Dr. Barry Mills, who became president of Bowdoin College in Maine in 2001, endeavored to make his alma mater “look more like the rest of America.”
But Mills the freshman quickly learned that his wealthier classmates regularly vacationed in Europe. He had yet to travel by airplane. Mills realized how fortunate he was that Bowdoin officials had crafted a financial package with enough aid so that his father, who did not finish 10th grade, could afford the tuition.
So when Mills became president of his alma mater in 2001, he was determined to increase access and affordability to Bowdoin for low-income families and to students of color who otherwise might not have bothered to apply to the liberal arts institution in Maine, where 95 percent of the state’s population is White.
“For better or worse, this has been my single-minded commitment,” says Mills, who is stepping down as president at the end of June. “It has been my good fortune to financially make this happen without straining the institution.”
Currently, 33 percent of Bowdoin’s 1,800 students are minorities, compared with only 14 percent in 2001. As an example of the lack of diversity back then, the number of African-American students on the entire campus was comparable to the dozen or so Black classmates from Mills’ undergraduate years.
Nowadays, Pell Grant recipients comprise about 14 percent of the enrollment, and a similar proportion are first-generation college students.
In addition to his goal at the beginning of his presidency to make Bowdoin “look more like the rest of America,” Mills says, a chorus of faculty, alumni and trustees clamored for the student body to become more diverse in terms of race and socioeconomic class.
