Timeline

1850-51

• Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose husband Calvin (Bowdoin ’24) is a professor of theology at the College, writes Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Appleton Hall and in her home on Federal Street— and shares the unpublished manuscript with Bowdoin students

1871

• Bowdoin President Joshua Chamberlain, in his inaugural address, asserts that Bowdoin should become a coeducational institution.

1876

• Bowdoin’s Summer Science Institute includes eleven women among twenty-seven students

1901

• Bowdoin grants 1^st honorary degree to a woman, Maine novelist and short story writer Sarah Orne Jewett. The College would grant honorary degrees to twenty-two additional women before coeducation would be established

1922

• Society of Bowdoin Women founded
  –   Constitution
  –   Kate Douglas Wiggin Room in 1968 and 2011
  –   Interview with Mary Lou Sprague, Society of Bowdoin Women, by Samantha Copland ’14

1943

• Marion C. Holmes, wife of Bowdoin math professor Cecil T. Holmes, hired as instructor of mathematics
• Ruth Y. Yeaton and Marguerite D. Little hired to teach meteorology in specialized military training program offered at Bowdoin during World War II

1969

• The Report of the Study Committee on Campus Environment (Pierce Report) recommends coeducation.
• The first women students arrive on campus via the 12 College Exchange Program.

1971

• Susan Jacobson, a transfer student, is the first woman to graduate from Bowdoin
  –  In Father’s Footsteps – Sue Jacobson and President Howell
  –  Orient: Bowdoin Graduates Its First Woman Student
  –  Susan Jacobson’s Commencement Address
• Bowdoin matriculates first coeducational class, with 65 first-year women and nearly 70 exchange and transfer women in attendance
  –  First applicants with Dick Moll
  –  Orient: Men’s College with Women
  –  Interview with Richard Moll, Head of Admissions
• Belinda Bothwick becomes first woman student to serve as residence hall proctor
• Bowdoin hosts first women’s sports event, a field hockey game with coach Sally LaPointe
  –    Orient: Bear Broads Bow
  –    Athletic Team Photographs in the Bugle

1972

• Bowdoin Women’s Association (BWA) founded
• Patricia “Barney” Geller becomes president of Psi Upsilon fraternity
  –  Social Life and Sexuality Focus Group
• 1^st coeducational housing opens on campus
• Bowdoin hires Helen Cafferty as the first female faculty member to go through the ranks (asst. assoc. full professor) at the College

1973

• Matilda Riley, hired as full professor in department of sociology, becomes first female full professor on campus
• Roz Bernstein becomes first woman elected to Board of Overseers

1975

• Graduation of first class of women who completed four years at the College
  –   Alumni Magazine Excerpt
  –   Deborah Mann Speaks at 1975 Commencement Ceremony

1977

• First women’s studies course offered, through German department

1980

• Women’s Resource Center opens at 24 College Street
  –   Bowdoin Alumnus Magazine: A Women’s Resource Center
  –   Interview with Linda Nelson ’83
  –   Women’s Resource Center Focus Group
• Gay Straight Alliance, which had been founded in 1979, receives its charter

1983

• Bowdoin’s first and only all-women’s fraternity, Alpha Beta Phi, is founded

1985

• Joan Benoit Samuelson (Bowdoin ’79) recipient of first and only Bowdoin Prize awarded to a woman since the prize’s inception in 1933

1988

• Minor in Women’s Studies established

1992

• Major in Women’s Studies established

1994

• The Bowdoin Alumni Council votes unanimously to adopt Anthony Antolini’s (Bowdoin ’63) revisions to the alma mater. The song’s new, gender neutral title, “Raise Songs to Bowdoin,” replaces “Rise Sons of Bowdoin,” and its new lyrics replace “the nurturer of men” with “our nurturer and friend”

1997

• Fraternities phased out, in part because of their incompatibility with coeducation

2002

• Professors Kristen Ghodsee and Jennifer Scanlon hired as first faculty members appointed full-time Women’s Studies Program

2005

• Women’s Studies Program changes name to Gender and Women’s Studies Program

 

2007

• Women’s Field Hockey team 1^st Bowdoin team to win NCAA National Championship

2010

• Gender neutral housing option implemented

2011

• Bowdoin celebrates 40 years of coeducation with a host of speakers, concerts, and events