Bowdoin College Library

Bowdoin’s library—the intellectual heart of the College—serves as a gateway to the world of information and ideas, helps students succeed academically, and supports teaching and research. In addition to notable print and manuscript collections, historically recognized as among Bowdoin’s hallmarks of excellence, the library offers a wealth of electronic resources along with a host of instructional programs and services that enhance use of the collections and student learning.

The library’s website (library.bowdoin.edu) is the portal to the combined Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin library catalog (CBBcat), rich collections of electronic and print resources, and essential digital research and discovery tools. The library’s collections, developed over a period of 200 years, exceed one million volumes and include more than 170,000 print and electronic periodicals, 500 online indexes and databases, extensive e-book collections, audiovisual items, maps, photographs, a growing digital collection of student theses and faculty publications, and over 5,600 linear feet of manuscripts and archival records.

Research librarians and faculty partner to encourage the use of scholarly resources in all disciplines and to teach students to identify, select, and evaluate information for coursework and independent scholarship. Students receive information literacy instruction in their first-year seminars, and librarians provide personalized assistance—virtually as well as on campus—in using library resources throughout the academic year.

Interlibrary loan and document delivery services allow students and faculty to request materials not held at Bowdoin; most journal articles are delivered electronically, and books arrive daily from Colby and Bates colleges and other libraries in New England and worldwide.

Library Locations and Collections

The Hawthorne-Longfellow Library, the main library building, houses humanities and social sciences materials, the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives, and a depository of federal and Maine State documents. Hawthorne-Longfellow features an array of popular student study spaces, ranging from quiet individual carrels to technologically equipped group learning spaces, as well as an electronic classroom for instruction, a student gallery, and meeting rooms for public events and student exhibits, presentations, and other activities. The Media Commons features teaching and screening spaces; audio and video recording and production studios; workstations to support media viewing, capture, and design; and the state-of-the-art Telepresence Classroom, equipped with audio-sensitive cameras, multiple high-definition screens, and interactive whiteboards. The Research Lab, the library’s most recent addition, was developed as an active and flexible space for formal and informal learning interactions among students, faculty, and research librarians. The lab supports student-librarian collaborations, class-based instruction sessions, group study, and peer tutoring. The library also houses Bowdoin’s Test Center, which supports students with disability-related testing accommodations and those who need to schedule alternative exam times.

The George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives includes the official archives of the College, rare books, manuscripts, oral histories, photographs, and an increasing number of digital collections. These materials afford an invaluable opportunity for undergraduates to engage in object-based learning, conduct original research, and develop visual and digital literacy; using primary resources in Special Collections & Archives is a distinguishing characteristic of a Bowdoin education.

The Government Documents Collection provides the Bowdoin community and the public access to print and digital government information reflecting over two centuries of federal and state history.

The Hatch Science Library offers research and instructional services and a variety of individual and group study facilities in support of its science-related print and digital resources.

The William Pierce Art Library and the Robert Beckwith Music Library, located adjacent to classrooms and offices for those departments, serve as centers for research and study. The art library offers a strong collection of art books and exhibition catalogs. The music library’s extensive collections include books, scores, sound recordings, and videos.

Bowdoin College Museum of Art

The Bowdoin College Museum of Art, the cornerstone of the arts and culture at Bowdoin, is one of the earliest collegiate art collections in the nation. It came into being through the 1811 bequest of James Bowdoin III of seventy European paintings and a portfolio of 141 old master drawings. Over the years, the collection has been expanded through the generosity of the Bowdoin family, alumni, and friends, and now numbers more than 25,000 objects, including paintings, sculpture, works on paper, decorative arts, and artifacts from prehistory to the present and from civilizations around the world.

