Academics, Faculty, and Staff

This article was published in the Bowdoin alumni magazine three years after the first woman graduated. The piece summarizes an Alumni council panel discussion concerning the status of coeducation at Bowdoin. Early women faculty and administrators participated on the panel: Alice Early, assistant dean of students; Barbara Kaster, associate professor of communications in the English department; June Vail, a modern dance instructor who later founded the College’s dance department in 1986; and Sally LaPointe, the first woman athletic coach. The panel discussed the strain of hypervisibility, women’s academic and extracurricular programs, and the college’s progress since 1971 with regard to coeducation. The panel was optimistic and enthusiastic in women student’s participation in academic, athletic, and extracurricular programs as well as the College’s treatment of women on campus.

“Women at Bowdoin: Some Thoughts” in the Bowdoin Alumnus, March 1974