Youtube daily Oct 4 2017

Good evening, everyone.

Thank you for joining us.

My name is Whitney Soule.

I'm the dean of admission and financial aid at Bowdoin College.

And welcome to those of you who are coming from the bay area.

I understand we had some people facing traffic to get here I think there are some folks still

in the traffic who will come in while we are talking.

So want to welcome folks watching in the live stream.

I know there are some live stream viewers who are local but others who are in other

states and wide group of actually other time zones, countries and continents.

So we really are talking to a people today and as you know from your invitation, today

what we are doing is elevating the conversation about the liberal arts, the power of its flexibility

and the preparation that it provides to the students as they leave the experience on campus

and into the world.

So to do that we are going to be engaging with a group of alumni all of whom have a

degree from a Bowdoin as undergraduate students and a liberal arts experience and they are

going to reflect on what that experience was like as a student and what that has meant

for them in their lives since.

So that is one part of the conversation.

I also know that there are a lot of you in here who are high school students who are

thinking about applying to Bowdoin or perhaps colleges like Bowdoin and are here to learn

a little bit about our school but other also what colleges like Bowdoin are about.

So I'm going to spend a little bit of time today talking about the Bowdoin experience

as it is for students, the selection process and what you might expect about how we would

support you financially at Bowdoin.

We are going to do this chronologically kind of in reverse order.

We're going to start talking about outcomes.

We are going to be working with our graduates and they are going to be talking about their

experiences and where they are now.

And then we are going to back up and I'm going to spend some time talking about the prospective

student experience, the application process and financially.

So before we get to a long on the far along in going to ask each of our alumni guests

to introduce themselves, tell us what your they graduated what their major was and where

they are now.

Hey everyone, my name is Adrian Rodriguez, class of 2014.

I majored in government and legal studies with a minor in Latin American studies.

And I am currently at Google.

Hi everyone.

Clara Lee, class of 2003.

Double majored in English and psychology, currently at Apple.

Skye Lawrence, graduated in 2010 and I majored in anthropology and minored in Spanish and

I'm working at biome analytics.

I am Seth Glickman.

I double majored in math and computer science class of 2010 and I'm now at Google.

My name is Wills Dawson could in the class of 2013 double majored in math and computer

science and minored in theater and I'm now working at talk to.

You might be wondering who the guy at the end of the stage here is.

That is president Clayton Rose who is going to moderate the conversation among our alumni.

And he's actually perfectly well-equipped for this conversation especially when you

hear what his career path has been.

So Clayton earned his undergraduate degree and MBA from the University of Chicago and

went into a very successful 20 year career in finance.

Sound like a very direct route.

But for about 20 years he decided to do something different.

He changed his mind.

Went back to school.

Earned a Masters and PhD in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania where he was focusing

on race in the United States.

And without became a faculty member at Harvard business school.

And in that role he was focusing on issues of ethics and leadership and business.

And then he changed his mind again about what he wanted to do.

And so in 2015 we were fortunate enough for Clayton to join us as Bowdoin's president.

So, Pres.

Rose.

Thank you, Whitney.

So welcome everyone.

This is just a really exciting afternoon.

Really excited to be here with you.

I want to thank our five alumni for taking time to be here with us.

Let me just make a few comments to warm us up and then we will jump right into the conversation

here.

We are here in some ways to talk about the liberal arts in the context of a career and

I want to take that apart a little bit.

Let me start with what the notion of the liberal arts is all about.

And a liberal arts education.

I think about that in at least three different ways.

First it is broad and deep at the same time.

Broad in the sense that over four years you acquire some sense of how to think about the

world from the perspective of the humanities, philosophy, history literature languages,

from the perspective of the social sciences, economic government political science.

The natural sciences, biological biology and so forth, the physical science, quantitative

disciplines like math and statistics.

So a broad sense of how to think about issues and challenges and problems and questions

of the world.

Then there is the deep, which is picking a major or often as you have heard two majors

and really going deep on those particularly in the last couple years as a student.

And it's not about acquiring a specific set of information, although some of that takes

place.

It's really about acquiring a lens with which to see the problems of the world and really

refining that lens and how one thinks about questions and those lenses are different whether

you are thinking about them from a mathematical perspective or a biological perspective or

English perspective or historical perspective.

And so there is the broad and the deep that comes with a liberal arts education.

The second is that there is a very specific set of general skills.

It sounds like an oxymoron a bit, that one acquires in the liberal education, skills

of critical thinking, the ability to analyze, to reason well, to use data and fact, to be

able to learn as you move through life and to be able to communicate well both with the

written word and the spoken word.

And all of those as I think we will hear more about are incredibly important skills for

success in life.

And then the third way that I think about the liberal arts is the power that it brings

to each of us as individuals and that comes in three categories.

The first is that, and I think this is actually most important.

I was the product fortunately of a great liberal arts education at the school was different

from Bowdoin but in many ways what I got out of it is exactly what our students get out

of it today.

The first is that it is an education that allows us to live deeper, richer more fulfilling

lives to understand ourselves better as human beings and to be able to understand the world

and our place in it better.

The second is that it in allows us to engage in civic life in a more thoughtful and robust

way, and in the world we are in today and the a society we are in, engaged in today

having more thoughtful engaged individuals in civic life is incredibly important.

It's probably been never important, more important than it is today.

Interestingly, the world liberal and liberal arts that is not a political statement although

there's a lot written about that today, it comes from the Latin liberalis.

Hope those of you who are Latin students think that I got close to that, but it comes from

an idea derived in Roman times about what education was appropriate for individuals

who are going to engage in the appropriate civil life of the Roman, Rome and the Roman

Empire.

The kind of education they needed to be able to do that.

So this has been the idea of liberal arts, what is an education that is appropriate for

an informed citizen.

And the third category of benefit that comes from liberal arts education revolves around

success and satisfaction in your professional life.

The things that you choose to do with your career after you leave school and graduate

school if that is what you choose to do.

And I use the word success and satisfaction to liberally.

How well you are doing your job and are you progressing in the way you want to engage

in kind of problems that you want to deal with.

But that is one doing work that you want to do, that allows you to engage in, to the fill

your passions and go to work every day, or most every day and feel like you're doing

something that is important to you and important more broadly beyond yourself.

And liberal arts education gives you the opportunity to think about those three things.

The kind of human experience, the civic experience and your professional experience.

But let me finish by saying, coming back to the notion of what we are doing here.

We have teed this up as a discussion about the liberal arts and careers, it is a little

bit funny to be talking to folks in high school thinking about college but what you're going

to do in your career and to the extent that you've decided I really want to do this I

would suggest you think again.

I don't even know what I want to do when you want to grow up so you shouldn't even think

about what you want to do.

And so this is a gateway, a window to thinking about the power of a liberal arts.

To think about the possibilities of what is out there and to do that in the context frankly

of what is going on in Silicon Valley and entrepreneurship, and to the most exciting

as you all know from living here, the most exciting parts of the economy and society

today within the US and globally.

And so, to understand the power and relevance of the liberal arts through that lens is an

interesting way to think about Bowdoin, and more broadly other college and university

experiences that you are looking at and thinking about.

We hope many of you will think seriously about Bowdoin and I suspect you would not be here

in the room or live streaming if you are not.

But you will think about other colleges and universities as well and if this session helps

you refine and come to a place that allows you to make the best decision that speaks

to you in a deep and profound way that is perfect and it is mission accomplished for

us.

So I'm now going to return to my seat here and try to facilitate the conversation and

Clare has agreed to be the first victim of a conversation.

We are going to try to mix it up a little bit and talk to you and together about some

of the questions that relate to Bowdoin liberal arts and life after school.

So, Clare, as you reflect back on what your liberal arts education, both the general education

at Bowdoin and specifically your majors, how do you think about what was most important

in what you got out of your experience at Bowdoin and the work that you do today?

So I think that's a great question and when I think about it as I mentioned before I was

both an English major and a psychology major.

As part of my English education I had a great opportunity to write a lot and also to mentor

other students.

I was part of a group called the writing project and I was actually paid to run writing workshops

and also kind of guide my peers through outlining a writing process.

And that then led to a couple internships during my four years at Bowdoin.

One at a software company and another with a publication in Seattle.

And you know, that writing experience is something that pops up over and over in my career.

You know, I spent four years in finance and when I enter that field I was part of a large

class of recent graduates and you know, my comfort with writing and, really put me in

a position to I think help a lot of my peers out.

There were always a stable requirement for analytical skills but in terms of actually

communicating a result and talking about your findings that really is what takes it to the

next level.

So again in finance I found myself guiding and leading others.

I spent a couple years and consulting and you know, I feel like the writing skill is

really what helped me differentiate from a lot of other people.

As you know it's a very competitive field and so how you break down and how you explain

complex analytical problems can really set you apart from others.

And then lastly in my current job at Apple I'm in marketing.

And there are always situations where we have an agency and a MARC O MM team full of experts

working on copy there were several instances where the SVP

of product pulled me in and said hey, do you think this copy makes sense you think it is

going to resonate with people, and to be thought of as a writer because of the experiences

I've had in college and throughout my career has really been something very positive for

me, and a very consistent thread through my career.

I think in a more general sense the Bowdoin experience is one where I gained, one that

really emphasizes an importance for respect for the individual.

In a general sense whether I'm managing a team of two, a team of five, a team of eight

or 25, that emphasis on respecting the individual is something that is very important to me

and as you think about a group of people and their relative strengths and what they bring

to the table you're always trying to position people where they can not only contribute

to the greater good, but shine in their own right.

And so I would say during my Bowdoin experience you know, I never felt like a number.

I never felt like I was part of a machine.

My education was very individual and very personal.

My relationships with my professors were the same way.

And that is in turn how I choose to give back to my teams.

Anyone else wishing to add here?

I can call on you, but anyone who's dying to jump in with a thought.

Seth you are looking at me, but I will call on you.

You have a very different background than Clare, right?

Yes so I was a double major in math and computer science.

And I am...

I don't know.

I'm currently a software engineer at Google and the computer science definitely helped

with that, all the classes in computer science, but to kind of mirror what you are saying

it is not so much about individual, like there were some classes devoted to individual languages,

or algorithms, but a lot of it was learning how to approach these problems in this realm.

And math was very a similar thing.

I almost in a PhD program for math but then I did not do that.

I entered the workforce instead.

But it is a very similar sort of thing.

It's like, here is a problem.

How do you get to the answer and how can you put this logical sort of proof together.,

And that has been very helpful.

As well.

So the problem solving that underlies the education rather than the specific

And for sure, some of the extracurricular stuff that I was doing helped as well.

We may come back to that in a minute.

Wills do you want to ? I was going to jump in on the extracurricular

stuff.

We will go for that.

It's really about the extracurriculars, not the classes, that was a joke.

I also doubled a major in math and computer science like Seth.

So a lot of the same computer science stuff and I would agree with them very much so.

And I think the classes and the way that Seth described them and in terms of giving you

resources and tools in terms of solving the problems laid a good foundation and the extracurricular

on top of that, while I was at Bowdoin there was a research program in the computer science

program called Robo cup and so we basically programmed these humanoid robots that are

about 2 feet tall to play soccer by themselves and that was a lot of fun.

They fell down a lot, but we got back up and kept going.

But it was the kind of problem where there is no right answer.

There is no solution set at the back of the book.

There is nothing, people around the world, we are competing with graduate schools from

around the world, flying all over the place, and there is no right answer and the tools

that Bowdoin provides in terms of how to learn, how to grow, how to solve these problems and

then being able to actually do that was really cool.

Experience.

Skye, how do you think about creativity and problem-solving as a kind of sensibility or

skill that comes out of the education you got?