The museum’s landmark Walker Art Building was commissioned for the College by Harriet and Sophia Walker in honor of their uncle, a Boston businessman who had supported the creation of the first art gallery at Bowdoin in the mid-nineteenth century. The Walker sisters, encyclopedic collectors and supporters of art education, stipulated that the building be used exclusively for art purposes. Designed by Charles Follen McKim, the building was completed in 1894 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. The brick, limestone, and granite façade, based on Renaissance prototypes, overlooks a broad staircase where generations of Bowdoin graduates receive their diplomas.

The antiquities collections contain over 1,800 Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, and Roman artifacts and constitute one of the most comprehensive compilations of ancient art in any college museum. European art includes paintings, illustrated manuscripts, sculptures, and decorative arts. Among twelve European Renaissance and Baroque paintings given in 1961 by the Kress Foundation is a panel depicting nymphs pursued by a youth that recently has been attributed to the young Fra Angelico. The collection of prints, drawings, and photographs is large and varied, numbering more than 8,000 works and representing artists from Rembrandt and Rubens through Callot, Goya, and Manet to Picasso and Warhol.

The museum’s American collection includes an important grouping of colonial and Federal portraits, with, for example, seven major paintings by Gilbert Stuart, including the famous presidential portraits of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, together with other works by Robert Feke, John Copley, Thomas Sully, and Joseph Blackburn. Among other notable works are the murals commissioned by McKim to decorate the museum’s rotunda by the four leading painters of the American Renaissance: Elihu Vedder, Kenyon Cox, Abbott Thayer, and John LaFarge. The collection also includes works by significant nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists such as Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, John Sloan, Rockwell Kent, Marsden Hartley, and Andrew Wyeth, and an archive of memorabilia from Winslow Homer’s Maine studio.

Non-western materials range from Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Southeast Asian prints, ink paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts to modest but distinguished holdings of African, Pacific, Pre-Columbian, and Native American artifacts.

Renovations, designed by Machado and Silvetti Associates and completed in 2007, include expanded galleries, a seminar room, and improved art storage facilities. The restored museum retains the building’s iconic architectural features and provides state-of-the-art climate control and mechanical systems. A dramatic glass and bronze entry pavilion houses a glass elevator and “floating” steel staircase, while a rear addition to the building features an expansive glass curtain wall behind which the museum has installed its five celebrated ancient Assyrian relief sculptures.

The museum, open to the public at no charge, is a teaching facility, with the core of its mission to keep its rich collections within immediate reach of Bowdoin students, faculty, scholars, and visitors from near and far. Its active emphasis on the study of original objects as an integral part of the Bowdoin curriculum makes the museum the ultimate cross-disciplinary and multicultural enterprise. Although online resources are no substitute for an actual visit, the collections can be searched and information on museum programs and publications found on the website at bowdoin.edu/art-museum.

Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies Center

The Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum was founded in 1967 in honor of two famous Arctic explorers and Bowdoin alumni, Admirals Robert E. Peary (Class of 1877) and Donald B. MacMillan (Class of 1898). On April 6, 1909, after a lifetime of Arctic exploration, Peary headed the first team of people to reach the North Pole. MacMillan, a crew member on Peary’s last expedition, spent the next forty-seven years exploring Labrador, Baffin Island, Ellesmere Island, and Greenland. He used the Bowdoin, a schooner he had built for work in ice-laden northern waters, on most of his expeditions. MacMillan took college students to the Arctic and introduced them to the natural history and anthropology of the North. He was not the first to involve Bowdoin students in Arctic exploration, however. In 1860, Paul A. Chadbourne, a professor of chemistry and natural history, had sailed along the Labrador and West Greenland coasts with students from Williams and Bowdoin. Professor Leslie Lee took Bowdoin alumni and students to the same regions in 1891, paving the way for the program’s North Atlantic focus.

