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The Bowdoin Project National Association of Scholars releases 360 page critique of the College
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Samantha Garvey ’16 gets shout-out from Obama at DNC
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Divestment Mills says College will not divest from fossil fuels
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In letter, professors defend time spent outside the classroom
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335 students meet with CPC in last ten days, eight seniors secure jobs
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Foster restructures Office of Student Affairs
Tim Foster, dean of student affairs, announced that Office of the Dean of Student Affairs will be consolidating two part-time positions into one full-time position, which will be known Associate Director of First-Year Programs via campus-wide email on Sunday. Foster also announced the departure of Dean Laura Lee, within the email.
Foster announced these changes after Margaret Hazlett, senior associate dean, decided to leave Bowdoin to become Dean of the College at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. “Whenever you have someone who’s been in a senior position such as Margaret’s, for as long as she has, it’s a good chance to step back and say ‘How do we want to best organize ourselves to best meet the needs of students, faculty and staff going forward?’” said Foster.
The new associate director position will take on a series of new responsibilities. He or she will oversee international students, accommodations for students with disabilities, and the Host Family Programs.
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Hazlett, senior dean, to leave Bowdoin for position at Franklin & Marshall College
After 16 years at the College, Margaret Hazlet, senior associate dean of student affairs, will leave Bowdoin next year to take up a position as Dean of the College at Franklin and Marshall College (F&M), a liberal arts college in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster sent an email to the campus announcing Hazlett’s impending departure on Monday afternoon.
Hazlett said when she first arrived at the College she did not intend to stay for so long.“I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll be here two or three years and I’ll move on’,” she said.
Foster explained that Hazlett was hired through an unusual chain of events. A mutual friend had reached out to Foster, hoping he would be able to advise Hazlett, who was then in the midst of applying for a position at Georgetown University. Foster, upon seeing her qualifications brought her to the attention of then-Dean of Student Affairs Craig Bradley. Hazlett started at the College as the assistant dean of student affairs.
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The Bowdoin Project: National Association of Scholars releases 360 page critique of the College
Bowdoin students spend too much time talking about identity, don’t know enough about the founding fathers, and have way too much sex.
It took the National Association of Scholars 19 months to reach those conclusions, which, among others, are detailed in “The Bowdoin Project,” the organization’s report on the College.
Totaling 360 pages, the report applies conservative ideology of the past three decades to virtually every aspect of Bowdoin policy, academic affairs, and student life. The report assails Bowdoin on topics as wide-ranging as sustainability and climate change, gay marriage, and affirmative action.
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College to offer new course in computational studies
The College will offer the first course in a new interdisciplinary program of study, Digital and Computational Studies, this fall.
Eric Chown, who currently serves as the chair of the Department of Computer Science, and Associate Professor of Art History Pamela Fletcher will teach the course, which will be called Gateway to Digital Studies. Though the class will contain some introductory material, it will largely be project-based to allow students to investigate their own specific inquiries.
Discussions surrounding the creation of a digital studies course began last winter. Over the summer, Chown and others took part in a workshop for faculty to examine what the first course in this new field would be.
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The Bowdoin Project: What is the NAS?
The National Association of Scholars defines itself as “an independent membership association of academics and others working to foster intellectual freedom and to sustain the tradition of reasoned scholarship and civil debated in America’s colleges and universities.” The organization “advocates for excellence by encouraging commitment to high intellectual standards, individual merit, institutional integrity, good governance, and sound public policy.”Dr. Stephen Balch founded the NAS in 1987 and served as its president until 2009. He currently serves as the director for the Institute for the Study of Western Civilization at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.Peter W. Wood, who received his PhD in anthropology from the University of Rochester in 1987, succeeded Balch as president of the NAS. Prior to joining the staff of the NAS, he taught at Boston University in the anthropology department.“Students in general may have disagreed with his politics, but found him to be a very inspiring and tough teacher,” said Boston University Professor Tom Barfield, who was chair of the department during Wood’s tenure. Wood left Boston University to serve as provost of The King’s College in New York City, a Christian liberal arts college which Michael Toscano, the report’s co-author, attended.One of the first major works published by NAS was a report titled “The Dissolution of General Education: 1914-1993,” which was published in 1996. As part of this study, NAS analyzed the curricula of the fifty top schools in the country, including Bowdoin and many of its NESCAC peers, noting the decrease in broad survey courses during that period. The 65-page report strikes the same note as “The Bowdoin Project,” suggesting, “in the debates over what students learn and ought to learn disagreement most commonly arises over whether the curriculum should be expanded to make it more ‘inclusive,’ ‘diverse,’ and ‘multicultural.’”In October 2011, the National Association of Scholars co-signed an amicus curiae to the Supreme Court in support of Abigail Fisher in the case of Fisher v. Texas, which questions the legality of affirmative action in college admissions. On this matter, the group wrote that it was “dedicated to the principle of individual merit and opposes race, sex, and other group preferences.”The NAS published “Recasting History: Are Race, Class and Gender Dominating American History?” in January of this year. Co-authored by Wood, it examines the changing scope of history courses within the University of Texas, Austin and Texas A&M. This study found that at both institutions—though it states that the problem is more pronounced at UT—race, class, and gender were over emphasized, to the detriment of “military, diplomatic, religious [and] intellectual history.”In a March 2013 article titled “National Scholars’ Group Turns 25, Showing its Age,” Peter Schmidt, writing for the Chronicle of Higher Education, addressed the declining relevance of the NAS since its “height in the late 1990s.”Shortly after the publication of this article, Peter Wood refuted many of its claims in an online comment on the Chronicle’s website. He argued that the NAS is a thriving organization that still has a powerful impact on the academic community.Wood wrote, “The documentation we provide on the politicization of the curriculum and bias in faculty hiring rightly alarms the public, if not the faculty members and academic administrators who ought to be most concerned.”The National Association of Scholars defines itself as “an independent membership association of academics and others working to foster intellectual freedom and to sustain the tradition of reasoned scholarship and civil debated in America’s colleges and universities.” The organization “advocates for excellence by encouraging commitment to high intellectual standards, individual merit, institutional integrity, good governance, and sound public policy.”
