Parents and Families

Cindy Cammarn ’14 and Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek, Photo courtesy of Jeopardy Productions, Inc.

Bowdoin junior Cindy Cammarn first had to make it through rigorous try-outs to qualify as a contestant for Jeopardy!’s College Championships, held this spring. She then went on to win the first round of competition to make it to the semifinals.

Even though she didn’t win her semifinal game, Cammarn gushed with enthusiasm recently as she described her experience on the famous game show. “It was 100% positive,” she said. It doesn’t hurt that she walked away with $10,000.

Read the full story here.

Although basements are one of the best places to stay safe during a tornado, fewer than one in 10 Oklahomans have access to cellars. This is because the soil in the state is mostly made of clay, and clay can be fickle as a foundation for buildings, The Atlantic explains. “There is a chance your house, its basement surrounded by glorified mud, will eventually simply topple into itself,” the magazine says.

Compounding the problem is Oklahoma’s bedrock below the clay, which is limestone. Drilling steel reinforcements into the bedrock doesn’t work well because dry limestone becomes flaky. Plus, a steel-reinforced shelter can cost thousands of dollars, much more than most families can afford.

Daisy Alioto ’13

Trying to convince National Public Radio to hire her for an internship this summer, senior Daisy Alioto — who will be the student Baccalaureate speaker Friday evening — eschewed the old-fashioned cover letter typed on heavyweight stationary.

Instead, she turned to Storify, an online site that lets users tell narratives by compiling posts from different sources such as Twitter, Facebook, online news sites, blogs and more. (Alioto jokes in her Storify letter that the reason for this was because Grumpy Cat — the sour-faced kitty that has become an Internet sensation — ate her cover letter.)

Read the full story here.

Fortune magazine reveals the 10 companies that are not only America’s largest corporations but also great employers. Once again, Internet juggernaut Google tops the charts at #1, with notoriously great benefits such as free haircuts, gourmet sushi and fitness centers galore. Indicators for the ranking include work-life balance, training, pay and turnover.

Robert Greenlee

In a Bangor Daily News article, Bowdoin Professor of Music (and Oklahoma native) Robert Greenlee tells the hair-raising story of his experience in the devastating tornado. Having waited out the storm in the cellar of his parents’ home, mere blocks from the worst devastation, he described the tornado as sounding like “a thousand freight trains combined with continuous explosions.”

William Head Williams

Two years ago, Bill Williams ’69 and his wife learned that their 22-year-old son, William, was addicted to heroin. Shortly before William’s 24th birthday, he accidentally overdosed. When it was clear William would continue in a persistent vegetative state, his family removed him from life support.

“In the beginning,” Bill Williams writes in his New York Times op-ed “Ending the Secrecy of a Child’s Addiction,” the family kept their battle secret, both to shield their privacy and also out of a sense of shame. “How could we possibly explain the corrosion in the midst of our well-reared, respectable family?” Williams writes.

Williams reflects on how he and his family learned to open up and share their story, which in turn prompted others to speak about their experiences with addiction, all of them “quite separate from a world racing on.” These stories need to be told, Williams insists. “Secrecy and anonymity are part of the disease, for addict and family alike,” he says.

Illustration credit: Abby McBride

Violinist Timothy Kantor ’07 is this week’s Young Artist in Residence at the studios of Performance Today, America’s most popular classical music radio program.

A music major while at Bowdoin, Kantor earned a master’s degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music and is now a doctoral candidate in violin performance at Indiana University. He was recently appointed concertmaster at the Evansville Philharmonic in Indiana, and he is a founding member of the Larchmere String Quartet.

Interviews and videos featuring Kantor are available as part of his profile on the Performance Today website, along with free downloads of performances.

As the Bowdoin women’s varsity four rowed up to the start line in Philadelphia at the Dad Vail Regatta, the officials seemed unsure of how to pronounce Bowdoin, despite the fact that the Bowdoin women’s team has medaled in this event five years in a row.

Bowdoin raced four boats at Dad Vail the weekend of May 11-12 and all of them reached the semifinals, putting them in the top third of competitors at the regatta. Bowdoin is small compared to many of the schools at the regatta, and rowing is a tiny program within the College.

Even though the starters called “Buhdoyne” to the line, none of that mattered as seconds later the crew of Mary Bryan (MB) Barksdale ’15, Catherine Yochum ’15, Courtney Payne ’15, Sam Burns ’13 and coxswain Bonnie Cao ’13 were off to a fast race that earned them gold at the largest intercollegiate rowing event in the United States.

Read the full story by Sam Burns ’13.

(L. to r.) Madeleine Albright, Jean Arasanayagam, David Blight, Rose Marie Bravo, Philip Conkling, C. Lee Herter.

Many of the College’s six distinguished honorary degree recipients will soon be on campus sharing with the Bowdoin community and visitors fascinating insights on a variety of topics. View the schedule of talks and read more about the honorary degree recipients.

