Historical Information

1806: The first Commencement was held in the second meetinghouse of First Parish Church across the street from the College.

1824: In Portland, an honorary degree was awarded to The Marquis de Lafayette.

1852: Commencement during Bowdoin's semicentennial celebration took place in a large tent on the quad. Franklin Pierce (1824) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (1825) were in attendance.

1875: On the day before Commencement, at the fiftieth reunion of the Class of 1825, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow recited his poem "Morituri Salutamus," an elegiac reflection on youth and age.

1890: This class was the first to introduce the custom of wearing academic regalia (caps and gowns) at Commencement.

1909: Admiral Robert E. Peary (1877) received an LLD in honor of his reaching the North Pole.

2005: Bowdoin celebrated its 200th Commencement.

2020: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Bowdoin held its first virtual Commencement ceremony.

The First: Seven graduates in 1806.

The Smallest: Three graduates in 1807.

Best Known: Class of 1825 with Hawthorne and Longfellow.

First Black Graduate: John Brown Russwurm, 1826.

First Woman Graduate: Susan D. Jacobson, 1971.

Until 1877, every graduate had a speaking part. Addresses were given in Latin, German, and occasionally Greek or Hebrew. The custom of selecting student Commencement speakers through competition began in the 1880s.

In the early years, students who had received degrees from one institution could also receive reciprocal degrees from another. In 1806, thirteen Harvard graduates also took Bowdoin degrees. Faculty also frequently added Bowdoin master's degrees to their list of credentials. Bowdoin currently awards several honorary degrees each year. There are approximately 130 living Bowdoin honorary degree holders.

Bowdoin now confers only the Bachelor of Arts degree. To date, 32,566 degrees in academic programs have been awarded.

From 1821 to 1921, Bowdoin's Medical School of Maine awarded degrees to more than 2,000 doctors.

Bachelor of Science degrees were awarded from 1875 through 1883 (including to Robert E. Peary in 1877) through a scientific department inaugurated by President Joshua Chamberlain; and again from 1914 through 1949 to those whose programs emphasized Mathematics over the Classics.

Bowdoin also granted a total of 274 Master's degrees in Mathematics between 1962 and 1974.