The museum’s collections include equipment, clothing, and photographs relating to the history of Arctic exploration; natural history specimens; artifacts and drawings made by indigenous people of Arctic North America; contemporary Canadian Inuit carvings and prints; and Alaskan Iñupiat and Yup’ik carvings, masks, and baleen and grass baskets. The museum has large collections of ethnographic photographs and films taken on the expeditions of MacMillan and Robert Bartlett, an explorer and captain who sailed northern waters for nearly fifty years. Diaries, logs, and correspondence relating to the museum’s collections are housed in the Special Collections & Archives section of the College’s Hawthorne-Longfellow Library.

The museum is located on the first floor of Hubbard Hall. The building was named for General Thomas Hubbard of the Class of 1857, a benefactor of the College and financial supporter of Peary’s Arctic ventures. Generous donations from members of the Class of 1925, together with gifts from George B. Knox of the Class of 1929, a former trustee, and other interested alumni and friends, made the museum a reality. Ian M. White, who sailed with MacMillan in 1950, designed the museum’s first exhibitions.

The Arctic Studies Center was established in 1985 as a result of a generous matching grant from the Russell and Janet Doubleday Foundation to endow the directorship of the center, in recognition of the Doubledays’ close relationship to MacMillan. The center links the resources of the museum and library with teaching and research efforts, and hosts lectures, workshops, symposia, and educational outreach programs focused on contemporary Arctic developments; issues of environmental and social justice; indigenous knowledge; climate change; adaptation and resilience of small-scale societies; Inuit artistic and cultural endeavors; and the history of Arctic exploration reconsidered in light of issues of race and gender, technological developments, and colonialism. Continued support from the Doubleday Endowment, friends of the College, the Kane Lodge Foundation, Inc., and federal grants have allowed the College’s Arctic- and North Atlantic-focused programs to grow. Through course offerings, field research programs, student employment opportunities, and special events, the center promotes anthropological, archaeological, political, artistic, and environmental investigations of North Atlantic and Arctic regions.

In the spring of 2021, the College broke ground on the John and Lile Gibbons Center for Arctic Studies, located next to the Smith Union. The three-story Gibbons Center will provide new classroom and laboratory spaces for the teaching and study of the Arctic, along with a new home for the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum.

Arts Facilities

Bowdoin has a deep and historic commitment to the role of the arts in a liberal education, which is supported by state-of-the-art facilities and numerous opportunities for participation in the vibrant student performance and art exhibition scene on campus. For students wishing to specialize in an artistic field, Bowdoin’s programs offer exceptional flexibility and the opportunity for in-depth study with recognized faculty. Bowdoin also hosts an exciting array of performances and exhibitions, bringing renowned artists and scholars to campus from all parts of the world.

Robert H. and Blythe Bickel Edwards Center for Art and Dance

The Robert H. and Blythe Bickel Edwards Center for Art and Dance, an ambitious renovation of a former landmark elementary school completed in 2013, offers a dynamic and communal center for the full range of activities in the visual arts and dance on campus. The building contains two dance studios; painting, drawing, printmaking, and sculpture studios; classrooms for critique; exhibition spaces; and state-of-the-art facilities including a wood shop, print shop, kiln, analog darkroom, and digital media lab. The Edwards Center for Art and Dance enables faculty and students engaged in dance, digital arts, drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, and sculpture to work together under a single roof, fostering a cohesive arts community and opportunities for artistic and intellectual synergies.

Gibson Hall

Gibson Hall houses the Department of Music and offers rehearsal and practice rooms, teaching studios, the Beckwith Music Library, an electronic music lab, a state-of-the-art projection system, faculty offices, a sixty-eight-seat classroom/recital hall, and a more intimate seminar room. It is located on the main quadrangle between the Walker Art Building and the Hawthorne-Longfellow Library.

Pickard and Wish Theaters

Memorial Hall includes performance, rehearsal, set construction, and instructional facilities. The centerpiece is Pickard Theater, a 600-seat theater with proscenium stage equipped with a full fly system and state-of-the-art lighting, sound, and video equipment. Wish Theater addresses the needs of experimental, educational theater in a flexible and intimate black box space that includes high-tech lighting and sound. Memorial Hall also features a seminar room, a rehearsal studio—which is also used for smaller performances and student productions—and a dance studio.

