The McKeen Center for the Common Good recently celebrated all the work students have done over the course of the year that engaged with communities outside of Bowdoin.

The McKeen Center describes the event as “an opportunity for students involved in community engagement through service and research to share what they have learned while working in partnership with organizations throughout Maine and around the globe.”

Janice Jaffe, associate director of the McKeen Center, said, “We wanted to shed light on all the different ways students and staff are working toward the common good.”

Read the full story by Margot Howard ’13 here.

Ellis Ratner ’14 has won a Goldwater Scholarship

Since arriving at Bowdoin in 2010, junior Ellis Ratner has dedicated himself to robots. And his commitment and accomplishments in the robotics field have been recognized by the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program, which has given Ratner one of its 272 scholarships this year to talented students in the United States who are pursuing careers in math, science or engineering.

Read the full story here.

This story is a follow-up to an earlier preview about the trip.

The students in Nadia Celis’ Spanish class who traveled to Colombia over spring break came back with more than just a deeper academic understanding of Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez.

Although the focus of the trip was to explore the historical and cultural context of García Márquez’s work, Celis said students gained another lesson. They also developed a new perspective on their identities as foreigners and Americans.

Read the full story here.

Cambodia exchange students Rada Chhorn and Kimsrung Lov

As young girls growing up in Cambodia’s countryside, both Kimsrung Lov and Rada Chhorn faced steep odds in obtaining a college education.

Lov’s father, a small business owner in a town 57 miles outside of Phnom Penh, believed that because girls were only destined to become housewives, it was a waste for them to receive an education.

Chhorn was raised on a small farm in a village with no electricity or plumbing, and her family could not afford to pay for college.

Despite these obstacles, Lov and Chhorn not only earned undergraduate degrees, but they became two of just a handful of Cambodian students to study abroad in the United States.

Read the full story here.

Nat Wheelwright, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Natural Sciences

As part of Maine Public Broadcasting’s “Music That Moves Me” audio diary series, biology professor Nat Wheelwright talks about the orchestras and symphonies that his grandfather introduced him to as a boy, when his “world opened up to bird song.”

(Bowdoin Professor of Music Robert Greenlee gets in the mix on this clip, too.)

Additionally, research by Professor Wheelwright and colleagues, H. Williams, Iris Levin ’05, D. R. Norris, and A. Newman, recently appeared in Scientific American‘s “60-Second Science” series.

In 2010, Chelsea Gross ’13 participated in an archaeological dig of Joshua Chamberlain’s Maine Street house with her archaeology class. The excavation, led by Professor of Anthropology Scott MacEachern, unearthed about 7,000 artifacts — far more than expected — and the findings inspired Gross to do more research and write an honors project on the untold stories of the Chamberlain household.

Chelsea Gross ’13 Pieces Together Story of Chamberlain Household from Bowdoin College on Vimeo.

Bowdoin chemistry and biochemstry majors at the ACS National Meeting & Exposition

Several chemistry and biochemistry students (including one 2012 graduate) recently presented their research at the April 7-11 National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society, which took place in New Orleans.

All nine Bowdoin students who applied to present were accepted, according to Professor of Chemistry and Environmental Studies Dharni Vasudevan. To be accepted, undergraduate student research has to be at an advanced stage, as well as be original and potentially worthy of publication, she said.

Read the full story here.

Gov Prof Jean Yarbrough on Theodore Roosevelt from Bowdoin College on Vimeo.

Gary M. Pendy Sr. Professor of Social Sciences and Professor of Government and Legal Studies at Bowdoin College Jean Yarbrough speaks with Professor of Government Paul Franco about her new book, “Theodore Roosevelt and the American Political Tradition.” In the book, Yarbrough “provides a searching examination of TR’s political thought, especially in relation to the ideas of Washington, Hamilton, and Lincoln—the statesmen TR claimed most to admire,” according to the University Press of Kansas.

Yarbrough teaches political philosophy and American Political Thought, and has twice received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is the author of “American Virtues: Thomas Jefferson on the Character of a Free People” and has edited “The Essential Jefferson.”

"Reaching Day Zero" sustainability panel (Katy Longley not pictured)

Six faculty members, plus College Treasurer Katy Longley, recently took turns addressing student-posed questions about what Bowdoin students can do about climate change and what different fields can contribute to a possible solution.

