The Bowdoin Orient

Since receiving his honorary degree in 2013, many Bowdoin students have ogled over Patrick Dempsey. But perhaps now is the time to reflect on the people from McDreamy’s non-Bowdoin home. 

Claire McCarthy ’18 and Philip Kiefer ’18 both grew up in Seattle and described their childhoods in the rainy, green city as very typical.

“When I was a young child, I had the quintessential childhood: awesome, huge backyard, dog and cats. And we would play in the streets. It was the classic childhood,” McCarthy said. “But once I was a teenager, I had access to the more urban lifestyle and experiences. All my friends lived in the city. So I kind of moved away from the suburban lifestyle. It was like the things I had the option to do expanded and I got to choose and in a way I got to live both a suburban and an urban lifestyle.”

The influence of the urban lifestyle on Seattle as a whole seems to be transforming the city, especially with the influx of tech companies.

“The tech industry has brought a very different group of people into Seattle, a lot of millennials, a lot of people starting their careers in tech. It’s brought a lot of diversity into Seattle, and also, a lot of wealth,” said McCarthy. “The tech startups have been huge especially for people who have grown up in Seattle and lived there their whole life so they want to come back and live there as adults.”

Kiefer also felt the ways in which the tech boom on the West Coast was painting his home in a certain way.

“I went to school with a ton of kids of Microsoft execs and Amazon people. I think it’s really interesting to read about the role of technology in the world and then see who it actually is creating that stuff and Seattle is experiencing incredible growth because of the growth of Amazon,” he said. “It’s kind of like seeing that human side to the Silicon Valley, seeing that the internet isn’t this abstract thing. It’s this thing built by the people largely in Seattle and Silicon Valley and Boston, to a certain extent.”

Kiefer, too, began to see the growing effects of the tech industry on his life and not all of them were positive.

“But, honestly, that isn’t doing great things for the city. The way the city has gentrified in the last five to 10 years because of the explosive growth of the tech industry has driven out a lot of that diversity that I think sets the West apart,” he said. 

The gentrification can also be seen by the ways the tech industry has affected the socio-economic diversity of the city as well.

“A lot of people are saying that this booming tech industry that we have in Seattle is kind of pushing out the middle class a little bit. And a lot of the neighborhoods in Seattle that historically may not have been the greatest neighborhoods are now located in central locations in relation to the tech companies,” said McCarthy. “So we’re seeing a lot more wealth move through those areas and like for the community as a whole, it’s been a great boost to the local economy and small businesses. But at the same time some of these communities are losing a lot of their culture.”

Yet, McCarthy sees the city actively working to change and to maintain a semblance of the same city.

“I think it’s important to have Seattle maybe look at Silicon Valley, maybe see what they did wrong. Yes, they have amazing economic opportunities there and an amazing tech boom there but it’s almost entirely reserved for white males between the ages of 25 and 35. I think that the leaders in Seattle are looking at that really closely and making sure Seattle doesn’t turn into that,” said McCarthy. 

In fact, with the influx of new wealth being poured into the Seattle economy and the growing job opportunities in the city, McCarthy sees the new industry as a positive influence on Seattle.“I think a lot of people look at what’s happening in Seattle right now and say it’s the tech companies, but the tech companies are actually providing a lot of opportunity across the board,” said McCarthy.

Both Kiefer and McCarthy, throughout the changes still see the city they love for all its central characteristics that so innately shape it.

“Seattle is a fairly green city. Pretty much anywhere you turn there’s like a giant lake or the ocean. Just geographically nature is definitely a contributing factor to life there,” Kiefer said. “You can get up in the winter and everything will smell salty and it’s kind of misty and you can look out onto the ocean and it’s just lightly covered in fog. And that’s kind of a physical feeling that I miss. But it’s more just the experience of being in that place.”

Nestled on the coast of Maine and located conveniently close to Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor, Maine is one of the ultimate tourist destinations in the state. Bar Harbor is not just a tourist attraction, though. It is a home to its residents who don’t come and go with the seasons. This home is drastically different than the picture on a postcard or the ideal of summer vacationers, particularly to its residents.

“It’s like day and night. The Bar Harbor that most people think of is the Bar Harbor from May through October, at best. All the stores are open, and tons of restaurants. Streets are really crowded. In the winter it’s just really dark and pretty much everything is closed,” said Olivia Erickson ’18, who grew up in Bar Harbor, Maine. “The restaurants do this thing where they rotate who’s open. There’ll be one or two restaurants open at a time. That’s just so that they all can get business through the winter. For the most part it’s really, really quiet in the winter.”