Studzinski Recital Hall

The world-class Studzinski Recital Hall is a transformation of the Curtis Pool building into a 280-seat facility for small- and medium-sized musical performances. The hall includes a rehearsal room, nine practice rooms, and a number of Steinway pianos. Kanbar Auditorium features raked seating, exceptional acoustics, advanced technical capabilities, and a stage designed to accommodate different performance configurations and types of musical programs, including classical, jazz, electronic, and world music.

Visual Arts Center

The Visual Arts Center houses the faculty in art history and digital and computational studies, the Pierce Art Library, Beam Classroom, and Kresge Auditorium.

Baldwin Center for Learning and Teaching

Bowdoin College’s Baldwin Center for Learning and Teaching (Baldwin CLT) opened in 1999–2000 with the mission of creating a space in which students, faculty, and staff members can address issues related to learning and teaching at the College. Established through a gift to the College by Linda G. Baldwin ’73, the center, housed in Kanbar Hall, room 102, offers resources to help students attain their academic goals and faculty to enhance student learning. The types of programming housed in the Baldwin CLT include: Academic Mentoring and Coaching, Academic Communication for Multilingual Speakers, Quantitative Reasoning, Writing and Rhetoric, and Faculty Development.

Academic Mentoring and Coaching

Academic Mentoring and Coaching focuses on learning skills and resources, tailored to the student, which help students be successful in college and beyond. An academic coach examines learning preferences, habits of working, current challenges in an academic context, and barriers to success. Based on the student’s strength and needs, the coach and the student develop an action plan to overcome those challenges and create a foundation for success in college. Throughout this process the student learns to identify and practice the strategies and resources that work best to reach their goals. The ambition of Academic Mentoring and Coaching is to increase awareness of what it takes to stay on track academically and anchor this awareness with new strategies, a supportive relationship, and personal accountability. Individual consultations can be booked with an assistant director of the Baldwin Center or with an academic peer coach. The program also offers activities and services such as study skills workshops (wicked smart workshops) and a curated collection of material that serves as resources for students to reach their full potential.

Academic Communication for Multilingual Students

Students who are multilingual or who have multilingual parents may work individually with the associate director of the Baldwin Center within the Academic Communication for Multilingual Students program. Students may develop understanding of assignments and readings and attend to grammar, outlining, revising, and scholarly writing conventions. Specific attention to pronunciation and oral presentation skills are also offered. Students may schedule a regular weekly appointment or meet as needed.

Quantitative Reasoning Program

The Quantitative Reasoning (QR) Program was established in 1996 to assist with the integration of quantitative reasoning throughout the curriculum and to encourage students to develop competence and confidence in using quantitative information. The program was established in recognition of the increasing demand to understand and use quantitative information in college-level work, in employment situations, and for effective citizenship.

The QR Program assists students in a variety of ways. Entering students' proficiency with quantitative material is assessed. Utilizing the test results and other indicators, the director of Quantitative Reasoning and faculty advisors counsel students regarding appropriate courses to fulfill their Mathematical, Computational, or Statistical Reasoning (MCSR) distribution requirement, including placement in the Mathematics 1050: Quantitative Reasoning course. In addition, students are encouraged to take courses across the curriculum that enhance their quantitative skills.

The QR Program supplements many of the quantitative courses with trained peer tutoring. One-on-one tutoring is available on a limited basis. Workshops on special topics are also provided by the QR Program.

Writing and Rhetoric Program

Communication takes many forms at Bowdoin. The support offered for writers and speakers is equally diverse. First-year students enroll in a first-year writing seminar taught by faculty across disciplines. Students may also take courses with specially selected and assigned, trained writing assistants at the request of the course instructor.