So anthropology is not immediately what you immediately think of when you think of a technology

company, but it actually has been one of the most useful set of skills that I learned when

I learned majoring in anthropology.

So I work in a healthcare company.

Well, it is a company that does analytics for cardiovascular teams in hospitals.

So it is a very narrowly focused company, and a big part of what I do is I present data

to clinicians and physicians and also learn from them what they want to see when they

want to evaluate quality and cost internally in the hospital.

My anthropology degree is so central to my ability to be successful in doing that.

I mean, you just think of a cardiovascular team in a hospital in the same way you think

of a different culture.

It is a whole different language.

A different way of being, different personalities, and the skills that I was able to gain in

research especially have served me incredibly well.

At Bowdoin one of the coolest classes I took was a research sort of project, so it was

a class around research methodology and you actually had to pick a culture in Brunswick

Maine that you wanted to go and kind of deeply understand.

So you go and observe and interview different people and I actually picked tattooing and

piercing in Brunswick Maine, and went to a tattoo parlor and was able to sit in and have

these conversations with people who are so, had really different lives than what I was

leading at Bowdoin.

And learned, with the guidance of some unbelievably accomplished and wonderful professors how

to really engage and learn about and understand that culture.

And so for me I find that anthropology is, I mean it is a big part of why I am able to

do what I do.

Interesting, Adrian, last but not least?

I guess my major and overall experience at Bowdoin, one thing I can say looking back

that I got is just the ability to learn how to learn.

And so this notion of going into the tech world, where there are a lot of problems that

we want to solve, a lot of issues that exist, a lot of different, a lot of dilemmas that

we just have to deal with and being able to learn how to tackle them, how to strategically

think of them and narrow down the problem and therefore have a plan to execute it and

use the resources available at your disposal.

Those are things you kind of have to do at Bowdoin depending on whatever class or requirement

that you have, any curricular activities that you have.

In every scenario at Bowdoin you are forced to engage with different issues, connections

with individuals and these are things that are easily translatable to the workspace,

especially in tech.

So here is an unfair question that I just thought of actually.

But, what do you think was more important in the process of becoming an educated person,

what you majored in, or the general Bowdoin experience you engaged in.

Let's keep it on you, Adrian yeah.

I think for me was the general education.

I went to Bowdoin without really not knowing what I wanted to majoring in.

I ended up majoring in government because I had no clue what I wanted to do so I took

a few courses.

I took an intro to international relationships with [Lemar] Harry.

I loved that class.

And the following semester I ended up taking more government classes and by that point

the major just became that.

And I was glad because there was a genuine interest in that field.

I was not thinking how am I going to translate this into a career.

Well, I started doing that my junior year.

I was getting close to graduating.

And the time I was just interested and generally curious on that major.

But the overall experience, the people that I met, the conversations that I had, the individual

interactions that I created with my professors as well as studying abroad and all these different

activities, all of that played a major role in the person that I am and the sort of work

that I'm doing hopefully and I will continue to do moving forward.

Seth, what do you think about that?

Yeah, Bowdoin shaped me tremendously for sure.

I've been out of school now for seven years.

Class of 2010.

And thinking about the person that I was in 2006 when I started at Bowdoin it is amazing.

It's really amazing.

The person that I was in 2010 and it is all good things too.

[laughter] Definitely all good things.

I would also say that one of the really great things for me at Bowdoin was that I think

all of my best friends, my close friend group were outside of my majors and that was pretty

incredible.

Just to be in that context with people from all sorts of different interests who had different

sets of knowledge and just the conversations and just hanging out with people is wonderful

and I'm still friends with them.

I went to a bunch of their weddings this summer actually yeah.

Other thoughts on this question about major versus the general experience.

Skye, you want to...?

Sure, yeah.

So one of the amazing things that Bowdoin offers is there are these fellowships and

grants you can apply for over the summer.

So if you maybe don't want to do a traditional internship or I guess even if you do, there

are funds that Bowdoin has that you can apply for.

And so one summer I was really interested in public health and you can implement an

effective public and what the roadblocks are that you run into as you try and do that.

And so I apply for one of these grants and got money to go down to Ecuador to work on

a water purification project.

And it was an amazing learning experience, mostly because the project was very poorly

managed and needed a lot of work to kind of get it going again.

But I mean, to be you know, I got to speak Spanish all summer.

I was confronted with these challenges that I never would have been confronted with otherwise.

And came back a really different and very...

A much more confident person as well.

You know, I mean you are confronted with challenges and you overcome them and all of a sudden

you start to have more faith in your own ability and the fact that Bowdoin offer something

like that over the summer I just think it's totally wonderful.

And yeah.

Definitely changed my life.

Adrian you want to...?

I want to take something that to Seth said about how different he was before Bowdoin

and after and also the fact that he had a lot of folks that came from different backgrounds

around him.

That diversity is something that was very unique to me.

I think when I think of my experience before Bowdoin, I'm the first one in my family to

go to school.

And so going to a place like Bowdoin was life-changing because I was exposed to so many people, bright

people from all different backgrounds.

One of my best friends is from Uganda and New York.

And Muslim.

Something that I was never really exposed to growing up.

And when I think about the friendship that we have it would not be possible without me

going to Bowdoin.

And meeting somebody of his capabilities and brightness.

Then I think that for me, the general environment that you have when you are exposed to people

from different backgrounds that are extremely bright and have so many different ideas and

experiences is something that allows you to grow and see the world as bigger than the

current world that you live in.

Clare, let me come back to you having started with you and shift gears to the world of technology

that exists here broadly of Silicon Valley and the bay area and think about the two forces

at least as we see them from a college and university perspective of engineers and coders

on the one hand and humanists and social scientists on the other hand.

Can you talk a little bit about your own sense of what is the role for each in this world

that we live in here and how this work might be changing and the influences that either

side may be having over the next five or 10 years?

Sure absolutely Obviously all these, these two different roles are critical in maintaining

a balance between the tech industry.

You know I think I would approach this a little bit differently and say that the way that

I see the industry going you know, the two main things that I think are most important

at this part are truth and privacy.

And aims to be lucky to work for a company that values those both.

But what I think it means for people entering the industry is, you really need to come at

things from a human perspective.

And it is very easy to forget especially when you work for a giant companies or not giant

companies that are just doing things that are changing the world.

There is that ambition.

There is a certain level of aggressiveness always to be pushing things forward and I

think it is important to have people, whether on the coding side or on the business side,

it's really important to have people step back and look at the big picture and ask what

is the right thing to do.

Are we doing the right thing for the consumer, are we doing the right thing for society in

general?

And I think in the future it will be just as important what you do not do as a company

versus what you do do.

So, how does this relate back to the Bowdoin experience?

I think critical thinking is something that is emphasized in all of your classes.

Class sizes are super small so you cannot get away with not critical thinking.

There's no space for someone who just wants to sit in the back of the classroom and not

talk.

That will not happen.

And so whether you like it or not, you will be involved in a discussion and there were

many experiences I had at Bowdoin where a student or myself would ask a question and

that would become the discussion for the next 30 minutes.

And I think at Bowdoin if you like that, or if you develop a joy for that it will really,

that eagerness to ask questions and make sure you ware on the right path will serve anyone

right in the tech industry.

Well, let me ask you a question, and follow something that Clare said.

How do you think about this challenge from your perspective here?

You're in the tech engineering industry.

I think it ties back to the value of a liberal education.

For my perspective the most powerful coders programmers and engineers that I have encountered

have been people that can communicate, that can think in terms of the things Clare was

talking about.

I like to think of myself as one of those people who knows, but it lets you, and something

Skye was talking about, about communicating the effectiveness of your work and how that

is really important.

And so as an engineer being able to both interact with the people that went to an engineering

university that have come out of that program with really technical skills, but then also

being able to go the other way to a marketing person or salesperson and be able to explain

what's going on without getting too deep technically is very powerful.

And definitely I thank a liberal arts education like Bowdoin's that I'm able to do that at

least somewhat effectively.

Seth, do you think, sticking with the technical side here on this question, do you think,

or have you been confronted with ethical humanistic challenges in the context of the technical

work that you do every day and how do you think about that?

I have not come across an awful lot of those in my personal work, but I see it certainly

in the company.

I work at a very big company that has a lot of products that are used by millions, and

I think billions of people and there's a tremendous number of these questions.

But I wanted to, before I forget, I wanted to revisit something I think you are asking

in the last question of where the balance is in terms of the coder image and the social

scientist image and where that might be shifting in the future and I think that the image so

far in Silicon Valley, the hero image has been the coder.

It is somebody who can write a piece of software that runs 50% faster than the competition

or somebody who can shave off some requirements or what not.

But I don't know how, I mean, and that is really admirable.

That is an important and very difficult skill.

However, I don't know how crucial that is to every company.

I don't know how crucial that will be going forward either.

And so, this is going to be an imperfect metaphor because I'm working on the spot here, but

almost like if you're driving a car you don't necessarily need to know how to build a car

to get a lot of use out of it.

It is good to know when things ding, good to know what that means, how to put gas in

it, you have to understand some things but not necessarily know how to build the fastest

car.

And I think the part of the skill set that is going to be critical going forward is some

understanding of some software stuff, but also more person stuff because most of your

job is going to be dealing with people and most of your company is going to be interacting

with people and so that is, I think a very important thing going forward.

Skye, how do you bridge the gap to understanding what you need to understand and what you don't

in the world of cardiovascular therapy, because you're not a cardiovascular surgeon.

So I work at a company that is very very small.

Actually we just hired someone else, we are five people now which is really big.

And basically, it is, what everyone has talking about has been talking about I started out

there at a very entry-level person.

I was buying office furniture for the company but in a small company you get a lot of opportunity

and if you have the ability to think critically and have the willingness to just jump into

things, which I think Bowdoin really nurtures.

It is a safe place to try all these things that you would not try otherwise, you can

figure it out and succeed and it is a little bit of fake it till you make it.

I think that is one of the meanings that I understood early on.

How did everyone not know that I didn't know what I was talking about.

Is that a class that we teach at Bowdoin?

I guess, I think actually I learned it at Bowdoin, and I also learned it after Bowdoin

on my Watson Fellowship which I was very fortunate to get

To earn.

You did not get that.

You earned that.

And could apply to because I went to Bowdoin and I had kind of a liberal arts education

that I had.

The Watson is one of the most prestigious undergraduate fellowships you can receive.

So you earned that.

Thank you.

But I think Bowdoin really teaches you to jump into things and try things and be inquisitive

and speak up when you don't think something is right.

I think that inquisitiveness is a real key to what has enabled me, I mean I have learned

a lot of what I need to know on the job and if you think dynamically I think it serves

you enormously well.

Adrian, if you could go back and do one thing differently with the four years on campus

what would it be?

Probably not stress as much as I did about choosing a major.

I think if I think about my sophomore fall, that's when you are supposed to make a decision,

By the end.

I was putting so much pressure on myself talking to so many people, we had many conversations

about what I should do and how this major is going to lead to a career and if I don't

then I'm not going to have a job and That's not what I was saying.

I was listening.

I think when I think back I appreciate the Bowdoin experience more generally as opposed

to just a specific major.

I think that we all mentioned various reasons why that is the case.

I also would say that thinking back, college is more than simply what you study.

The people you interact with and not just the opportunities inside but outside the classroom

that are out there everyone should make the most out of these and that means if you have

the opportunity to study abroad, do it.

If there are volunteer opportunities go ahead and take them.

There are a lot of clubs that exist that will force you to interact with people that are

different from you and have different opportunities.

That's an opportunity outside the classroom.

Take that.

