Bowdoin College
Bowdoin College, founded in 1794, is a private liberal arts college located in the coastal New England town of Brunswick, Maine. The college enrolls approximately 1,700 students and has been coeducational since 1971. It offers 33 majors and 4 additional minors; the academic year consists of two four-course semesters, and the student-faculty ratio is 10:1. As of 2009, U.S. News and World Report currently ranks Bowdoin sixth among liberal arts colleges in the United States. [USNews.com: America's Best Colleges 2008: Liberal Arts Colleges: Top Schools]
Brunswick is located on the shores of Casco Bay and the Androscoggin River, 12 miles (19 km) north of Freeport, Maine, 28 miles north of Portland, Maine, and 131 miles (211 km) north of Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to its Brunswick campus, Bowdoin also operates a 118 acre (478,000 m²) coastal studies center on Orrs Island [The Bowdoin Coastal Studies Center] in Harpswell, Maine and a 200 acre (809,000 m²) scientific field station on Kent Island [A description of Kent Island.] in the Bay of Fundy.
History
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. In 1806, 13 Harvard graduates opted to accept a Bowdoin degree along with their diploma from Harvard[Bowdoin Traditions and History].
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's connections to the Civil War have prompted some to 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 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 and president of Bowdoin, distinguished himself at Gettysburg, where he led the 20th Maine in its valiant defense of Little Round Top.
There are other Civil War connections as well: 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 famous 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.
In addition to Howard and Chamberlain, a third Bowdoin alumnus attained general officer rank in the Civil War: Brevet Brigadier General Ellis Spear, Class of 1858, who was Chamberlain's second-in-command at Gettysburg.
Although Bowdoin's Medical School of Maine closed its doors in 1920, the College is currently known for its particularly strong programs in the natural sciences. Dr. Augustus Stinchfield, who received his MD in 1868, was one of the co-founders of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. While Bowdoin's best-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. 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 [Website of the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum] honors the two explorers, and the College's mascot, the Polar Bear, was chosen after in 1913 to honor MacMillan, who donated a particularly large specimen to his alma mater in 1917, Peary, and Thomas Hubbard class of 1857.
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; Joseph Finnegan, class of 1923, later served as Senator for MA, George J. Mitchell, class of 1954, served as Senate Majority Leader from 1989-1995 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, today held by Tom Allen, class of 1967, has been christened the "Bowdoin seat" due to 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 abolished fraternities in the late 1990s, replacing them with a system of college-owned social houses. Recent developments include the 2001 appointment of Barry Mills, class of 1972, as the fifth alumnus president of the College, and a 2002 decision by the faculty to change the grading system so that it incorporated plus and minus grades.
On Jan. 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.[Bowdoin Eliminates Student Loans While Vowing to Maintain its Com, Campus News (Bowdoin)] It will be joining a very small group of schools who have chosen the "no-loans" policy, among them Harvard University, Yale University and Princeton University, all of whom have very large endowments. President Mills stated, "Some see a calling in such vital but often low paying fields 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."
Academics
Bowdoin is consistently ranked among the top ten liberal arts colleges in the United States by U.S. News and World Report. In the 2009 edition of the rankings, Bowdoin ranks sixth, behind Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Wellesley, and Middlebury. In other years it has ranked as high as fourth. [US News and World Report rankings for liberal arts colleges.] In 2006, Newsweek described Bowdoin as a "New Ivy," one of a number of elite colleges and universities outside of the Ivy League.  Bowdoin is also part of the SAT optional movement for undergraduate admission. As of April 2008, Bowdoin was the first college to be named "School of the Year" by College Prowler [College Prowler names Bowdoin College “School of the Year”].
Bowdoin offers majors in African Studies, Anthropology, Art History, Asian Studies, Biochemistry, Biology, Chemistry, Classics, Computer Science, Economics, English, Environmental Studies, French, Gender and Women's Studies, Geology, German, Government, History, Latin American Studies, Mathematics, Music, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Physics and Astronomy, Psychology, Religion, Russian, Sociology, Spanish, and Visual Arts. In addition, the college offers minors in Theatre, Dance, Education Studies, Teaching, Film Studies, and Gay and Lesbian Studies.
The Government Department, whose prominent professors include Allen Springer, Paul Franco, Richard E. Morgan, Chris Potholm and Jean Yarbrough, was ranked the top small college political science program in the world by researchers at the London School of Economics in 2003. [Official website for the Bowdoin London School of Economics] Government was the most popular major for every graduating class between 2000 and 2004.
A 2003 exposé in The Bowdoin Orient revealed that the departments with the most rampant grade inflation included theatre and dance, women's studies, and sociology; those with the least grade inflation included physics, economics, philosophy, mathematics and government. [Bowdoin Orient exposé on grade inflation.]
