BRUNSWICK — With no part-time enrollment options and a heavy on-campus student population, non-traditional students are hard to come by at Bowdoin College. But with a recent push to draw more veteran students to the school, that could soon change.
Bowdoin recently joined forces with an organization called Service to School, which helps veterans interested in pursuing higher education get connected with schools.
“This has been part of a conversation for a number of years,” said Whitney Soule, the school’s dean of admissions and student aid.
Bowdoin College has about 1,825 students on campus with another 150 studying abroad or in other off-campus programs, according to enrollment data, but Soule said that none of them are veterans and only one student is in the military reserves.
They often have students join the military after graduation, she said, but enrolled veterans are few and far between. Part of this may be because the majority of students, including all first-year students, live on campus.
“Part of the Bowdoin model includes an immersive experience,” Soule said, which works well for 18- to 22-year-olds, but for a veteran or someone who’s already started a family, this option isn’t realistic.
“Veterans’ life experiences are very different than any student just coming out of high school,” she said. Having people with military experience would create a more diverse student body and would be a benefit for the traditional students, exposing them to people who might interpret ideas differently, have far different experiences and have a variety of political beliefs, Soule added.
Bowdoin officials worked closely with an active group of Bowdoin alumni and Marines to work out solutions for problems, such as housing, that may arise as the initiative gets off the ground.
“I feel like we have a good starting point,” Soule said.
School officials will also work with professors and teaching staff to help determine accommodations for veteran or military reserve students if needed.
Roger Duncan, an 18-year U.S. Navy reservist who will re-enlist for a final four years next month, said that this was a problem for him during his pursuit of higher education. Duncan started the teacher certification process at the University of New England in 2004, using a portion of his G.I. Bill to help cover the costs. He ultimately earned his state certification to be an ed-tech, but he had to leave the program before he became a teacher.
“It didn’t work out,” he said. “It was in a time that as a reservist there were a lot of deployments and … I was ambitious to be on that track,” he said. “I got called away in the middle of the semester and my professors were uninterested in accommodating my travel schedule.”
Duncan said it was not the school’s fault, and appreciated that he was able to take night classes to help get his degree, but with a full-time job at L.L. Bean, a young family and his military career, he could not make it work.
Service members in the reserves are doing more than the traditional one weekend per month, two weeks per year service than they used to, he said, and it is something that affects everyone from the employer, the school, the family and the individual.
“It’s made me a better man,” he said.
Bowdoin has not determined a “target number” for how many veterans they are hoping to attract annually, but Soule said that she is looking forward to reading their applications. Last year, nearly 95,000 veterans used federal educational aid, or the G.I. Bill, to pay for college, with more than 3,000 veterans attending Maine schools.
Soule hopes Bowdoin will be one of those schools next year.
“I’m excited to be moving in this direction,” she said. “Pursuing an education is valuable for everyone.”
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