Leon Gorman '56

After leading L.L. Bean for more than four decades and steering the outdoors store to its prominent spot as Maine’s most recognized brand, Leon Gorman ’56 is stepping down as chairman of the company. His nephew Shawn Gorman, great-grandson of company founder Leon Leonwood Bean, will replace him, the Portland Press Herald reports.

In 2010, Bowdoin College gave Gorman, a trustee emeritus of the College, The Bowdoin Prize, the highest honor the College bestows. The prize is awarded every five years “to the graduate or former member of the College, or member of its Faculty at the time of the award, who shall have made during the period the most distinctive contribution in any field of human endeavor.” Gorman was selected based on his distinguished career as a business leader, conservationist and philanthropist.

Jennifer Scanlon

The popular lexicon has gained a new catchphrase for women’s empowerment, thanks to the 2013 book Lean In by Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. A New York Times article includes input on the “lean in” phenomenon from Bowdoin professor Jennifer Scanlon, who said that the phrase “really resonated with so many women who supposedly live in a post-feminist age and yet find that there are obstacles.”

With a smart phone in hand and a beautiful campus as a backdrop, it’s easy to capture special moments on a daily basis. Students have been using the popular photo app Instagram to do just that all year long. Mariah Reading ’16, part of the Interactive Media Group’s student digital media team, collected photos tagged #Bowdoin and pulled them together for this collage, on display as a 10-foot poster in David Saul Smith Union.

Get a close-up look a the miniature portraits by viewing the poster in its full size.

Bowdoin’s ultimate frisbee team, Chaos Theory, finished its undefeated season with a 15-5 win over Williams College this past weekend at the Division 3 National Championship in Milwaukee, Wis.

Throughout the season, the team allowed an opponent to score in the double digits only once, Ultiworld reports.

In the final game, Hannah Young ’13 made six goals for Chaos Theory. The team’s captains, Julie Bender ’13 and Phoebe Aron ’13, figured Young scores nearly half of the team’s goals.

Read a pre-game story here.

Bowdoin will hold its 208th Commencement ceremony at 10 a.m., Saturday, May 25, 2013, and confer bachelor of arts degrees on 464 graduates.

Read about the big day, learn who’s speaking during Commencement Weekend and how to watch live online here.

Helen Newton ’14 started her lesson at the LeRoy Greason pool by instructing two novice swimmers in goggles and swim caps to sink to the bottom of the pool. They obliged without hesitation, but did emit shrieks as they entered the cold water.

Newton explained that she has her swimming students begin by sinking like stones as a way to develop their ease in water. “What I like to teach is comfort with the water,” she said. “You can control your breath and your stroke better when you’ve established authority over the water.”

Newton is one of six volunteer coaches — five Bowdoin students and one Bowdoin employee — who this spring, from March to May, offered six weeks of Women’s Swimming Lessons at the Farley Field House pool. The women-only program is in its fourth year, and is open to any Bowdoin student, staff or faculty member who does not know how to swim or who would like to improve their swimming skills.

Read the full story here.

Courtesy: Reuben Fischer-Baum/Deadspin

You may have heard that the highest-paid employee in each state is usually the football coach at the largest state school. but as Reuben Fishcher-Baum reports on Deadspin, this is actually a gross mischaracterization. Sometimes it is the basketball coach. Check out the infographic and see who’s scoring the big bucks in your home state.

Psychiatrist Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (1889-1957) insisted, back before the idea was popular, that “loneliness [which she described as the 'want of intimacy'] lay at the heart of nearly all mental illness,” Judith Shulevitz  writes in the New Republic. These days Fromm-Reichmann’s theory is gaining traction, backed by science. “Loneliness has now been linked with a wide array of bodily ailments as well as the old mental ones,” according to Shulevitz, and it can hasten death as much as smoking.

While there is thought to be a genetic predisposition to loneliness, the world also contributes to this condition. People who feel discriminated against are more likely to feel lonely than those who don’t; African-Americans are lonelier than whites; the less educated are lonelier than the better educated; and the unemployed and retired are lonelier than those with jobs.

In this video by Dave Wilkinson ’67, T’ai Chi Master Ken Ryan ’71 leads 200 students in a class on the Bowdoin Quad. The event was part of International T’ai Chi day, which took place this year on April 27.

The National Weather Service is getting a boost in computing power that will be a “game changer” for forecasting weather and tracking storms, according to a Reuters article.

Nicholas Miller ’02, of Bien Nacido Vineyards, Santa Maria, California. Photo by Chris Leshinsky.

In its feature “40 Under 40: America’s Tastemakers,”Wine Enthusiast Magazine has named Nicholas Miller ’02, of Bien Nacido Vineyards in Santa Maria, California, among the ”rising young stars who are changing the way the world drinks.”