Outside of the classroom, student peer-led resources include: Writing Center meetings for writing and presentations, workshops on topics such as writing a research paper, and writers blocks (spaces and time to write together in community). As collaborators rather than authorities, peer assistants facilitate the writing process for fellow students by providing helpful feedback while encouraging writers to retain an active and authoritative role in writing and revising their work.

Faculty resources include ongoing workshops, individual advising and consultations, and peer assistants paired with courses.

Faculty Development

Faculty and staff may individually consult with a Baldwin CLT staff member on any topic related to teaching and learning at the College. Course (re)Design Experiences and intentional pedagogy workshops are offered for faculty to engage with the scholarship of teaching and learning, and to design their courses and syllabi. Other workshops and lunch seminars on topics related to teaching and learning at Bowdoin are offered during the semester and over breaks in August, January, and May. Book groups allow faculty and staff to engage substantively with topics such as stereotype threat (Whistling Vivaldi) and academic resilience (Grit), as well as more pedagogical focused themes from Teaching Across Cultural Strengths, Small Teaching, and The Spark of Learning.

The Teaching Triangles program provides faculty an opportunity to gain new insight into their teaching and students’ learning through a non-evaluative, formative process of reciprocal classroom visits and reflection. Guest speakers and workshop facilitators deepen understanding of topics essential to effective teaching and learning in higher education. The Faculty Fellows program is a yearlong, immersive experience for faculty focused on reflective practice on teaching and learning with the specific goal of enhancing equitable and inclusive learning environments for students. Through monthly meetings, workshops, and access to funding for teaching innovation, an annual faculty learning community of approximately six fellows research and discuss challenges to student learning, and explore equitable and inclusive pedagogies, all to inform the redesign of a course.

THRIVE Initiative

THRIVE is a college-wide initiative designed to foster achievement, belonging, mentorship, and transition. Historically, many low-income and first-generation students as well as those traditionally underrepresented on college campuses have described their higher education experience as one of survival. This initiative transforms the college experience for these students from merely surviving to thriving. THRIVE comprises a range of undertakings, including academic enrichment, service and leadership development, peer mentoring, and financial support. It draws on best practices for inclusive excellence and fosters innovative curricular and pedagogical approaches to instruction. THRIVE is located in Banister Hall and serves as both a point and place of connection for previously existing academic support programs, including Bowdoin Advising in Support of Excellence (BASE), Bowdoin Science Experience (BSE), Bowdoin Science Scholars, THRIVE Peer Mentoring, and the Chamberlain Scholarship, as well as the College’s Geoffrey Canada Scholars Program (GCS).

Field Stations

The Bowdoin Pines

Adjacent to the campus on either side of the Bath Road is a 33-acre site known as the Bowdoin Pines. Cathedral white pines, some of them 135 years old, tower over the site, which is a rare example of one of Maine’s few remaining old-growth forests. For biology students, the pines provides an easily accessible outdoor laboratory. For other students, the site offers a place for a walk between classes, an inspirational setting for creating art, or simply a bit of solitude. A system of trails within the pines makes the site accessible to students and community members.

Bowdoin Scientific Station

The College maintains an island-based scientific field station in the Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick, Canada, where qualified students can conduct research in ecology, animal behavior, marine biology, botany, geology, and meteorology. Every summer the station also supports a Bowdoin student as an artist-in-residence. Art projects have been in visual arts, poetry, fiction, science writing, film, and music. The Bowdoin Scientific Station (BSS) is located on a cluster of islands in the Grand Manan Archipelago known as Three Islands. The BSS consists of Kent, Sheep, and Hay Islands, which are owned entirely by the College. Kent Island, the largest of Three Islands (250 acres), was presented to the College in 1936 by J. Sterling Rockefeller. In 2003, the College acquired neighboring Hay and Sheep Islands to help preserve the unique environment offered by the three islands. The BSS has an international reputation, with more than 200 peer-reviewed publications, many of which are coauthored by students.

