Central to a Bates education are the intense and deep relationships formed between faculty and students, and the quality of learning that results from sustained contact between teacher and learner. To complement the focus and depth of intellectual exploration among students and faculty, the College has established the Bates Learning Associates Program, which brings to campus experts in many fields who hail from Maine and around the world. Learning associates help students and faculty by offering new meanings and perspectives to a subject. Learning associates may be on campus for a day, a week, several weeks, or may have a "virtual residence," working with students electronically, critiquing research methodology or results, or reading emerging senior theses. These experts expand the knowledge available to students and faculty, challenge the neatness of discipline-based academic thinking, and provide rich contexts for translating ideas into action in the real world. Each year a variety of learning associates work with students in a range of disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. Recent contributors have included an award winning Sri Lankan writer; a popular Maine playwright; a media artist specializing in building interactive art installations and staging robotic performances that highlight underrepresented voices; and a flutist and musicologist who specializes in relationships between music and belief systems, particularly race and politics.