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sign up today—it's free! On This Day1878 — President Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain is the orator for the 46th annual Alpha Delta Phi Convention in Middletown, Conn. StorePurchase Bowdoin merchandise online. |  Sarah Hirschfeld ’13 With months of free time stretching out before her in advance of her enrollment in the Bowdoin Teacher Scholars Program next January, senior Sarah Hirschfeld decided to take an adventure. She plans to bike across the country from Portland, Maine, to Santa Barbara, Calif. “I could get a [summer] teaching job, but since I’ll be doing that for the rest of my life, I figured why not try something crazy and adventurous,” Hirschfeld said recently, taking a break from studying for a microbiology exam. She wants to be a high school biology teacher. But the conscientious biology major doesn’t just want an adventure for its own sake — she wanted to combine the experience with something more meaningful. So Hirschfeld will peddle with Bike & Build, a nonprofit that organizes cross-country trips for young people that combine bicycling with building homes for low-income families. Read the full story here.  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.  Port of St. George's, Grenada People living in eastern coastal Grenada have seen their shoreline gradually disappear into the sea, “a result of destructive practices such as the extraction of sand for construction and ferocious storm surges made worse by climate change,” the Associated Press reports. Farmers complain that crops are getting damaged by the intrusion of the salty water, and fishing families may have to relocate farther up the hillside, away from their source of livelihood. What is happening in Grenada is a small preview of what many fear could happen in the rest of the 15 nations that make up the Caribbean Community bloc. Rising sea levels and surge from more intense storms will bring enormous economic and social costs. “The tourism-dependent Caribbean is thought to be one of the globe’s most vulnerable regions,” the AP reports. 
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.  Apekshya Prasai ’16 For most of her life, Apekshya Prasai ’16 harbored the same attitude toward urban street boys shared by many other Kathmandu residents. When she saw the grubby urchins in the streets, she would turn the other way and run, worried they might rob her. “They’re seen as a problem in society,” Prasai said. But after traveling to Maine last fall to start her Bowdoin education, and becoming involved with the McKeen Center’s community-service projects to help the homeless, Prasai began to think differently about the boys in her home country. Instead of viewing them as a scourge on the city, she now sees them as the product of a damaged society that is still recovering from a civil war. Read the full story here.  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. Continue reading Spanish Literary Class Tours Land of Gabriel García Márquez Mark Wethli, Bowdoin’s A. LeRoy Greason Professor of Art, took nine of his studio art majors to New York City for a gallery-, studio- and museum-packed weekend. Among the several artists the class visited were three alumnae: Sara Griffin ’09, a gallery associate at Sean Kelly Gallery; halley harrisburg ’90, director of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery; and Avery Forbes ’08, who works at Specialists LTD, which makes props for TV, movies and theater. The slideshow highlights some of the trip’s action, including an alumni reception at the School of Visual Arts, where seniors got to meet about 22 alumni who are in the visual arts. (Two museums visited but not pictured in the slideshow are The New Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.) Allen Wells, Bowdoin’s Roger Howell Jr. Professor of History, is spending his sabbatical year conducting research into Latin America’s crusade for democracy during the Cold War. Last summer, he spent time in Venezuela, getting a chance to witness some of the final weeks of Hugo Chávez’s regime. In this video, Wells discusses Chávez and his legacy, addressing the riddle of the man who led Venezuela for 14 years. Why did the leader inspire both intense loathing and veneration? What are the future prospects for his revolution? And can the United States and Venezuela forge stronger ties now that Chávez is dead? Prof. Allen Wells on “Hugo Chávez: A Bundle of Contradictions” from Bowdoin College on Vimeo. Photos courtesy of Allen Wells or licensed by Creative Commons  William Bao Bean ’95 skypes in from China to chat with Bowdoin students William Bao Bean’s first rule is “work your ass off.” Bean ’95, co-head of the networking group Bowdoin Club of Asia, has an impeccable record of finding employment for students who follow his rules. If you want it, “he will get you a job or internship,” said Bowdoin Career Planning advisor Sean Sullivan ’08 to the crowd of fifteen students that gathered for a recent Skype call with Bean to talk about the possibility of working in Asia. The Bowdoin Club of Asia runs an internship and job placement program, and has placed close to 90 students over the last six years. During the Skype call, Bean discussed his path from Bowdoin, experience in Asia and involvement in undergraduate job placement. Why Work in Asia? Alithea McFarlane ‘14: “I have studied Japanese since high school…and I’ve been taking it here. … Since I have this language, I’m trying to find a useful avenue to use it and to take this knowledge and experience that I’ve built up over the years.” Hannah Sherman ‘15: “I was born in Bangkok, Thailand, and I lived in Hong Kong for a year and then came to the States and I have never been back… I’m really interested in economic development and possibly teaching, as well, and so this would be a way for me to get back to Asia.” Bean emphasized that one of the most important types of connection in China is the “schoolmate” connection. With the one-child policy, extended families are small or nonexistent, he said. He cited the Bowdoin Club of Asia, now about 250 strong on Facebook, as an important auxiliary network. In 2007, Bean made the switch from investment banking to venture capital and currently works in Shanghai as managing director at Singtel Innov8, a strategic investment fund backed by Singtel Group and focused on the technology, media and telecom sectors. He has connected students of all language abilities to opportunities at both large companies and Internet start-ups. Bean does not promise students a career, but rather a “stepping stone to get that first job experience.” Bean pointed to Bowdoin’s internship subsidies and Bowdoin Club of Asia’s new philanthropy arm as means to help fund students’ travels to Asia for internships. However, one can live in China for a reasonable rate, he said, “if you’re eating a lot of noodles.” Though offering a helping hand to student interns, Bean enforces strict rules: “The people who came before you worked their ass off so you could have this chance as well,” he said, segueing to his second rule: “Don’t do anything stupid or embarrassing more than once… Everybody makes a mistake, but don’t do it twice.” For his third stipulation, he referenced Corleone in The Godfather, who says famously: “Some day… I will call upon you to do a service for me.” He explained that he hopes the people he helps break into the job market will one day help another student to find his or her footing. Of his placement program, Bean reiterated: “This is an opportunity, it’s a stepping stone, it’s a bridge to help you get from Brunswick, Maine, which is in the middle of nowhere, to China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and to some extent Tokyo and Beijing.”
Story by Melissa Wiley ’13 | On This Day in Civil War History…Bowdoin Talks: Lectures, Discussions and Events |
