As a small institution located in Maine, Bowdoin faces some challenges in retaining faculty members.
Although the official data regarding Bowdoin's faculty retention rates are not available, according to Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Nancy Jennings, two tenure-track professors left Bowdoin in the 2004-2005 school year.
Jennings believes the issue of faculty retention at Bowdoin is "not all that huge of a problem." With more than half of all faculty on tenured contracts, and many others on tenure-track contracts, faculty members, for the most part, tend to stay at Bowdoin.
"Because of visiting professors [30 percent of all faculty], students perceive there are a lot more issues with retention," said Jennings, "but percentage-wise, very few of our ongoing or tenure-track professors leave."
Marc Hetherington and Eddie Glaude, two high-profile professors who left Bowdoin in years past to pursue faculty positions elsewhere, spoke to the Orient about their experiences.
Hetherington, a former professor in the Department of Government and Legal Studies, had been at Bowdoin for six years prior to leaving last year for Vanderbilt University.
In an interview with the Orient, Hetherington shared his motives for leaving Bowdoin.
"The most important reason was the location of my family. My wife and I have two little boys, and we wanted to live nearer to our parents," Hetherington said. "And there was the weather."
Hetherington noted that the benefits of a larger, research institution did not play a central role in his decision to leave Bowdoin.
"Bowdoin proved a great place for me and all the people in my cohort of incoming professors to do good research," he said.
He acknowledged the book review of Professor of English Pete Coviello and the career grant won by Professor of Computer Science Eric Chown as accomplishments that "make it clear that Bowdoin is a place where outstanding research and teaching go hand in hand."
Hetherington did recognize, however, that there are advantages to being on the faculty at larger institutions. At Vanderbilt, there is "a lot of collaboration on research and I produce more research overall."
Glaude is a religion and African-American studies professor who left Bowdoin after six years to teach at Princeton University. His last year at Bowdoin was 1991.
"There were a couple of factors that affected my decision," Glaude said. "I was recruited by the No. 1 institution, and it was an honor to return to my grad school. In addition, I wanted to raise my son in a more diverse community," he said.
He notes that working with graduate students at Princeton has been a rewarding experience.
"It has been exciting to watch grad students encounter cutting-edge work," Glaude said.
"People leave for lots of reasons?many of them are personal," Jennings said. She also said that professors tend to leave Bowdoin not because of institutional reasons, but in order to take advantage of other opportunities.
Both Hetherington and Glaude made it clear that their decision to leave Bowdoin, however, was not because of dissatisfaction with the school.
"Bowdoin is an extraordinary place," Glaude said. "I enjoyed every minute of my time there?I just needed to move on, and we needed a much more diverse environment."
Hetherington loved the close-knit community of a smaller school. "An outstanding small college in a small town allows you to meet interesting and engaging people across disciplinary bounds."
The loss of such "incredible" professors may cause students to think that there is more of a problem with faculty retention than there actually is, noted Jennings.
"We all loved Marc [Hetherington] and Eddie [Glaude]?these kinds of stellar cases make it easy to think of it as a bigger trend than it may actually be," Jennings said
"Marc and Eddie went to outstanding institutions?I might feel differently if they were going to Williams or some place very comparable to us," she said.