Academics

A Liberal Education at Bowdoin College

In 1906, Bowdoin's president, William DeWitt Hyde, wrote "The Offer of the College":

To be at home in all lands and all ages; to count Nature a familiar acquaintance, and Art an intimate friend; to carry the keys of the world's library in your pocket, and feel its resources behind you in whatever task you undertake; to make hosts of friends...who are to be leaders in all walks of life; to lose yourself in generous enthusiasms and cooperate with others for common ends – this is the offer of the college.

This offer spelled out a vision of the aspirations of a liberal education appropriate to the early 20^th century. Many elements of it still have currency one hundred years later. At the beginning of the 21^st century, a vastly changed College in a dramatically altered world provides a related but expanded offer – of intellectual challenge and personal growth in the context of an active and engaged learning community closely linked to the social and natural worlds.

A liberal education cultivates the mind and the imagination; encourages seeking after truth, meaning, and beauty; awakens an appreciation of past traditions and present challenges; fosters joy in learning and sharing that learning with others; supports taking the intellectual risks required to explore the unknown, test new ideas and enter into constructive debate; and builds the foundation for making principled judgments. It hones the capacity for critical and open intellectual inquiry – the interest in asking questions, challenging assumptions, seeking answers, and reaching conclusions supported by logic and evidence. A liberal education rests fundamentally on the free exchange of ideas – on conversation and questioning – that thrives in classrooms, lecture halls, laboratories, studios, dining halls, playing fields, and dormitory rooms. Ultimately, a liberal education promotes independent thinking, individual action, and social responsibility

Since its opening in 1802, Bowdoin has understood the obligation to direct liberal education toward the common good. In the 21st century, that obligation is stronger than ever. The challenge of defining a “common good” and acting on it is highlighted, however, in an interconnected world of widely varied cultures, interests, resources, and power. To prepare students for this complexity, a liberal education must teach about differences across cultures and within societies. At the same time, it should help students understand and respect the values and implications of a shared natural world and human heritage. By doing so, a liberal education will challenge students to appreciate and contend with diversity and the conflicts inherent in differing experiences, perspectives and values at the same time that they find ways to contribute to the common project of living together in the world.

Although a liberal education is not narrowly vocational, it provides the broadest grounding for finding a vocation by preparing students to be engaged, adaptable, independent, and capable citizens.A student in a residential liberal arts college is removed from many of the immediate responsibilities of daily adult life, making the four years of education extraordinarily privileged ones. Such an education, however, must engage that world -- both contemporary and historical, both local and global. This engagement comes through individual and group research, service-learning, volunteer activities, summer internships, off campus study and more.

The success of a Bowdoin education is evident in the capacity of graduates to be informed and critically analytic readers of texts, evidence and conclusions; to be able to construct a logical argument; to communicate in writing and speaking with clarity and self-confidence; to understand the nature of artistic creation and the character of critical aesthetic judgment; to have the capacity to use quantitative and graphical presentations of information critically and confidently; and to access, evaluate, and make effective use of information resources in varied forms and media. These fundamental capacities serve as crucial supports for a commitment to active intellectual inquiry -- to taking independent and multi-faceted approaches to solving complex problems; knowing how to ask important and fruitful questions and to pursue answers critically and effectively; sharing in the excitement of discovery and creativity; and being passionately committed to a subject of study. Graduates should thus have the ability to engage competing views critically, to make principled judgments that inform their practice, and to work effectively with others as informed citizens committed to constructing a just and sustainable world.

The Bowdoin Curriculum

Bowdoin students must design an education in the context of their own developing goals and aspirations and in relation to the College’s vision of a liberal education, its distribution requirements, and the requirements of a major field of study. The distribution requirements encourage exploration and broaden students’ capacities to view and interpret the world from a variety of perspectives; the major program challenges students to develop a deeper understanding and self-assurance as independent and creative contributors to an area of study. Throughout the four years students will build intellectual capabilities, self-confidence as independent thinkers and problem-solvers, and come to know the pleasures of discovering and developing proficiencies in new areas of knowledge. A liberal education founded in both breadth and depth teaches students to learn how to continue learning as the world changes and demands new perspectives, knowledge and skills.

The College’s curriculum introduces students to academic disciplines that bring conceptual and methodological traditions to bear in teaching disciplined inquiry, analysis, argument, and understanding. Students must choose or self-design a major in a department or program as a way to engage a discipline in depth. Furthermore, they should distribute their courses across the curriculum in order to broaden awareness of the varying ways that academic fields make sense of the world.

The College requires students to seek breadth in their education through a modest set of distribution requirements that should stimulate students to explore the curriculum more widely on their own. These requirements should be completed with courses taken at Bowdoin by the end of the fourth college semester. To graduate, a student must also complete an approved major.

1. One course on Mathematical, Computational, or Statistical Reasoning. These courses enable students to use mathematics and quantitative models and techniques to understand the world around them either by learning the general tools of mathematics and statistics or by applying them in a subject area.
2. One course on Inquiry in the Natural Sciences. These courses help students expand their scientific literacy through an acquaintance with the natural sciences and with the types of inquiry in those disciplines, developed by engagement in active and rigorous study of scientific problems.
3. One course on Exploring Social Differences. These courses develop awareness, understanding and skills of analysis for examining differences such as those in class, environmental resources, ethnicity, gender, race, religion and sexual orientation across and within societies and the ways that these are reflected in and shaped by historical, cultural, social, political, and economic processes.
4. One course on International Perspectives. These coursesassist students in gaining a critical understanding of the world outside the United States, both contemporary and historical.
5. One course on the Visual and Performing Arts. These courses help students expand their understanding of artistic expression and judgment through creation, performance and analysis of artistic work in the areas of dance, film, music, theater, and visual art.
6. One First-Year Seminar. These seminars provide small, intensive learning settings to allow students to engage significant ideas and problems and to expose them to various scholarly approaches. Seminars support the development of intellectual capabilities such as clear writing, analytic thinking, argumentation, information seeking and assessment, oral presentation, and critical reading.
7. By the end of the senior year, one course in each of the following three divisions of the College:natural sciences and mathematics, social and behavioral sciences, and humanities (in addition to the required course on the visual and performing arts). Students may meet this expectation by counting courses taken to fulfill one of the requirements 1. through 4. and 6.
8. Completion of a major. Major programs provide students the opportunity to pursue an academic discipline or an area of inquiry in substantial depth.

Planning a Course of Study

The most fulfilling liberal arts education cannot be fully planned before the first day of class because such mapping would not permit the many new paths for exploration that students discover as they learn about unfamiliar fields, find exciting questions and ideas, and uncover unanticipated interests and talents. Nor can a challenging education emerge by selecting courses one by one each semester; a liberal education is much more than the sum of thirty-two courses. Bowdoin College permits a wide set of choices to enable students to broaden their views of the world and of their own talents and interests and to deepen their knowledge and capacities. Designing an education thus requires self-examination, careful thought, substantial flexibility, some intellectual daring, and the wise counsel of academic advisors.