Parents and Families

Trustee emeritus Gerald Chertavian '87

Gerald Chertavian ’87, founder and CEO of Year Up, will deliver a Common Hour talk Friday at 12:30 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium, Visual Arts Center.

Chertavian is dedicated to closing the opportunity divide in our nation. Combining his entrepreneurial skills and his passion for working with urban young adults, Chertavian founded Year Up in 2000.

His talk will be streamed live on the Bowdoin Daily Sun tomorrow. It will also be archived with other videos on Bowdoin Talks.

Before pitching your next idea, product, company or cause, New York Times bestselling author Daniel H. Pink suggests six alternatives to the traditional elevator metaphor of pitching that he says fit the rising culture of the digital marketplace more appropriately.

Harvard Magazine recently reported that the way we perceive and categorize others depends heavily on stereotypes of competence and if we see their personality type as warm or cold. The dichotomous relationships reveal whether  a certain type of person is more likely to be harassed or exploited, admired or resented.

Trustee emeritus Gerald Chertavian '87

Gerald Chertavian ’87, founder and CEO of Year Up, will deliver a Common Hour talk Friday at 12:30 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium, Visual Arts Center. Can’t make it to campus? Watch it here on the Bowdoin Daily Sun as the talk is streamed live. It will also be archived with other videos on Bowdoin Talks.

Bowdoin will stream Gerald Chertavian’s talk this Friday at 12:30 p.m. for the College’s regular Common Hour series.

Chertavian is dedicated to closing the opportunity divide in our nation. Combining his entrepreneurial skills and his passion for working with urban young adults, Chertavian founded Year Up in 2000.

Year Up is an intensive one-year training and education program that serves low-income youth ages 18-24, providing them with technical, professional and communication skills to help them make successful transitions to careers and higher education. With its annual operating budget exceeding $50 million, Year Up is one of the fastest growing non-profits in the nation. It has been recognized by Fast Company and The Monitor Group as one of the top 25 organizations using business excellence to engineer social change.

Microsoft is currently in the process of compiling a 3D map of the universe, utilizing telescopes to gather information and images. The map, called The WorldWide Telescope, even uses NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to provide users with a detailed view of any star, planet or galaxy known to man.  The research team has made the tool easy to navigate with a touch screen or desktop, making it a useful (and revolutionary) educational resource for students of all ages.

Do you appear to have low energy? Do you apply to jobs without attempting to network? Do you not put enough time into each job application? These, among other things, may be keeping you from getting a job. CareerRealism runs down “13 Reasons You’ll Never Get A Job (Or, 13 Ways You Could).”

This is a fun little video that showcases Portland in a whimsical way. Luke Plunkett uses tilt-shift photography to create the illusion that Maine’s largest city is actually a tiny town for toys.

One of Kathryn Byrnes’ spring courses, Mindfulness in Education, tends to provoke curiosity in those who come across it in the Bowdoin catalog or who hear about it from students in the class.

“Students talk about it and others wonder, ‘What are you really doing’? ‘What’s going on?’” Visiting Assistant Professor of Education Byrnes said, smiling. To satisfy those questioning minds, Byrnes encourages her students to invite a friend, teammate, professor or coach to sit in one class midway through the semester.

On one such day recently, Byrnes opened the class’s lab component — when students practice mindfulness twice a week before they launch into the 90-minute classroom analysis and discussion section — with a ringing tap to a metal bowl. She asked the group to sit in silence for a few minutes, then led them on a short guided meditation to help them concentrate on their breathing. “When we focus on our breath, we realize how busy our mind is all the time,” she said.

Read the full story.

Erica Berry

Berry, an English and environmental studies major, describes in her Udall application that she strives to “write narrative nonfiction about the intersections between the ever-shifting environment and humanity.” She points out that scientific developments on their own can be futile in prompting action. “The last decade has shown us that scientific fact alone cannot incite change, but I believe that narratives illuminating science, history and the stories of those people directly affected by environmental change can.”

Read the full story here.

