Bowdoin to Award 499 Degrees at 221st Commencement May 23
By Bowdoin News
- Watch Commencement live online here.
- Schedule of events, answers to frequently asked questions, and other Commencement information here.
President Safa Zaki will preside over Commencement and award degrees on the terrace of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art on the Quad. In the event of very severe weather, Commencement will be held in Sidney J. Watson Arena.
Of the 499 graduates, fifty-two are from Maine. Forty-two states, as well as the District of Columbia, are represented, including Massachusetts with seventy students, California with fifty-five, New York with forty-eight, and New Jersey with twenty-five. Thirty-three graduating seniors hail from outside the US; forty-two countries and territories have citizens graduating from Bowdoin.
Commencement Speakers
Since 1806, Bowdoin has given the honor of speaking at Commencement to graduating seniors. Until 1877, every graduate had a speaking part. The custom of selecting student Commencement speakers through competition began in the 1880s.
Past speakers have included poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1825, House Speaker Thomas Brackett Reed 1860, Arctic explorer Robert E. Peary 1877, and biologist and researcher Alfred Kinsey 1916. This year’s Commencement speakers are Jickinson Louis ’26 and Kaya Patel ’26.
Other participants include Abby Matusovich ’26, who will deliver greetings from the State of Maine, and Reverend Julia Bruce Barnes, who will deliver the invocation. Class president Timothy Ignacio ’26 will also speak.
Honorary Degrees
During Commencement, Bowdoin will award honorary doctorates to longtime Maine island health care provider Sharon Daley, author and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich ’14, and economic policy thought leader Cecilia Elena Rouse.
Commencement History
Bowdoin College was chartered in 1794 and held its first Commencement ceremony in 1806 in the second meetinghouse of First Parish Church across the street from the College. There were seven graduates in the Class of 1806. The following year saw the smallest graduating class in the College’s history, with just three members in the Class of 1807.
While the honorary degree recipients will not give speeches at the Commencement ceremony, they will deliver talks, which will be streamed live.
Friday, May 22
- A conversation with 2026 honorary degree recipient Sharon Daley will take place in Kanbar Auditorium, Studzinski Recital Hall, beginning at 1:30 p.m.
- Cecilia Elena Rouse, president of the Brookings Institution and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, is to deliver the keynote address at Baccalaureate in Sidney J. Watson Arena, beginning at 4:30 p.m.