The BSS is a major seabird breeding ground. Its location makes it a concentration point for migrating birds in spring and fall. The famous Fundy tides create excellent opportunities for the study of marine biology. The BSS also features old field habitat for pollination studies and deciduous and coniferous forests.

Students from Bowdoin and other institutions select problems for investigation at the BSS during the summer and conduct independent fieldwork with the advice and assistance of a faculty director. Students have the opportunity to collaborate with graduate students and faculty from various universities and colleges. Three-day field trips to the BSS are a feature of Bowdoin’s courses in ecology and marine biology.

Schiller Coastal Studies Center

Schiller Coastal Studies Center occupies a 118-acre coastal site that is twelve miles from the campus on Orr’s Island, once known as Thalheimer Farm. The center offers the Bowdoin Marine Science Semester each fall, and interdisciplinary teaching and research throughout the College.

The center’s facilities include the Marine Laboratory, which allows researchers to study a diversity of benthic and pelagic marine organisms and systems. The Marine Laboratory includes an experimental seawater system designed to allow researchers to better study the effects of climate change and ocean acidification. A newly constructed dry-laboratory, with a separate dedicated classroom and research spaces, features light microscopy and molecular biology capabilities. In addition, there is a newly constructed Living and Learning Center with classrooms, meeting space suitable for groups of up to one hundred people, and residential cabins that can accommodate eighteen people. The site has 2.5 miles of coastline, a dock and pier facility, and access to a monitoring buoy and pier-integrated sensor array that provides continuous data from Harpswell Sound.

The center maintains a small boat fleet including the twenty-eight-foot research vessel, the R/V A.O.K., twenty-one-foot parker, sixteen-foot maritime skiff, and a thirteen-foot Boston Whaler. Other facilities include the off-the-grid Terrestrial Lab (T-Lab), a space that embodies the multidisciplinary approach of the center in that it is used as both an art studio and laboratory, and the Bowdoin sailing team’s Leighton Sailing Center. A centrally located farmhouse serves as a meeting space with a forty-five-person capacity and a facility for computationally demanding science laboratories. Classes, students, and faculty from all disciplines use the center for fieldwork, research, lab work, meetings, and recreation.

The Schiller Coastal Studies Center site is surrounded on three sides by the ocean and encompasses open fields, orchards, and old-growth spruce-fir forest. A 4-mile interpretive trail runs through the site, offering students and the local community a glimpse into the cultural and natural history of the property and surrounding coastal waters.

Student Fellowships and Research

The Office of Student Fellowships and Research connects Bowdoin students to merit-based academic experiences. Often, the application forms for these merit-based scholarships and fellowships require applicants to concisely articulate their past experiences, interests, and future aspirations. While sometimes challenging, this requirement encourages students to undergo a process of self-assessment and self-development. The Office of Student Fellowships and Research is committed to making the application process a worthwhile learning experience for all students, regardless of whether a fellowship is awarded.

The Office of Student Fellowships and Research works with students and alumni to identify and to apply for relevant nationally competitive fellowships and scholarships such as Fulbright, Marshall, Rhodes, and Watson. Numerous Bowdoin students receive these prestigious awards each year, enabling them to engage in a variety of activities including spending time overseas, conducting independent research, receiving support toward their undergraduate tuition, and attending graduate school.

The Office of Student Fellowships and Research also strives to inform all Bowdoin students about undergraduate research opportunities, primarily at Bowdoin but also at institutions across the country. Each year the College awards Bowdoin research fellowships to more than 200 Bowdoin students to carry out faculty-mentored research across all disciplines. A Bowdoin research fellowship allows a student to delve deeply into a research question and can lead to an enhanced independent study or honors project, coauthoring a paper with a faculty mentor, or presenting findings at a professional meeting. These research experiences enrich students’ undergraduate experience, make students more competitive for entrance to graduate school, and prepare students to successfully undertake graduate study.