The presenters were limited to three-minute remarks, and their advice ranged from changing small habits, such as reducing waste, to more radical counsel, such as to stop flying on airplanes and to have no children.

Sophomores Anna Hall, Courtney Payne and Margaret Lindeman organized the panel, “Reaching Day Zero: Living Sustainably at Bowdoin and Beyond,” which was sponsored by the Green Bowdoin Alliance. President Barry Mills, who moderated the event, praised the three organizers for having the enterprising spirit to bring the group of experts together. “These folks are sophomores, which is good news because they’ll be here for two more years to continue the enthusiasm and rigor they’re bringing to this conversation,” he said.

Read the full story here.

One of Kathryn Byrnes’ spring courses, Mindfulness in Education, tends to provoke curiosity in those who come across it in the Bowdoin catalog or who hear about it from students in the class.

“Students talk about it and others wonder, ‘What are you really doing’? ‘What’s going on?’” Visiting Assistant Professor of Education Byrnes said, smiling. To satisfy those questioning minds, Byrnes encourages her students to invite a friend, teammate, professor or coach to sit in one class midway through the semester.

On one such day recently, Byrnes opened the class’s lab component — when students practice mindfulness twice a week before they launch into the 90-minute classroom analysis and discussion section — with a ringing tap to a metal bowl. She asked the group to sit in silence for a few minutes, then led them on a short guided meditation to help them concentrate on their breathing. “When we focus on our breath, we realize how busy our mind is all the time,” she said.

Read the full story.

Chelsea Gross ’13 is completing an honors thesis that analyzes 19th-century artifacts discovered two years ago during an archaeological dig at Joshua Chamberlain’s Brunswick house. Eliza Warren-Shriner ’13 is researching food hubs in Maine and Vermont to study the differences between the two systems. Tess Beem ’13 is creating a series of maps for a proposed walking and biking path between Brunswick and Bath.

Of the more than 100 honors projects and independent studies that Bowdoin seniors are pursuing this year — on topics spanning the globe and academic disciplines — a handful of projects like these are incorporating local research in Brunswick or in Maine. Several more involve hands-on research completed during study-away semesters.

Keep reading more about community-based research at Bowdoin and about the projects of Gross, Warren-Shriner, Beem and Tasha Sandoval ’13.

Students in Prof. Megan Cook’s English class, Chaucer: Epic and Romance, have curated a new exhibition in the Hawthorne-Longfellow Library.

Through May 7, the library is hosting their show, “Chaucer after Chaucer: Reading the Medieval In the Renaissance And Beyond.” Cook is Bowdoin’s Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in English.

According to the exhibition introduction, “The works of the Middle English poet Geoffrey Chaucer have been read, referenced, and studied almost continually since the poet’s death in 1400. The books in this exhibit bring together items from Bowdoin’s collections that illustrate some of the ways in which the poet’s text and reputation have been transmitted since then.”

Many of the exhibition items bear evidence of their use by Bowdoin students and faculty. For instance, the lecture notes of Professor Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain explain his decision to focus on Chaucer in a class on the development of English literature.

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“The Canterbury Pilgrimage,” frontispiece to Tyrwhitt’s ed. of The Canterbury Tales (London, 1830)

“Geoffrey Chaucer,” in The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. Urry (London, 1721)

At the end of the table, left, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Sociology Craig McEwen with John Hodge, executive director of Brunswick Housing Authority

A diverse group of Bowdoin faculty spent two days over spring break getting to know an often invisible side of the community.

During their intensive “field trip,” 11 professors met with representatives of a number of Brunswick- and Portland-based nonprofit and civic organizations that work on behalf of immigrants, refugees, children, the poor or the homeless.

The faculty participants come from a range of academic fields: government, Spanish, education, anthropology, theater, dance, music, economics, math, history and chemistry.

The McKeen Center for the Common Good Director Sarah Seames and Associate Director for Courses and Research Janice Jaffe, with Senior Faculty Fellow Nancy Jennings, organized and led the trip. One of the priorities of the McKeen Center is to help professors explore topics of public concern through connections with the community and to assist faculty who are interested in incorporating community issues into their teaching or scholarship. This recent field trip was a pilot program that Seames hopes to continue offering to faculty members, particularly recent hires.

