Community Profiles

Kelsey Freeman

Kelsey Freeman

Class of: 2016

“Service has been the essential foundation of my Bowdoin career. It not only allows me to build my academic interests, but also provides a richer and more experiential understanding of the issues I run across in the classroom. Through the commitment to a common goal, service is a vehicle to connect with people of all perspectives and these connections remind me what it means to be fully human.”

Kelsey Freeman

Kelsey Freeman from Carbondale, CO, became involved with the McKeen Center her first year by tutoring at Portland Housing Authority. Since her senior year in high school, when she spent a month volunteering on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Kelsey has been interested in the relationship between Native tribes and the state and in culturally based indigenous education. Her sophomore year at Bowdoin, Kelsey lead the Alternative Spring Break Trip to Pleasant Point, Maine to work with Passamaquoddy Native students. She then received funding through the Mckeen Center’s Community Matters in Maine Summer Fellowship to intern at the Mitchell Institute in Portland, a higher-education research institute that provides scholarships to Maine students.

While studying abroad in Mérida, Mexico during her junior year, Kelsey taught English classes in an urban school and conducted a community-based research project on Mayan education in the Yucatán, which involved substantial time spent in a rural Mayan school and cultural community center.

Her junior summer, Kelsey received a Denning Summer Fellowship to work at the Native American Youth Association in Portland, Oregon. There she developed and taught culturally based summer classes for elementary and middle school students.

Bill De La Rosa

Bill De La Rosa

Class of: 2016

“Service for the common good should extend outside Bowdoin and well into the most marginalized corners of the United States.”

Abby Roy 2016

Abby Roy

Class of: 2016

Major(s): Sociology

Minor(s): Education

“My academic classes often ignite passions in me, but I truly become inspired by these passions when I participate in the greater community. I believe that education is the great equalizer, and my experiences with the McKeen Center have helped me to understand the intricate, complex, and unique problems that Maine students in particular face when they look at higher education.”

Abby Roy

Coming to Bowdoin College from Winslow, Maine, Abby Roy (Sociology/Education) was passionate about Maine and equity in education. Her first involvement with the McKeen Center was as a participant of the Community Immersion Orientation trip to North Haven Island. Within one week of being at Bowdoin, Abby knew that the McKeen Center would help her to find meaningful connection to the greater Bowdoin and Brunswick community. Soon after returning from North Haven, Abby signed up to be a Falcon Friend mentor at Bowdoinham Community School. The relationship that she developed with her fifth-grade mentee was both engaging and rewarding.

Midway through her first semester, Abby volunteered to host several students from local Maine high schools as part of the McKeen Center’s twice-annual Aspirations in Maine Day. This fueled her passions for Maine and education and set her on a pointed, meaningful trajectory of involvement with the McKeen Center. During the spring of her first year, Abby signed on as one of the student co-coordinators of Aspirations in Maine Day. At the end of her first year, Abby rechartered the Bowdoin Education Society in order to make issues in education more widely discussed by students across Bowdoin’s campus.

Abby applied for and received a Community Matters in Maine Fellowship and spent the summer after her first year as an intern at the Portland-based Mitchell Institute, where she worked with both the research director and the scholarship director to conduct research on education in Maine and work with scholarship recipients.  She continued this work during the summer of 2014, focusing on researching and implementing scholarship programs for at-risk students.

Before returning for her sophomore year, Abby knew that she wanted to help incoming first-year students to be inspired to get involved after participating in a Community Immersion Orientation trip, as she had been. She co-led the inaugural trip to Vinalhaven Island. This experience allowed Abby to see firsthand the challenges that come with organizing and leading group service projects.

Upon returning to Bowdoin’s campus, Abby became the first McKeen Fellow for Aspirations and BASE First-Year Programming. Part of her responsibilities include planning and running Aspirations in Maine Day. She also worked closely with the Office of the Dean of First-Year Students to act as a student-liaison for a cohort of over thirty first-year students who participate in BASE, a program specially designed to aid the high school to college transition.  Abby continued work as a junior.

Through the McKeen Center, Abby has been able to complement what she has learned in class with real-life experiences. Her involvement in the McKeen Center has helped her to merge her two passions – Maine and education – into one directed path.

Joe Sherlock 2016

Joe Sherlock

Class of: 2016

“The common good is about putting others first through often unnoticed, under-appreciated, seemingly mundane ways. I think contributing to the common good promotes a sort of personal growth where you begin to derive enjoyment from seeing others flourish.”

Kyle Nowak

Class of: 2015

Major(s): Physics

“My journey in service will never end. Many people aided me on my journey to get to where I am today. For that, I am thankful Now it is my turn. I want to give back.”

