Academic Programs

This is the promise of an enduring and transformative liberal arts education—built on the traditions of personal learning, disciplinary knowledge, and continuous faculty innovation.

This campaign is our chance to show the world that Bowdoin will always double down on the power of the liberal arts. We will work to hone our curriculum for a changing world—as we've done for hundreds of years—in areas that include interdisciplinary scholarship, global perspectives, and quantitative and digital literacy.

The largest portion of academic campaign funding, $30 million, will create faculty chairs and endowed leadership positions, including five for existing faculty and five for new hires in areas of curricular priority.

In order to attract and retain the best faculty across disciplines, we must continue to provide these scholars, performers, and artists with research funding, professional development, travel support, and the opportunity to experiment and collaborate across disciplines and focus areas.

A Bowdoin education has always emphasized connections—between ideas, disciplines, fields of thought, people, and moments in time. As shifts in technology, the environment, and culture create waves of change in our society and in our global economy, workers and leaders who make these connections have never been more essential.

To be a critical thinker in the twenty-first century is to navigate well in a data-rich world. Raising $20 million will enable the academic program to prepare for the evolving intellectual and ethical challenges that face our students and graduates in the changing world ahead.

Make your campaign gift

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  Bowdoin Funds Twenty-Two Ambitious Student Projects Across the Curriculum

  Each fall, Bowdoin's Office of Student Fellowships and Research awards grants of up to $2,500 to students pursuing semester- or yearlong faculty-mentored research in a range of fields.
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  Social Impact Dinner: How the Common Good Plays Out

  A special dinner connects students with alumni who carry out socially impactful work in a variety of settings. The aim is to demonstrate the many ways in which Bowdoin graduates can incorporate the common good into their professional lives.
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  Bowdoin Announces Four Appointments to New Chairs Honoring Distinguished Black Graduates

  Bowdoin has appointed a cohort of four accomplished scholars to new endowed faculty professorships honoring distinguished Black graduates of the College. These new positions, which are fully funded by donors, will focus on the interdisciplinary study of race, racism, and racial justice and across themes of environmental justice and belonging, citizenship, and freedom.