Bowdoin President Barry Mills announced Thursday that the College will seek to add more than $100 million to its endowment in support of “need-based” financial aid for students.
Mills said the new fundraising initiative is part of a focus on “access, opportunity and innovation” and the need to enroll, support and graduate what he calls “our first-choice students,” regardless of their ability to pay the sticker price of a Bowdoin education. He said the additional funds will support both low- and middle-income students, and even students from some “upper-middle-income” families.
Mills, who announced last month he is leaving the College at the end of the 2014-15 academic year, said he will dedicate his last year at Bowdoin to raising these funds.
“Over the next 14 months we will work tirelessly to achieve these goals,” said Mills. “We will work … to ensure that Bowdoin College is a place that welcomes the most talented, the most diverse, the most engaging students to this campus.”
Mills made the announcement Thursday, May 8, 2014, at Bowdoin’s annual Scholarship Appreciation Luncheon, an opportunity for hundreds of students to share a meal with the donors — alumni, parents and friends of the College — who provide the financial support that makes a Bowdoin education possible for them.
Mills, who has called the event “the most emotional gathering of the year,” shared that he had been a first-generation college student from Rhode Island. He said Bowdoin “changed my life.” His remarks followed those by trustee emerita Marijane Benner Browne ’83, who has dedicated her personal and professional energies to creating opportunities for others at Bowdoin and in the larger community, and by Tung Nguyen ’15, who spoke of his path to Bowdoin made possible with the help of financial aid.
Entertainment was provided by a student quartet comprising violinists Adam Zhang ’14 and Roya Moussapour ’17, violist Sean Moran ’14 and cellist Sheng Ge ’16, coached by George Lopez, Bowdoin’s Beckwith Artist-in-Residence.
Photos by Dennis Griggs/Tannery Hill Studios