Kyle Nowak

In order to pursue a double major in Physics & Classical Archaeology, Kyle matriculated to Bowdoin from West St. Paul, Minnesota. During his second semester, he began working with the America Reads and America Counts program, which places college students in local schools to help students with reading and mathematics skills. Now, as a senior, Kyle leads the program as a McKeen Fellow training, scheduling, and engaging the tutors.

In other arenas on campus, Kyle worked with Computer Science students as a Quantitative Reasoning mentor. In addition, when people are requesting volunteers for a specific event, Kyle lent a hand, when available. Throughout his experiences, Kyle built an appreciation for the little gestures that can make a huge impact. An hour here or there can help serve many in the community as well as reduce the stress of many organizing the event.

To serve for the common good, for Kyle, means a variety of things. It can be a community coming together in order to progress their community. It can be one person striving to make the lives of many better. It can even be as small as teaching a fourth grader long division. All of these share the quality of making lives easier for one another and having fun while doing so.

Adrienne Chistolini ’15

Adrienne Chistolini

Class of: 2015

“The personal connections I have formed through my service experiences inspire me to stay dedicated to my philanthropic endeavors and reach higher.”

Adrienne Chistolini

From Paris, France, Adrienne (History/French) first became involved in service at Bowdoin through her Community Immersion Orientation Trip, focused on immigrants and refugees in the mid-coast region of Maine. Beginning her freshman fall semester, she joined the Common Good Grant Program, a student-operated community foundation that allocates grants to local non-profit organizations through a comprehensive grant-making process annually. After her first year sitting on the Grant Committee reviewing proposals and collaborating with her peers to decide how to dedicate the funds, the following year Adrienne participated as a CGG Development Committee member, soliciting donors to supplement the funding the Program already possessed. She currently serves as McKeen Fellow of the Program, helping to run both the grant and development processes as well as developing the philanthropic-oriented educational curriculum that is taught to the foundation board of twenty students.

Adrienne’s other service experiences includes mentoring a variety of programs including Portland Housing Authority, Harpswell Community School, and Big Brothers Big Sisters. She has also served as a Community Immersion Orientation Trip Leader focused on hunger and homelessness and as an Alternative Spring Break participant working with Habitat for Humanity in Mississippi.

Adrienne stays involved in service and community work through the knowledge that she is helping a greater good and making a positive impact, no matter the size. She has pursued summer internship opportunities in the field of philanthropy, including working at a community foundation, a non-profit organization focused on human rights, and a corporate social responsibility department at a financial services company.

Bowdoin’s philosophy surrounding the common good was one of the primary factors in drawing Adrienne to the College, and is one she strongly conveys throughout her work with Bowdoin Admissions as Co-Head of the Tour Guide Leadership Team. She hopes to expand her knowledge of this concept further through pursuing a career in philanthropy, specifically in corporate social responsibility, after graduation.

David Silverman 2015

David Silverman

Class of: 2015

“I see the common good as an opportunity to contribute to positive change in one’s community through open dialogue, thoughtful reflection, practical planning, and collaborative action.”

David Silverman

Originally from Westborough, MA, David initially became involved in service at Bowdoin his junior year through the Alternative Break programs. He participated in an Alternative Winter Break in Portland for refugee and immigrant education, continuing to mentor an ELL student through the Make It Happen program at Lyman Moore Middle School that spring. He was also a part of an Alternative Spring Break trip to Pleasant Point, ME, where he acted as a teaching assistant to a 6th grade classroom in the public K-8 school on the Passamaquoddy reservation. That year, David also began working with Bear Buddies as a mentor for local Brunswick children with varying special needs, a program which he now co-leads.
David received the Global Citizens Grant to travel to South Africa to work with the Amy Biehl Foundation, an education-based nonprofit that runs after-school programs to empower youth living in the poverty-challenged communities of Cape Town. David worked on many different projects toward the improvement of ABF’s HIV/AIDS Peer Education and Prevention, English Language Learning, and Environmental-Outdoor Education programs. David is now one of the student McKeen Fellows for the Global Citizens Grant program, facilitating conversations and preparing grant recipients for international nonprofit work.
As a proctor in Residential Life, a trip leader in the Bowdoin Outing Club (BOC), and a McKeen Fellow, David has utilized his leadership positions across campus to establish systems of collaboration and communication across organizational lines.
His junior year, David co-founded the BOC Dorm Reps program, a program for systematic collaboration between the Outing Club and Residential Life, with the intent of increasing the accessibility of the outdoors to all Bowdoin students. This program pairs trained Outing Club student leaders with interested proctors/RAs (and their affiliate dorms) in order to facilitate outdoor trips for first-years.
His senior year, while David has continued expanding the BOC Dorm Reps program between Residential Life and the Outing Club, he has also set a precedent for collaborative efforts between the Outing Club and the McKeen Center. His hope has been to bring the spirit of community engagement into the Outing Club, while creating more mechanisms by which those in the McKeen Center could connect with their target groups in fun outdoor settings. One result has been the creation of a series of new hybrid Orientation trips, named Service Adventure Orientation, combining the strengths of both organizations to enhance the experience of first-year students coming to Bowdoin. Another has been programming between the Bowdoin and Brunswick High School Outing Clubs with the Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust, with ultimate goals of providing an outdoor leadership experience to high school students and to initiate networks for future community efforts.

