Clayton S. Rose (2015–2023)

Clayton Rose served as Bowdoin’s fifteenth president from July 1, 2015, to June 30, 2023.

He strengthened the intellectual mission of the College; vigorously championed “intellectual fearlessness”—the imperative of respectful engagement with ideas that challenge our own; significantly expanded the College’s work to create diversity, equity, and inclusion; increased access and opportunity for students; addressed the mental health challenge facing the current generation of students and young people; reimagined and significantly expanded career exploration and development for students; and enhanced the College’s leadership in sustainability. He also strengthened Bowdoin’s financial condition, with success in its most ambitious fundraising campaign, record amounts raised in annual funds, and one of the highest alumni participation rates in the country. His tenure also saw construction of essential new facilities for teaching, learning, research, residential life, and athletics, as well as a new home for Bowdoin’s storied Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum. 

During his presidency, overall applications to Bowdoin increased by 62 percent. Applications from students of color increased by 60 percent, while those from first-generation students increased by 129 percent. First-year students receiving financial aid increased from 45 to 49 percent, with the College expanding its aid program by eliminating the summer work requirement for many students, increasing aid to middle-class families, and extending “need-blind” admission to international students.

The THRIVE program was also established during Rose’s tenure to address the needs of students entering Bowdoin from significantly under-resourced high schools, and Bowdoin launched an effort to actively recruit veterans and community college students for admission to the College.

Three new facilities—the Roux Center for the Environment, the Schiller Coastal Studies Center, and the John and Lile Gibbons Center for Arctic Studies—opened during the Rose presidency. Along with the Bowdoin College Scientific Station established in 1936 on Kent Island in the Bay of Fundy, they positioned Bowdoin to significantly advance its work and leadership in the interdisciplinary and interconnected studies of the oceans, environment, climate, and the Arctic.

Rose also led Bowdoin through the COVID-19 pandemic, during which the College successfully delivered on its two goals of protecting the health and safety of the campus and larger Brunswick communities and providing a strong Bowdoin education to its students, while also continuing its work on the priorities for the future. In addition, no employees were laid off or furloughed, salary and benefit cuts were restored well ahead of peer institutions, and budgets were balanced using existing operating reserves without the need for extraordinary steps.

In addition, Rose launched the first comprehensive review in decades of board governance, resulting in changes that strengthened the engagement of the board of trustees with the long-term issues facing the College. The diversity of the board—across race, gender, age, professional background, and sexual orientation, among other dimensions—was also significantly increased, as was the diversity of the College’s senior staff.

Prior to arriving at Bowdoin, Rose served on the faculty of Harvard Business School, where he taught and wrote on issues of leadership, ethics, the financial crisis that began in 2008, and the role of business in society. He spent the first twenty years of his career in finance, retiring as vice chairman at J.P. Morgan, having run several global divisions of the bank. He earned his undergraduate degree (1980) and MBA (1981) at the University of Chicago. In 2003, following his business career, he enrolled in the doctoral program in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania to study issues of race in America, earning his master’s degree in 2005 and his PhD with distinction in 2007.

A member of the board of directors of Bank of America and chair of the board of trustees of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Rose returned to the faculty at Harvard Business School following his retirement as Bowdoin’s president.