Bowdoin College

Bowdoin College

Bowdoin College  is a private liberal arts college located in the coastal Maine town of Brunswick. Founded in 1794, the college currently enrolls 1,839 students, and has been coeducational since 1971. Bowdoin offers 33 majors and four additional minors, and has a student–faculty ratio of 9:1. Notable alumni include Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Brackett Reed, Franklin Pierce, and Joshua Chamberlain.

Bowdoin is consistently ranked as one of the top 10 liberal arts colleges in the US, and was tied with Pomona as the fifth-best liberal arts college in the U.S. in the 2015 U.S. News & World Report rankings.

Bowdoin is located on the shores of Casco Bay and the Androscoggin River, 12 miles (19 km) north of Freeport, Maine, and 28 miles (45 km) north of Portland, Maine. In addition to its Brunswick campus, Bowdoin also owns a 118-acre (478,000 m²) coastal studies center on Orr's Island and a 200-acre (809,000 m²) scientific field station on Kent Island in the Bay of Fundy.

Contents  

1 History

1.1 Founding and 19th century

1.2 Twentieth century

1.3 Recent developments

2 Academics

2.1 Rankings

2.2 Admissions

3 Student life

4 Postgraduate placement

5 Student organizations

5.1 Media and publications

5.2 A cappella

5.3 Other

6 Environmental record

6.1 Commitment to action on climate change

6.2 Energy profile

6.3 Energy investments

7 Campus

8 Athletics

8.1 Facilities

9 Sustainability

10 Bowdoin alumni

11 Bowdoin in literature and film

12 Presidents of Bowdoin

13 References

14 Further reading

15 External links

History

Founding and 19th century

Bowdoin College, circa 1845. Lithograph by Fitz Hugh Lane

Bowdoin College was chartered in 1794 by Governor Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, of which Maine was then a district, and was named for former Massachusetts governor James Bowdoin, whose son James Bowdoin III was an early benefactor. At the time of its founding, it was the easternmost college in the United States. It is thought that the Bowdoin seal, created in 1798 by Joseph Callender, was a sun because it was the first college in the United States to see the sunrise.

Bowdoin came into its own in the 1820s, a decade in which Maine became an independent state as a result of the Missouri Compromise and the college graduated a number of its most famous alumni, including future United States President Franklin Pierce, class of 1824, and writers Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, both of whom graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1825.

Bowdoin College Chapel, 2014

From its founding, Bowdoin enjoyed a reputation for academic rigor, and "catered very largely to the elite from the state of Maine." During the first half of the 19th century, Bowdoin became known for its "exacting" admissions requirements, which included, in 1854, a certificate of "good moral character" as well as knowledge of Latin and Ancient Greek, geography, algebra and the major works of Cicero, Xenophon, Virgil and Homer.

Bowdoin's connections to the Civil War have given rise to a quip that the war "began and ended" in Brunswick. Harriet Beecher Stowe, "the little lady who started this big war", started writing her influential anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin in Bowdoin's Appleton Hall while her husband was teaching at the College, and Brigadier General (and Brevet Major General) Joshua Chamberlain, a Bowdoin alumnus and professor, was responsible for receiving the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House in 1865. Chamberlain, a Medal of Honor recipient who later served as governor of Maine, adjutant-general of Maine, and president of Bowdoin, distinguished himself at Gettysburg, where he led the 20th Maine in its valiant defense of Little Round Top.

The college has other Civil War ties as well: Major General Oliver Otis Howard, class of 1850, led the Freedmen's Bureau after the war and later founded Howard University; Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew, class of 1837, was responsible for the formation of the 54th Massachusetts; and William P. Fessenden 1823 and Hugh McCulloch 1827 both served as Secretary of the Treasury during the Lincoln Administration. After the war, Bowdoin contended that a higher percentage of its alumni fought in the war than that of any other college in the North—and not only for the Union. In fact, Confederate President Jefferson Davis held an honorary degree from Bowdoin, which he received while United States Secretary of War in 1858. President Ulysses S. Grant, too, was given an honorary degree from the college in 1865. All told, seventeen Bowdoin alumni attained the rank of brigadier general during the Civil War, including James Deering Fessenden and Francis Fessenden; Ellis Spear, class of 1858, who served as Chamberlain's second-in-command at Gettysburg; and Charles Hamlin, class of 1857, son of Vice President Hannibal Hamlin.

Twentieth century

Bowdoin was also the Medical School of Maine from 1821 to 1921

Although Bowdoin's Medical School of Maine closed its doors in 1921, the College is currently known for its particularly strong programs in the natural sciences. One illustrious alumnus was Dr. Augustus Stinchfield, who received his M.D. in 1868 and went on to become one of the co-founders of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He was asked to join the two Mayo brothers' private medical practice in 1892. In 1915, the remaining partners in the then private practice embraced the creation of the non-profit Mayo Clinic. While perhaps Bowdoin's better-known alumnus in the sciences is the controversial entomologist-turned-sexologist Alfred Kinsey, class of 1916, the College's reputation in this area was cemented in large part by the Arctic explorations of Admiral Robert E. Peary, class of 1877, and Donald B. MacMillan, class of 1898.