I think my freshman year I was a bit hesitant and I was all about, mostly focused on my

grades and kind of missed the opportunity to see Bowdoin for more than just simply a

place to take classes.

I would say that.

Clare, how about you, what is the one thing you might do differently?

Oh, I probably maybe would have minored in Russian.

[Laughter] I really enjoyed those classes.

I don't know, there are so many choices at Bowdoin that is the tough part and I think

you see most of us on stage have two majors or we have got a minor and that is something

that is really easy to do.

I think and someone mentioned, they look back and realize, oh I almost have a major.

That's a great benefit.

Both my husband and my brother went to large universities where it was impossible to do

that within a four year period.

Whereas at Bowdoin it just happens.

I think going back I would have minored in Russian.

How about you, Seth?

I am skipping Skye for now.

Yeah well, this is kind of, I have given this some thought.

I've definitely spoken with Skye about this before, but similar to what you were saying

I would probably have tried to minor in music and take more varied classes.

I did the requirements, and I did take a couple of music causes toward the end of my college

career and really enjoyed them and wish that I had taken more of them.

Wills, why did you minor in theater?

Because I did not want to have to take any other electives.

[Laughter] As somebody who has two majors and a minor at Bowdoin hearing a lot of desires

for that, I was strapped for time to try and finish all of the classes that I had to do.

I barely fit in all of my distribution requirements and had I wished for something to do over

again I almost would have wished I did a fifth year just so that I could take more breadth.

But, why I minored in theater, I had been doing theater all my life.

Acting.

In high school I switched over to the tech side and did lights and sound so thanks guys,

I appreciate it.

And at Bowdoin, that was really easy to do.

At the first academic fair I met Michael Shafir who is the lighting guru at the time.

And he kind of took me under his wing.

I did stagecraft for the theater department and my freshman and ended up doing a work-study

there which was a great opportunity.

Both to get some spending money and also to major in the craft.

And I think in the spring I ended up doing that, so it's all good.

I am skipping Skye I will come back to you, and others can come in behind Skye, but if

you look into your crystal ball about the world of work five years from now, six years

from now when our students will be wandering into the world after college, what would be

the most important skill, the same skill that is required of you when you graduated and

what do you think is the one most different or the one we need to be thinking about going

forward?

That is such a hard question.

That's why I asked it.

I am a really big believer in gumption and grit and I think if you, I think you're going

to learn what you learn at Bowdoin, and you will have the wonderful experience that you're

going to have.

You will make these wonderful friends.

But ultimately I think it's hard to get a job when you're first graduating.

You've never really had a real job full-time before.

And so I think that determination and the ability to just be, I just really am a believer

in determination.

And I think if you, the things that Bowdoin teaches, you challenge yourself, you meet

all these wonderful people that are different from you and have experiences that you never

could have had otherwise, I think all of it is preparation and challenges not just in

the workplace, but in your life generally, and I also think ethics.

I really liked what you said about ethics or whatever the whatever you said, truth and

[inaudible] but I think being ethical and being determined are skills too frequently

lacking in this world and Bowdoin does such a good job.

It's part of the offer of the college, and it's such a big part of common good day, and

that was a really rambling response It was a hard question.

Clare, what would you say?

Networking.

So the Bowdoin network is something that I tapped into over and over and over again.

I myself am part of the Bowdoin career advisory network, and I love it when people approach

me but I also approach people and the great thing about the network is you get a 100%

responded to me which is really quite amazing.

I'm part of another network as part of my graduate school and they don't have the same

response rate.

So the Bowdoin network is super responsive.

It is global.

I've had several experiences in Asia where I have been there for one reason or another

and I wanted to work or be part of a startup and the Bowdoin network helped me do both.

So it is global, it is responsive.

People are great and they will the extra step to help you even if they do not know you.

And actually my first experience was I was recruited by Dick Carlin, class of 73.

I think the Bowdoin network is invaluable.

Adrian?

Yes to the network.

My sophomore year, my first official internship was with George [Shortavian] an ultimate role

model of mine.

I think he had a board meeting at Bowdoin and I ran into him, was telling him that I

was interested in Europe.

And he was like all right, perfect.

And I had an amazing internship that summer.

And I think along those lines, adaptability is one thing that I would say was extremely

important when you think about the industry that we work in.

A lot of things change, and they change extremely fast.

And I think Bowdoin can help you with that because I know a lot of my friends who thought

they were one major but ended up changing and so you need to be able to think about

that when you're in the real world you have to adapt to different work or learning styles

and when you think about that in the learning, the real world you have your first job at

you realize it's not what you want you might have to pivot into something different, how

do you learn to do that again.

You need to be adaptable to those changes.

That is much, much more likely to be the case then someone who stays in one job for a long

time.

Can I just add one thing?

You may.

I think also the ability to see the big picture and the small picture, the big details and

the little details is so important or useful, at least in my job you have to understand

really deeply the data but you have able to extract kind of high-level themes that are

meaningful for the people that you are walking through the data.

And so I think that ability to go detail small and detail big I think is an important skill

for the future Wills, what would you say ?

A lot of the excellent points.

I would echo the network.

I got a job, I was calling around all the alumni, I think I talked to really chill originally

from the bay area, and I was trying to come back here for work and was calling a bunch

of people trying to say, hey, what was your experience.

How did you get a job back in Bay Area and ended up talking to a god name guy name John

Todd from class of 05.

And he was talking about how to go about finding a job what to look for from companies and

at the end he said oh, by the way we are hiring if you're interested.

And three weeks later I had a job.

And definitely I love the grit, determination and the adaptability bit as well.

I don't know if I can cover it better.

So Seth, last word on this one and then we will get into the last question here.

Just a really quick thing about similar to determination I guess.

Looking back on my sort of history, looking back I've been sort of lucky, but I have kind

of made, I've kind of made room for the luck to happen.

No step of that was a given but there are definitely ways that they could not have happened

had certain conditions not been met and so part of the determination bit is making room

for these things to be able to happen whether that is contacting people in your network

or picking up a skill or an internship I mean, we were on a hike earlier today and we were

talking with a friend who mentioned he got his first job but he applied for it, had an

interview and got the interview and waited outside this guy's office.

He figured out the schedule when the interviews were going to end and waited outside of the

office for the guy to walk out.

...to be like hey, whatever happened we had a great chat, but I just wanted to and you

know it worked out.

It is a little bit like it's a raffle you want to buy as many tickets it will help your

own odds.

So that's what I would say.

I will, I will add my own answer my own question, but it builds on several things that several

folks have said here.

I think that risk-taking and the risks that will be necessary knowing that there are different

ways to get Down a path but you won't know what happened what's going you will never

know what's going to happen but have to tolerate and have the willingness to fail and one of

the things about our students and the students here and on the live stream is that you have

not failed much.

You've been incredibly successful at everything you've done and that's fabulous but there

will come a time when you have to take choices that will raise the risk of doing that.

Figure out how to pick yourself up and keep moving forward is part of the grit and determination

that we were talking about.

Let's end on this question.

And I will go around and with you, Clare.

So you get the last question.

But Adrian let me start with you.

Adrian, what is your best memory of Bowdoin?

Spending four months in Europe going to study abroad.

Where was that?

Barcelona.

Cool Wills I think mine was going to Istanbul for the

Robo competition.

It was fun watching the professor especially dressed up in tourist clothes and walking

around.

Seth?

I think one of my best experiences at Bowdoin was getting involved with the radio station.

The student radio station.

I made really good friends and it was a really wonderful time.

> Sky??

I really loved almost everything.

But one thing that I really have such fond memories of and feel such appreciation to

a specific professor for was, my senior year I did a, like year long honors thesis and

it was again, like research-based and I mean, it was just an amazing experience.

I got to do things that I never would have done.

Was also on the tattoo theme.

And the professor that I had was just I mean, she was just amazing.

She was an amazing woman and is an amazing woman.

And was a real mentor to me.

That last year.

Clare?

So I was part of the Asian students Association for all four years that I was there.

And every year we put together an annual show which was a third comedy, third design and

a third dance.

And so every year that was probably the most exciting thing but specifically senior year

was the year where everything went wrong.

But it was still great.

And it was just such a joy to be able to kind of showcase all of these talents of the student

body and also throughout the rest of the year to see different student groups bring their

best on stage as well.

Well thank you.

Adrian, Clare, Skye, Seth and Wills.

Five amazing polar bears.

And we are really grateful for your willingness to share your wisdom and thoughts and talk

about Bowdoin and your life after Bowdoin and so forth.

It's been really quite interesting.

We could keep going here but I'm going to turn it back to Whitney.

They here because some of the questions may come up.

Could we just had a hand.

Give a hand.

[Applause] I had no idea what Clayton was going to ask

them exactly or how they might respond but they did such a good job I'm not really sure

what I'm supposed to talk about now.

That was really fabulous and covered a lot of the points that will be coming in the next

15 minutes or so.

I do want to make a point that for the person who figured it when the interviews were over

and waited outside to make a case, that does not work in admissions.

It does not work like that.

But we are going to talk about how it does work so that we can help you out a little

bit.

I also think I neglected to welcome in my earlier comments on high school counselors

who are both present and listening in on the live stream.

And so I hope that the topics that have been covered so far in the conversation are helping

you as you guide students in the process but also what we are going to be covering next

which are some key things about the college as well as the application process and financial

aid.

So come on the screen I think it was Skye who made reference to the offer of the college,

but this is really important.

It is a real thing.

It is a poem and an adaptation of the original pump was penned by our seventh president in

the mid-19th century.

So this was the idea of what liberal arts was.

Way back then.

And the applicability of it.

And it is really relevant now, it is the underpinning of how we think about delivering education

as a liberal arts experiment and I'm quite certain it will be relevant in perpetuity

some going to read it you just because it is small print and also for the folks in the

live stream I want them to hear it.

So the offer of the college says to be at home in all lands and all ages.

To count nature a familiar acquaintance.

And art and intimate friend.

To gain a standard of the appreciation of others' work as well as for the criticism

of your own.

To carry the keys of the world's library in your pocket and to feel its resources behind

you in whatever task you undertake.

To make host of friends who are to be leaders in all walks of life and to lose yourself

in generous enthusiasms and to work with others toward common ends.

This is the offer of the college for the best four years of your life.

It is a pretty important poem and I would also add the best four years of your life

so far because there's a lot of life afterward where these experiences will carry you forward

as you have heard from the graduates.

It is important to start with that particular if you are not family with Bowdoin because

if you are comparing slippery life experiences from one school to another there are a lot

of things we have in common, liberal, residential, students knowing one another, students knowing

the faculty well that is the kind of thing in which we participate but what we are going

to talk aboutwe are in Brunswick made it was important for me to help you see that we have

for seasons.

Not just one.

Even though we have a polar bear as a mascot that has everything to do with really important

Arctic explorers, McMillan, also the polar bear is about not our climate.

And I want you to think about place because we are located on the coast in southern Maine

we have both a landscape of the coastline as well as the mountains as part of our students

experience.

We are also in a small community of about 20,000 people.

That is Brunswick.

On the upper left side, this is amazing actually for a community of about 25,000 people we

have 60 eateries.

60 places to eat, never mind the food trucks like talk of the town which is a fine establishment,

moves around a bit, but students can walk their right off of our quad.

This is really close to Clayton's house actually.

On the bottom right is a picture of Portland which is the closest city.

That is a city of about 60,000 people.

That is where the airport is.

About 30 minutes away a great place for people to get off campus if they want to explore

the midcoast area and Brunswick.

It's on the arts community, in the waterfront, we have students who go down that way to go

surfing believe it or not.

That is wetsuit surfing in case you're wondering.

On the bottom right and left slides are really important.

The upper right is a picture from the coastal studies center.

