Bates College is a private liberal arts college, founded in 1855, located in Lewiston, Maine, in the United States. Bates confers Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) or Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degrees. The College enrolls approximately 1,700 students. Bates is a nonsectarian institution.
Bates is located on a 109 acre (441,000 m²) campus. Primary academic resources on campus include the George and Helen Ladd Library; the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, which holds the papers of the former Maine Governor, U.S. Senator and U.S. Secretary of State and member of the Class of 1936; and the Olin Arts Center, which houses a concert hall, and the Bates College Museum of Art. The College also holds access to the 574 acre (2.32 km²) Bates-Morse Mountain Conservation Area, in Phippsburg, Maine, which preserves one of the few remaining undeveloped barrier beaches on the Atlantic coast; and the neighboring Bates College Coastal Center at Shortridge, which includes an 80 acre (324,000 m²) woodland and freshwater habitat, scientific field station, and retreat center.
Bates has always admitted students without regard to race, religion, gender or national origin. Although they met with considerable criticism from other regional colleges, the founders held fast to their commitment to admit both men and women: Bates was New England's first coeducational college, and several of its earliest students were former slaves. The College was originally called the Maine State Seminary and replaced the Parsonsfield Seminary which burned under mysterious circumstances in 1854. The Parsonsfield Seminary was founded in 1832 by Free Will Baptists and served as a stop on the Underground Railroad.
As with many New England institutions, religion played a vital role in the College's founding. The Reverend Oren Burbank Cheney founded and served as the first president of Bates. He was a Freewill Baptist minister, a teacher, and a former Maine legislator. Cheney steered through the Maine Legislature a bill creating a corporation for educational purposes initially called the Maine State Seminary, located in Lewiston, Maine's fastest-growing industrial and commercial center.