“The goal was to give faculty the opportunity to get to know the community better, the issues in the community, and the partnerships we’ve developed with community organizations,” Seames explained. “Beyond thinking about courses, we wanted to just give faculty the chance to make connections based on their own interests in the community.”

Faculty at the Brunswick Housing Authority

Katie Byrnes, a visiting assistant professor of education who went on the field trip, said she benefited from meeting many community partners that serve disadvantaged youth and adults. “My take-away was that there are endless possibilities to incorporate community engagement in courses,” she said, “and it reinforced how powerful it is for us and for students to connect theory and practice in the learning process.”

Assistant Professor of Economics Erik Nelson said the trip was an opportunity to hear about and temporarily glimpse some of the conditions under which the more marginalized members of the Midcoast Maine/Portland community live. “These are human stories that I would have never experienced otherwise. Also, as someone who never spent any time in Maine before accepting the Bowdoin position, it did give me exposure to some of the equality, cultural and public policy challenges in Brunswick and Portland that as an “outsider” I was not aware of,” he said.

The trip started off with a presentation at the Brunswick Housing Authority by Executive Director John Hodge and Craig McEwen, Bowdoin’s Daniel B. Fayerweather Professor of Political Economy and Sociology Emeritus. The Authority helps find affordable housing for low-income people. Over the years, McEwen’s students have provide it with surveys and data on its clients and programs.

“[McEwen] was able to talk about how he incorporated research into his courses and built this long-term relationship with John Hodge,” Seames said. “It was good to hear from a faculty member who has done this and hear what he saw as the reward for his classes.”

Dharni Vasudevan and Janice Jaffe at Asmara, an Eritrean Restaurant in Portland

The rest of the field trip included meetings with representatives from Tedford Housing, Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program, ArtVan and the United Way of Mid Coast Maine, all Brunswick organizations. The group also heard from staff from four organizations that help immigrant and refugee communities in Portland, including Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, Portland Adult Education, Community Financial Literacy, and the City of Portland Refugee Services Office. They also went on a tour of Preble Street, a homeless advocacy and assistance organization in Portland, with Executive Director Mark Swann ’84. And they spoke with the Portland mayor, the Portland superintendent of schools, and a staff member of The Mitchell Institute.

The group spent the night in Portland and ate out at local restaurants. “It was a really full two days,” Seames said, likening the program to the community-service trips that students go on during Orientation or for Alternative Winter and Spring Break trips. “We tried to make the whole experience our version of community immersion for faculty.”

Bowdoin students in the Bay of Fundy

A handful of birders have left the nest that is the College and soared to great heights in the field of ornithology. Nicole Wetsman ’16 writes of some of those who have spread their wings.

As a well-known and rigorous academic institution, Bowdoin can cite a long list of professors and graduates who have contributed prolifically to their fields. While some are well known and heralded by the college — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne, to name a couple — others are not so well known within the Bowdoin community. Especially those who have devoted their careers to birds.

Despite its lack of fanfare, ornithology has a long history with the college — beginning with the collections and scientific interests of college founder James Bowdoin III. Since then, Bowdoin has employed and taught scientists who went on to greatly impact the discipline.

Bowdoin has had three ornithologists on its faculty — Alfred Gross, Chuck Huntington and current professor Nathaniel Wheelwright — and has graduated dozens of ornithologists.

“I cant imagine very many schools this size that have produced as many ornithologists as Bowdoin has,” said Wheelwright.

To read about some of the significant ornithologists Bowdoin has produced, click on their portraits below. (While this article highlights a few of the Bowdoin graduates who went on to pursue ornithology, it is by no means a comprehensive list. Dozens of Bowdoin graduates have gone on to pursue graduate work in zoology, ecology and other scientific fields.)

Charles Otis Whitman (1842-1910) was born and grew up in Woodstock, Maine. Like many other prominent ornithologists, his interest in the subject began at an early age. By 17, he had amassed an impressive collection within two massive glass cases; according to his cousin, “they attracted much attention among ornithological students.” Continue reading.