This is property that the college owns on the coast.

And what you are seeing there are picture of boats for the sailing team.

And what the property really is is that part of the property of the college we have faculty

putting students in boats and putting them out on the water to do their research.

There are labs there and buildings right on the grounds.

There is retreat space, recreational space, pathways, students go swimming off the dock.

It is an amazing amazing place for our students to both experience recreationally in academic

work and we have received a $10 million gift from the Schulyer family to further expand

opportunities available to students on the coastal studies center.

So it is now the Schulyer coastal studies center.

This dovetails into the overall environment opportunities of the college.

Where we are located is really really important.

We are building the roots center which will be opening next fall.

Another opportunity to further expand how we think about the environmental work, the

challenges ahead of us and incorporating in a very liberal arts way the interdisciplinary

approach to solving those problems.

On the lower left you will see students hiking and I have to be honest I don't know whether

this was an orientation trip which it could have been coming out of club experience or

just a group of students choosing to go hiking on the weekend, but this is Maine.

Where we are located is central to the experience students have your and for students choosing

Bowdoin for some of them it matters very much that they are choosing a liberal arts experience

in this landscape.

For others, they do not care about Maine at all.

They just want Bowdoin.

But for every student who graduates I'm certain that being in Maine will have mattered by

the time they leave.

We talked a lot about, with our guests here on the stage about the experience of learning

and the ways in which they undertook that at the college.

And if you think about the poem and to learn the appreciation of the others work as well

as criticism of your own and also the line about working for common ends that really

reflects what our guests were talking about and how they understood their faculties commitment

to them.

How they learn from one another.

These small classes are not just small.

They are collaborative.

I think it was Seth or perhaps Skye was the one who said you cannot hide in class.

You have to participate.

Was it Clare?

And this is really important because from an admissions point of view we are deliberately

building a class every year that is as diverse as we can possibly imagine it to be with 500

students in all the ways you can think about diversity including intellectual thought.

And when you cannot hide in a classroom and you have to talk it means everyone comes into

the classroom having read the same material and then they are asked to reflect on it and

say something and when you hear somebody who read the same material who understands it

differently, reacts to it differently, has a different response, how can that happen

when you all read the same thing.

It is those conversations that help students understand how different making sense can

be.

How the experiences you have had in your life help you understand something that you are

learning and when you realize how different that can be it makes you better at learning

how to ask questions, makes you better at figuring out how to solve a problem because

you have a better way of anticipating how you might solve that problem for someone besides

someone like you.

This interactive learning whether on the water or in a classroom is super important to how

we want our students to experience the idea of testing their intellectual ability and

sharing that with others.

And let's talk about generous enthusiasms.

Our guests were talking about having a good time and friends and in the response to the

question Clayton asked about what you wish you had done or what else could you have done,

they talked about more experiences.

They wish they could have tried more things, more time.

He's talking about he wished he had another year of college.

So, generous enthusiasms.

We are talking about being a residential place.

We are talking about bringing people together.

And we do this around the dining.

Dining is a big deal at Bowdoin, food is a super big deal.

Because we are on the coastline I had to put in a shot of lobsters because I think you

all know that Maine lobster is a thing and we actually open every year with a lobster

bake for the students and a graduation we close every year with a lobster bake as well.

But bringing people together and creating space for fun.

For conversations that can go late at night, conversations that can linger in a dining

room, conversations that can happen on the quad.

Or in a volunteer activity are important.

And generous enthusiasms extends itself into the world of the art, the arts of the college

as well.

I could be the academic experience within the arts but also through clubs and also it

could be through the generative way in which our students share what they know and what

they love.

This could be coffeehouse performances.

This could be a music jam that happens in a hallway or a dorm room late at night.

But what it does, and actually Clare was describing the experience of, every year, your club having

dance and fashion and design and all kinds of things coming to gather which is pulling

people together to think about how to share what they love and what they know and make

it accessible and appealing to others.

And sports.

Right, generous enthusiasms and think about all the lessons of the common good and how

that pays the, plays out in competitive athletics.

We are division three school that means that the varsity sports competed the Division III

level and we belong to the New England small College athletic conference.

NESCAC.

That may sound familiar to you.

But what we know is that our athletes are using the skills of problem-solving, working

together for a common goal.

Anticipating what might happen next, having to make a quick decision for something they

could not see coming.

All of those skills are present in athletics and compounded by what students are learning

in the classroom and in their social spaces and recreational time.

So, let's talk about who we are on the way in and who we are on the way out.

So, one thing that I think people do not expect is really for a small college on the coast

of Maine, what is our enrollment who are those people.

If you look at the first-year class, the class of 2021, they are about half and half men

and women 34% of people in class are domestic students of color.

Just over 16% of them are first-generation to college in their families.

7% are non-US passport holders.

This might surprise you, but nearly 2/3 are from outside of New England.

A lot of people do not expect that but it's really integral to how our students are experiencing

their friendships with one another.

Then when we think about what happens on the output I am thinking about the class that

walked across the stage and shook Clayton's hand last spring, the class of 2017.

97% of those students when they shook hands and picked up their diploma had plans for

what they were going to be doing next.

Whether that was employment, graduate school, internships, fellowships, you name it.

97% knew what it was they were planning to do.

But what we know is that whatever it is they are planning to do and they are doing right

now is probably not what they are going to be doing five years from now or 10 years from

now and our goal is to make sure that they are ready to follow those interests to where

it takes them next.

And when the interest changes, that they have the adaptability.

I have the gumption and the grid to follow it and they will learn what they need to do

to meet that challenge.

Right?

We know that that is an important part of the experience.

So what does this mean for applying to Bowdoin?

When you think about what our graduates on the stage have talked about and the skills

that they brought with them, the skills that they have used while they were at Bowdoin,

house that has translated into their work life so far we look for those in your applications.

As an admissions officer we are reading pieces of material that you ask us to send us and

we are looking for signals within the pieces to understand what your curiosity is like.

How do you solve problems.

Now.

In high school.

Who do you like to engage with and how do you do that.

What are the activities that have your attention.

There is so much conversation right now around, you need to have passion and explain your

passion.

I don't need you to have passion.

I need you to know what you like.

Right.

I don't always know what I'm passionate about and it kind of changes.

But if you know what you like, what has your attention, why do you spend your time doing

these things.

Which classes do you love the most, which teacher do you like the most.

Why.

What are the things that have your attention.

If you can let us into that and help us understand that in you it helps us figure out where you

place in our community because when you think about all the things available to you we want

to make sure that you are a student when you come onto campus that you are excited about

it and you wrap your arms around it and once you have graduated if you were sitting on

a panel you had have things to say about what you wished you could have fit into the time

not just how am I going to get into the four years to get into the next thing.

So this is how you apply.

You can apply using the coalition application which is a fairly new platform.

It is in its second year.

You can use the common application which you have probably all heard about.

Or you can use the Qwest bridge application and it doesn't matter which application platform

you use because all of them require the same materials more or less.

It might be the different format but ultimately all of you will need to submit a transcript,

information about your high school, recommendations, information about your activities and writing

samples.

You all have to submit those things.

We use all of those pieces to answer some of the questions I described to you in putting

our community together.

One thing that you don't have to submit is standardized testing.

How many people knew that before I just said it?

Keep your hand up if you think it's true that you really don't need to.

A lot of believers in here.

That's good.

I want to spend a few minutes talking about it because I think it's entirely misunderstood

for what that means in the application process for Bowdoin.

Bowdoin was the first school to eliminate standardized testing as an application requirement

in 1969.

That means we have had nearly 50 years experience figuring out how to do an adequate academic

assessment based on the materials that we do require.

To figure out whether or not we think you will adapt well into what we will require

of you academically.

The pieces that we do require the make up the academic assessment are some of the ones

I described you.

The transcript, the courses you took, how well you did with the courses, your writing

and how your teachers talk about you.

We require that of everybody and that works really well in the way we work with those

pieces to predict how well we think you will adapt to what we have to offer.

If you choose to send testing we will use it.

But if you don't, we don't hit a speed bump.

And I know you are like yeah, you can say that.

Right.

You are the Dean.

But if I don't send my test scores you are going to think they are very bad.

So I think I should send my test scores so you can see they are not as bad as you think

you were if you were guessing at what they might be.

Right.

I know somebody is thinking that.

But imagine what that would mean for us.

If we were really trying to fill in the blank that exists for your test scores because of

you withholding them then we are guessing and if we really needed them, if we were really

a pause because now we are guessing at what the scores might be we would have just asked

you to submit the scores we know you have.

We would not give you the option.

What we are saying is we know how to select students academically based on the pieces

we require.

And if you want to send your test scores we will include them and we will consider them.

But, if you choose to withhold them we don't feel like we are missing critical information.

In making a decision and I know people are going to ask me this question later.

I'm going to answer it for you now.

About one third to a quarter of the applicant pool does not submit any testing at all.

About 1/3 to 1/4 of every incoming class didn't, not submit any testing and also if you are

wondering how it plays out, that's how it plays out.

The other thing we are looking at when we review the application is who you are personally

because a lot of what are graduates talked about and what I was talking about in the

slides was the whole experience, the personal experience, the friendships, the enthusiasms,

the things you will experience on campus.

We want to see that you enjoy experiences with other people, that you are curious about

trying new things.

And so when we look at your activity list it does not have to be around have you been

a leader in everything.

People can be incredibly impactful in their space without having the moniker of leadership

attached.

And if you have it, if you are the captain or the head or the president or the cofounder

of something, that's great and we want to know about that and what that means, but it's

not the only way that we understand how students make a difference where they are.

So what we really need to see when you are describing your activities is the activities

that meant something to you.

What has your attention why do you do it and what would you want us to know about it.

Okay.

Let's talk about affordability because this is a big.

I really began.

A private liberal arts college is an expensive proposition.

We know that and we are ready for it.

What's really important to us is that any student who finds the idea of a Bowdoin education

interesting and appealing and wants to apply for it should have the opportunity to do so

right from the very beginning.

And so one year ago we dropped the application fee for one family who is also applying for

financial aid or who is a first-generation and their family to go to college.

And so when a student is filling out an application if they answer yes to either of those questions,

the fee zeros out.

We did this because we wanted to make sure because we even though we offer fee waivers

we didn't want a student to have to ask and we didn't want a family to feel the burden

of the application fee if it was in fact a burden.

If you are interested in applying to Bowdoin we want to see you in the application pool

so we have a chance to review the application.

That is at the front end.

When you think about affording the college and financially it is a very confusing thing

and higher at right now because there's lots of different approaches.

Ours is pretty straightforward.

The way we think about financial aid is our money is reserved for need-based aid that

means all of our financial aid is there to fill in the gap between what a family can

afford and the cost of being at the college.

And so we determine what your need is and then we need to the full need.

We want you to enroll and we want you to enroll without the anxiety without the cost of being

at the school, and to do that, we do that without putting in loans.

For real.

Right.

So what this means, a financial aid package at Bowdoin is meant to meet the need, it's

meant to see what can a parent or parents contribute so there is that if anything.

We are expecting students receiving aid from Bowdoin to have a job on campus, about eight

hours per week.

We assume they are earning some money over the summer to contribute to purchasing books

and that sort of thing that we are not asking students to take out loans even if you would

qualify for them.

And we are not asking parents to take loans.

We are filling the gap with grant money.

That means it is money that you do not pay back.

We reevaluate need annually to make sure that every year that a student is at Bowdoin they

can comfortably afford to be there.

That their experience doesn't have the undercurrent of anxiety of affordability.

This is a huge commitment on the part of the college.

Our first year class, 52% of the class is receiving financial aid from the college with

an average grant north of $43,000.

