Bowdoin College

Bowdoin College  is a private liberal arts college located in the coastal Maine town of Brunswick. Founded in 1794, the college currently enrolls 1,839 students, and has been coeducational since 1971. Bowdoin offers 33 majors and four additional minors, and has a student–faculty ratio of 9:1. Notable alumni include Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Brackett Reed, Franklin Pierce, and Joshua Chamberlain.
Bowdoin is consistently ranked as one of the top 10 liberal arts colleges in the US, and was tied with Pomona as the fifth-best liberal arts college in the U.S. in the 2015 U.S. News & World Report rankings.
Bowdoin is located on the shores of Casco Bay and the Androscoggin River, 12 miles (19 km) north of Freeport, Maine, and 28 miles (45 km) north of Portland, Maine. In addition to its Brunswick campus, Bowdoin also owns a 118-acre (478,000 m²) coastal studies center on Orr's Island and a 200-acre (809,000 m²) scientific field station on Kent Island in the Bay of Fundy.
Contents
1 History
1.1 Founding and 19th century
1.2 Twentieth century
1.3 Recent developments
2 Academics
2.1 Rankings
2.2 Admissions
3 Student life
4 Postgraduate placement
5 Student organizations
5.1 Media and publications
5.2 A cappella
5.3 Other
6 Environmental record
6.1 Commitment to action on climate change
6.2 Energy profile
6.3 Energy investments
7 Campus
8 Athletics
8.1 Facilities
9 Sustainability
10 Bowdoin alumni
11 Bowdoin in literature and film
12 Presidents of Bowdoin
13 References
14 Further reading
15 External links
History
Founding and 19th century
Bowdoin College, circa 1845. Lithograph by Fitz Hugh Lane
Bowdoin College was chartered in 1794 by Governor Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, of which Maine was then a district, and was named for former Massachusetts governor James Bowdoin, whose son James Bowdoin III was an early benefactor. At the time of its founding, it was the easternmost college in the United States. It is thought that the Bowdoin seal, created in 1798 by Joseph Callender, was a sun because it was the first college in the United States to see the sunrise.
Bowdoin came into its own in the 1820s, a decade in which Maine became an independent state as a result of the Missouri Compromise and the college graduated a number of its most famous alumni, including future United States President Franklin Pierce, class of 1824, and writers Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, both of whom graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1825.
Bowdoin College Chapel, 2014
From its founding, Bowdoin enjoyed a reputation for academic rigor, and "catered very largely to the elite from the state of Maine." During the first half of the 19th century, Bowdoin became known for its "exacting" admissions requirements, which included, in 1854, a certificate of "good moral character" as well as knowledge of Latin and Ancient Greek, geography, algebra and the major works of Cicero, Xenophon, Virgil and Homer.
Bowdoin's connections to the Civil War have given rise to a quip that the war "began and ended" in Brunswick. Harriet Beecher Stowe, "the little lady who started this big war", started writing her influential anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin in Bowdoin's Appleton Hall while her husband was teaching at the College, and Brigadier General (and Brevet Major General) Joshua Chamberlain, a Bowdoin alumnus and professor, was responsible for receiving the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House in 1865. Chamberlain, a Medal of Honor recipient who later served as governor of Maine, adjutant-general of Maine, and president of Bowdoin, distinguished himself at Gettysburg, where he led the 20th Maine in its valiant defense of Little Round Top.
The college has other Civil War ties as well: Major General Oliver Otis Howard, class of 1850, led the Freedmen's Bureau after the war and later founded Howard University; Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew, class of 1837, was responsible for the formation of the 54th Massachusetts; and William P. Fessenden 1823 and Hugh McCulloch 1827 both served as Secretary