Growing up in a place so shaped by the people who happened to visit it, Olivia became keenly aware of the attitudes of the tourists.

“I think that all [tourists] think that we speak with the Downeast accent. That we say ‘Bah Habah’ which is not true. So I guess they have more of a stereotypical ‘Downeast Mainer’ view of what it’s like but Bar Harbor has more to offer than that,” Olivia said.

“You start really resenting tourists because they start to assume that your entire existence is geared towards them having this great experience. And that is a lot of people’s jobs.”

The way that temporary visitors can shape a place like Bar Harbor and deeply affect its citizens is similar to the way Bowdoin influences Brunswick. Though we are only visitors, we change the dynamic of the town and while sometimes for the better, that isn’t always the case.

We may be the people involved in positively shaping the community through the McKeen Center but we’re also the people who Randy Nichols has to remind to be considerate of our neighbors as we traipse across Brunswick late at night. The important thing for us along with any people making a temporary place for themselves is to use that time to have a positive influence.

“Bowdoin has so many people from so many different places that it’s almost like it’s out of place. You know, we talk about connection to place so that’s a very contradictory thing to say. But the backgrounds they bring to the College are very different than the backgrounds in Maine because people are from so many places,” Olivia said.

The assumptions we make about any place are never representative of the people who make it up.

“Most people think of very rural back country people as Mainers, but there’s also a lot of other things in Maine," said Olivia. “You have Portland, a lot of people live there. Someone from Portland is very different than someone from Caribou. Living on the coast versus living inland is very different. It’s such a broad array of experiences.”

The beauty of Bowdoin and its place in the Brunswick community is that it allows for the melding of these vastly different experiences and worldviews. This place allows for the students and the community to learn from and grow with each other.

“I think Bowdoin is a really special place. I think going here is making me even prouder to be from Maine because a place this great is in Maine.”

Pitcher Julia Geaumont ’16 set a new Bowdoin softball single-season record for wins on Wednesday when she led the Polar Bears to a 2-1 win in the first game of a doubleheader against St. Joseph’s College. The Polar Bears won the second game 8-0, and took four of the six games it played last weekend. The team’s record now stands at 23-11 overall and 8-4 in the NESCAC, good enough for second in the conference’s eastern division.

The softball team started out its weekend with a Friday night home win against Colby (10-15 overall, 4-5 NESCAC). Marisa O’Toole ’17 gave Bowdoin an early lead with a solo home run in the first inning, but Colby tied up the score by the third. In the fifth inning captain Adriane Krul ’15 put ahead 2-1 with another solo home run. Colby had no answer in the closing innings and Krul’s home run was the decisive factor in a Polar Bear victory on the team’s Senior Night.

On Saturday, the Polar Bears played two more games against Colby, this time on Colby’s home field in Waterville. The first of the two games was a 1-0 loss for Bowdoin, with Colby first-year Skylar Labbe scoring the only run of the game.

In the second game of the day, Bowdoin won 3-0. Senior captain Cielle Collins scored in the first inning to give the Polar Bears an early lead. Krul trotted home on a Collins’ double in the fourth inning, and first year Claire McCarthy scored from first on a Lauren O’Shea ’18 double one inning later.

On Sunday, the team played a game against an undefeated Tufts team (30-0 overall, 9-0 NESCAC) that had been rescheduled from April 10, and a double-header against the University of Maine-Farmington.

Bowdoin lost 5-4 to Tufts in its first game of the day. Tufts opened the scoring with two runs in the top of the third inning. Bowdoin responded in the bottom half with four runs, but the Jumbos tied the game in the fifth with help from a throwing error. In the sixth inning, Tufts scored the go-ahead run, the final run of the game.

On Sunday in the first of the team’s two wins against the University of Maine-Farmington, Krul’s second inning, three-run homer gave the Polar Bears a lead they would not relinquish. In the third inning they scored two more runs, followed by a seven-run explosion in the fourth to secure the 13-1 victory.

In the final game of the weekend, Bowdoin cruised to a 10-0 win against a Farmington team that committed five errors. In the first inning Bowdoin scored four runs, two coming on an O’Shea triple. The Polar Bears scored three times in both the third and fourth innings, ensuring their 10-0 victory to end the weekend.

