings continue in Chase at 7 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, Oct. 26-29.

The conference begins with registration at 4:15 p.m. Wednesday in Chase. Conference sessions take place at 8 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 27, and at 9 a.m. Friday and Saturday, Oct. 28-29, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

A closing reception in the �ֲ��ý College Museum of Art, 75 Russell St., follows the Saturday readings.

Here are the poets and the dates when they read (all the poets read on Oct. 29):
Oct. 25: Rhea Coté, of Brewer, Maine, and �ֲ��ý faculty member Francisca López, a native of Spain;
Oct. 26: Miguel Angel Zapata, of Peru, and Naomi Otsubo, a native of Japan living in Maine;
Oct. 27: Polina Barskova, a native of Russia, and �ֲ��ý faculty member Robert Farnsworth;
Oct. 28: Danny Plourde, a Francophone poet from Canada, and Carmen Elisabeta Puchianu, a poet from Romania who writes in German.

Conference presenters include Enrique Yepes, a Colombian critic and scholar of Latin American literatures; and Rafael Carpintero of Spain, a translator whose works include Spanish editions of titles by best-selling Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk. Yepes offers the talk Carving the Air: On Poetry Festivals at 7 p.m. Thursday in Chase Lounge, and Carpintero discusses the translation of poetry at 7 p.m. Friday in Chase.

The authors’ work will be available at the �ֲ��ý College Store, 56 Campus Ave., throughout the festival.

“Poetry, widely defined, can illustrate all issues pertinent to our times and culture,” says Aburto Guzmán. “In the public sphere, translation can help us focus on the challenges involved in cross-cultural communications.”

Campus Construction Update: June 7, 2011

Doug Hubley — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 18:14:30 +0000

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.

Click the thumbnails for a slide show of views from Roger Williams Hall.

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 �ֲ��ý 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.

�ֲ��ý 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 �ֲ��ý, 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.