Greg Rosen

Greg Rosen

Class of: 2014

Location: Houston, Texas

The common good and a sense of community remain important to Greg after Bowdoin. Graduating in 2014 with majors in Government & Legal Studies and Sociology, Greg now works as a Public Health Associate with the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) in Houston, Texas. Greg’s position with the CDC is a part of a rotational program that aims to build the public health workforce in the US to provide training in state and local health departments and regional departments.

Greg Rosen

As a Public Health Associate, Greg spent one year working in infectious disease and disaster response by conducting epidemiological case investigations of food/waterborne, vaccine-preventable, and respiratory diseases. Since October 2015, Greg has transitioned into his new role as a Quarantine Public Health Officer with CDC’s Division of Global Migration and Quarantine, stationed at the Houston Quarantine Station at George Bush Intercontinental Airport. In this role, Greg responds to reports of illnesses and deaths on inbound international conveyances (both airplanes and maritime vessels) into the U.S., and enforces federal regulations governing the importations of potentially infectious material, including live animals and etiologic agents. Greg credits his background in Sociology for his interest in public health. As a student, Greg developed an interest in the social and environmental determinants of health among diverse populations. His coursework allowed him to cultivate the critical thinking that is essential to his current social science and epidemiological research with the CDC. Furthermore, his co-curricular experience with Peer Health assists him in extracting important information through goal-oriented conversations.

In Houston, he has joined a running club that allows him to meet a host of Houston residents of different ages, industries, and backgrounds. This, he says, is helpful in personal development as he is able to learn from people who have backgrounds and perspectives that are different from his.

Greg has also been able to engage with communities outside the United States. On a fellowship awarded to him post-graduation, he spent over two months in Cambodia working for a small local NGO focused on community development and projects in small agricultural villages. One of his most meaningful projects was a report where he interviewed individuals in the community who had been involved in sex trafficking prevention work. Greg’s supervisor presented his work to government officials, and a project was launched based on the service he had performed.

Greg urges Bowdoin students to identify opportunities and to not be afraid of raising their voices in asking for those opportunities. “They do not come around,” Greg says, “It’s up to your initiative to speak up and address your desire to take advantage of that opportunity.”

Beginning in August, Greg will be pursuing a Master of Science in Public Health (MSPH) in International Health, concentrating in Social and Behavioral Interventions, at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Lauren speigel 2012

Lauren Speigel

“There is not an easy or clearly laid-out career path if your goal is to work toward the common good (for the most part), so you have to be somewhat entrepreneurial and take some risks.”

Did your academic or extracurricular experience at Bowdoin influence how you are involved in communities now? If yes, how so?

Although the work I do now is not at all related to what I studied at Bowdoin–my concentration within the government department was comparative politics– I do think that my experience at Bowdoin influences my work. I have always been interested in working on issues related to social justice, but I think my time at Bowdoin showed me that there are many different ways you can approach that type of work, which has allowed me to have some really incredible experiences since I graduated from college. The school’s emphasis on furthering the common good reinforced a lot of my beliefs, and also helped me to identify practical ways to help others. The skills I developed at Bowdoin have allowed me to approach issues I am passionate about from an angle that I find interesting–researching and writing.

What’s been your favorite or most meaningful experience in public service since you graduated?

One experience that really stands out in the work I’ve done since graduating has been working with survivors of domestic violence and gun violence, primarily in lobbying their legislators on Capitol Hill. I worked with one woman in particular who had been shot by her ex-husband, and it was truly empowering to see someone who had been deeply impacted by gun violence have the courage to share her story with others and use it to effect positive change.

What advice do you have for students who want to work for the common good after Bowdoin

There are a lot of ways to go about accomplishing that goal! I know when I was in school I didn’t realize all of the different types of jobs that were out there, so one important thing is to really explore different options and think creatively about how you want to effect change. I’m always hearing how the field of public policy is growing, because people in our generation are pursuing careers geared toward helping others at an unprecedented level. There is not an easy or clearly laid-out career path if your goal is to work toward the common good (for the most part), so you have to be somewhat entrepreneurial and take some risks. I’ve also found that my interests have completely changed since I graduated from Bowdoin, so be prepared to discover new things and to not be worried if you take a little while to settle on the type of job that you find most engaging in an interest area that is appealing.