Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, has been awarded three Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grants totaling $1 million.

The awards from the New York City-based Mellon Foundation include a $250,000 grant to establish an Office of College and Community Collaboration in recognition of the work begun through LA Excels, a college-community partnership with the stated goal of establishing a "vision of excellence" for the Lewiston-Auburn community; a $450,000 grant in support of the Learning Associates initiative to provide strengthening of senior thesis work (with special emphasis in the humanities) at the school; and a $300,000 grant to support the school's environmental studies program and establish a new learning associate in environmental studies position. In addition, an Office of College and Community Collaboration will continue to make possible the close association of the college and the Lewiston-Auburn community.

Funding provided for the Learning Associates initiative in the humanities will be used over a four-year period to enhance the senior thesis experience, a critical and creative milestone for Bates students. Building a program of academic enrichment in core disciplines, the grant will support the participation of non-faculty learning associates as key members of student thesis teams, as well as a scholarly journal and an annual symposium devoted to humanistic pursuits.

The three-year, $300,000 environmental studies award will support the school's five-year-old environmental studies program, which draws significantly from all three of the existing divisions in the Bates curriculum — humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences. Among other things, the grant will support the development of learning associates in environmental studies, enabling the school to invite professionals whose careers focus on the natural world to the campus for a semester.