This is a real commitment.

It's a really big deal.

If there's any message that you take away from this as it relates to affordability,

it is that affording a school like Bowdoin is possible.

It is our commitment to do so.

And so if the idea of being at Bowdoin is appealing to you we want to see you in the

applicant pool.

We want to have a chance to review your application and think about putting you into our community

and we will take care of making sure that it is an affordable experience for your family.

So I'm going to leave it right there.

I'm going to pass it back to Clayton.

If there is anything you want to add in with any of the topics and from there we can move

into questions.

The only thing I would do is put an exclamation point on the last part about affordability.

The commitment is rock solid at Bowdoin that if you can earn a spot at Bowdoin we will

find a way for you to come be a student there and with all the details you laid out there

it is a no loan financially package and so forth but there is an underlying philosophy

that permeates what we are doing.

We want every student who has an interest in Bowdoin to apply without regard to financial

circumstances in every student to be able to earn a spot at Bowdoin to be able to come

without regard to financial circumstances and Whitney and her team to work really hard

of doing that and we have an amazing group of alumni and parents who through their generosity

make this possible and it's a really remarkable thing we are able to do.

And so thank you.

One other thing I will add about the affordability question for those prospective families are

high school counselors who are guarding, guiding families all colleges required to have something

called the net price calculator sometimes referred to as NPC somewhere on the website

it is required by law.

There is no law that says that it has to be accurate or the questions that it asked or

anything else but it has to be there.

We have to end you will find them on the student a portion of the website.

There is the net price calculate it.

And asks a lot of questions.

You would want to be able to do this with taxes available and information about your

finances and assets because the questions are built around specific information related

to finances and the more accurate the information you put in the more accurate the estimate

you will receive back.

The other one is called a quick cost calculator which only asks about eight questions which

really is a broad stroke.

But it is quick.

You don't have to know a lot about the overall finances but it will give you a good range

a quick shot answer to what it would cost to your family to attend Bowdoin.

Typically the net price calculator is a little bit more, we suggest a family [inaudible]

that net calculator and get the results and if you want to talk about that with the financial

aid office they will invite you to send the results to them and have an appointment on

the phone or in person and talk you through what it means and what you might expect.

The net price calculator is not as effective for the parents who own a business or who

are divorced and because the nuances of those finances are not handled well in the calculator

and the aid process is very personal and takes into account a lot of the regard to the finances

and so that that applies to you I definitely remake recommend you do the calculator and

speak to someone in the financial aid office and do this before applying they are not going

to tell you what to do with regard to the [inaudible] and that can give you an idea

what to expect in a way to get oriented to the idea of need-based aid and also affordability

for the college.

Can I just add one more thing?

Can I talk about the admissions process for a second.

My wife Julianne and I have two sons who are off in life now.

One of them just had a new daughter so I'm a new grandfather in the last six months.

I thought I would say that because I say it to everyone even if you don't ask.

It was not that long ago that we were going through this process of getting our kids into

college and we recognize, and deeply be stresses and strains for everyone having to go through

this.

The thing I find remarkable about Bowdoin having worked now with Whitney on the team

for several years and sat through several of the admissions meetings is that this has

nothing to do with numbers.

This is all about people.

It is all about the students who are in this room and who are watching.

It is so personal, and our admissions team knows the students who are applying, and they

understand them as human beings and as people.

As you think about the process and number and the yields and the number of people applying

put that out of your mind.

What matters is whether this is a place that fits for you.

Does it resonate with you and you think it's a place where you can do your best work and

be her best self.

And if Bowdoin is that place, Whitney and her team will be able to see that and be able

to think about that and understand that and it's really quite different from a numbers

game.

It's remarkable work that goes on in the admissions office.

And so we did not actually plan this.

You want to, why don't you moderate questions.

Okay so questions?

It can be for me around admissions and aid, or for president Rose as the leader of the

college, or for the graduates who have experienced it and are now out in the world.

Yes?

[Inaudible voice off microphone] I'm just going to repeat the question for

those on the live stream who might not be able hear it.

The question was around characteristics that area common denominator among the student

body.

Is that a good paraphrase?

I think one of the characteristics, I think maybe we can trade off, one of them is curiosity

and it is like genuine curiosity.

A desire to learn.

I think that is probably pretty apparent in the applicant pool that you guys look over

as well but I would say the classmates and friends that I have now, that curiosity, the

desire to learn is a big part of who they are and who I am.

That's almost the exact word that I was going to use.

I would also say the people I know from Bowdoin are just really, this is going to sound silly,

they are really great people.

I mean, they are really warm, generous, really giving and definitely my best friends.

So.

Yeah, I would say good people also.

I mean, there is something really, when I was applying to Bowdoin I remember hearing

from a couple of people actually that they knew someone who had gone to Bowdoin and that

person had the most amazing group of friends wherever they were living, a lot of whom also

went to Bowdoin and they just had the best time.

I mean, at least for me in San Francisco I see a ton of Bowdoin people it's not like

I just, really great personalities and I think a lot of really great [inaudible] also.

Yeah I think it goes back to the offer of the college.

If you want all of those things, you want the keys to your world in the back pocket

and you want to share generous enthusiasms, the offer of the college is something I've

read over and over again throughout my career and it rings true, and that is the promise

you will get it.

Curiosity, and a lot of them a lot of them are very driven which can inspire you in many

ways.

Because they all come from different backgrounds, are in different careers, get that perspective

and learn from one another.

You know, I would just add to that, and I witness this in lots of different ways, but

I also taught last year a first-year seminar and got to see it up close and personal but

all of our students as we say in Maine are wicked smart, but the thing that I think differentiates

Bowdoin students from, from students from lots of other places and these are all quite

obviously true is that there is a desire to collaborate.

Students do not come with the notion of competing with one another.

In order for me to do very well you have to not do well but rather see it as a collaborative

exercise and want to work together.

It goes back to being the people nice people, there is a sense that we are in all, all of

us in this and there is self-selection goes in and real self-selection that goes on around

that characteristic as well.

I would add, Clare said something early on in one of the early questions about how you

think about a team as a leader.

And the Bowdoin really valued the individual and you took that with you and you think about

that as a team leader and there really is at the heart of what Clayton was just deciding

and we are built on the concept of a common good.

The president talked about this.

And the ideas that the education bears the response building not just to learn for yourself

but to apply what you've known and make a difference.

So it really is this platform that forces the collaboration.

You cannot be coming into Bowdoin and into a classroom trying to win the class.

While also trying to share ideas.

Right?

Because if you are sharing you're giving up what you know and letting other people here

and work with it and also getting the same thing from other people.

And so that idea of a rising tide is going to lift all boats.

Everybody does better when everybody knows more and everybody is better equipped.

It still means that the students have individual wins.

They win Watson fellowships.

They get great jobs they publish with their faculty.

They individually accomplish amazing things but they are also in an environment where

they recognize that those achievements that have their name on them are achievements that

were influenced by the value of working with other people.

And they could not have been there without that exposure, without those conversations,

without that experience and the pressure of other people's questions to help them learn

and the idea of being a leader and on during, honoring individualism and helping each person

within a team be their best self, do their best work, place them well so that they can

do their best work means that the whole team does better.

That is the common good and it really is a learning environment of the college and the

students as a common denominator are a self-selecting group of apply to Bowdoin and it's a higher

achieving group of students but the students who are really drawn to Bowdoin are the students

looking for that kind of opportunity to bring their motivation and share it.

The students who are really driven to be number one in whatever they are doing, if that is

the engine, it's not a bad engine.

But if that is where the energy comes from it will not be satisfying at Bowdoin because

the experience at Bowdoin is to share the learning and really push everybody forward.

It was a great question.

You got a lot of answers out of it there.

Are there other questions?

Yes?

[inaudible voice off mic] So, the question was, I just made reference

to the common good and its place at Bowdoin and the student was posing the question to

the alumni if they felt like they had a chance to experience the common good at Bowdoin.

Yeah, so for me in the computer science being that coder person I was able to step out of

the corner and work with some of the professors.

I was able to learn to some of the kids from schools and blood of the schools around teaching

them how to code while I was at school and I'm really proud to work for a company that,

two years ago we announced or guess it was one year ago we announced an OKTA for good

program and we have been ramping that up and helping people and I've been involved with

that while I've been there.

So absolutely.

I think for me definitely at Bowdoin I had the opportunity to go back home mentor a lot

of first-generation students and kids that wanted to go to college but did not have the

resources or knowledge.

So I was able to take my experience from Bowdoin and bring it back and it's part of the common

good and now at Google I recently joined a mentorship program going to start doing that.

And so I feel like the values that I acquired in the experience I had at Bowdoin will forever

be with me moving forward.

You want to talk a little bit about what the mentorship program is?

This one is called I mentor.

And so the idea is you pair a mentor with someone who is in corporate or just in the

workforce with a high school student who is curious about going to school but they have

questions and so something similar to this but on a more individual manner.

So yeah.

One thing also with the common good, that was the thing also, Maine is so amazing, but

the common good is something that really helped me on Bowdoin I felt not only did the college

encourage and support any work you wanted to do toward the common good but now when

we live in San Francisco there is a common good day that gets put on.

It also factors into the choice that I have made in terms of my profession.

And I'm also working at an organization in San Francisco and a lot of it is what you

experience at Bowdoin and what you learn about the world kind of beyond just Maine.

It was started by a Bowdoin alum.

Oh yes it was.

How did I forget that?

So it's called aim high.

It's an organization that does summer programming for middle schoolers from under resourced

communities and it was started by a Bowdoin grad, Alec Lee who was recognized by the Obama

administration, which was really amazing and they just do great work in the bay area and

actually beyond as well.

So.

Yes?

[inaudible voice off mic] So, the question was about the outing club

experiences at Bowdoin and whether you had experience with the outing club adventures

in particular or how the nature and landscape influences their time at the college.

I was not in the outing club.

Some of my really good friends were.

And I think Nick, he was, he was doing the orientation trips and I think a couple of

the other ones.

I was not a huge outdoors person.

I am more of one now for sure than I was again, going into college, but part of like the splendor

of Maine is, yes the photos are incredible and the campus is Bowtiful, and there's really

a lot to be gained even if you are not doing hiking or you are not doing coastal if you

are not kayaking and stuff like that, just being outside just being on the campus is

incredible so that really was great for me.

One of the things I really wish from when I was at Bowdoin is that I had done more outing

club activities.

One of the most memorable things though is the pre-orientation trip.

Which is before you arrive as a student at Bowdoin you actually go out into the wilderness

and you pick whichever orientation trip you want to go on.

So there were varying experiences in terms of kayaking into the wind for 4 miles.

I mean, mine was wonderful.

Bowdoin actually has a cabin I don't actually even know where it was but out in the wilderness

of Maine.

We don't know where it is either.

[laughter] And so we are all new students.

We don't know anyone, we are out camping, or hiking through the Maine splendor.

And then come back to a cabin at night and all sleep in kind of one big room.

In your sleeping bags.

Kind of like right next to each other.

And it's kind of an amazing equalizer.

I think going out into the wilderness.

I guess there are some people who really know what they are doing but I just felt like it

was really, we were all reliant on our guides to take us where we needed to go.

I guess.

I will say that the orientation trips are now orientation trips rather than pre-orientation

trips, we realized a large proportion of the students were choosing to do this and there

was not anybody who did it who regretted it and we suspected a lot of students who were

not choosing to do a pre-orientation trip were nervous around what it might be like

and had not had exposure and so we decided you are all going in and so now it's part

of orientation.

Everybody chooses a trip.

We are compassionate people at Bowdoin College.

So not everybody has to go into the wilderness.

We do offer community service orientation days.

