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.

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.

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.”

On campus, the seventh- and eighth-graders listened to a panel of deans and professors from the college, and then broke into teams of four or five to go on a scavenger hunt to locate such things as a stuffed polar bear, a glass cube, a rock-climbing wall, etc. The students seemed game to explore despite the rain, and even more game for the Thorne Dining Hall lunch offerings and soft-serve ice cream that followed.

The panelists answered questions from students on why they chose their career paths and what obstacles they had overcome. The deans and faculty members also spoke about their middle school experiences — and for many, these were hard years of grappling with their differences from other students.

The winter break program and the day spent on campus weren’t just instructive for the middle schoolers. Harrison said the time he spent with the seventh- and eighth-graders had given him a “new understanding of what it’s like to not have English as a native language. … It’s humbling. It makes you aware of your privilege.”

Echoing Harrison, Hendrickson said, “In my household, going to college was a given, it was just how it was going to be. That’s not the case for so many of these kids.”

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.

Bowdoin Daily Sun: First off, why is it called Beyond the Bowdoin Hello?

Nylea Bivins: We’ve all noticed that it’s easy to get comfortable in your own social groups here and to remain and stay in your own little bubbles inside the bubble, and we wanted to push students to do more than just say hello to one another. As every first-year hears at President Mills’ welcoming speech, he talks about the Bowdoin hello, so we all know what it is. We figured it was something Bowdoin students could relate to. But we also wanted to push the community to do more than just that—to actually talk and engage with everyone in the community and to really make use of the diversity that’s here. Because we all know that Bowdoin offers a great education within the classroom, but education is so much more than that, and you can learn so much from the people around you.

BDS: What role have you played in creating the event?

NB: The idea for the event came out of a meeting with President Mills and student leaders [last spring], and we were generating ideas as to how we wanted to engage the community and to talk about identity and difference and privilege and inequality and bias. One student suggested having a day dedicated to talking about all the different topics and issues. … The entire group jumped on that and got really excited, and from there we were trying to figure out how to make it happen … Later I followed up with President Mills and asked him what was going on and he offered me the chance to work on the project over the summer, and I was more than happy to do it.

BDS: Was that a paid job?

NB: It was, which was very lucky because I hadn’t set anything up for the summer yet.

BDS: How much time have you spent so far to make this event happen?

NB: I don’t know if I can say in hours or weeks. … It was a full-time position during the summer, and it was also one thing I spent a lot of time doing during the school year as well. So, many months.

BDS: How did you come up with the different events and speakers?

NB: Over the summer, I did a lot of research and looked at what other schools had done in the past and were currently doing. I looked at NESCAC-area schools but also at schools across the nation to see what sort of programs they had done. Some schools have days that they’ve committed to talking about diversity and identity and bias and privilege; some schools have weeks; some schools have months; some schools don’t have much at all. Seeing what our peer institutions were doing helped me get a feel. I did a lot of research, contacted different administrators, contacted students, and got their opinions on what was successful, what wasn’t successful. I got a whole range of ideas.

From there, I met with students who were also here over the summer to get their opinions on what they thought would be most appropriate and what would draw a lot of students to any event we put on. … It was clear that everyone’s comfort level was different and students really needed multiple vectors to engage in the conversation. … There’s no one way, no right way to do it. You have to give everyone the chance to enter the conversation in their own way.

BDS: Why do you think a weeklong event focused on discussion, interaction and collaboration is good for Bowdoin and the community?

NB: I can’t take credit for the idea. …  A lot of students were saying they needed a space where they could share their experiences and feel they were being heard. And a lot of students expressed that they don’t feel that students are necessarily malicious on campus or intentionally hurtful, but just many times ignorant, and they wanted to have the space to really talk and to share and to also listen and to ask questions. That’s what the week is trying to give the community the space to do: to ask, to listen. I’m hoping students and community members feel that through the speakers and through the interactive activities and through the films and the tea times and small discussions, and hopefully back in someone’s house or their dorm room, they have the chance to start to feel more comfortable to ask questions and to share and to take someone’s lecture and to take that further and to really wrestle with it and challenge their own opinions and beliefs.

In our brainstorming discussion about the name of the week, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out the last three words: the ask, listen, engage. We spent the most time figuring out what the last word would be and finally decided on engage, because we feel it’s important to start off asking questions and to have the curiosity to want to learn more, but also to take it a little further and actually listen to the answers that people are giving you. And to respect their answers and realize that they’re sharing a part of themselves with you and that’s a privilege and that’s an honor. We hope that the practice becomes habitual on campus and it’s not just something that’s going to last for the next seven days, but that it becomes a part of our culture.

BDS: And what kind of questions do you see people asking one another?