In the first game against St. Joseph’s on Wednesday, Geaumont pitched a complete game with St. Joseph’s only run coming after a Bowdoin error extended the sixth inning. In the second game Bowdoin’s offense came alive early, scoring three, one, two and two runs in the first four innings, respectively, en route to an 8-0 win.

The Polar Bears have another doubleheader today at Brandeis University, with games at 3:30 and 5:30 p.m.

Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) debated an amendment to the bylaws proposed by Wylie Mao ’18 to begin using an instant runoff voting system for future Bowdoin student elections during Wednesday’s meeting. BSG also heard speeches for a special election being held to elect a new vice president of facilities and sustainability, a position recently vacated by Bridgett McCoy ’15.

The new runoff voting system would allow students to choose a first, second and third choice candidate when voting. If a majority was not reached for one candidate, the bylaws would allow for an immediate runoff between the top candidates.

“It’s in the interest of making our elections more fair and to allow better representation to what each constituency wants,” said Mao. “This is a system that is adopted widely by a lot of our peer schools.”

However, many of the representatives voiced concerns over how this amendment would affect first-year voters or voters not familiar with all of the candidates running for office. They feared that runoff voting would lead to candidates being ranked in alphabetical order or in other superficial ways.

The debate, however, was inconclusive and a vote on the matter will occur at a later meeting.BSG elected Kyle Wolstencroft ’15 to replace McCoy in an internal election last night. He and the other candidate, At-Large Representative David Levine ’16 , had the opportunity to pitch themselves at Wednesday’s meeting.

“I believe that I have the experience necessary to take over the position with so little time left in the year and this is because I was actually [vice president for facilities and sustainability] last year,” said Levine. “I have also already established relationships with the staff and administrators throughout the College.”

While Wolstencroft was unable to attend the meeting, his speech was read on his behalf. 

“As a member of the Facilities and Sustainability Committee this year, I believe I’ve added significant value,” his speech read. “I took the lead on main projects.”

BSG also suspended its two-week rule—which requires BSG to wait two weeks after a bill is proposed to vote on it—to vote on two events sponsored by the Good Ideas Fund.

The first event, which BSG voted to pass, is a Mainers mini-series—with whoopie pies—in which students will be allowed to have discussions with Maine state legislator Drew Gattine. The event will take place on February 28. 

The second event, which also passed, will be a screening of “Boyhood” with brunch provided in Adams Hall at 11 a.m. on February 22.

The Board of Trustees voted to give tenure to five professors at their meeting last weekend. Ericka Albaugh of the government and legal studies department, Jack Bateman and Bill Jackman of the biology department, Steve Meardon of the economics department and Carrie Scanga of the visual art department were all promoted to the position of associate professor.Bowdoin professors who are eligible for tenure teach in a tenure-track position as opposed to a temporary, visiting professor position. Typically, professors are recommended for tenure in the fall of their sixth year at Bowdoin.

The College describes tenure in the Faculty Handbook as “a safeguard to academic freedom.” Tenure provides professors with more leeway in their research and more choice about what and how to teach.

“I’m going to do a little bit of different teaching than I was doing before,” said Meardon. “I can probably afford to try to start up courses, for instance, that might have seemed a little bit riskier for me before tenure. So I can do some experiments both in research and pedagogy.” 

The Faculty Handbook also describes the College’s expectations for tenure candidates.

“Candidates for tenure will be expected to have excelled in their teaching and to have achieved a level of professional distinction recognized by members of their guild outside the College,” it states.

Each of this years appointees has a unique approach to the advancement of their scholarship. Professor Albaugh published her book on language politics in Africa, “State Building and Multilingual Education in Africa,” last year. Professor Jackman recently received a grant for his research on embryonic development in fish as a model for human development. Professor Meardon has done a great deal of research on changes in free trade due to trade policies. All of the professors agreed that the tenure process encourages a great deal of growth both as scholars and as educators. 

“At Bowdoin, you’re expected to be an excellent scholar and an excellent teacher,” said Albaugh. “You also are expected to serve the College in several different capacities, so there’s lots of different tracks that you have to manage at once. So it’s been a lot of work. It’s also been really enjoyable. I’ve learned a lot about teaching.” 

“The process is hard, too, because there’s a lot at stake,” said Meardon. “There’s a job that you love—and you want to be able to keep it—a place that you love to be at, and the experience of the students that you value.” 

