Bowdoin College
EN-3: Student Life

While the sustainability office does not have a formal relationship with these clubs, there is frequent collaboration to organize or promote events that center around sustainability on campus and beyond. Often, the membership and activity of each club varies slightly each semester, depending on the vibrancy of its student leadership.

• Bowdoin Citizens Climate Lobby: Creating political will for addressing climate change through nonprofit, nonpartisan, grassroots advocacy. 


• Bowdoin Earth Science Enthusiasts: A community of scientists, allies, and leaders interested in spreading knowledge, enthusiasm and interest in earth and ocean science in the Bowdoin and Brunswick communities.


• Bowdoin Naturalists: Encourages an understanding of local ecology and the natural history that surrounds us in the greater Brunswick and coastal Maine community. Our mission is to help students feel at home in all lands through identifying local species of trees, plants, insects, birds, fungi, and mammals and engaging with the outdoor world through reflection, exploration, art, and discussion.


• Bowdoin Organic Garden: The Bowdoin Organic Garden (BOG) Club is meant to connect students with a close and convenient location for pursuing their passions surrounding farming and sustainable food systems. Our goal is to teach students about organic and sustainable farming through hands-on experience in the garden, as well as forums to discuss and learn about critical issues facing our food systems through farm tours, agricultural fairs, and talks from experts. The BOG is committed to educating the broader Bowdoin community about issues related to local, sustainable, and organic agriculture.


• Sunrise Bowdoin: Sunrise Bowdoin is an official hub of the Sunrise Movement. We believe that climate change is one of the defining problems of our generation, the effects of which are already being felt, often disproportionately in communities that contribute the least to this change. We organize for a Green New Deal on the state and federal level. Through this, we promote a just transition to renewable energy in order to combat climate change on the timeline that science demands, while at the same time addressing the economic and social inequalities of our time, related to class divides, racism, and the crippling hold of corporate money on our political system.


• Yellow Bike Club: Our mission is simple: to provide an affordable means of communal transportation for the Bowdoin community in a healthy and environmentally friendly (carbon-free) way, and in the process, help alleviate parking and traffic issues on campus and in Brunswick.

The Bowdoin Organic Garden is operated by the College's dining service and includes a year-round garden manager, part-time personnel, student employees, and volunteers. In addition to growing approximately 10,000 pounds of produce for consumption in the College's dining halls annually, it provides agricultural experiences and events for the greater college community. The garden is located on two plots of land on campus, at the corner of South Street and Coffin Street and at 52 Harpswell Road. The Harpswell Road property, which is located roughly a five-minute walk from the center of campus, includes a half-acre of growing space, a 576-square-foot propagation greenhouse, and a historic barn. The gardens are managed using no-till practices, and the entire operation is certified organic by the Maine Organic Farmer's and Gardener's Association. In 2022 a new area of the 52 Harpswell garden location was created to focus on growing perennial plants with medicinal properties, and a series of programming is being developed to accompany the harvest and use of those plants.

The Yellow Bike Club is a student-run club that provides an affordable means of communal transportation for the Bowdoin community in a healthy and environmentally friendly (carbon-free) way. The Bowdoin Yellow Bike Club provides maintenance and storage during the year for participating members. Members can drop off their bikes at any time and a student mechanic will fix it as soon as possible. https://students.bowdoin.edu/yellow-bike-club/

The Environmental Studies Program celebrated it’s fiftieth anniversary during the 2022–2023 academic year with a series of events and a symposium aimed at reflecting on the past half-century of environmental studies at Bowdoin, as well as looking at the progress—and setbacks—of the environmental movement at large. The Fall 2022 semester featured a three-part program co-sponsored by the Bowdoin Naturalists student group, the Environmental Studies Program, sustainability office, and Center for Multicultural Life, titled “Students of Color Share their Environmental Stories." This event consisted of a writing workshop taught by Senior Writer-in-Residence Anthony Walton, a letter-writing event where students turn their personal stories into action by composing letters to political representatives, and an evening of sharing stories about how they became interested or engaged in environmental issues or interested in pursuing a career in the environmental field. The Spring 2023 semester kicked off events with the first installment in an annual Women in Climate series for The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in Maine. This panel discussion featured Bowdoin environmental studies alumni and TNC Maine staff working at the intersection of climate and community. The event conveyed the importance of centering community in the conservation and climate fields and how and why integrating values of equity, diversity, and inclusion is vital for both people and nature in the face of a changing climate. https://www.bowdoin.edu/news/2022/11/an-environmental-studies-program-for-todays-changing-world.html

