colleges. In 2024, Washington Monthly ranked Bates 28th among 194 liberal arts colleges in the U.S. based on its contribution to the public good, as measured by social mobility, research, and promoting public service.
== Campus ==
Bates is in a former mill town, Lewiston, which has a large French Canadian ethnic presence due to migration from Quebec in the 19th century and a large population of Somali immigrants, arriving between the 1990s and 2010s. The college is known to have had cultural strains with the town in the past, with townspeople describing Bates as a "leafy oasis of privilege." The work done by Bates' Harward Center for Community Partnerships intends to keep "Bates College and (Lewiston) connected."
The overall architectural design of the college can be traced through the Colonial Revival architecture movement, and has distinctive Neoclassical, Georgian, Colonial, and Gothic features. The earliest buildings of the college were directly designed by Boston architect Gridley J.F. Bryant, and subsequent …