The consensus among the newly promoted professors is that they are excited to begin their work after achieving tenure— continuing current projects along with starting new ones.“You’re never quite done as a scholar,” said Albaugh. “That’s why we all got into this business—because we like to keep learning.”

Additionally, the Board of Trustees announced the appointment of three new professors to the faculty. Kana Takamatsu, who just received her Ph.D. in chemisty from the California Institute of Technology, Theo Greene, a current doctoral candidate at Northwestern, and Ken Kirsch, a Talman Scholar at Boston College, will all join Bowdoin next fall.

The College, however, is still in the middle of other searches for new professors, according to Dean for Academic Affairs Cristle Collins Judd. Professors of Japanese history and French are still being sought for the upcoming fall.  

    Between Early Decision I (ED I), Early Decision II (ED II) and regular decision candidates for the Class of 2019, the Office of Admissions has received a total of 6,765 applications to the College this year, down 170 from last year.

However, the overall number of ED I and ED II applications increased. Six hundred and sixty six ED 1, 287 ED II and 5,812 regular decision applications were received. ED I applications were up by 68 and ED II applications were up by 34 from last year. While those numerical increases are small, they represent substantial growth percentages in the ED I and II applicant pools.

Two hundred and eight applicants were accepted ED I this year for an admittance rate of 31 percent, a number that is substantially higher than Bowdoin’s overall acceptance rate of around 14 percent. 

The Office of Admissions is currently reading and evaluating ED II and regular decision applications. ED II decisions will be announced in the middle of February and regular decisions will be announced in early April.

“We have passed the January first deadline so we have all of our applications in, but we are in the process of reading them at this time,” said Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Scott Meiklejohn. “We are currently busy getting a sense of the applicants. Everyone is plowing through the applications. We are just starting to get a sense of the applicant pool.”

According to Meiklejohn, this year’s numbers do not represent a significant change from previous application pools. Bowdoin received a record 7,052 applications for the class of 2017 and 6,935 applications for the Class of 2018. The acceptance rate has hovered between 13 and 15 percent over the past three years.

 “These numbers are very similar to last year’s numbers. A difference of 170 is a blip. I think that our quality of doing business has remained the same as in previous years.” 

According to Meiklejohn, Admissions has high hopes for an incoming class.

“Our job is to deliver to Bowdoin a very exciting group of people in August. The College has high aspirations for its students. Our job is to find smart, talented, diverse students.”

Becky Brodigan, vice president for institutional planning and assessment, will step down from her job at the College at the end of December. Brodigan has been with the Office of Institutional Research at the College for six years. 

“She’s really, really talented,” said President Barry Mills. “And I think she’s decided that it’s time to think about doing some other things...She and I have talked about all kinds of interesting life changes that she’s contemplating.”

Brodigan declined to comment on her departure from the College.

During her time at Bowdoin, Brodigan has spearheaded many important projects for the Office of Institutional Research, such as the one-, five- and ten-year-out alumni data projects. These surveys track the percentage of Bowdoin graduates who are employed, enrolled in graduate or professional schools, traveling or seeking employment. 

They also provide data about how well students feel the College has prepared them with certain skills and abilities and how often they use these skills, such as managing time and writing effectively. Before Brodigan’s arrival, Bowdoin “did not keep track of post-graduation data in a comprehensive way,” according to a 2012 Orient article.

“We’ve always had a very good institutional research capacity here at the College and when Becky came, it stepped up even more,” said Mills. “She brought a level of rigor and analysis to all of the survey work and analysis that she did that really stepped up the analysis for the College.”

On Monday, Brodigan received the Distinguished Service Award at the North Eastern Association of Institutional Research (NEAIR) conference. The award is given each year to a person who has made, according to NEAIR's website, “significant and substantial contributions to the field of institutional research, to the professional development of NEAIR colleagues and to the vitality and success of NEAIR as an organization over a period of years." 

Before coming to Bowdoin, Brodigan served as the director of institutional research and planning at Middlebury for ten years. 

Mills said that Brodigan’s departure will leave the College with “a big hole to fill.” 

Dean of Academic Affairs Cristle Collins Judd said in a statement that in the wake of Brodigan's departure, the Office of Institutional Research will be reorganized to include Information Technology's data warehousing efforts. This new department, called the Office of Institutional Research, Analytics and Consulting, will be headed by Tina Finneran, the current director of academic technology and consulting.