NB: I think it can be anything personal, like, where are you from, something about your family, to anything as far as your beliefs and opinions on religion or politics. … So all those questions that you might have thought, ‘I don’t know if I can ask that,’ or maybe ‘I shouldn’t ask that.’ I know for myself, I usually have my hair in a big old fro, and people are like, ‘I’m not sure if I can say this, but can I ask you about your hair? How do you do that?’ If you ask me if you can ask, that’s fine! I’m more than happy to share. I love my hair; I would love to talk to you about it!

BDS: What have you learned or taken away from your experience organizing this event?

NB: I think I have learned a lot about myself while doing this, and I think one thing that I found particularly interesting is … I had to, in some ways, check myself for the same things as I was creating the program for, and make sure I wasn’t playing into too many of my own biases and that I was really addressing the needs and concerns that the community wanted to see and what the community needed.

BDS: When you say your own biases, what are you referring to?

NB: As a black lower class female, it’s very easy for me to focus on class issues, and to focus on issues related to race and to gender, and I could very easily forget, because I’m a heterosexual female, I could completely forget to talk about issues that affect the LGBTQIA community. There are so many different aspects of identity and I had to remember to encompass all parts of that.

BDS: Is there anything new that you think you might learn or feel next week? What are your expectations?

NB: Right now, at the end of next week, all I can think about is sleeping. I think I will sleep like a baby at the end of next week!

But I can say that in my first year at Bowdoin, I had a very difficult transition, and a lot of that stemmed from the different parts of my identity. Being a black, lower-class female on a predominantly white campus was a very hard transition for me, and then, also the class factor was also very difficult in making Bowdoin really feel like home. So I’ve always had a desire to help change that for other people on campus and to hopefully make another student’s transition easier. And I think that by the end of next week, I will feel that I’ve really started to make some progress in that way, and I think that first-year Nylea would be proud of Nylea now!

BDS: Would you like to see Beyond the Bowdoin Hello become an annual tradition?

NB: I would really love to see this happen every year. I think that we’ll have to get a lot of feedback from the community and from the campus to see how they felt, to see how it can be improved and changed. But I hope that everyone enjoys it and gets something from it, and finds that it’s meaningful in some shape or form.

BDS: Anything else you want to touch on?

NB: I don’t know if can make a plug?

BDS: Yes. Make a plug.

NB: I would just like to say thank you to everyone who has helped me, because it has definitely not been the Nylea Show at all. I haven’t done anything on my own. There have been a lot, a lot of people involved, from the president’s office to the dean’s office to all the different student leaders and club members who have all been involved. So I would like to say thank you to everyone who’s helped out.

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.”

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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.

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

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.”

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 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.

The Citation

Barry Mills, distinguished educator, you have seen a new future for higher education. Centre College today honors your remarkable willingness to embrace technology and your perceptive appreciation of how it might transform and improve our teaching and learning in the liberal arts.

I am hereby pleased to confer upon you, by the authority of the Centre College Board of Trustees, the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, with all the honors, rights, and privileges thereto appertaining.

I therefore present you with this diploma,and ask that you be invested with the appropriate hood.

January 18, 2012

by Centre College President John A. Roush

The Presentation

Presented for an honorary degree Doctor of Laws

President Roush: It is with respect and admiration that I present Barry Mills for an honorary degree.  Dr. Mills has been president of Bowdoin College since 2001.  During more than a decade at the helm of one of the nation’s premiere liberal arts colleges, he has led a major curriculum reform, replaced loans with grants for all students receiving financial aid, and built or renovated arts buildings, athletic facilities, and residence halls. Given Bowdoin’s strong emphasis on sustainability, it will be no surprise that many of the new facilities are environmentally responsible. Under his leadership, Bowdoin completed a $293 million capital campaign to strengthen the academic program that not only raised $43 million more than the original goal, it did so two years early. He holds weekly office hours to meet with students and writes a column for the Bowdoin website on topics ranging from the challenges facing liberal arts colleges to being a Yankees fan in Red Sox territory.

His wide-ranging interests, talents, and career trajectory perhaps stem from his undergraduate experience with the liberal arts.  After graduating cum laude from Bowdoin in 1972 with a double major in biochemistry and government, he earned a Ph.D. in biology at Syracuse University in 1976. A law degree from Columbia University followed in 1979. During a successful two decade career in New York City with the international law firm Debevoise & Plimpton, he ultimately became deputy presiding partner. He was a Bowdoin trustee for six years before returning to the college as president.

Of particular interest to him is the potential for the power of technology to transform teaching and learning in the liberal arts. He is convinced that technology and “modes of learning emancipated by technology” will enhance our educational model and make it possible to offer more broadly the best of a liberal arts education.

In appreciation of his efforts to explore technology’s role in strengthening the liberal arts and because of his outstanding leadership in higher education, I am delighted to present Barry Mills for the honorary degree Doctor of Laws.