So, rather than going camping or hiking or out of the water you could be doing something

specific like that.

We have a yoga retreat.

So there are different opportunities for students who really are not interested in experiencing

nature in its fullest but most of our students do that and there's something really important

about that experience.

Everybody is nervous.

Nobody has parents or friends.

Everybody left home and they have not moved into their dorms yet and they are figuring

out how to deal with being wet.

Bugs.

Challenges of weather and dealing with equipment is that they don't know how to use, never

heard of before, it does not feel good, and so there is a bond that is created among people

who do not know one another and working together.

This is a common good experience, where they are going to figure out how to get where they

are going, they are going make the food, deal with whatever comes up and they will remember

each other forever.

When they come back to campus after a couple days of this they are landing back at campus

with the whole enrollment with these really important friends who just went through this

amazing experience with them for a couple of days and whether or not they have other

interactions that bring them together naturally after that, they will always have that shared

experience.

It's a really great way of starting a four year experience at Bowdoin.

Just touches on so many things.

Just a quick anecdote about that.

I was just at a wedding where four of the eight people who had been on my orientation

trip were at the wedding.

So that's pretty amazing.

That's really amazing.

Yeah really representative.

Other questions from our guests?

[Inaudible voice off microphone] So the question is around the most important

resource that our graduates thought they had at Bowdoin or since graduating that they would

not have had otherwise.

The network.

Easily.

Without it, I think there are so many people from so many different areas, I think a couple

days ago we had a happy hour welcome for a lot of the new students and I met so many

amazing Bowdoin people from different classes.

And these are like, I can call them friends.

I can reach out to them, I can pick their brains if I need to make a career move.

I can talk to them and get the perspective.

That is not a resource I would have had if it wasn't for Bowdoin.

I would 100% agree with network but I would also say the career planning center when I

was there was amazing.

I'm sure that it is still amazing but again, a very individual experience.

I had a counselor that was assigned specifically to me based on my interest, but also kind

of personality kind of, you select your counselor and she and I are still in touch and we still

talk.

And that was 15 years ago.

And so the career planning center was great not only for its tactical, not only for its

tactical resources, but for kind of the very approach that they took.

Because it's scary.

You are applying to big jobs in New York City or LA, and maybe you have been there, maybe

you have not.

You're talking to people at companies, wearing a suit for the first time.

It's so weird.

And they approached it from a perspective of compassion where it was really a positive

experience for me.

I think mine is probably research opportunity.

And so an academic experience going beyond the classes you take, being able to really

learn at a very deep and cutting-edge level about something new, something contributing

to research that nobody else in the world has done before as an undergraduate student

is powerful and helped me get to where I am in my career today.

I will say the professors that I had were incredible.

And it is so important to get to know your professors and it's very possible at Bowdoin,

and one professor in particular, the math department was not the biggest department

on campus when I was there.

I suspect it is not...

It's larger than computer science.

That's true.

It is larger than it was in the last couple of years, larger than in the last couple of

years.

Which I think also has changed maybe.

But it was not a huge department and it was professor [Jayveck].

And she really made it very unified, she would have dinners at her house which was not quite

on campus but almost on campus.

And she would do a bunch of events and it was incredible.

Was really incredible, and so definitely get in touch with your professors.

And then the other resource was, and I'm going to say it again, was the radio station.

It really opened my mind to a lot of, I did not listen too much, I would listen to whatever

was on the radio at the time.

And then starting at the radio station I was like oh my God, there's actually a lot of

good music out there.

It turns out I like good music.

And you'd walk into the room and it is just like walls of vinyl.

You know, just a huge number of records and you are like I want to put this on the air

and whoever is tuning in right now is going to listen to this.

And it is really fun, really really fun.

I would also say the professors.

I mean, I had one professor who I took a class from.

I was so in awe of her, and she actually ended up being my advisor.

I talked about it a little bit earlier.

She was just a wonderful mentor.

And also yeah, there were so many great professors.

They make such an effort beyond the classroom to engage students and I completely second

what you said about making an effort to get to know them.

I think one of my proudest moments post graduation was this professor, I was like thank you so

much professor [Powell] for all that you have done and she goes Skye, call me Susan and

I was like...so, it was just wonderful.

It meant a lot to me at that moment.

Other questions?

Yes, in the back.

[inaudible voice off mic] So, the question was around how majors that

are specific like science relate to careers?

[inaudible] voice off mic] Okay, so the question was how does liberal

arts with the breadth benefit those who are in very specific majors like these sciences

as they move into the career world and since some of you really have careers that are very

directly related to your majors and those of you who do not appear to be as directed

but are actually calling on your majors, we talked about a little bit but if there are

specific anecdotes you can offer to answer the question that would be great.

I can start with one anecdote.

So, I have been, as a computer scientist and a software engineer, we are not typically

known for our writing and our English, but that said, I have been complemented by a lot

of people I worked with thing that was a really great email that you sent.

Not necessarily the most flamboyant, whatever, but it's around that kind of theme, for me

at least, is that breadth of saying oh I can go talk to whoever it is in whatever department

at the company and being able to communicate to get to a real conversation with them and

that was incredibly valuable.

I would say I think there is a little I guess at least of a hypothetical concern that if

you are interested, to, I mean sciences are what are the other liberal arts?

Physical, natural, social sciences and humanities.

It's not like it's outside the realm necessarily but there is hypothetical concern that if

you are interested if you are very focused on something on something that it might be

a hindrance if you do a liberal arts education.

I don't think that's true.

You can get as far as you are interested in doing and also the breadth which I think is

crucial for personal development but also for, also really important I think for a career

because I think a lot of it is not just one domain.

A lot of it is, yes I know I know a lot about this and a lot about this and I can see some

patterns between them that helps me see more patterns in whatever it might be working on

now.

And a lot of that stuff.

So I think there's also if there is a concern surrounding the core competency you need like

in becoming a doctor, or get a PhD, that is not a concern that should exist because I

mean, I have friends who are now in the residency, took a ton of science classes but one of them

loved languages, took French and Spanish.

She loved to dance.

She took dance classes.

She was able to get all the requirements done and study abroad.

And play volleyball.

For all four years she was there.

And still get everything she needed to then apply to medical school.

I mean she actually went in to teach for America for a year and then went.

So I just think if there is a concern about getting the core competency, that's not....

Can I just add three examples, and some data, some data that is qualitative and quantitative

because it is a great question.

They are all great questions.

Lake Wobegon.

Every question is above average here.

Seth Ramis who is our advisor for students who are interested in health professions has

an unbelievable track record.

The proportion of our students who apply to medical school that get into them and get

into good ones blows away the national averages.

And I can dig up the data, but what I have just said is true.

What Seth would tell you is, successful students are students who pursue the things they are

interested in.

Where they satisfy requirements but then they take it and follow the dance and language

and so forth.

And become a whole person as a function of the liberal arts education and that in fact

makes them more interesting and appealing to medical school.

I just had lunch this morning in the city with my niece who is a doctor in residency

at UCLA.

She is a graduate not of Bowdoin but of Claremont McKenna and had the same experience and we

were talking a little bit about this.

I can think of three examples.

Another niece who is a senior at Bowdoin is interested in veterinary sciences.

Wants to be a veterinarian.

She spent the summer working at one of the Marine animal labs with seals in Cape Cod.

She's a double major in biology in French and she's been taking French since the day

she started.

French for us is not French language, it's French language and literature, a holistic

notion of linkage and literature that comes together.

Another graduate, 2013 I think, someone I have known for a long time, graduated with

a degree in physics.

And had a deep interest and lots of other things and was an athlete on campus and so

forth.

Got into the program at Columbia in quantum mechanics.

And her doctoral project was working on [LIGO], for those of you who know physics, [LIGO]

was the experiment that proved Einstein's General theory of relativity announced a couple

years ago.

She was instrumental in the project.

And there at the moment that they found that they had squared the circle and proven his

theory.

And we've obviously published all about that and she's terrific and she's actually working

out here now.

Back to the point, I have had conversations with faculty in our science is about how do

you think about the pluses and minuses of a student deeply interested in science going

to a R1 research University where they have the ability to have big departments in post

graduate coursework and they can get into graduate courses working in big labs versus

working at Bowdoin where you get to work with faculty hands-on on particular projects and

how well do they do when they get off into a PhD program?

Unequivocally the response across all the faculty when I talk to them about this is

our students do really well.

Alexa, the PhD in physics that I just talked about is a great example of that but not the

only one.

There are two reasons for that they said.

One is that they get to figure out what their question is, the issue they want to understand

and work with their faculty on that.

They are not working on some, and not to trivialize it but they are not working on someone else's

problem.

They are working on their problem.

And the skill of crafting a question in figuring out what it is you have to do to answer the

question is a big part of what being an academic is all about.

And so the head start on the process is really quite profound.

The other is the communication skill.

The ability to write well and communicate well.

And there our students excel at that.

So.

Those are great examples.

I have two that I want to offer to round it out because it is a really great question

that you asked.

One is one of our admissions officers who was with us for one year and we knew he was

going to be with us for one year because he was in the process of applying to medical

school when we hired him as a Bowdoin graduate.

And he was phenomenal.

For a person who had recently graduated he spent a year working in AmeriCorps and joined

us for nine months in the admissions office.

He was on the road for probably eight or 10 weeks in the fall traveling to visit folks

like you.

And really got his head around all these different places in urban areas and rural areas where

students are coming from and getting to know the counselors and he brought all that back

with him first pass as exposure and became an application reader.

Some of the most insightful and compassionate notes and insights that you could ever expect

from a young professional to have in evaluating application materials.

He was really remarkable.

And so it was no surprise to me that, and he was going to the process of applying to

medical school while he was working with us.

He got admitted to every single medical school to which he applied.

And was interviewed.

That was a part of the process of admission was to get to the level of being interviewed

and I'm absolutely certain, he had all the guidance from Seth Ramis on campus, and as

a student for taking the right courses for making sure he was well-prepared and the technical

aspects of what you need to know in the sciences to be ready.

But, he also had this tremendous scope of accessibility and warmth and consideration

that I have to think mattered when he was being interviewed for medical school and they

had to imagine what he might be like as a physician in practice and how he might problem

solve.

He's a wonderful example and if you ever need a doctor a couple years from now, his name

is Toby.

He is great.

I'm sure he will be a really good doctor.

The other thing I want to talk about not directly to your question but I thought of it when

Clayton was talking about Alexa and her work in physics is that it relates to the idea

of small.

You are talking about large universities versus the opportunities that our students have and

what I notice a lot in my work and with people who I see and visit during my travel is that

lots of the time the size of a school becomes a proxy for what it's opportunity might be.

So there's an assumption that a smaller school means less opportunity in the larger school

means greater opportunity.

I understand why that happens but if you think about the experience that Alexa had and what

she worked on, and what she got to experience at a, as a very young woman with her academic

work and something historic that is huge, and we had a student who when he came to Bowdoin

know that he wanted to study biology.

He wanted to go to a PhD program and in his first year got to know one of us faculty members.

You all talk about these important relationships you have faculty in the faculty member had

a grant to do research with faculty from another institution and both of them had money to

bring students with them.

And so, this student applied to be part of that program and in the summer between first

and second year at Bowdoin they were out in an ocean.

This was their summer work.

And they had to go to the bottom of the ocean to collect this very special warm that lives

at the bottom of the ocean.

So to get there they have to go in submarines, two-person submarines.

The size of an Advil pill.

To people to the bottom of the ocean.

He's 19 years old.

That is amazing.

To be an undergraduate student in between first and second year of your college experience

to be part of that project, getting to go into the summary, submarine and go to the

bottom and not just take notes when someone else comes up.