“We’re in the process of trying to think about how we continue on the important trajectory that [Brodigan] put us on,” said Mills, regarding the restructuring of the College's institutional research efforts. “We’re trying to think about how the intersection between institutional research, data warehousing, data collection and storage can be even more technologically managed going forward.”

According to Judd's statement, the new Office of Institutional Research, Analytics and Consulting will "provide an opportunity to deepen existing synergies between the library and academic technology." 

Due to insufficient storage and concerns about Ashby House’s ability to house large quantities of books on the upper floors, the College will relocate the Religion Department to a space in Kanbar Hall in January. This move has triggered several other relocations that will take place during the spring and next fall, in addition to nine other relocations that will transform the layout of campus. 

With the religion department occupying Kanbar, the Office of Off-Campus Study, the Office of Health Professions Advising and the Office of Student Research and Fellowships will move into the current Office of Residential Life space in Moulton Union.Residential Life will in turn move to the nearby Dudley Coe Building.

According to Dean for Academic Affairs Cristle Collins Judd, these moves will allow for easier collaboration between the Career Planning Center, already located in Moulton Union, and the offices moving in.

“For students I think it’s much easier if you can go into one location and not have to know whether you are talking about a fellowship or a funded internship or summer opportunity,” she said.

As for the religion department, professors have expressed minimal concerns about the move. “The religion department is looking forward to the move to Kanbar,” said Associate Professor of Religion Robert Morrison. “As the move is scheduled during Winter Break, we are confident that there will be minimal disruption in our teaching and scholarship.”  

“That space for religion is one which fits the department perfectly in terms of the number of offices, and it gives them a great identifiable space,” Judd added. 

Moving out of Ashby will also allow renovations to be made to the house. According to Senior Vice President for Finance and Administrator and Treasurer Katy Longley, the Treasurer’s Office is currently pricing these repairs and plans to relocate the Office of Student Aid to Ashby from Gustafson House in August.

“I think having the Financial Aid Office renovated and close to the Admissions Office will be helpful to prospective students and students here,” said Longley.

Additionally, the Bursar’s Office, the Controller’s Office and the Bowdoin College Human Resources Department will all move from 16 Station Avenue to 216 Maine Street in January. Longley says that these moves are unrelated to the relocation of the religion department to Kanbar. They will, however, minimize the outsourcing of office spaces to buildings off campus. 

“The College will no longer have to be paying rent. We have a lease there [Station Avenue] until the end of the second semester,” said Longley. “We may use it for faculty offices for the remainder of the year.”

To facilitate the larger moves, Upward Bound offices will move from Dudley Coe to Gustafson House and two Counseling Services offices will leave 30 College Street for Gustafson House. 

The religion department will relocate from Ashby House to Kanbar Hall this January.  The house, which was built in the 1840s, is no longer suited to hold large quanities of books and files on its upper floors, posing problems for professors with office space in the building. 

Dean for Academic Affairs Christle Collins Judd said there is “no structural issue with the building.” 

While Ashby has been deemed unsuitable for the needs of professors who currently have offices there, it poses no real immediate threat to them. Judd said many of the problems exist because Ashby was originally built as a residence hall.

“It is a residential house and so, structurally, having academic offices with many, many bookcases and many, many files is just not what the building was built for,” said Judd. “We recognize that it is not the best place to have lots and lots of bookcases and files on the upper floors.”

Senior Vice President of Finance and Administration Katy Longley said that the building may require construction for later use. Whether or not such changes will be made will be decided by the Board  of Trustees on October 16 and 17.

“We have to fix it structurally and...think about who will go in there, but it’s premature,” said Longley. “We’re still doing an investigation of how much we need to fix, how much it’s going to cost to fix it. We’ll have to go to the board for approval.”

Judd and Longley were both unable to comment on which professors in Kanbar will be required to move in order to make room for religion professors. It is not yet clear where those moved from Kanbar will be relocated. 

After the religion department moves out, Ashby—whether renovated or not—will likely house administrative offices. “We will use it for administrative purposes—that doesn’t require all of the books and faculty,” said Judd. “[Ashby] was built as a house. It was built as a home. So it is fine for administrative purposes.”

Members of the religion department declined to comment on the move. However, Judd said that she feels certain the move will not have a negative impact on the department.

“Obviously, nobody likes to have to pack up your books and move, but the College will take care of that,” said Judd. “The department will have a good location as they go forward and access to good academic resources. So I think it’s a positive move for the department.”