| 1794 | Bowdoin College founded. |
| 1833 | Oberlin College becomes first college in the United States to admit women. |
| 1862 | Mary Jane Patterson is the first Black woman to receive a college degree in the United States. |
| 1871 | Joshua Chamberlain proposes coeducation at Bowdoin in his Inaugural Address. |
| 1876 | Seven of the twenty-seven students at Bowdoin’s Summer Science Institute are women. |
| 1891 | Mary Sophia and Harriet Sarah Walker donate a building “exclusively for art purposes” in memory of their uncle. |
| 1901 | Sarah Orne Jewett is the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Bowdoin, for her work as a writer; the College will grant twenty-three honorary degrees to women before the introduction of coeducation. |
| 1922 | Kate Douglas Wiggin, Bowdoin’s second woman honorary degree recipient, founds the Society of Bowdoin Women. |
| 1943 | During World War II, Bowdoin hires Marion C. Holmes to teach mathematics and Ruth Y. Yeaton and Marguerite D. Little to teach meteorology in a specialized military training program. |
| 1962 | Bernice S. Engler and Carolyn M. Mann become the first women to be awarded earned degrees through Bowdoin. They both receive a master of arts degree through the Mathematics Institute program supported by the National Science Foundation. |
| 1969 | The Twelve College Exchange Program brings the first women full-time students to Bowdoin. The Report of the Study Committee on Underclass Environment (the Pierce Report) recommends implementing coeducation. |
| 1971 | Susan Jacobson becomes the first woman to graduate from Bowdoin. Seventy transfer and sixty-five first-year women matriculate in the first coed class. Bowdoin’s first women’s sports event is a field hockey game with coached by Sally LaPointe. |
| 1972 | Patricia A. (Barney) Geller ‘75 becomes the first woman president of a fraternity in the United States Bowdoin Women’s Association is established. The College hires Helen Cafferty as the first woman faculty member to go through the ranks: from assistant to associate to full professor. |
| 1973 | Sociology professor Matilda White Riley is the first woman to become a full professor. Rosalyne Spindel Bernstein becomes the first woman elected to the Board of Overseers. |
| 1975 | Saddie Smith, one of the first Black women students at Bowdoin, graduates with the first class of women to complete four years. |
| 1976 | Bowdoin’s first all-women a cappella group, Miscellania, created. |
| 1977 | First women’s studies class offered, through German department. |
| 1980 | Bowdoin opens the Women’s Resource Center at 24 College Street. |
| 1983 | Bowdoin’s first and only all-women fraternity, Alpha Beta Phi, is founded. |
| 1985 | Joan Benoit (Samuelson) ’79 receives the Bowdoin Prize, first and only woman to be awarded the prize since its inception in 1933. |
| 1988 | Women’s studies minor established. |
| 1989 | Mariko Onuki and Miyako Satoh become two of the first Asian women professors at Bowdoin. |
| 1992 | Women’s studies major established. |
| 1994 | The original alma mater, titled “Rise Sons of Bowdoin,” is changed to “Raise Songs to Bowdoin” with new gender-neutral lyrics “our nurturer and friend” replacing “a nurturer of men.” Anthony Antolini ’63, the chorus director, proposed these changes which the Alumni Council voted unanimously to approve. |
| 1997 | The Women’s Resource Center begins sponsoring annual performances of Eve Enseler’s play The Vagina Monologues which details the many experiences of being a woman. |
| 2002 | Professors Kristen Ghodsee and Jennifer Scanlon are hired as first faculty members appointed full-time to Women’s Studies Program. |
| 2005 | Women’s Studies Program changes name to Gender and Women’s Studies Program. |
| 2007 | Women’s field hockey team first Bowdoin team to win NCAA National Championship. |
| 2011 | Kelly Fayard, assistant professor of Anthropology, becomes the first woman Native American hired. |
| 2015 | The Office of Gender Violence Prevention and Education is officially established. |
| 2017 | The Women’s Resource Center and the Resource Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity combine and form the Sexuality, Women, and Gender Center (SWAG). Inspired by The Vagina Monologues, students produce the first performance of RISE: Untold Stories of Bowdoin Women. The Free Flow Initiative provides menstruation products in campus bathrooms. Second floor women’s bathroom in Smith Union is converted to a gender-inclusive bathroom. |
| 2019 | The Lived Name Initiative launches. |
| 2021 | Bowdoin celebrates fifty years of women’s admittance at the College. |
Return to Exhibit Home Page | Explore Fifty Years of Coeducation