LEWISTON — Birding and Bates College go way back so it’s fitting that its commencement speaker this year is one of the nation’s most respected birders.
J. Drew Lanham, an ecology professor at Clemson University, will speak at Bates College’s Commencement on Sunday, May 28. Clemson University photo
J. Drew Lanham, an ecology professor at Clemson University, has built a reputation for mixing poetry and art with a passion for the natural world that reflects deeply on what he sees.
His 2016 book “The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature” helped raise his profile to such a degree that he earned a Macarthur Genius Award last year for “combining conservation science with personal, historical, and cultural narratives of nature.”
Lanham will also receive an honorary degree at the Sunday, May 28, ceremony on the historic Quad where Bates has long held its graduation exercises.
Three other people are also slated to be on hand to receive honorary degrees: writer Michael Lewis, who wrote “Moneyball” and other well-known books; Shanker Vedantam, whose Hidden Brain podcast has attracted a big audience; and Julieanna Richardson, who created and oversees “The HistoryMakers,” an archive of African-American oral histories kept at the Library of Congress.
“This year’s class of honorary degree recipients embody the very best of the liberal arts — bringing to their work deep curiosity, rigorous inquiry, and sincere dedication to forging connections and creating something that serves the wider world,” President Clayton Spencer said in a prepared release.
“We are so pleased to be able to share their stories with our graduates and their families at Commencement,” she added.
The ceremony, held rain or shine, begins at 10 a.m. and lasts about two hours. It is open to the public.
Bates’ interest in birding reaches back to its first years when Jonathan Young Stanton, a professor of Greek and Latin, began exploring the woods and fields that surrounded the tiny college to see any birds he might find.
“It was on his morning bird walks that Prof. Stanton always was in his happiest vein,” The Lewiston Evening Journal once reported. “Many a bit of wit and wisdom enlivened these precious hours and made the memory of them something to be tenderly cherished by those who participated in them.”
Stanton, who taught at the college from 1865 until 1906, played a key role in its growth, including the debate club he pushed and a strong commitment to preserving Bates’ own history. He taught ornithology even after his retirement, a class that was mandatory for students from 1873 until 1918, when Stanton died.
The Stanton Bird Club, named for him, still keeps his passion for birding alive in the community.
Lanham would understand Stanton’s wide interests as well as his love of birding. His research flows in part from an interest in songbird ecology.
“‘Connecting the conservation dots’ is how I envision my research mission,” he said, according to his Clemson website. “My past work has focused on the impacts of forest management and other human activities on songbirds, herpetofauna, small mammals and butterflies.”
He’s also expanded his reach to explore how ethnicity relates to wildlife and the natural world.
“Coloring the conservation conversation is my outreach mantra,” he said. “As a birder, I use birds and the conservation issues surrounding them as the inspirational vehicle to connect others to the outdoors and advocate for their protection.”
Bates graduates begin lining up along Alumni Walk after 8:30 a.m. and proceed at 9:30 a.m. to their seats in a long line behind their professors before Commencement gets underway.
Starting about 9 a.m., the ceremony will be shown live on the college’s website and its Facebook page.
This year marks the 157th annual Commencement at Bates. The first came in 1867 when its first group of undergraduates reached the end of their college education.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
