Bowdoin faculty convened on Monday to discuss additions to half-credit course options, recommendations for pre-major advising and policy changes in Academic Affairs. Associate Professor of English Emma Maggie Solberg moderated the meeting in Daggett Lounge.
After approving the minutes from the previous meeting, President Clayton Rose addressed the faculty for the first time since announcing his June 2023 departure from the College.
In a memorandum to the faculty dated April 21, Senior Vice President and Dean for Academic Affairs Jennifer Scanlon announced that her office had revised the College’s Shared Appointments policy. The policy had previously allowed candidates for tenure-line positions to request that they share the position with another applicant, typically their spouse or partner.
The Committee on Governance and Faculty Affairs is composed of faculty members responsible for advising the President and Dean on faculty-related issues. The GFA is tasked with overseeing faculty governance with duties ranging from promoting faculty professional development to overseeing department budgets and leading departmental reviews.
College faculty gathered once again last Monday, April 4, in Daggett Lounge for its monthly faculty meeting. Since Associate Professor of English Emma Maggie Solberg was absent due to illness and could not moderate as usual, Professor of Physics and Chair of the Committee on Governance and Faculty Affairs (GFA) Mark Battle stepped in to conduct the meeting.
In an email to the College community on Thursday, Senior Vice President and Dean for Student Affairs Janet Lohmann announced two new staff appointments in the Division of Student Affairs.
Katie Toro-Ferrari will serve as Associate Dean for Student Affairs and Director of Student Life, having previously held titles of Associate Dean for Student Affairs and Assistant to the Dean for Student Affairs.
On December 6, the faculty had its final meeting of the semester where, among other matters, they discussed how to empathetically hold students to high standards. The meeting was facilitated by Associate Professor of English Emma Maggie Solberg, a member of the Governance and Faculty Affairs Committee.
For Visiting Assistant Professor of English Zahir Janmohamed, good literature serves as a vessel for ambiguity. Janmohamed aims for his students to explore the texture, contradictions and uncertainties of their lives through text.
“I’m not really interested in certainties, and I’m also not interested in cleverness,” Janmohamed said.
The Bowdoin community has faced unimaginable challenges this semester, and while everyone processes hardship differently, “Polar Pause,” the extended Thanksgiving break this year, has provided students and faculty with additional time and space for rest and reflection.
At the third faculty meeting of the year on Wednesday, the faculty addressed strategies for supporting students, staff and each other. The meeting was facilitated by Associate Professor of English Emma Maggie Solberg, a member of the Governance and Faculty Affairs (GFA) Committee.
Lisa Rävar ’07 is leaving her role as director of gender violence prevention and education (OGVPE), Associate Vice President for Inclusion and Diversity Benje Douglas announced in an email to the campus community this Tuesday.
Rävar’s role has shifted in her six years with the Office.
At the first faculty meeting of the school year, which was held Monday over Zoom, President Clayton Rose announced four new endowed faculty positions intended to honor notable Black graduates of the College. These positions aim to bring new faculty to the College to study race, racism and racial justice at an interdisciplinary level.
Marvin H. Green, Jr. Assistant Professor of Government Chryl Laird will be leaving Bowdoin at the end of the year for a new role at the University of Maryland (UMD), Laird announced on Twitter April 28.
After 14 months of research, Professor of Anthropology Krista Van Vleet shared her book published in 2019, “Hierarchies of Care: Girls, Motherhood, and Inequality in Peru,” with the Bowdoin community in a webinar-style book talk on Wednesday.
A year ago, during the first week of March, the Department of Theater and Dance staged a performance of Shakespeare’s “Henry VI, Part II” in Pickard Theater. One week later, students returned home for spring break.
When Associate Professor of Theater Abigail Killeen first heard about the opportunity to act in an episode of the Smithsonian’s “America’s Hidden Stories,” she did not realize that she was auditioning for a starring role. Earlier this month—almost a year after that audition—she made her debut as Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union spy who fought for the abolition of slavery during the Civil War.
On Wednesday, the Committee of Governance and Faculty Affairs (GFA) met to continue their discussion about inclusive excellence. Emma Maggie Solberg, associate professor of English, Jennifer Scanlon, senior vice president and dean for academic affairs, and Jeanne Bamforth, assistant to the dean of academic affairs, led this week’s faculty meeting.
On November 3, professors across all departments were faced with a challenge: how to address the election. From canceling class to walking to the polls, professors had a variety of plans for students on Tuesday and throughout the week.
