Ellen Baxter ’75, H’05, will receive the Bowdoin Prize, the College’s highest honor recognizing an alum’s distinct contribution in any field. The nomination was first approved by The Board of Trustees and then confirmed by the Committee of Award, made up of the presidents of Harvard University and Yale University, and the Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

Baxter applied to Bowdoin from the Netherlands, where she lived at the time, and matriculated alongside the first class of women at the College in 1971.

“It was actually the only school that I applied to, and I’d never heard of Bowdoin before. I didn’t know how to pronounce it, but it was the only school that had sent me an application with an airmail stamp that allowed me to submit an application before the deadline,” Baxter said.

During her time at Bowdoin, Baxter took several psychology classes and became involved with community service projects her professors directed her to. She reflected fondly on her time volunteering at Pineland Psychiatric Center, Brunswick Town Hospital and the Youth Development Center in Topsham.

“I had a child assigned to me [at the Youth Development Center] who had severe autism, and I would take her out of the classroom, and we’d go for a walk, and collect leaves, and build snowmen,” Baxter said.

Beyond these experiences, one opportunity Baxter received proved especially influential: a Watson Fellowship.

“I [lived] in a town in Belgium called Geel, where seriously mentally ill people had been invited to live in the homes of townspeople for centuries…. I spent a year living in that town, interviewing families,… [going] from farmhouse to farmhouse to townhouse,… and just [spent] time observing how it worked,” Baxter said. “That was such a stark contrast to what I had witnessed in Maine, where people with disabilities were institutionalized,… and here I witnessed this long-standing tradition where the community took care of people who were disadvantaged.”

Later, while working for a law firm, she was introduced to a lawyer who enlisted Baxter and several others in bringing a class action lawsuit to the New York State Supreme Court. This lawsuit, Callahan v. Carey (1979), originated from the New York State Constitution that included an amendment compelling the state government to provide food, shelter and clothing to the destitute in New York City. Together, Baxter and others were able to secure the right to shelter, resulting in a 1981 Consent Decree that remains in effect today.

“That provision in the Constitution is why we were able to bring the class action suit on behalf of all the people who were denied shelter and were living in the street, and to our astonishment, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of homeless people,” Baxter said.

Baxter also helped found the New York Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy organization which she continues to serve on the board of. This work laid the foundation for Baxter to establish Broadway Housing Communities (BHC) in 1983, a nonprofit organization focused on permanent, dignified housing rather than emergency shelters. BHC developed seven permanent housing projects in the same neighborhood, along with two early childhood centers and the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling.

“Creating that early childhood center helped me to realize that lots of women and grandmothers in the neighborhood knew us because we cared for their smallest children,” Baxter said. “When we chose to do our seventh building, all those mothers and grandmothers helped us to get the support for our next building because they were friends by that point.”

Baxter expressed gratitude in receiving the Bowdoin Prize, crediting Bowdoin for providing her with a setting that gave her courage to create change. She also emphasized that homelessness remains unresolved and that fixing the issue has continued to be a collective effort throughout the decades.

“It’s been all of us, together, making it happen. The tenants that live in our buildings, the grandmothers that… come to the community board meetings and stand up for us, all the artists who now are part of the community art galleries that are in our buildings in the museum,” Baxter said. “It’s become a network of people who are compassionate and care about one another and believe that everybody deserves a place to live.”

Baxter will receive the Bowdoin Prize during a special ceremony set to be held in March of 2027.