Grant , too, was given an honorary degree from the college in Although Bowdoin's Medical School of Maine closed its doors in , 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. He was asked to join the two Mayo brothers' private medical practice in In , 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 , the College's reputation in this area was cemented in large part by the Arctic explorations of Admiral Robert E. Peary , class of , and Donald B. MacMillan , class of 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 , 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 and Bowdoin's Peary—MacMillan Arctic Museum [8] honors the two explorers, and the College's mascot, the Polar Bear , was chosen in to honor MacMillan, who donated a particularly large specimen to his alma mater in Following in the footsteps of President Pierce and House Speaker Thomas Brackett Reed , class of , several 20th century Bowdoin graduates have assumed prominent positions in national government while representing the Pine Tree State.
Wallace H. White, Jr. Mitchell , class of , served as Senate Majority Leader from to before assuming a prominent role in the Northern Ireland peace process; and William Cohen , class of , 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 , it became one of a very limited number of selective schools to make the SAT optional in the admissions process, and in , after nearly years as a small men's college, Bowdoin admitted its first class of women.
Bowdoin also phased out fraternities in the late s, replacing them with a system of college-owned social houses. In , Barry Mills , class of , was appointed as the fifth alumnus president of the College. On January 18, , 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 — academic year.
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. 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.
Bowdoin is consistently ranked among the top ten liberal arts colleges in the United States by U. News and World Report. In the edition of the rankings, Bowdoin ranks sixth. In the late s it was ranked as high as fourth. Bowdoin was the first college to be named "School of the Year" by College Prowler.
Morgan , Chris Potholm and Jean M. Yarbrough , was ranked the top small college political science program in the world by researchers at the London School of Economics in Other departments are also strong, including economics, the natural sciences, and English. Course distribution requirements were abolished in the s, but were reinstated by a faculty majority vote in , 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.
A small writing-intensive course, called a First Year Seminar, is also required. In , the faculty decided to change the grading system so that it incorporated plus and minus grades. Ghodsee , Eddie Glaude , Joseph E. For the first half of the nineteenth century, the Bowdoin curriculum was essentially an eighteenth-century one: a great deal of Latin, Greek, mathematics, rhetoric, Scottish Common Sense moral philosophy, and Baconian science, modestly liberalized by the addition of modern languages, English literature, international law, and a little history.
Its teaching methods were similarly traditional: the daily recitation and the scientific demonstration. The antebellum College also had several unusual strengths. Thanks to bequests by James Bowdoin III, the College had one of the best libraries in New England and probably the first public collection of old master paintings and drawings in the nation.
A lively undergraduate culture centered on two literary-debating societies, the Peucinian whose name comes from the Greek word for "pine" and the Athenaean, both of which had excellent circulating libraries. And there were memorable teachers, notably the internationally known mineralogist Parker Cleaveland, the psychologist or "mental philosopher," in the language of his day Thomas Upham, and the young linguist and translator Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Finances were a problem, however, especially following the crash of The College also became involved in various political and religious controversies buffeting the state.
Identified with the anti-separationist party, the College faced a hostile Democratic legislature after statehood in and for financial reasons had to agree to more public control of its governance. For the most part Congregationalists, the College authorities found themselves attacked by liberal Unitarians on the one side and by evangelical "dissenters" on the other notably by the Baptists, the largest denomination in the new state.
The question of whether Bowdoin was public or private was finally settled in by Justice Joseph Story in Allen v. McKeen, which applied the Dartmouth College case to declare Bowdoin a private corporation beyond the reach of the Legislature. The more difficult matter of religion was settled by the "Declaration" of , which stopped short of officially adopting a denominational tie but promised that Bowdoin would remain Congregational for all practical purposes.
One immediate result was a flood of donations, which allowed completion of Richard Upjohn's Romanesque Revival chapel, a landmark in American ecclesiastical architecture. An ambitious new medical school had been established at Bowdoin by the state in —and was to supply Maine with country doctors until it closed in —but plans in the s to add a law school never found sufficient backing, and Bowdoin did not evolve into the small university that many of its supporters had envisioned. For a college that never had an antebellum class of more than sixty graduates, Bowdoin produced a notable roster of pre-Civil War alumni.
The most enduring fame seems that of Nathaniel Hawthorne , who set his first novel, Fanshawe , at a college very like Bowdoin. Even better known in his day was his classmate Longfellow, who after Tennyson was the most beloved poet in the English-speaking world and whose "Morituri Salutamus," written for his fiftieth reunion in , is perhaps the finest tribute any poet ever paid to his alma mater.
Other writers of note included the satirist Seba Smith , whose "Jack Downing" sketches more or less invented a genre, and Jacob Abbott , author of the many "Rollo" books. But it was in public affairs that Bowdoin graduates took the most laurels: among them, Franklin Pierce , fourteenth president of the United States; William Pitt Fessenden , abolitionist, US senator, cabinet member, and courageous opponent of Andrew Johnson's impeachment; John A.
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The Architecture of Bowdoin College. Brunswick, Me. Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Bowdoin College, the Commemoration of the Opening of the College. Bowdoin College. Brown, Philip Henry.
Thurston and Co. Calhoun, Charles C. Cleaveland, Nehemiah. History of Bowdoin College: with Biographical Sketches of its Graduates, from to , inclusive. Coursen, Elizabeth Huntoon. Charleston, SC. Arcadia Publications. French, George. Maine State Archives. Historic Preservation Commission. Augusta, Me. Sills, Kenneth C. Joseph McKeen and the Beginnings of Bowdoin college, New York.
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