Garry Jenkins, the incoming president of Bates College in Lewiston, speaks Tuesday to students and staff in Alumni Gymnasium. The New Jersey native said he is “overjoyed and truly honored” to have been selected as the ninth president beginning in July. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

LEWISTON — Standing before an audience in Bates’ College’s Alumni Gymnasium with a broad smile Tuesday, the college’s next president, Garry Jenkins, declared, “Sometimes dreams come true.”

Jenkins, 52, told an enthusiastic crowd that he is “overjoyed and truly honored” to be selected as the college’s ninth president beginning in July.

The chairman of Bates’ board of trustees, John Gillespie, called it “truly a historic occasion” as Jenkins, the dean of the University of Minnesota Law School, made his first public appearance at Bates.

Gillespie said the selection of Jenkins marks “the opening of a new chapter in the life of the college” founded in 1855 as the first institution of higher learning in New England to enroll women. It has also enrolled Black Americans since then, another rarity in that era.

“I was drawn to Bates’ distinctive history,” Jenkins said, but was attracted at least as much by the college’s academic rigor, commitment to engaging with the world and the way its graduates have “a capacity to think expansively.”

Jenkins said he recognizes that Bates is “not a perfect place.” He said he is “fully aware that there is more work to be done,” but he sees the college doing that work with its “spirit of innovation” and a campus culture of caring for one another.

Jenkins said Bates is committed to the task of putting human dignity at the center of its efforts to do good for itself and for the community to which if belongs.

He said he and his husband, law professor Jon Lee, are eager to immerse themselves in college and community activities, from lectures to ballgames.

“I am looking forward to calling Lewiston home,” Jenkins said. As a bonus, he added, “I love lobster and blueberries.”

Born in Newark, New Jersey, Jenkins grew up in South Orange, New Jersey, where his parents, Garry and Leslie Jenkins, still live.

They were both the first in their families to attend college and “from them, I developed a strong belief in higher education” that carried him through years of schooling.

Bates’ president-elect attended public schools through middle school, and attended Delbarton School in Middletown, New Jersey, and then Haverford College in Pennsylvania.

Jenkins, who also earned graduate degrees in public policy and law from Harvard University, said his time at Haverford transformed him.

“That is my touchstone,” he said. “It shaped my life.”

He said the vigorous, versatile education he received as an undergraduate there opened the door to “the joy of learning and discovery” while also helping convince him that he could make a difference in the world.

That’s the point of a liberal arts education, Jenkins said: to instill the idea that “anything is within reach.” It’s what makes places like Haverford and Bates so magical, special and inspiring, he said.

“That is the transformative experience that I wish for you,” Jenkins told students gathered to hear him speak.

Jenkins concluded his address, “Onward and upward, it’s a great day to be a Bobcat.”