Bowdoin also participates in the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU)'s University and College Accountability Network (U-CAN).
Student body
Bowdoin's acceptance rate has hovered around 25% from 2000-2005, but dropped to 18.5% for the class admitted in the fall of 2007, making it one of the most selective small colleges in the United States. Indeed, the April 17th, 2008 edition of the Economist noted Bowdoin in an article on university admissions: "So-called “almost-Ivies” such as Bowdoin and Middlebury also saw record low admission rates this year (18% each). It is now as hard to get into Bowdoin, says the college's admissions director, as it was to get into Princeton in the 1970s." Although Bowdoin does not require the SAT in admissions, all students must submit a score upon matriculation. The middle 50% SAT range for the verbal and math sections of the SAT is 650-740 and 650-730, respectively — numbers only of those submitting scores during the admissions process. Bowdoin regularly accepts 30 to 40 percent of the matriculating class through its two early decision programs.[Bowdoin admissions]
While a significant portion of the student body hails from New England — including nearly 25% from Massachusetts and 10% from Maine — recent classes have drawn from an increasingly national pool. Although Bowdoin once had a reputation for homogeneity, a diversity campaign has increased the percentage of non-white students in recent classes to 23%.
In fact, admission of minorities goes back as least as far as John Brown Russwurm 1826, Bowdoin's first African-American college graduate, and the third African-American graduate of any American college.[ Charles C. Calhoun, A Small College in Maine: 200 Years of Bowdoin, published by the College in 1993, ISBN 091-6606-25-2 ] Cumberland County, Maine, is among the 100 U.S. counties with the largest percentages of Jewish residents. 476 foreign students applied[Bowdoin Orient article on foreign student applications] for the graduating class of 2009.
Student life
Recalling his days at Bowdoin in a recent interview, Professor Richard E. Morgan '59 described student life at the then-all-male school as "monastic," and noted that "the only things to do were either work or drink." (This is corroborated by the Official Preppy Handbook, which in 1980 ranked Bowdoin the number two drinking school in the country, behind Dartmouth.) These days, Morgan observed, the College offers a far broader array of recreational opportunities: "If we could have looked forward in time to Bowdoin's standard of living today, we would have been astounded." [Orient article interviewing Professor Morgan]
Bowdoin is particularly well-known for its dining services, which the Princeton Review has ranked first in three of the last four years, including the 2006-2007 school year. [Princeton Review dining rankings] The College has two major dining halls, one of which was renovated in the late 1990s, and every academic year begins with a lobster bake outside Farley Fieldhouse. Bowdoin also does well in other lifestyle categories; in 2004 it ranked 10th in dorm quality and 14th for quality of life. [Princeton Review dorm rankings] In April 2008, College Prowler, a publishing company for guidebooks on top colleges and universities in the United States and written by students, named Bowdoin College its "School of the Year" citing excellence in academics, safety and security, housing and dining.
Since abolishing Greek fraternities in the late 1990s, Bowdoin has switched to a system in which entering students are assigned a "college house" affiliation correlating with their first-year dormitory. While six houses were originally established, following the construction of two new dorms, two were added effective in the fall of 2007, bringing the total to eight: Ladd (affiliated with Osher Hall), Baxter (West), Quinby (Appleton), MacMillan (Coleman), Howell (Hyde), Helmreich (Maine), Reed (Moore), and Burnett (Winthrop). The college houses are physical buildings around campus which host parties and other events throughout the year. Those students who choose not to live in their affiliated house retain their affiliation and are considered members throughout their Bowdoin career. Before the fraternity system was abolished in the 1990s, all the Bowdoin fraternities were co-educational (except for one unrecognized sorority and two unrecognized all-male fraternities).
Bowdoin's chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, which was founded in 1825, is the nation's sixth oldest. Among those who have been inducted to the Maine Alpha chapter as undergraduates include Nathaniel Hawthorne (1825), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1825), Robert E. Peary (1877), Owen Brewster (1909), Harold Hitz Burton (1909), Paul Douglas (1913), Alfred Kinsey (1916), Thomas R. Pickering (1953), and Lawrence B. Lindsey (1976).
Bowdoin's student newspaper, The Bowdoin Orient, is the oldest continuously published college weekly in the United States.[Bowdoin Outing Club website.]. The Meddiebempsters, the oldest of Bowdoin's six a cappella groups and the third oldest collegiate a cappella group in the nation, were well known after World War II for performing at numerous USO shows in Europe
Athletics
The Bowdoin Polar Bears compete in the NCAA Division III New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), which also includes Amherst, Conn College, Hamilton, Middlebury, Trinity, Tufts, Wesleyan, Williams, and Maine rivals Bates and Colby in the Colby-Bates-Bowdoin Consortium (CBB). The College's official color is white, though black is traditionally employed as a complement.