View of the campus from Coles Tower (constructed as the "Senior Center"), the second tallest building in Maine

Peary led the first successful expedition to the North Pole in 1908, and MacMillan, a member of Peary's crew, became famous in his own right as he explored Greenland, Baffin Island and Labrador in the schooner Bowdoin between 1908 and 1954. Bowdoin's Peary–MacMillan Arctic Museum  honors the two explorers, and the College's mascot, the Polar Bear, was chosen in 1913 to honor MacMillan, who donated a particularly large specimen to his alma mater in 1917.

Following in the footsteps of President Pierce and House Speaker Thomas Brackett Reed, class of 1860, several 20th century Bowdoin graduates have assumed prominent positions in national government while representing the Pine Tree State. Wallace H. White, Jr., class of 1899, served as Senate Minority Leader from 1944–1947 and Senate Majority Leader from 1947–1949; George J. Mitchell, class of 1954, served as Senate Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995 before assuming a prominent role in the Northern Ireland peace process; and William Cohen, class of 1962, spent twenty-five years in the House and Senate before being appointed Secretary of Defense in the Clinton Administration. Maine's First Congressional District has been christened the "Bowdoin seat" because of its long occupation by graduates of the College. A total of eleven Bowdoin graduates have ascended to the Maine governorship, and three graduates of the College currently sit on the state's highest court.

Over the last several decades, Bowdoin College has modernized dramatically. In 1970, it became one of a very limited number of selective schools to make the SAT optional in the admissions process, and in 1971, after nearly 180 years as a small men's college, Bowdoin admitted its first class of women. Bowdoin also phased out fraternities in the late 1990s, replacing them with a system of college-owned social houses.

Recent developments

$20.8 million renovations of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art (built in 1894), completed in 2007

In 2001, Barry Mills, class of 1972, was appointed as the fifth alumnus president of the College.

On January 18, 2008, Bowdoin announced that it would be eliminating loans for all new and current students receiving financial aid, replacing those loans with grants beginning with the 2008–2009 academic year. President Mills stated, "Some see a calling in such vital but often low paying fields such as teaching or social work. With significant debt at graduation, some students will undoubtedly be forced to make career or education choices not on the basis of their talents, interests, and promise in a particular field, but rather on their capacity to repay student loans. As an institution devoted to the common good, Bowdoin must consider the fairness of such a result."

In February 2009, following a $10 million donation by Subway Sandwiches co-founder and alumnus Peter Buck, class of 1952, the college completed a $250-million capital campaign. Additionally, the college has also recently completed major construction projects on the campus, including a significant renovation of the college's art museum and a new fitness center named after Peter Buck.

Academics

Bowdoin's archetypal Hubbard Hall, once the College's library

Rankings

University rankings

National

Forbes 14

Global

Liberal arts colleges

U.S. News & World Report 5

Bowdoin is consistently ranked among the top ten liberal arts colleges in the United States by U.S. News & World Report. In the 2014 edition of the rankings, Bowdoin ranks fourth.In 2006, Newsweek described Bowdoin as a "New Ivy", one of a number of elite colleges and universities outside of the Ivy League.[15] Bowdoin is also part of the SAT optional movement for undergraduate admission. Admission to Bowdoin has been deemed "most selective" by U.S. News, and the college has an acceptance rate of 14.5%. Bowdoin was the first college to be named "School of the Year" by College Prowler.

The Government & Legal Studies Department, whose prominent professors include Paul Franco and Richard E. Morgan, was ranked the top small college political science program in the world by researchers at the London School of Economics in 2003. Government & Legal Studies was the most popular major for every graduating class between 2000 and 2009. Other departments are also strong, including economics, the natural sciences, English, and Romance Languages.

Bowdoin Chapel during the late spring

Course distribution requirements were abolished in the 1970s, but were reinstated by a faculty majority vote in 1981, as a result of an initiative by oral communication and film professor Barbara Kaster. She insisted that distribution requirements would ensure students a more well-rounded education in a diversity of fields and therefore present them with more career possibilities. The requirements of at least two courses in each of the categories of Natural Sciences/Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Humanities/Fine Arts, and Foreign Studies (including languages) took effect for the Class of 1987 and have been gradually amended since then. Current requirements require one course each in: Natural Sciences, Quantitative Reasoning, Visual and Performing Arts, International Perspectives and Exploring Social Differences. A small writing-intensive course, called a First Year Seminar, is also required.

In 1990, the Bowdoin faculty voted to change the four-level grading system to the traditional A, B, C, D and F system. The previous system, consisting of high honors, honors, pass and fail, was devised primarily to de-emphasize the importance of grades and to reduce competition. In 2002, the faculty decided to change the grading system so that it incorporated plus and minus grades.

Other prominent Bowdoin faculty include (or have included): Edville Gerhardt Abbott, Charles Beitz, John Bisbee, Paul Chadbourne, Thomas Cornell, Kristen R. Ghodsee, Eddie Glaude, Joseph E. Johnson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Elliott Schwartz, and Scott Sehon