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On This Day

2000 — Not-for-profit entrepreneur Ellen Baxter '75 presents a lecture entitled "Homelessness in New York City: The Courts, the Politics and Pragmatic Solutions,” in the chapel.

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Geoffrey Canada ’74 to Receive Harvard Medal for Education Impact

Geoffrey Canada '74

 

Geoffrey Canada ’74 has been selected to receive the second Harvard Graduate School of Education Medal for Education Impact. The medal is the highest honor given by the Ed School, and is awarded to practitioners, policymakers and researchers who have had an outstanding transformative impact on the education sector.

“To be chosen for this medal by the Harvard Graduate School of Education, which has had such a profound impact on my life and on education reform across the nation, is a deeply felt honor,” Canada said.

Canada is the president and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone, a full-service community organization geared toward improving the lives of low-income children and families in New York City through education.

Slideshow: Dr. Charlotte Cole ’82 on Muppet Diplomacy — How Sesame Street is Working to Change Our World

Dr. Charlotte F. Cole ’82 oversees Sesame Workshop’s global strategies and leads the development of all curriculum and research for its international projects, including recent projects in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Mexico, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Pakistan, South Africa and West Bank/Gaza.

Cole was the featured speaker at Tuesday’s Bowdoin Breakfast, delivering the talk ”Muppet Diplomacy:  How Sesame Street is Working to Change Our World” in which she talked about the mission and the reach of the Sesame Workshop, whose name, Cole said, originated from “the concept of ‘open sesame’ and the idea that you can open the world of learning through opening Sesame.”

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Cole received her doctorate in human development and psychology from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, previously worked as a Senior Researcher at the Joslin Diabetes Center and a college course instructor, and is a member of the editorial board of theJournal of Children and Media and served as the publication’s first Review and Commentary Editor.

Bowdoin Students Introduce Middle Schoolers to the Campus

More than 50 middle schoolers from Lincoln Middle School’s English Language Learners program in Portland visited Bowdoin last Friday to learn about college and what it takes to get there.

Their visit was organized by Mike Hendrickson ’13 and Robbie Harrison ’14 as part of the Bowdoin Alternative Winter Break program that focused on immigrant and resettlement issues. During the last week of winter break, a small group of students led by Hendrickson and Harrison spent time with the middle schoolers, talking to them about setting goals and the importance of education.

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“Today was one of our ways of focusing them on college and future opportunities,” Hendrickson said.

Harrison added,”It was a way for us to give them an idea of what they could set as a goal.”

Continue reading Bowdoin Students Introduce Middle Schoolers to the Campus

Nylea Bivins ’12 on Moving Beyond the Bowdoin Hello

Nylea Bivins '12

Since the start of last summer, Student Coordinator of Multicultural Projects Nylea Bivins ’12, a Eurasian and East European studies major from Maryland, has been developing a series of events to welcome students back to college this week. The 10-day program, Beyond the Bowdoin Hello: Ask, Listen, Engage, is designed to bring students, staff, faculty and community members together to think about and discuss issues of identity, difference and bias.

Assistant Director of Communications for News Content Rebecca Goldfine spoke with Bivins the day before the series launched with a screening of a film about race, gender and politics in American sports. Bivins spoke about how she helped create Beyond the Bowdoin Hello and what she hoped would come of it, both for the community and for herself.

Continue reading Nylea Bivins ’12 on Moving Beyond the Bowdoin Hello

Alternative Winter Break: Bowdoin Students On The Ground, In The Community

One group of Alternative Winter Break students volunteered with immigrants and refugees at Portland Adult Education.

This year, nearly 20 students gave up the comforts of home to pitch in for a demanding week of volunteering with Portland community groups through Alternative Winter Break, administered by the McKeen Center for the Common Good.

Robbie Harrison ’14, co-led a group working with immigrant and refugee communities, including adult English-language learners at Portland Adult Education.

“We talked with students who come from different countries and speak two or three languages, they have worked so much harder than we have, and yet we’re the ones telling them how to reach college,” said Harrison.

“It gave us a lot to think about after we got back from Portland,” he added. “We’re privileged to be young and working on our education. Privilege with a capital P. It is daunting.”

Read full story.

Listen: Bowdoin’s Director of Admissions on Getting Into College (MPBN)

Whitney Soule

Director of Admissions Whitney Soule shares her perspective on the college admissions process as part of a panel interviewed for the MPBN program Maine Calling hosted by MPBN News Director Keith Shortall ’82.

Soule, along with an admissions officer from the University of Maine system and a placement director from a local high school, discussed the myths and misconceptions, the anxiety that is increasingly part of the process and the importance of the application essay.

Listen to the segment.

 

Should More Students Study Design? (The Atlantic)

Given the onslaught of graphics, digital photography, videos and busy websites that most people consume and often produce these days, it might make sense to incorporate design into schools’ curricula. Jon Freach, a professor at the Austin Center for Design, argues that teaching design to students in K-12 along with science and the humanities could help people become more comfortable making things.

Gerald Chertavian ’87 on ‘The Power of Mentoring’ (The New York Times)

Gerald Chertavian '87

Gerald Chertavian—a member of the Bowdoin Class of 1987 and a current trustee of the College—has been mentoring young people for most of his adult life. Today, his Boston-based company, Year Up, provides a one-year, intensive training program for urban young adults, all aimed at building opportunity. As he tells The New York Times, it’s “a matter of social justice.”

The Cost of High School: A Free Market Approach (Economist/Mother Jones)

 

In a free market, a four-year high school education would cost $67,500, or $17,000 a year, for the average earning returns it gives graduates, according to Matt Steinglass of The Economist.

That’s compared to the true market price of a college education, which Mother Jones political blogger Kevin Drum estimated at $75,000. (Drum got his figure by estimating the lifelong earnings of a college grad at $1 million over a 40-year career, and figured out the sum you’d have to invest, at 3% interest, to earn this amount in four decades.)

 

President Mills Gives Annual Founders Day Address at Centre College

 

President Barry Mills ’72, with his Ph.D. from Syracuse and Columbia law degree, is adding another feather to his educational cap. Centre College is awarding Mills an honorary degree at the private liberal arts college’s annual Founders Day ceremony January 18 in Danville, Kentucky.

President Mills is also to deliver the talk, “Teaching, Learning and Technology,” following a similarly themed address presented at Bowdoin’s 210th Convocation and referenced in an essay Mills wrote for Inside Higher Ed.

 

Continue reading President Mills Gives Annual Founders Day Address at Centre College