Bowdoin offers thirty varsity teams, including men's teams in baseball, basketball, cross country, football, ice hockey, lacrosse, Nordic skiing, soccer, squash, swimming, tennis, and track, and women's teams in field hockey, golf, ice hockey, lacrosse, Nordic skiing, soccer, softball, squash, swimming, tennis, track, volleyball, and rugby. Men's ice hockey is the most popular spectator sport, with hundreds of students turning out for games against arch-rival Colby. In 2004, Bowdoin became the second college in the United States to elevate the women's rugby team to varsity status. While technically still varsity, the women's rugby team competes in New England Rugby Football Union, rather than NESCAC. The sailing team is co-ed and was considered in 2006 to be one of the top 20 sailing teams in the nation by Sailing World magazine. There are also intercollegiate and club teams in men's and women's fencing, men's and women's rowing, men's rugby, water polo, men's volleyball and men's and women's Ultimate. Recent NESCAC champions include men's tennis (2008), men's cross country (2001, 2002), women's basketball (2001-2007), women's ice hockey (2002, 2004) and women's field hockey (2001,2005, 2006, 2007); recent NCAA tournament appearances include women's basketball (Elite Eight, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007; Final Four, 2004), men's rugby (sweet 16, 2001), women's ice hockey (Final Four, 2002, 2003; Elite Eight, 2004, 2005), and women's field hockey (Final Four, 2005, 2006). Bowdoin College has won only one NCAA Division III Championship -- women's field hockey in 2007, defeating Middlebury College in the finals.
In addition to the outdoor athletic fields, the College has indoor and outdoor tracks, a swimming pool, squash courts, an ice hockey rink, a rowing boathouse, several basketball courts, indoor and outdoor tennis courts, an independent weight room with 8 treadmills for the entire student and faculty population, elliptical machines, and a new astroturf field.
Postgraduate placement
In 2003, the Wall Street Journal ranked Bowdoin College among the top twenty colleges and universities in the United States based on the percentage of alums who attend a "top five" graduate program in business, law or medicine — ahead of a number of highly ranked universities, including Rice, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Caltech, Virginia, Notre Dame, William & Mary, Emory, UC Berkeley, Tufts and Washington University. [Wall Street Journal rankings of undergraduate institutions' success at sending students to top-five graduate programs.]
In 2006, Bowdoin was named a "Top Producer of Fulbright Awards for American Students" by the Institute of International Education. [Bowdoin Orient article on Bowdoin producing Fulbright Scholars.]
Alma Mater
Bowdoin's Alma Mater is "Raise Songs to Bowdoin." Originally penned by Kenneth C.M. Sills, class of 1901, new lyrics have since been added by Anthony Antolini '63, who serves on the faculty of the College's Department of Music. Singers punch the air on the word 'friend' in both verses.
 Raise songs to Bowdoin, praise her fame,
And sound abroad her glorious name;
To Bowdoin, Bowdoin lift your song,
And may the music echo long
O'er whispering pines and campus fair
With sturdy might filling the air.
Bowdoin, from birth, our nurturer and friend
To thee we pledge our love again, again.
While now amid thy halls we stay
And breathe thy spirit day by day,
Oh may we thus full worthy be
To march in that proud company
Of poets, leaders and each one
Who brings thee fame by deeds well done.
Bowdoin, from birth, our nurturer and friend
To thee we pledge our love again, again.
The original lyrics for the first verse were as follows. The changed phrases have been highlighted.
Rise sons of Bowdoin, praise her fame,
And sing aloud her glorious name;
To Bowdoin, Bowdoin lift your song,
And may the music echo long
O'er whispering pines and campus fair
With sturdy might filling the air.
Bowdoin, from birth, the nurturer of men,
To thee we pledge our love again, again.
Bowdoin alumni
Famous Bowdoin graduates include U.S. President Franklin Pierce (1824), poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1825), novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne (1825), Civil War heroes Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1852) and Oliver Otis Howard (1850), U.S. Speaker of the House Thomas Brackett Reed (1860), Mayo Clinic co-founder Dr. Augustus Stinchfield (1868), Arctic explorer Admiral Robert Peary (1877), sex researcher Alfred Kinsey (1916), co-founder of the Subway sandwich chain Peter Buck (1952), U.S. Senator George Mitchell (1954), U.S. Senator and Secretary of Defense William Cohen (1962), American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault (1973), Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill (1974), Author and activist Geoffrey Canada (1974), ABC News anchor Cynthia McFadden (1978), Olympic gold medalist Joan Benoit Samuelson (1979), Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings (1983), and Musician and writer DJ Spooky (1992).