Joseph McKeen Center for the Common Good

At the opening of Bowdoin College in 1802, President Joseph McKeen declared that:

…literary institutions are founded and endowed for the common good, and not for the private advantage of those who resort to them for education. It is not that they may be enabled to pass through life in an easy or reputable manner, but that their mental powers may be cultivated and improved for the benefit of society. If it be true, that no man should live to himself, we may safely assert, that every man who has been aided by a public institution to acquire an education, and to qualify himself for usefulness, is under peculiar obligations to exert his talents for the public good.

Encouraging students to live up to McKeen’s vision is a central mission of the College as a whole, and the Joseph McKeen Center for the Common Good provides opportunities for students to discover the ways in which their unique talents, passions, and academic pursuits can be used for the “benefit of society” through public engagement.

Housed in Banister Hall, the McKeen Center supports work that takes place across the campus, in local communities, and at selected locations around the world. The center assists student-led volunteer organizations that provide service to the local community through activities such as mentoring, tutoring, visiting with senior citizens, serving meals at the local soup kitchen, and working with immigrant populations in nearby Portland. Fostering student initiative and leadership, the center provides opportunities for students to propose and lead alternative winter and spring break trips that connect their peers with community organizations to address public issues in places ranging from California to Florida, and from Northern Maine to Puerto Rico. The center also houses the Bowdoin Public Service Initiative, a multifaceted program designed to explore ways to serve the common good through government and public service. In all areas, the McKeen Center encourages students to reflect upon their public engagement and connect these experiences to curricular and vocational interests.

In coordination with other departments, the center administers summer fellowships for students interested in nonprofit internships and provides funding for international service. It assists students in finding community partners with whom to engage in community-connected independent research and honors projects and helps identify courses at the College that provide context for the issues students address through their community work. The McKeen Center supports faculty in developing and teaching community-engaged courses that take students out of the classroom to conduct interviews, record oral histories, develop curriculum for schools, and collect scientific data in conjunction with community partners.

The center also encourages and helps sponsor campus-wide events that challenge students, faculty, and staff to examine the varied meanings of public service and the “common good.” These events include the What Matters dialogue series, the Leading for the Common Good seminar, and the Joseph McKeen Visiting Fellow program.

Information and Technology

Technology is embedded in the fabric of the Bowdoin College experience. The teams in the Information and Technology (IT) division work to empower the educational mission by engaging and collaborating across the College, seeking opportunities to enhance academic work with technology. Academic Technology and Consulting partners with faculty and students to provide tools, approaches, and experienced consultants to take advantage of technical resources in teaching, learning, and research. IT is continuously working across the College to evolve information security tools and practices to protect and ensure the integrity of College data and systems. The IT Service Desk supports Mac, Windows, and Linux computers and software applications; and answers questions and resolves software and hardware issues. Additionally, software support is available by phone twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and online video training courses are provided via LinkedIn Learning.

Bowdoin is one of the most robust wired and wireless institutions in the nation. Students and faculty have access to high-performance computing and over 600 supported software packages providing them with the latest tools to assist with their studies, analysis, and research. In 2020, Bowdoin launched an iPad Initiative providing every enrolled student with an Apple iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, and Magic Keyboard. Continuing into the 2021–2022 academic year, the iPad Initiative is the initial phase of the long-term Mobile Computing Program to make sure that every Bowdoin student has access to highly reliable computing resources.

IT provides an array of technology-enabled services including multiple academic computer labs, a twenty-four-hour public lab, over thirty public printers, and 3D printers. The College uses the Microsoft Office 365 suite of tools including email, OneDrive file storage, Microsoft Office, video conferencing capabilities, and Teams instant communication. There is a free equipment Loaning Center that includes video- and audio-recording devices, projection, laptops, digital cameras, GoPros, and newer technology for testing and evaluation. The campus cable television is provided via a streaming service to easily watch on laptops, tablets, and streaming devices.

IT is constantly exploring technology trends and working to provide accessible, secure, and stable services.