Report of the President, Bowdoin College 1989-1990

Bowdoin College Bowdoin Digital Commons Annual Report of the President Special Collections and Archives 1-1-1990 Report of the President, Bowdoin College 1989-1990 Bowdoin College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/presidents-reports Recommended Citation Bowdoin College, "Report of the President, Bowdoin College 1989-1990" (1990). Annual Report of the President. 99. https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/presidents-reports/99 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Special Collections and Archives at Bowdoin Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Annual Report of the President by an authorized administrator of Bowdoin Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Report of the President 1989— 1990 BOWDOIN COLLEGE Brunswick, Maine Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013 http://archive.org/details/reportofpresiden19891bowd Report of the President 1989— 1990 BOWDOIN COLLEGE Brunswick, Maine Composed by Partners Composition, Utica, New York Printed by Penmor Lithographers, Lewiston, Maine Report of the President To the Trustees and Overseers of Bowdoin College: I have the honor of submitting the following report for the academic year 1989 — 1990: This is the last report that I shall write as president of the College, and such occasions inevitably prompt mixed feelings. I am also aware that thirty-eight years is a long period of service to an institution, and if I can claim credit for some of the successes of the past, I must also ac- knowledge that new problems are sometimes best addressed by new lead- ership. The timing of my retirement, after a semester as acting president and nine years as president, is right both for me and for Bowdoin. If I had doubts about the timing for me, they would be banished by recalling a letter I received during the fall of Dean Kendrick's first year of retirement. He wrote: "I gather everyone is back that's coming back to the old rou- tine of orientation. It renews my enthusiasm for retirement, which lags a little now and then." This year has in many ways been a transitional time, as next year will also be. The search for my successor has understandably prompted the College to focus on the future, on the challenges to a good college in the 1990s, and the selection of Robert H. Edwards as Bowdoin's thirteenth president has assured many of us that those challenges will be well met. Since the future properly belongs to the president-elect, I would like to devote this report not simply to the year behind us, which is documented in various minutes and reports, but to those decades behind us in which I have been an observer and a participant in the life of the College. Except for striking instances of change, such as the move to coeducation in 1970, change has usually occurred in small steps, sometimes impercep- tible to those in residence. We think the College has always been "this way." Even new buildings soon appear to be part of an eternal landscape — as do the trees that surround them. Only the broader perspective re- minds us of where we have come from, thereby helping to explain who we are. The Bowdoin to which I came in 1952 was a fairly static college. Though change was taking place, the rate of change was much slower than it has been of late. Alumni of the 1940s and 1950s have no problem relating to the memories of alumni of the 1 9 20s and 1 9 3 os. That cannot be said for alumni of the 1970s and 1980s, although the underlying concerns of the College are still much the same. It is the expression of those concerns and their relative roles in the College that have changed. How this all happened was the subject of my remarks at the Alumni Convo- cation in June. Since many who will read this report were not there, I shall rely on that talk for some of the material that follows. In 1952, 68 faculty members taught 775 students; today 125 faculty members teach 1,350 students. Those 1952 faculty and students were served by a professional staff of 16; today about 1 10 do the job, or rather many jobs. The endowment then was approximately $12,000,000; today it is almost $150,000,000. The difference that gives us pause, though, is the difference in tuition: $600 in 1952; $15,045 in 1990. We could, of course, charge much less, and I have said so and been quoted widely to that effect. But I have also said that a Bowdoin run at half the present tuition would attract far fewer good students — if any. Why that is so and how it relates to the ways in which the College today expresses its concerns can only be understood by looking behind the figures. In that simpler college of 1952, each officer wore many hats, and of those officers, Philip S. Wilder probably held the record. He was the as- sistant to the president, the director of student aid, the director of foreign students, the director of the Bowdoin Plan, and the director of public events, one of whose duties included the corralling of faculty to speak in Chapel. He filled so many roles that he was listed on the Massachusetts Hall directory as simply "Mr. Wilder," lest there be no room on the sign for other names. In fairness to those who today fill some of those roles full time, one should note, for example, that there were not many scholarships to administer then. Endowed scholarships were few in number, and a tight budget precluded the generous use of unrestricted income for scholarships. Today, with our need-blind admissions practice, over 550 students apply for financial aid annually. Endowed scholarships and other student aid funds generate $3,800,000 of grant money, to which the College adds almost $1,000,000 of unrestricted income. There are also federal and state programs to administer, as well as various private aid programs and loan options to account for. Today two professionals serve the Student Aid Office, and as federal reporting requirements grow, the pressure to expand that office is growing too. The Bowdoin that I first knew had only one alumni and development officer — the alumni secretary. He ran the Alumni Office and edited the alumni magazine with the help of Bob Cross, then a full-time teaching fellow who supplemented his modest stipend with a "75 cents an hour job " at the Alumni Office. The alumni secretary also conducted the Alumni Fund, which in 1952 raised $88,687, ^ ar short of the $3,009,547 raised this year. And just as there was one alumni secretary, there was one secretary for the faculty. Those of us who were junior faculty seldom saw him. We typed our own letters and used our own stamps, another way of keeping college costs down. The role of the faculty was quite different in other respects, too. Few professors were scholars. Names such as Gross, Kirkland, Livingston, and Van Cleve stood out. Others in the 1960s and 1970s replaced them, and it is to such faculty members that the College owed its reputation as a place where scholarship should be taken seriously. Most faculty, however, devoted their time to teaching and to extracurricular duties. They taught three or four classes, not the two or three that faculty teach today. And they chaperoned dances. Faculty actually received their chaperon- ing assignments at the start of the year, and they and their wives were expected to appear at the proper time and place and in proper dress. Ad- vising extracurricular activities and fraternities was expected too, and almost everyone took his turn at leading Chapel. If necessary, faculty were also college counselors. For new faculty, committee work included the scheduling and sectioning committee, where late into the night instructors sat around a large table under the direction of Professor Holmes and placed students into balanced sections and reasonable schedules — a process a computer does in short order today. Faculty members also performed jobs that physical plant employees now handle. As a member of the Public Exercises Committee, I would show up for Commencement at First Parish Church with a gown and hood in one hand and a stepladder and hammer in the other, ready to post directional signs for parents and guests: North Door, South Door, East Door, West Door. A Ph.D. was important, for survival, but so was the ability to box the compass. And one did such chores year after year, for faculty served in junior ranks for many more years than the seven pre- scribed by A.A.U.P. principles today. The College was helped economi- cally, and the young instructor, through participation in many roles, en- joyed an immediate sense of the community and a feeling of being a part of it. Those who lament a decline in this "sense of community" must re- member, however, that it was maintained at the cost of significant salary increases and advancement for the instructors. Other efficiencies also helped the Bowdoin of the 1950s to pursue its goals at modest cost. The curriculum, for example, continued almost constant year after year; with many specific courses required for gradu- ation, traffic through the curriculum was so easily predictable that staff- ing could be highly efficient. Sabbatical replacements were not much of a problem, for sabbaticals did not begin until seven years after a teacher was promoted to associate professor. (Tenure did not technically exist then at Bowdoin, although de facto it did.) Today, of course, faculty members on tenure tracks are entitled to sabbatic leaves after four years, for the ideal instructor is the scholar-teacher, much as Roger Howell was, and the practices of the College must serve to make that ideal possible.

Load more