A faculty member who is infrequently on campus and teaching completely remotely tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday, according to an email sent Thursday morning to the Bowdoin community from COVID-19 Resource Coordinator Mike Ranen. The individual is the first faculty member and the second College employee to test positive since the beginning of the semester.
At this week’s faculty meeting on Wednesday, Roland Mendiola, interim director of counseling and wellness services, presented a nationwide survey that showed two-thirds of college students nationwide reported feeling “overwhelming anxiety” as part of their normal college experience.
The College will extend tenure decisions by one year and has created an adapted, informal questionnaire to temporarily replace the formal Bowdoin Course Questionnaires (BCQs) to account for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic’s disruption of professors’ teaching and scholarship.
As the last students vacated campus on March 18, Laboratory Instructor in Chemistry Ren Bernier was scouring an empty Druckenmiller Hall for gloves, face shields and cotton swabs. The personal protective equipment (PPE) that Bernier and other instructors, technicians and professors gathered from labs across campus will be donated to MaineHealth, a Portland-based medical supplier, to augment depleted supplies of critical protective equipment in hospitals throughout Maine.
Dancing outdoors and sharing snapshots of quarantined family life, faculty from the Department of Theater and Dance relayed an exuberant and spirited message to the Bowdoin community last week. With 2,500 views and counting, professors starred in a video cover of The Temptations’ 1960s Motown hit “Can’t Get Next To You,” taking a humorous—albeit important—stance on the social distancing measures prompted by the coronavirus (COVID-19).
Elizabeth McCormack, the dean for academic affairs and senior vice president of the College, will be stepping down from her position at the end of the academic year, President Clayton Rose announced in an email to campus Tuesday.
Teaching a full course load, firing back against Twitter trolls and publishing a book eight years in the making—Assistant Professor of Government and Legal Studies Chryl Laird is doing it all.
On February 25, Laird and Ismail K.
The Curriculum and Educational Policy Committee (CEP) introduced a motion to change the Exploring Social Differences (ESD) distribution requirement at a faculty meeting on Monday. It would instead be called “Difference, Power, Inequity” and a new definition of the requirement aims to address vagueness of the current requirement.
After an extended debate, the faculty voted at Monday’s faculty meeting to change the parameters for First Year Seminars requirement.
The proposal, introduced by Director of Writing and Rhetoric Meredith McCarroll, aims to refocus the seminars on teaching college-level writing and composition.
On Wednesday evening, Harrison King McCann Professor of English Marylin Reizbaum discussed her latest book—one that took her 10 years to complete.
“Unfit: Jewish Degeneration in Modernism” examines the manifestations of degeneration theory in Jewish artwork.
During a faculty meeting on Monday, President Clayton Rose denied that any organization or group external to the College participated in the appointment of former American Enterprise Institute (AEI) president Arthur Brooks as the inaugural Joseph McKeen Visiting Fellow.
To the Editor:
We applaud the College’s administration for the decision to substantially raise wages of staff in a progressive manner. We also applaud the workers who bravely spoke out about concerning conditions here, and pushed the College to do our best to honor our commitment to the Common Good.
The faculty will consider a motion at next Monday’s faculty meeting that would require President Clayton Rose to produce a written account of the process that led to Arthur Brooks’ appointment as the inaugural Joseph McKeen Visiting Fellow.
A living testament to the rise of a city and its natural remnants, the Los Angeles River was a one-of-a-kind subject for professor of art Michael Kolster. In his new book “L.A. River,” Kolster captures the river through a 19th century lens, questioning conventional notions of time and technical progress.
From September 24 to October 13, Abigail Killeen, associate professor of theater and chair of the Department of Theater and Dance, will star in a production of “The Clean House” at the Portland Stage Company, directed by Cait Robinson ’08.
After 40 years at Bowdoin, John Holt will leave the College at the end of the semester. Holt, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of the Humanities in Religion and Asian Studies, will spend the spring semester at the University of California, Berkeley before moving on to teach at the University of Chicago, his alma mater.
For over 200 years, American colleges and universities have maintained a commitment to the public good that has outlasted cultural, economic and technological change, says Chuck Dorn, professor of education and associate dean for student affairs.
Starting this semester, students can now declare majors in Italian studies and performance arts and declare a minor in music performance. The faculty voted on the changes at a meeting last spring due to strong interest from students across the departments.