Dr. Stephen Balch founded the NAS in 1987 and served as its president until 2009. He currently serves as the director for the Institute for the Study of Western Civilization at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.
Peter W. Wood, who received his PhD in anthropology from the University of Rochester in 1987, succeeded Balch as president of the NAS. Prior to joining the staff of the NAS, he taught at Boston University in the anthropology department.
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LePage’s cuts to Medicaid will affect coverage for 20,000 Mainers
Cuts save Maine $4 million and reduce MaineCare’s eligibility threshold to 133 of the federal poverty line, down from 150%
A series of cuts to MaineCare—Maine’s Medicaid program—will go into effect today , affecting the healthcare coverage of nearly 20,000 people statewide. Governor Paul LePage proposed the cuts late last year.
Early this year the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) approved cuts for “the optional group of parents and caretakers” previously covered. It also approved reducing the MaineCare eligibity threshold of poor Mainers from 150 percent of the federal poverty level to 133 percent. In addition, the new cuts reduce benefits for elderly Mainers who are otherwise able to recieve coverage through Medicare.
“These cuts are not easy decisions because they do involve real people,” LePage wrote in a press release last year.
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Class size policy leaves classrooms cramped
Nearly 45 classes this semester have exceeded the maximum enrollment listed on Bearings. Of these, the Department of Mathematics has the most over enrolled classes with nine, the Department of Government ranks second with four classes above their designated limits. The course with the most students is Professor Samuel Putnam’s Psychology 101, with 64 students enrolled.This is significantly smaller than last spring’s highest enrollment for Classical Mythology, which had a whopping 96 students and last fall’s Environmental Studies 101, which had an enrollment of 81. To accomodate popular courses, the department will somtimes offer additional sections.
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Divestment: Mills says College will not divest from fossil fuels
President Mills said the College would not agree to divest the endowment of fossil fuels in the immediate future on Tuesday, just one day before Middlebury College announced plans to investigate the feasibility of divesting its own endowment. “At this point, we’re not prepared to commit to divest from fossil fuels, but I would never say never,” said President Mills on Tuesday afternoon, shortly after meeting with a group of students, led by Matthew Goodrich ’15, who petitioned for divestment. “We expressed to him that this is an issue that the student body cares very deeply about and that we really want to move forward with this,” Goodrich said.
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College remembers veterans, honors alums in active service
“There is no way to maintain the frontiers of freedom without cost and commitment and risk. There is no swift and easy path to peace in our generation,” said President John F. Kennedy in his Veteran’s Day address at the Arlington National Cemetery in 1961. His words echoed through Smith Union on Sunday when representatives of the College Republicans recited the speech to commemorate the national holiday, before asking for a moment of silence to honor the sacrifices of American servicemen and women.
“It’s an often overlooked day of remembrance, but what we wanted to do was just remind people ‘hey it is Veteran’s Day and take a minute to think about all the sacrifices people have made for you,’” said Sam Sabasteanski ’13, co-president of the Republicans.
This reading was not the only way that Bowdoin honored Bowdoin servicemen and women on campus.
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In letter, professors defend time spent outside the classroom
Bowdoin students are already looking ahead to Winter Break, but for professors, those five weeks are not a complete vacation. Professor Scott Sehon, chair of the philosophy department, views Winter Break as precious time outside of the classroom to dedicate to his own research.
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New trustees bring expertise in business and law to board
The Board of Trustees convenes this weekend with four new members to discuss renovating the former Longfellow Elementary School and changes to upgrade the College’s data network.
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335 students meet with CPC in last ten days, eight seniors secure jobs
Eight seniors have accepted full-time job offers so far this year, according to the Career Planning Center (CPC) that they have found positions for after graduation. Each of these students will be joining companies at which they had previously interned. For the rest of the nearly 500 members of the senior class, the job hunt continues.
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Samantha Garvey ’16 gets shout-out from Obama at DNC
When President Obama recalled meeting inspiring Americans in his address at the Democratic National Convention last Thursday, Samantha Garvey '16 had no idea she would be mentioned.
Garvey met Obama last January when she was named a semifinalist in the Intel Science Talent Search, one of the country’s most prestigious science competitions for high school students, for her research on the defense mechanisms of mussels.