The eARTh project is a program proposed and supported by the Department of Earth and Oceanographic Science  to create opportunities for student-led projects that showcase the work of their peers in response to a theme. There have been two “eARTh Exhibitions.” The first event, which was held virtually in May 2021, called for forms of art that communicate the impact humans are having on the environment or how the changing climate is impacting life on Earth. The second event was held in person in December 2021 and was titled “Art for an Insistent Future,” with nineteen featured artists whose contributed works spanned mediums from visual arts and poetry to dance. The December 2022 event theme was titled "Stepping Stones: Our Paths to the Future" and featured fourteen artists. https://courses.bowdoin.edu/earth-art-2021/ https://www.bowdoin.edu/news/2021/12/art-for-an-insistent-future.html

An exhibition organized by Bowdoin's Native American Students Association (NASA), held in February 2022 at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, brought together historical as well as contemporary examples of Wabanaki artistry. The event featured a special tour of the exhibition Innovation and Resilience across Three Generations of Wabanaki Basketmaking, with student curators.

The Bowdoin College Outing Club is an organization that provides opportunities for backpacking, kayaking, rafting, skiing, and climbing trips, among others. Students who undergo training to lead trips participate in Leave No Trace (LNT) discussions and training. Students who go on the trips themselves are also taught to make minimal environmental impact. The Outing Club collaborates with a number of on-campus organizations to offer outdoor programming. These partnerships include collaboration with the Sexuality, Women, and Gender Center for the Wild Women program and Out in the Woods program. Additionally, students who have completed one of our Leadership Training programs often lead trips for other organizations of which they are members. These students have led trips for the Latin American Student Organization (LASO), Asian Student Association (ASA), International Student Association (ISA), Women of Color Coalition, and various athletic teams. The Outing Club also organizes a significant number of first-year orientation trips, many of which have a focus on natural environment appreciation and follow Leave No Trace principles. The student leaders of these Orientation trips are all trained in LNT practices so that they can teach the incoming students these skills from their first moments at Bowdoin. https://www.bowdoin.edu/outing/index.html

The Office of Residential Life holds an annual Winter Book Club through the sophomore College Houses. The 2022–2023 book was Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. All members of the campus community were invited to sign up to join the book club to receive a free copy of the book before winter break and a chance to discuss the climate change and social inequality themes with other members of the Bowdoin community upon return to campus in anticipation of the upcoming performance of Toshi Reagon (Joseph McKeen Visiting Fellow) and Bernice Reagon’s congregational opera adaptation of the book.

The Sustainable Living Eco Rep Team shares steps that individuals can take in their daily lives around campus and beyond to live more sustainably through the Green Living Commitment program and zero-waste/crafting workshops and other events. The team held a series of workshops for their peers to make sustainable DIY personal care products during the month of April, leading up to the Earth Day celebration. Students learned how to make their own soap, shampoo, toothpaste, and wax food wraps.

The Bowdoin Organic Garden Club hosts a large variety of events and workshops, from creating tea blends, starting seedlings, and growing personal gardens to pickling cucumbers and carrots and creating dried flower wreaths, while also providing more ways to garden and eat sustainably. 

The Eco Rep team and Bowdoin Organic Garden collaborated on a workshop learning how to make soap bars with botanicals from the garden before the winter break to encourage students to make their own holiday gifts to bring home to family members.

The Yellow Bike Club hosts monthly bicycle repair events to encourage the community to learn how to care for their own bicycles with Bowdoin's two Bike Fix-It stations.  

The Office of Sustainability hires more than thirty student employees every year to work as Eco Reps in the residence halls and apartment complexes as well as work on projects like climate action planning in the office. In addition, the Environmental Studies Program also provides fellowship funds for eight to ten students to intern with a local environmental or sustainability-oriented organization. The Bowdoin Organic Garden hires two students each summer to work in the garden throughout the summer. Finally, various academic departments and facilities hire students throughout the summer as well as during the academic year to work as vivarium technicians or in grounds keeping, maintaining the health of the college's natural environment. A recent student position with grounds was utilizing a GPS to create a tree inventory of all the trees on campus. The end result is a tool for grounds to monitor the health of campus trees and inform planning for annual tree investments but also a resource for the community to learn about the variety of trees on campus. The Outing Club employs students seasonally for different leadership opportunities in getting the Bowdoin community out into the natural world in safe, responsible, enjoyable ways.