Presented by Stephanie Fabritius, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College

January 18, 2012

The story of Samantha Garvey, a high school student from Long Island and a semifinalist in the Intel Science Talent Search, has gained national attention because she and her family are also homeless. A recent article in Newsday confirms that Garvey has applied to attend Bowdoin, Yale, and Brown, among other top-flight schools.

Singer-songwriter Sarah Ramey ’03, who goes by the stage name Wolf Larsen, recently debuted a new album, Quiet at the Kitchen Door, “and it is not your normal record release,” she says.

Sarah paired up with the social microloan site Kiva and The Girl Effect, a non-profit that seeks to abolish poverty for adolescent girls, to release the album “as an Idea, rather than as a record.” The idea—when you invest in a girl’s education, the entire community improves—takes shape through a video explaining The Girl Effect. “Not my idea,” Sarah admits, “UNESCO and The World Health Organization are the biggest proponents.”

Sarah is donating one-third of all proceeds from Quiet at the Kitchen Door to these two organizations that invest in education for girls, as well as microloans for women entrepreneurs through Kiva’s www.joinfite.org program.

This is not a women’s rights issue—it’s a human rights issue.

Is upward mobility a thing of the past in America? In his latest post, Barry Mills argues that “The American Dream” depends on access to quality education.

Last Wednesday (January 4), The New York Times published an article by Jason DeParle about the upward mobility of people in the United States relative to other countries. According to DeParle, researchers now believe that Americans have less mobility than citizens in most other advanced countries. Experts and foundations on both sides of the political spectrum debate the accuracy of this conclusion and the measures used to reach it, but on one point there is wide agreement. Access to quality education remains vital for those seeking “The American Dream” of upward mobility and success in life, regardless of how that success is defined. On this score, we can be very proud of Bowdoin’s contributions.

Over the past ten years, we have dramatically increased the number of low- and middle-income students at the College, as well as the amount of financial aid available to these students and their families. We have also eliminated the loan portion of our financial aid packages by replacing these loans with grants. Obviously, this is expensive for the College, but I believe it is central to our principles and our commitment of service to the common good.

When we talk about financial aid, many people assume we are focused only on the poorest families in America. While it is true that we support many low-income students and their families, the largest percentage of Bowdoin aid actually goes to the middle class. Our College has always been a place where young people from middle class families have the opportunity to study, learn, and grow, and it is essential that we continue to provide this opportunity. Unfortunately, even with generous financial aid, it is an increasing challenge for these middle class families to send their children to Bowdoin.

As I have written and discussed frequently over the past ten years, it is difficult to reduce the cost of Bowdoin in meaningful ways or to moderate our increased costs without affecting the quality of the education we provide and the competitiveness of our College. We do think carefully about any new endeavors, measuring value relative to cost, and we have been successful in moderating costs to some extent. We continually evaluate our aid packages and we make improvements when we can—converting loans to grants is an example of our ongoing efforts. But we also have to acknowledge that in many cases, these efforts are not enough. Many families, especially those in the middle class, are still forced to borrow money for college.

There are good arguments that some debt connected to one’s college education is not entirely a bad outcome, but we have learned in the past decade that too much debt encumbers the opportunity of our best to succeed. All things being equal, I continue to believe we should strive to allow students to graduate from Bowdoin without debt that limits their choice of career or level of post-graduate study.

Access, affordability, and the cost of education are among the most vexing issues of our time, but they are issues we must address. Regardless of how one defines or measures upward mobility, our nation and our society will continue to advance only if we are an educated and informed people dedicated to making life better for ourselves, our children, and our communities.

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In the coming weeks, I will continue to offer my thoughts on subjects interesting to me or of importance to the College, but I want to hear your ideas too. If there is a subject you’d like me to address, send me an e-mail at mills@bowdoin.edu

Previous Bowdoin Daily Sun columns by President Barry Mills are available here or on the Bowdoin website.

New research suggests that students may learn more when classical music is playing in the background.

A study recently published in the journal Learning and Individual Differences shows marked improvement in academic test scores among students who listened to a music-enhanced lecture.

Some of the biggest names in business are also those of the philanthropists best poised to make a difference in the coming year.

From the third-generation Buffett to the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, see how the charitable giving torch is being passed and how these 10 donors may light the way to a brighter future.

Learn how Bowdoin students are making a difference with help from the Joseph McKeen Center for the Common Good.

Larry Bock, a member of the Bowdoin College Class of 1981, has long been concerned about the declining number of young Americans entering the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. That’s why he founded the USA Science & Engineering Festival, the nation’s largest celebration of science and engineering. Bowdoin was a partner in the inaugural event in 2010 that attracted over 500,000 people, including neuroscience students from Bowdoin and the College’s acclaimed robotics team, Northern Bites. On this New Year’s Day, Bock is asking Americans from across the country to make a resolution to participate in the 2012 event, scheduled for April.