Here’s one for the water cooler later: the protozoan Tetrahymena thermophila have diverse little lives in that they have seven gender options. Each one is able to mate with the other six. “It’s completely random, as if they had a roulette wheel with six numbers and wherever the marble ends up is what they get,” says Eduardo Orias, a UCSD professor emeritus, on Smithsonian.com.

We tell ourselves that owning up to our transgressions will make us feel better, so then why does refusing to apologize feel so good? In a recent study, researchers found that subjects who refused to say “I’m sorry” reported feeling much better than those who drafted an apology letter.

Drum and fife corps, 30th Maine Vol. Infantry (Hubbard Family Papers)

Bowdoin College is preparing Alumni College programming, “The Afterlife of the American Civil War,” a hands on study of culture, music, art and poetry following the Civil War, August 8-11, 2013.

As a part of this sesquicentennial commemoration, the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives presents the blog On this Day in Civil War History… as a daily reminder of what occurred 150 years ago.

You speak of your non-interference with my love-affairs. If all my friends could say the same – much bitterness of feeling would have been dispensed with. —C.H. Howard to his mother

Like a page out of science fiction, scientists are discussing the very real possibility of creating animals, such as woolly mammoths or dodos, from ancient DNA in a process they call de-extinction. While scientists and philosophers alike debate the pros and cons of such a feat, research comes closer to making it a viable reality.

ABC News has dived into the archives of the Museum of Hoaxes to find the best non-foolproof April Fools’ pranks. “Spaghetti trees” reportedly growing in Switzerland in 1957 had many would-be growers clamoring for their own pasta orchards. Other pranks that have successfully tripped people up include a state legislature that changed pi’s value to the “biblical value” of 3, and the development by researchers in Florida of pet Viagra, ABC News reports.

By Lidey Heuck ’13

It’s no secret that Bowdoin students have a variety of talents, skills and interests, but this weekend, the Class of 2013 learned that many of their classmates have special talents they don’t often have the opportunity to share. This weekend’s Senior Class Talent Show let students put their abilities — from the crafty, to the musical, to the just plain quirky — on display one last time before graduation.

Continue reading for the full story and slideshow.

Sailing — The Polar Bears are in action this weekend, at the Dellenbaugh Women’s Trophy race as well as the Ferrarone Team Race. In-progress scores are available here.

Softball — The Bowdoin softball team earned a sweep of Trinity on Saturday afternoon, taking a 6-5 win in the opener and a 9-1 victory in game two.

Baseball — The Bowdoin College baseball team split a Saturday doubleheader against host Trinity College.

Women’s Lacrosse — Ellen Halle scored five goals and added three assists to lift the Middlebury College women’s lacrosse team to a 15-10 win over Bowdoin in battle of top-ten squads Saturday at Ryan Field.

Men’s Lacrosse — Bowdoin goaltender Christopher Williamson made 18 saves, including a point-blank stop as time expired, to give the Polar Bear men’s lacrosse team a 7-6 win over Middlebury on Saturday afternoon.

Rowing — Bowdoin swept its opening day on the water with Clark and UMass-Lowell. Results are available here.

Tennis and Women’s Rugby — See scores here.

Last year, co-founders and roommates in NYC’s West Village, Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg, quit their jobs at NBC to launch their own news outlet in the form of a daily newsletter called “The Skimm.” Not even 12 months later, Forbes notes that the duo has transformed the way that  CEOs and stay-at-home moms alike are staying informed, ‘skimming’ the daily news and breaking it down into synthesized bits of digestible, relatable information for readers.

Approximately 80 Bowdoin employees participated in a recent walk-a-thon at Farley Field House to benefit the Bowdoin Staff Assistance/Paller Fund. The College agreed to make a donation of $1 per lap, and walkers cumulatively logged 1,030 laps around the track.

Fresh Florida oranges were used to track each lap and were donated to the Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program following the event. At the finish line, participants sipped hot chocolate and snacked on chocolate fondue. “It was a very successful event, which gave our employees an opportunity to make a contribution to two good causes, get some exercise, chat with friends, and enjoy the health benefits of chocolate,” said Michele Gaillard, associate director of operations for Bowdoin Dining.