For Justis Dixon ’23, the summer wasn’t spent going to the beach or relaxing in his home, rather, it was instead spent in an office in Topsham contributing to the Common Good. Over the summer, Dixon and a handful of other Bowdoin students participated in the Bowdoin Public Service (BPS) Maine Government Summer Fellowships which aim to give Bowdoin students hands-on government experience by pairing them with local governments in Maine.
The McKeen Center for the Common Good is discontinuing its annual Common Good Day (CGD), McKeen Center Director Sarah Seames announced in an email to the community Wednesday, May 5. CGD will be replaced by a new program called Common Good Project Teams (CGPT).
The McKeen Center for the Common Good is discontinuing its annual Common Good Day (CGD), McKeen Center Director Sarah Seames announced in an email to the community on Wednesday. CGD will be replaced with a new program called Common Good Project Teams (CGPT).
The College expects to resume Orientation trips and activities for the Class of 2025 this upcoming fall, President Rose announced in an email to the Bowdoin community on March 4. He also wrote that similar class-building activities may be offered to the Class of 2024, which did not have Bowdoin’s typical orientation programming this past fall due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Joseph McKeen Center for the Common Good has launched a new program for students who are independently volunteering this semester to connect and reflect on their experiences. The eight-week program, called Together in Community, will consist of weekly video challenges and an end-of-semester pizza party.
The Joseph McKeen Center for the Common Good has established the inaugural Winter Break Community Engagement Fund, which will distribute funding to around 25 or 30 students for service work at a non-profit or municipal organization between the end of the fall semester and the start of the spring semester.
Students taking personal leaves of absence (PLOA) for the 2020-2021 academic year may have to contend with a variety of policies regarding which College resources are available to them during their leave, according to the College’s Spring 2021 FAQ page updated Thursday.
Last weekend, the Bowdoin Outing Club (BOC), alongside the Bowdoin Sustainability Office and Bowdoin Wellness Services, hosted a sustainability and wellness overnight trip at the Schiller Coastal Studies Center, the second trip to the Center this semester.
Adapting to COVID-19 restrictions, the Bowdoin Public Service in Washington program is still moving forward this year. Instead of the program’s normal culminating trip to Washington, D.C., during the first week of spring break, the trip has been modified into a virtual program called Deep Dive D.C.
As students tune into Zoom lectures from across the globe, the Division of Student Affairs is launching an initiative to connect with students who are studying remotely. The Remote Connections Team, consisting of five staff members from the Division, is planning to reach out individually to every off-campus student this semester.
Cara Drinan ’96, a professor of law at the Catholic University of America, joined Bowdoin students and faculty on October 7 for a virtual discussion titled “Race, Crime and COVID-19.” Drinan has become a prominent figure in the battle for criminal justice reform, specializing in the right to counsel and juvenile sentencing.
On Thursday night, former Attorney General Eric Holder participated in a Zoom conversation with members of the Bowdoin community. Holder is best known for his service during the Obama administration from 2009 to 2015 as the first African American Attorney General in United States history, but he has also served in previous presidential administrations, including as Deputy Attorney General during the Clinton administration and as Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia during the Reagan administration.
With the 2020 election steadily approaching, groups across campus are kicking voter outreach into high gear.
Andrew Lardie, associate director for service and leadership at the Joseph McKeen Center for the Common Good, has taken a central role in promoting voter engagement through Bowdoin Votes, a nonpartisan voting initiative run through the McKeen Center.
The Joseph McKeen Center for the Common Good is hiring a student antiracism fellow for the first time this year and re-evaluating their programming and leadership structures to incorporate more voices of people of color.
Over the summer, McKeen Center staff created an antiracism subcommittee, composed of Sarah Seames, director of the McKeen Center, Andrew Lairde, associate director of service and leadership and Avery Friend, administrative coordinator, to reassess the Center as a whole.
Though recipients have not yet been informed, the Office of Residential Life decided last week that students awarded Career Exploration and Development’s (CXD) Funded Internship Grants will not be permitted to live on campus this summer.
Every afternoon, Annie Rose ’20 calls the same home-bound senior citizen in Brunswick. Their conversations flow naturally from topic to topic, just as a conversation with a good friend would.
“How’s your family these days?”
“What do you think of the presidential primaries?”
“Have I told you my story about a seagull eating raw meat from the back of my pickup truck?”
Rose and this woman have never met in-person.
“Name a college from every state that touches the ocean,” Bob Stuart ’77 announced last Thursday in Kresge Auditorium. Teams of elementary schoolers grabbed their pencils and began listing off schools: Bowdoin in Maine, Tufts in Massachusetts, Stanford in California.
The Bowdoin Public Service Initiative (BPS), a new program housed in the McKeen Center for the Common Good, aims to encourage students to pursue careers in public policy through education, networking and funded internships.
Inspired by conversations between President Clayton Rose and Thomas Pickering ’53, H’84, the initiative comes at a time of widespread distrust of the goals and values of governmental institutions.