Bowdoin graduates have led all three branches of the federal government, including both houses of Congress. Franklin Pierce (1826) was America's fourteenth President; Melville Weston Fuller (1853) served as Chief Justice of the United States; Thomas Brackett Reed (1860) was twice elected Speaker of the House of Representatives; and Wallace H. White, Jr. (1899) and George J. Mitchell (1954) both served as Majority Leader of the United States Senate.
Bowdoin in literature and film
Fanshawe (1828) — This Nathaniel Hawthorne novel, published only three years after his graduation from Bowdoin, is set at a small college which bears a striking resemblance to his alma mater.
"Morituri Salutamus" (1875) — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote this poem for his 50th Bowdoin reunion, and recited it on that occasion. One famous passage recalls the College: "O ye familiar scenes,—ye groves of pine / That once were mine and are no longer mine, — / Thou river, widening through the meadows green / To the vast sea, so near and yet unseen, — / Ye halls, in whose seclusion and repose / Phantoms of fame, like exhalations, rose / And vanished,—we who are about to die / Salute you; earth and air and sea and sky / And the Imperial Sun that scatters down / His sovereign splendors upon grove and town." [Longfellow poem written for his 50th Bowdoin reunion.]
M*A*S*H (1968, 1970) — In both and film, the character Hawkeye Pierce is said to have played football at Androscoggin College, a fictional school based on the alma mater of author H. Richard Hornberger, Bowdoin class of 1945.
The Killer Angels (1975) — This historical novel by Michael Shaara, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, focuses in large part on the role played by Bowdoin graduate and professor Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain at the Battle of Gettysburg.
Glory (1989) — Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew, class of 1837 is a character in this film about the 54th Massachusetts.
Gettysburg (1993) — In this movie based on The Killer Angels, there is at least one reference to character Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain as having had an academic career at Bowdoin, which he put aside to lead the 20th Maine.
The Man Without a Face (1993) — Parts of this movie were filmed on campus.
The Cider House Rules (1994) — In this John Irving novel, a Bowdoin-educated doctor forges a Bowdoin diploma for a young protégé.
The Sopranos (1999) — In an episode entitled "College," Tony Soprano and his daughter Meadow visit Colby, where Tony kills a former associate, and Bowdoin, where he reads an inscription paraphrasing Hawthorne's warning that "no man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true." [Synopsis of the Sopranos episode in which Tony Soprano and his daughter visit Bowdoin.] Tony's daughter is ultimately rejected from Bowdoin and ends up attending Columbia. The episode was not filmed on Bowdoin's campus, but was filmed at Drew University in New Jersey.
Where the Heart Is (2000) — The main character in this movie falls in love with a Bowdoin man. The film, which has a scene "at Bowdoin," is based on a novel of the same name.
Gods and Generals (2003) — This film, based on a historical novel of the same name, is a prequel to Gettysburg.
Kinsey (2004) — Biopic about sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, class of 1916, includes a scene in which his father opposes his decision to transfer to Bowdoin.
The Aviator (2004) — 1909 Bowdoin grad and U.S. Senator Owen Brewster plays a major role in this Howard Hughes biopic.
Presidents of Bowdoin
Joseph McKeen (1802-07)
Jesse Appleton (1809-19)
William Allen (1820-39)
Leonard Woods (1839-66)
Samuel Harris (1867-71)
Joshua Chamberlain (1871-83)
William DeWitt Hyde (1885-1917)
Kenneth C.M. Sills (1918-52)
James S. Coles (1952-67)
Roger Howell, Jr. (1969-78)
Willard F. Enteman (1978-80)
A. LeRoy Greason (1981-90)
Robert Hazard Edwards (1990-2000)
Barry Mills (2001-present)
External links
Bowdoin College
The Bowdoin Orient
The Princeton Review
Bowdoin Food Blog
Overheard at Bowdoin
Bowdoin Alumni Web Sites
References
"House Linked to 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'". (June 16, 1968), NY Times.
"Bowdoin Seeks End of R.O.T.C. Credits". (Feb 16, 1969), NY Times.
"Bowdoin Drops College Boards" (Jan 19, 1970), NY Times.
"Bowdoin to Become Coed" (Sept 29, 1970), NY Times.
Moran, Malcolm (Aug 6, 1984). "First Women's Olympic Marathon to Benoit". NY Times.
"Favorite Elective at Bowdoin: Food". (Feb 21, 1988), NY Times.
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