With registration for next semester's courses underway, Brunswick residents will continue to have the opportunity to audit courses at the College.
Every semester, a small number of local residents opt to audit Bowdoin courses. According to the Office of Student Records, there are 39 people auditing courses this semester. No distinction is made, however, between local residents, students, or faculty members auditing the courses.
Director of Institutional Research and Registrar Christine Cote estimated that among these 39 auditors, approximately 25 are local residents.
Bowdoin's policy regarding course auditing is such that people wishing to audit courses only need to go through the Office of Student Records if they wish to have access to electronic services, such as e-reserves and library databases, for which they must pay a $50 fee.
If the auditor is a friend of Bowdoin College, the fee is reduced to $30, and fees are waived all together for Bowdoin faculty, staff, and students, and for Bates, Colby, USM, and high school students.
The more common approach taken, however, is contacting the professor directly and asking permission to audit the course, thus leaving conditions and restrictions of auditing up to the professor. Because this is not conducted through the Office of Student Records, according to Cote, "The only ones the college is aware of are those through electronic services." Therefore, it is impossible to accurately gauge the actual number of students auditing courses at the college.
According to Associate Registrar Joanne Levesque, however, there is an upward trend in the number of Brunswick residents auditing through electronic services.
Though auditors may participate in courses, Bowdoin College neither grants them credit nor maintains a transcript of their course participation.
Bowdoin College's policy of allowing local residents to audit courses is not a new development, according to Dean of Student Affairs Craig Bradley.
"I have been here for ten years, and this policy has been in place all that time. I do not know when the practice of community auditors began, though I bet it's been going on for ages," he said.
Because the auditing process is left to the discretion of the professors and no slots in the courses are left open specifically for auditors, it does not generally "create a class size problem," said Bradley.
Brandon Mazer '08 corroborates that the policy does not seem to interfere with the intimacy of courses.
"I have never been in a class with more than one auditor in it. Having that one extra person in the class does not make the class feel any larger. If the school were to start letting four or five or even more, then I could see that becoming a problem, but I do not feel that one person takes away from any intimacy that there is."
Just as professors themselves are given the option of whether or not to permit auditors, they also have the option of encouraging or discouraging participation among them. While many students observe that auditors in their courses are present but do not participate, Department of Russian Chair Ray Miller said, "I prefer if people come that they be prepared, but I don't insist that they participate. In language classes, however, I do prefer that they participate in discussions."
In his experience, he continued, those auditing language courses tend to do the coursework.
Bowdoin's policy of allowing local residents to audit courses has come to serve as an incentive for recent retirees to settle in Brunswick.
"It's good for community relations," Cote said. "Most residents auditing classes are retirees and for them it's a personal education and they get to take interesting courses. Some people can take language classes if they're traveling. The College is often an incentive to retire here."
Bill and Carol Freeman, Brunswick residents and Bowdoin auditors, are two such people who were drawn to retiring in Brunswick because of the educational opportunity that the college provides for them. The Freemans are auditing Dostoevsky or Tolstoy with Professor Ray Miller and it is the second course they have audited at the College.
"It's great to take the courses without the pressure of tests and papers," Bill Freeman '56 said. "We're filling in the gaps in our education. These are courses I should have taken when I was here."