Roger Howell, Jr.

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Roger Howell, Jr. (1936-1989) was the 10th president of Bowdoin College and the fourth to be an alumnus.

[edit] Life and Career

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Howell continued his education at St John's College, Oxford after graduating from Bowdoin in 1958. When he became president of Bowdoin in 1968 at the age of 32, he was one of the youngest university presidents in the nation.

Under Howell's nine year presidency which lasted until 1978, Bowdoin became a co-ed institution (1971), expanded its enrollment from 950 students to 1,350, eliminated College Board examination requirements for entering students (1970), and established the first African American center in Maine. Bowdoin became the first academic institution in America to eliminate SAT I requirements, thus setting a trend to follow for other institutions, including Bates College, Franklin & Marshall College, Hamilton College, Middlebury College, Mount Holyoke College, Pitzer College, the University of Texas at Austin, and Wheaton College, among others.

A Rhodes Scholar at Bowdoin, where he graduated summa cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year, Howell first began teaching at Bowdoin in 1964 and continued to teach and write after the end of his presidency. During his life, he wrote several books on British history, where he specialized on the history of Tudor and Stuart England. In 2001, the Roger J. Howell Professorship was established in his honor.