That is huge.

He got to do that the second summer the project continued they went to another ocean and continued

the work and no surprise he went on to the PhD program which was his goal.

But his ability to be an attractive PhD candidate with that experience completed already as

an undergraduate is really significant.

And so there is a very specific opportunity there and his interest, but the breadth of

what he got to do and who he knew while he was on campus was pretty influential.

We probably have time for one more question that can answer anything for anyone.

Yes?

[inaudible voice off mic] We don't have winter.

I don't understand the question.

I would be happy to things about, the question is about climate, particularly about winter.

I am going to let our alumni talk about it because you did not all come from New England

so for those of you who came from California and went to Bowdoin you can describe that

experience.

I will say this though.

When our students arrive at the end of the summer it is still summertime.

It is 80� in the afternoon.

It is cool at night, and by cool I mean 50� at night.

And by the time we get to our long week in October the [inaudible] like high 50s.

And it is getting cold at night.

The possibility my Thanksgiving we will have definitely had a hard frost.

It's possible that we will have had snow by that point.

Maybe not snow that sticks and then snow is going to happen from December through March.

But not all the time thanks to climate change, it seems to come in really big sections where

there is no snow, then we get a lot of snow and then nothing happens and then a lot of

snow.

And by the time students are back from their spring break we are experiencing spring and

they are outside with shorts and T-shirts, and there are some students who wear flip-flops

year-round which mystifies me.

I think it is a defiance thing.

But the truth is that Maine is well-equipped for weather.

And we have heat.

So our students are generally comfortable and have the right clothing for when they

are walking around outside.

For those of you who really took on Bowdoin taking on a different climate you want to

talk about that a little bit?

So I came from California to go to Maine, and actually when I got into it when I would

tell people I was in Maine and their response would be like why.

I got a lot of like why are you going to Canada?

And I loved winter.

The snow is, I never lived anywhere that snowed before and it is really fun.

I mean, like snow nights, when there is fresh powder everybody goes outside in place.

I mean you don't have a car, maybe you have a car, I didn't have a car so I didn't have

to deal with any of that related with snow dealing, you don't have to shovel.

It's just like literally only upside on the snow front.

Also, L.L. Bean is amazing.

And is very nearby.

So I would recommend good boots and a jacket.

I really loved, I loved winter.

The time I had a hard time was after you've kind of gotten past the snow, it was still

cold and kind of wet.

But that is a couple weeks a month.

You know, you get over it.

So.

I will say L.L. Bean is open 24 hours of the flagship store which is a 15 minute drive

or something.. 24 seven 365 days per yeaer.

It is quite a thing to behold.

One of the 50 things somebody needs a list of 50 things somebody needs to do before going

to Bowdoin and going to being at three in the morning, and you can't say you couldn't

get there because it's open all the time.

You grew up here.

I grew up in the Bay Area and I have a good friend from Santa Barbara who were board shorts

every day for four years so defiance was definitely a part of it.

And so there was a question for me about the outing club I did dog sledding for most of

my junior year and that is something you don't get without winter.

And so winter is pretty cool.

But I'm back here and liking California, one season.

Also if you surf winter is the time you go surfing in Maine right with the weather.

And I would say climate wise Maine is a big state, so of the northern part is definitely

a Canadian climate and certainly North and inland is entirely different from where we

are.

Being on the southern tip of the state basically and on the coast, being by the water, tempers

are weather significantly.

So in the summer it is cooler than other aspects of the state and into the winter the water

keeps the snowfall a little bit lower.

So I would liken the climate more to like a Boston climate than to a Canadian climate.

We are much closer to Boston and so it makes sense.

With that I think we have run out of time.

Thank you so much to everybody.

And thank you to our guests, the Bowdoin graduates and thank you to those of you who are on the

live stream who were with us watching in and to those of you who took the time to come

today.

Thank you.

For more infomation >> Busting the Myth: Bowdoin College, the Liberal Arts, and the Path to a Career in Anything - Duration: 1:50:02.

-------------------------------------------

Busting the Myth: Bowdoin College, the Liberal Arts, and the Path to a Career in Anything (11:35) - Duration: 11:31.

What we are doing is elevating the conversation about the liberal arts, the power of its flexibility

and the preparation that it provides to the students as they leave the experience on campus

and into the world.

To do that we are going to be engaging with a group of alumni all of whom have a degree

from a Bowdoin as undergraduate students and a liberal arts experience and they are going

to reflect on what that experience was like as a student and what that has meant for them

in their lives since.

As you reflect back on what your liberal arts education, both the general education at Bowdoin

and specifically your majors, how do you think about what was most important in what you

got out of your experience at Bowdoin?

The Bowdoin experience is one that really emphasizes an importance for respect for the

individual.

In a general sense whether I'm managing a team of two, a team of five, a team of eight

or a team of 25, that emphasis on respecting the individual is something that is very important

to me and as you think about a group of people and their relative strengths and what they

bring to the table you're always trying to position people where they can not only contribute

to the greater good, but shine in their own right.

During my Bowdoin experience you know, I never felt like a number.

I never felt like I was part of a machine.

My education was very individual and very personal.

My relationships with my professors were the same way.

While I was at Bowdoin there was a research program in the computer science program called

Robocup and so we basically programmed these humanoid robots that are about two feet tall

to play soccer by themselves and that was a lot of fun.

They fell down a lot, but we got back up and kept going.

But it was the kind of problem where there is no right answer.

There is no solution set in the back of the book.

There is nothing, people around the world, we are competing with graduate schools from

around the world, flying all over the place, and there is no right answer and the tools

that Bowdoin provides in terms of how to learn, how to grow, how to solve these problems and

then being able to actually do that was really cool.

A big part of what I do is I present data to clinicians and physicians and also learn

from them what they want to see when they want to evaluate quality and cost internally

in the hospital.

My anthropology degree is so central to my ability to be successful in doing that.

I mean, you just think of a cardiovascular team in a hospital in the same way you think

of a different culture.

It is a whole different language.

A different way of being, different personalities, and the skills that I was able to gain in

research especially have served me incredibly well.

It's a big part of why I am able to do what I do.

Interesting, Adrian, last but not least?

I guess my major and overall experience at Bowdoin, one thing I can say looking back

that I got is just the ability to learn how to learn.

And so this notion of going into the tech world, where there are a lot of problems that

we want to solve, a lot of issues that exist, a lot of different dilemmas that we just have

to deal with and being able to learn how to tackle them, how to strategically think of

them and narrow down the problem and therefore have a plan to execute it and use the resources

available at your disposal.

Those are things you kind of have to do at Bowdoin.

In every scenario at Bowdoin you are forced to engage with different issues, connections

with individuals and these are things that are easily translatable to the workspace,

especially in tech.

So here is an unfair question that I just thought of actually.

But, what do you think was more important in the process of becoming an educated person,

what you majored in, or the general Bowdoin experience you engaged in.

Let's keep it on you, Adrian.

I think for me was the general education.

I went to Bowdoin without really not knowing what I wanted to majoring in.

I ended up majoring in government because I had no clue what I wanted to do so I took

a few courses.

I took an intro to international relationships with Laura Henry.

I loved that class.

And the following semester I kept taking more government classes and by that point the major

just became that.

And I was glad because there was a genuine interest in that field.

I was not thinking how am I going to translate this into a career.

Well, I started doing that my junior year.

I was getting close to graduating.

And the time I was just interested and generally curious on that major.

But the overall experience, the people that I met, the conversations that I had, the individual

interactions that I created with my professors as well as studying abroad and all these different

activities, all of that played a major role in the person that I am and the sort of work

that I'm doing hopefully and I will continue to do moving forward.

Seth, what do you think about that?

Yeah, Bowdoin shaped me tremendously, for sure.

I've been out of school now for seven years.

Class of 2010.

And thinking about the person that I was in 2006 when I started at Bowdoin, it is amazing.

It's really amazing.

The person that I was in 2010 and it is all good thing, too.

Definitely all good things Adrian?

I wanted to piggyback on something Seth said about how different he was before Bowdoin

and after and also the fact that he had a lot of folks that came from different backgrounds

around him.

That diversity is something that was very unique to me.

I think when I think of my experience before Bowdoin, I'm the first one in my family to

go to school.

And so going to a place like Bowdoin was life-changing because I was exposed to so many people, bright

people from all different backgrounds.

I think Bowdoin really teaches you to jump into things and try things and be inquisitive

and speak up when you don't think something is right.

I think that inquisitiveness is a real key to what has enabled me -- I mean I have learned

a lot of what I need to know on the job -- and if you think dynamically I think it serves

you enormously well.

Critical thinking is something that is emphasized in all of your classes.

Class sizes are super small so you cannot get away with not critical thinking.

There's no space for someone who just wants to sit in the back of the classroom and not

talk.

That will not happen.

Had I wished for something to do over again I almost would have wished I did a fifth year

just so that I could take more breadth.

Clara, let me come back to you having started with you and shift gears to the world of technology

that exists here broadly of Silicon Valley and the Bay Area and think about the two forces

at least as we see them from a college and university perspective of engineers and coders

on the one hand and humanists and social scientists on the other hand.

Can you talk a little bit about your own sense of what is the role for each?

The two main things that I think are most important at this part are truth and privacy.

And I'm super lucky to work for a company that values those both.

But what I think it means for people entering the industry is, you really need to come at

things from a human perspective.

And it is very easy to forget, especially when you work for giant companies, or not

giant companies, that are just doing things that are changing the world.

There is that ambition.

There is a certain level of aggressiveness always to be pushing things forward and I

think it is important to have people, whether on the coding side or on the business side,

it's really important to have people step back, look at the big picture and ask, what

is the right thing to do?

You're the coder-engineer person.

How do you think about this challenge from your perspective here?

I think it ties back to the value of a liberal education.

As an engineer being able to both interact with the people that went to an engineering

university that have come out of that program with really technical skills, but then also

being able to go the other way to a marketing person or salesperson and be able to explain

what's going on without getting too deep technically is very powerful.

What is your best memory of Bowdoin?

Spending four months in Europe, studying abroad.

Where?

Barcelona.

Cool.

Wills?

I think mine was going to Istanbul for the Robocup competition.

It was funny watching the professor especially dressed up in tourist clothes and wandering

around.

Seth?

I think one of my best experiences at Bowdoin was getting involved with the radio station.

The student radio station.

I made really good friends and it was a really wonderful time.

Skye?

I really loved almost everything.

But one thing that I really have such fond memories of and feel such appreciation to

a specific professor for was, my senior year I did a year-long honors thesis and it was

again, research-based.

It was an amazing experience.

I got to do things that I never would have done.

And the professor that I had was just I mean, she was just amazing.

She was an amazing woman and is an amazing woman.

And was a real mentor to me.

That last year.

Clara?

I was part of the Asian Students Association for all four years that I was there.

And every year we put together an annual show which was a third comedy, third design and

a third dance.

And so every year that was probably the most exciting thing, but specifically senior year

was the year where everything went wrong, but it was still great.

And it was just such a joy to be able to kind of showcase all of these talents for the student

body and also throughout the rest of the year to see different student groups bring their

best on stage, as well.

Well thank you.

Adrian, Clara, Skye, Seth and Wills.

Five amazing polar bears.

And we are really grateful for your willingness to share your wisdom and thoughts and talk

about Bowdoin and your life after Bowdoin and so forth.

It's been really quite interesting.

We could keep going here.

Could we just had a hand.

Give a hand.

For more infomation >> Busting the Myth: Bowdoin College, the Liberal Arts, and the Path to a Career in Anything (11:35) - Duration: 11:31.

-------------------------------------------

Video: October warmth sticking around for some time - Duration: 2:42.

