To each student: You will be changed by Bates forever

On behalf of myself and all the faculty and staff at Bates, it’s a great pleasure and a great privilege for me to welcome you.

At my inauguration as Bates president in 2002, I echoed the words of Emily Dickinson. At Bates, I said, we "dwell in possibility."

Bates is and always has been a place of possibility because our purview is education. The essence of education is to create the conditions under which each individual can realize his or her highest potential.

This is the promise of the College to each student: You will be changed by Bates forever.

"At Bates, we seek to prepare highly promising young minds from all backgrounds to work, to lead, to solve problems and to serve in the richly diverse and ever-changing world."

Elaine Tuttle Hansen

Our mission statement begins with a commitment first to academic rigor and then to "the dignity of the individual." Guided by this mission, you will explore identities that you have not yet imagined and yet will have a profound effect on the rest of your existence; you will focus your attention not only on knowing and doing but also on being, confronting at a formative moment the most serious questions all human beings should have the opportunity to ask and the freedom to answer: Who am I? Who might I become?

As you learn about Bates College, I invite you to talk to a student or alum and then let me know if you do not meet an individual for whom Bates has made a personal difference, someone with self-knowledge and self-confidence who is engaged in trying to live up to his or her potential.

This, then, is the striving community of learners that is Bates. Welcome! — President Elaine Tuttle Hansen

Next: Vision, values, legacy