Remote Work Group (August 25, 2021)

To the campus community,

I am pleased to announce that Mary Baumgartner has agreed to chair the College’s working group focused on remote work.

Mary, who serves as vice president for communications and public affairs, is taking the reins from Brian Robinson who has chaired this effort since it was formed last spring. As many of you know, Brian is leaving the College at the end of August to pursue a leadership position in human resources at Gorham Savings Bank. I am grateful to Brian for getting this important work off the ground and to Mary for her willingness to step in.

Beyond her many responsibilities at Bowdoin, Mary is also a moderator for Collaborative Gain, a community of senior business leaders from across the country who gather twice a year to share best practices and to help each other innovate and to build customer-centric organizations. Remote and hybrid work continues to be a topic in the discussions Mary moderates, and she will bring these perspectives into the conversation here at Bowdoin while also guiding the group to focus on the unique aspects of remote work at an educational institution.

I want to emphasize that while each senior officer has designed hybrid work models for their divisions this fall, there are many remaining considerations and unanswered questions about how best to build these models at Bowdoin for the long term. The working group will benefit a great deal from its recent Remote Work Survey—which had an impressive response rate of 70 percent—and from the experience of the hybrid models in place this fall. If you have additional suggestions or ideas for the group, please submit them here.

I expect to receive the group’s report and recommendations by the end of the fall semester, and the senior staff and I will use these to consider a new campus-wide policy on hybrid and remote work. The group’s full report will also be made available to the community.

All the best,

Clayton