For more infomation >> Video: October warmth sticking around for some time - Duration: 2:42.

-------------------------------------------

Vegas survivor: 'It sounded like a dozen shooters' - Duration: 1:34.

For more infomation >> Vegas survivor: 'It sounded like a dozen shooters' - Duration: 1:34.

-------------------------------------------

ALERT: McCain Makes Nasty Move Against US Military | Top Stories Today - Duration: 4:12.

One of President Trump's most effective war tactics is the element of surprise.

By avoiding transparency with military operations, the enemy is unable to mount a proper opposition

in advance.

According to Newsmax, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) doesn't like that he and other politicians

are being kept out of the loop.

McCain has announced that all Pentagon nominations will be blocked until Trump discloses more

details about his Afghan war strategy.

Trump announced his Afghan war strategy in late August, but kept the details intentionally

vague to avoid tipping off US enemies to exactly what would be executed.

He did reveal that more than 3,000 troops would be sent as advisers to the Afghan government

and its military, but did not specify what they would be advising on.

This lack of transparency is a deviation from former President Obama's policy of revealing

almost everything about his war plans, as reported by The Federalist.

In Obama's mind, if the American people knew the details of war planning, US enemies

would be privy to impending engagements and, therefore, the nation would be forced to pursue

diplomacy to avoid confrontation.

Instead, it resulted in the enemy being kept in the loop on nearly every engagement, attack,

level of defense, and other details useful for them to mount an effective and costly

opposition, giving them the upper hand throughout his administration and stagnating military

pursuits.

Trump's refusal to give the enemy details to potentially use against US military has

already worked successfully in the Afghanistan war efforts.

According to Chicago Tribune, Secretary of Defense James Mattis informed Congress that

for the first time in 16 years, Afghanistan security forces are being fully utilized,

and there are fewer casualties during engagements.

Despite this increased level of success, McCain is upset that he and other politicians are

being left out on the details.

They intend to hinder Trump's efforts to fill appointments until they get more information.

The announcement came during a committee hearing with Secretary Mattis and Joint Chiefs of

Staff Chairman, General Joseph Dunford.

There, McCain announced, "We've been holding nominations… from the Pentagon to fill in

those Pentagon jobs."

He explained the reason for the holds is because he and Congress feel entitled to the details

of the war strategy.

"In the six weeks since the President made his announcement, this committee and Congress,

more broadly, still does not know many of the crucial details of this strategy.

This is totally unacceptable.

I repeat, this is totally unacceptable," McCain said.

According to Defense News, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) was similarly upset about

being kept out of the loop and wanted Mattis and Dunford to commit to being more open about

the details of each mission and the exact number of troops utilized.

Mattis replied that any details the committee desired would be given in private, but under

no circumstances would the information be made public.

"No, ma'am, if it involves telling the enemy anything that will help them, and yes,

ma'am, if it involves honesty with this committee in private, at any time, at closed

hearing, we will get as specific as you wish.

No reservations at all in private," Mattis said.

Mattis' response shows that they are willing to reveal the details to McCain and other

politicians in a private setting to avoid leaking the information to the enemy.

It is unclear whether McCain was demanding these private meetings specifically or for

the information to be released publicly.

It is frustrating that McCain has no trust in Trump's war strategy, despite the recent

success experienced in the region and the overwhelming success in the war against ISIS,

especially when compared to Obama's efforts.

While Congress and the Senate should be kept in the loop if they can keep the details secret,

McCain's threat to hold Pentagon nominations until he got his way seems very elitist of

him.

Does Sen. McCain believe he is Commander in Chief?

what do you think about this?

Please Share this news and Scroll down to comment below and don't forget to subscribe

top stories today.

For more infomation >> ALERT: McCain Makes Nasty Move Against US Military | Top Stories Today - Duration: 4:12.

-------------------------------------------

I Am (아이엠) - Full Episode 1 [Eng Subs] | Korean Drama - Duration: 15:37.

Subtitles & Timing by the I AM Team @ Viki

I am

It was just a dream.

What- What are you?

Who are you??

Who are you?

What happened?

Why is she in my room? Why? Why? Why?

It's a ghost. Are you a ghost?

Big Sis, you go check it out.

You're the one holding the baseball bat!!

- Go and investigate, quickly! - You go!

- Stop. Just a sec. - You go, Big Sis.

You go.

STOP!

Are you alright?

How did you get in?

Dad?

Who is... this?

Why do you care? Take the kid and get out of here.

Hey, the first thing you say to me is to get out when we haven't seen each other for so long.

Dad? Who is? You are, big guy?

If you're a dad, then shouldn't you be acting like one?

Since when did you care for us to be called a dad?

Han Woo, enough.

Who is she? Is she perhaps your...

Hmm? Aha. What are you saying?

I mean, I am still good looking and all, but...

Then, who is that child.

You've heard of an android, right?

Android? A cellphone? Galaxy?

I suppose that's also an android.

Not that kind. I mean a human robot, android.

Ah, that kind of android? I may not look it, but I'm a science teacher.

You are aware that I've researched about A.I. all my life, right?

Wouldn't I know it. That is the reason for our abandonment.

For sure, you're my daughter, as you're capable of concise thinking.

At any rate, that child is the fruit of my research.

Are you saying that she's a robot or something?

Does that make sense?

You may not know this, but...

I don't really care to hear this nonsense.

It's nauseating to stay within the same space as you.

Hey, Chang Woon Woo!

I said get out!

Do you not hear me? Tell her to ge--

--- out I s-a-id.

Can you discern now?

Let me introduce,

the best and first of its kind in android for humans, number, Angel. #1!

You've heard of Kim Young Ik, right?

This child has even more complex structure than Kim.

But the basis is the same.

Right now, you can say that she has completed

the data mining for intelligence gathering and conventional communication phases.

You can say she's at the final stage of self awareness completion through societal experience.

I spoke on the matter rather difficult, eh?

To put it another way, it'd be appropriate to say that she has the mind of a high schooler.

A tumultuous stage... Amazing, no?

What nonsense are you spewing? Does that make sense?

Won't you say something too, Big Sis?

What are you about? What in the world are you?

Why are you touching?

Just stop, please. You too.

Dad. We understand now, so go.

Noona.

O.. okay. I'll take off.

This is the manual.

Okay I got it, so long.

Okay, see you again, Daughter.

Are you crazy? Have you gone mad?

I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy.

I will handle it as I see fit, as for you, get a hold of your temper.

Do you... understand languages?

Yes.

You do talk. Do you have a name?

Do you understand what people say?

AI Number 1.

What's this. He didn't even give you a name?

He really was bad.

Then, let's call you Annie.

From now on I'll call you Annie. If people as what your name is

just answer Annie, okay?

Ok. Annie.

Oh! Good job. Let's try again.

Annie.

Annie.

Annie.

So good!

Annie.

You're doing so well!

Hey. Hey!

Me. Me. I'm right here.

I'm here so if you need me...

What bright and happy seniors!

Everyone sit down.

Get back to your seats, quickly, quickly.

Today, we have a new student.

Annie. Shall we greet?

Hi, everyone. I'm Annie.

Please take care of me.

As Annie comes from America, Korean culture will be somewhat foreign to her.

I hope you help her get used to things in many ways.

Especially the class president. Alright?

Yes.

Annie, you can take a seat near the Class President.

Now, let's ensure we carry on the day without any accident,

and let's, please, do some studying, you Seniors, okay?

Are you not going to answer?

See you later.

Thanks, Class Prez. Annie?

The name's so pretty.

You came from the US? Do you have any US snacks?

Hey, look over here!

Annie, from now on, you have to attend school. You have to hide your identity here.

You understand what I mean, right?

Mm.

Not mm, it's "yes".

Yes.

And from now on, you're a younger cousin of mine from the States, alright?

That's a lie...

Huh?

That's right. The thing is, you need a bit of lie once in a while if you want to make it through your life.

At any rate, you're my younger cousin from the States, okay?

And, you can never stick out.

Especially, you can't pick up heavy objects and all. Okay?

Yes..Yes.

I'm right here.

Everything should go fine.

Of course. It's alright.

[ Noona ]

[ Noona ]

Hey, Chang Woon Woo!

Why did you come here?

Take Annie home with you.

Me? Why?

I have a business trip.

Making me go nuts. You've taken her over on your own.

Cut out with the complaint and do as you're told... if you don't want to die.

Annie, Woon Woo Oppa is going to take you home.

You have to listen to him until I return, okay?

Unnie, where are you going?

I have to go earn a living, to buy you delicious things.

Ah, I guess you can't eat food.

I'm going to buy pretty things. Pretty things for you. I'm off.

Sun Joo Yeon. Hey!

What are you doing?

Are you okay?

What?

I can go by myself. So, don't worry about me.

Did she say "are you okay?" to me?

Hey, hey come over here.

Seriously. She sure making me be concerned.

Son, what's up? Why'd you call?

Hello? If you called, then you should at least say something.

Well, it's nothing really.

Anything specific? Of course there's nothing going on.

Is Annie doing okay? I heard from your big sister that she named her Annie.

Be nice to Annie. She doesn't have family or someone to look after her.

She's alone you say?

Do you have the right to tell me what to do?

I was ALWAYS alone!

You who have never once asked whether I was lonely.

Woon Woo, the thing is...

Never mind. I'm hanging up.

That kid...

Sorry, my son.

...no connection...

I don't know. Whatever.

Please leave a message...

It was a puppy-dream (nonsensical dream).

Yup. A puppy-dream.

I'll ignore it.

[ Son ]

♫ On the road we walked on every day ♫

♫ Do you remember the promises we exchanged? ♫

For more infomation >> I Am (아이엠) - Full Episode 1 [Eng Subs] | Korean Drama - Duration: 15:37.

-------------------------------------------

Made In Maine: Lobster Designs - Duration: 2:27.

For more infomation >> Made In Maine: Lobster Designs - Duration: 2:27.

-------------------------------------------

Cult of Chucky Interview - Brad Dourif & Fiona Dourif - Duration: 6:48.

So you guys have a different Chucky doll!

That's very fitting for the two of you!

For more infomation >> Cult of Chucky Interview - Brad Dourif & Fiona Dourif - Duration: 6:48.

-------------------------------------------

How a Bump Stock Works on an AR 15 - Duration: 1:47.

For more infomation >> How a Bump Stock Works on an AR 15 - Duration: 1:47.

-------------------------------------------

박철 재혼 부인 근황|KT-KR - Duration: 4:18.

For more infomation >> 박철 재혼 부인 근황|KT-KR - Duration: 4:18.

-------------------------------------------

유아인 군대 면제 나이 골종양|KT-KR - Duration: 4:46.

For more infomation >> 유아인 군대 면제 나이 골종양|KT-KR - Duration: 4:46.

-------------------------------------------

정준하 이휘재 매니저시절|KT-KR - Duration: 3:33.

For more infomation >> 정준하 이휘재 매니저시절|KT-KR - Duration: 3:33.

-------------------------------------------

Phụ Nữ Nhất Định Phải Làm 7 Điều Này Sau Khi Quan Hệ Để Bảo Vệ Vùng Kin, Nếu Không Hối Hận Suốt Đời - Duration: 4:58.

For more infomation >> Phụ Nữ Nhất Định Phải Làm 7 Điều Này Sau Khi Quan Hệ Để Bảo Vệ Vùng Kin, Nếu Không Hối Hận Suốt Đời - Duration: 4:58.

-------------------------------------------

Bbkidtv: How to Draw a Birthday Cake Coloring Pages | Drawing for Kids - Duration: 10:11.

Welcome to bbkidtv channel

This channel I am create for kids

this video I show you guys how to draw a cute cake