Nathan Clifford Brown (1856-1941) grew up surrounded by birds, both in the orchards on his father’s estate in Portland, Maine and at his father’s summer home in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. At the age of 15, Brown shot his first game; in the same year, his parents demonstrated their approval of his interest in ornithology by giving him the new edition of The Birds of New England and Adjacent States by E. A. Samuels. Continue reading.

Olin Pettingill (1907-2001), referred to mainly as “Sewall,” is one of the country’s most distinguished ornithologists. As a teenager growing up in Belgrade, Maine, Pettingill said he performed “marginally well in school,” yet he refused to consider any college other than Bowdoin. Continue reading.

Alfred Gross (1883-1970) was a professor loyal to Bowdoin. Although he was offered a post at a university claiming to carry far more prestige than Bowdoin, he turned it down, saying, “I would never lean on any institution for prestige. …” Continue reading.

Charles (Chuck) Huntington arrived at Bowdoin in 1954, just after Gross’ retirement from the College in 1953. He served as director of the Bowdoin Scientific Station on Kent Island for 34 years, and his study of the population of Leach’s storm petrels on the island is one of the longest running scientific studies undertaken. Continue reading.

Nathaniel Wheelwright joined the Bowdoin Faculty in 1986. Wheelwright had a connection to Bowdoin before even arriving, as research he had done on the Fork-Tailed Storm Petrel cited Chuck Huntington’s studies on Kent Island. Continue reading.

Nadia Celis

Over spring break, students enrolled in Spanish 318 are getting the chance to glimpse the enchanted world conjured by Gabriel García Márquez in his novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

From March 10-17, eight students taking the course “A Journey Around Macondo,” taught by Assistant Professor of Romance Languages Nadia Celis, are exploring northern Colombia. Led by both Celis and Christine Wintersteen, Bowdoin’s director of international programs and off-campus study, the group is exploring the milieu that gave birth to Márquez’s fictional town of Macondo, where One Hundred Years of Solitude is set.

“Macondo … has been frequently regarded as both a metaphor of Latin America as a whole and as ‘the village of the world’,” Celis said. “The village is the fictional synthesis of several towns and cities in the region of Colombia where Gabriel Garcia Márquez lived during his formative years.” That region includes Cartagena and the northern Caribbean coast of Colombia, particularly the towns of Aracataca, Barranquilla and Santa Maria.

Celis said she designed “A Journey Around Macondo” to examine both the land and culture that gave birth to Macondo and the universal themes of the novel. “My attempts to illustrate [for students] the space that informed Gabriel García Marquez’ imagination — through strategies ranging from videos to Google Earth — as well as to document the history and social conflicts that influenced his work, have proved successful in engaging students with the text, the language, the culture and the human-interest themes in the novel,” she said.

More personally, Celis said she has long been nursing a hope to bring her students home with her. “As a native of the Colombian Caribbean and a professor of its literature, it is my dream to bring my students ‘home,’ and have them touch and smell a world greatly misunderstood from the outside,” she said.

Throughout the trip, students will hear talks by scholars, tour museums, meet Colombian university students and and visit sites important to García Márquez. All the academic activities will be conducted in Spanish.

García Márquez’s fans — including literary critics, international scholars and casual readers — have become increasingly interested in exploring Márquez’s native region and in learning about the work of other writers and artists who shared his background, Celis said. García Márquez’s childhood home is now a museum in Aracataca, and several spots important to him, such as a cafe in Barranquilla where he and his contemporaries once met, have been restored for visitors.

The students are staying in a hostel in central Cartagena, and will board at small hotels when they travel outside the city. The trip was optional, and eligible students received financial aid to help cover the $1,500 cost of the trip.

The new book, Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism, by Assistant Professor of Philosophy Sarah Conly, has been described as “novel,” “illuminating” and “provocative” in the New York Review of Books. The New York Times reaffirms that Conly’s book brings “serious philosophical discussion” to the debate on autonomy versus paternalism. Conly’s argument is particularly relevant in light of the uproar over Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ban on large sodas in New York City. Watch Associate Professor of Philosophy Larry Simon interview Conly about her book and why she thinks paternalism is a reasonable government response to some of our bad decisions.

Bowdoin Philosophy Professor Argues for Greater Paternalism from Bowdoin College on Vimeo.