Focus Group – Forty Years: The History of Women at Bowdoin

Women’s Resource Center Focus Group

This discussion brought together four Bowdoin women who all played important roles in establishing Bowdoin’s still vibrant and active Women’s Resource Center. Jan Brackett and Bridget Spaeth ’86 each served as directors for the WRC, and Linda Nelson ’83 and Laura Barnard ’83 were early members of the Women’s Resource Center Collective that founded the WRC in 1980. All four women share stories of triumph and love in the face of adversity and discrimination. Their discussion offers unique insight into what it was like to be a woman at Bowdoin in the late 70’s and early 80’s – the good, the bad, and the unexpected.

Audio: click title below to begin listening

Trustees Focus Group

Several women from the first coeducational classes at Bowdoin now serve on the Board of Trustees. In a focus group, trustees Michele Cyr ’76, Ellen Shuman ’76, Ann Kenyon ’79, and Debbie Barker ’80 discussed their experiences as students in the early years of coeducation at the College, and as alumnae with strong attachments to the school. Click the audio link below to hear their reflections on their triumphs and struggles as undergraduates; the changes that took place in the campus’s academic and social life; and why Bowdoin inspires such fierce loyalty in its alumni.

Audio: click title below to begin listening

Trustees Focus Group - Shelley Cyr '76, Ann Kenyon '79, Ellen Schuman '76, and Debbie Barker '80

Faculty Focus Group

This discussion involved four professors who arrived on Bowdoin’s campus either shortly before or after the College began admitting female students in 1971. If you are interested in hearing how Professors Vail, Cafferty, Cerf, and Potholm recount their experiences of Bowdoin’s transition to coeducation with regard to classroom dynamics, course content, student-professor relations, and faculty/departmental interactions, click on this audio link here and/or view these selected video clips.

Audio: click title below to begin listening

Social Life and Sexuality Focus Group

This discussion brought together three women of the first two classes of coeducation at Bowdoin. These women, Elissa [Liddy] Berry (’75), Barney Geller (’75), and Anne Ireland (’76), describe their social experience during their four years at Bowdoin. These women did experience hostility from some students on campus due to their gender, but the stories they share for the most part express a strong sense of belonging. Listen to the audio to hear their experiences with fraternities, sexual harassment and simply what it was like to be a woman at Bowdoin in the 70s.

Audio: click title below to begin listening

Athletics Focus Group

For this discussion, three women who were among the first female athletes at Bowdoin came together to share their stories. Click the audio links below to listen to Karen Brodie Doyle, ’79 (field hockey, diving, lacrosse), Sally Clayton Caras, ’78 (field hockey and lacrosse), and Ruth Spire Small, ’77 (lacrosse and swimming), discuss their experiences as female student-athletes during the initial years of coeducation at the College.

Audio: click title(s) below to begin listening