Bowdoin College Launches Digital Excellence Commitment

is president of Bowden College. He joins us on the phone from Brunswick Main. Mr President Clayton, how are you. I'm very well, Tim. It's great to be with you and Carol today. It's great to be with you as well. Um. So I'm not going to hold it against you. I went to Colby College, but I think we should get that out there, you know, right at the beginning, because we have this like rivalry. At least at least you're not from Bates. Okay, that's all I can say. Um,

but it's pretty remarkable what you guys are doing at Bowden. Uh. The Digital Excellence commitment provides every student with a thirteen inch MacBook Pro and I had many and an Apple pencil. UM. Talk to us about how this partnership came to be well, We began working with Apple in in earnest a few years ago before the pandemic um UH with respect to technology on campus and how to think about the future

of the use of technology and higher education. During the pandemic, we made the decision to provide every one of our students and any faculty member that wanted one with an

iPad pro and a pencil UH. And we did that UM during the academic year when a number of our students were operating remotely and many of our classes were operating remotely, so that every single student would have access to precisely the same hardware and be able to experience software in exactly the same way UM, and that faculty would be able to rely on very good technology to be able to deliver their classes and to work with their students in real time, and for the students to

work with each other in study groups and offline and so forth. And that that proved to be a very powerful tool for making sure that we were able to deliver a great education during the pandemic. Last, I want to jump into where we have some time with you. Now, we're gonna do some news in a few minutes and we'll come back with even more time. But I'm wondering why Apple and rather than a less expensive provider of PCs, because when we talk Apple, we're talking premium products here.

I guess I would turn to the old phrase that you get what you pay for. It's Apple has built fantastic products, both in the notebook version and in the iPad version, and they do different things, which is why we're providing our students with both of those tools UH

and the pencil as well. UH. Also the ability to provide the kind of software that we need to offer our students to be able to have the educational experience they have both general UM productivity software but also very core specific software across the range of disciplines really drove us to Apple. I would also say that UM the UH in addition to the quality of the product, the service relationship that we have with Apple was also very important to us to make sure that students would have

little if any downtime. If UM, they know something got broken, they needed to get something repaired, and so forth well, and this really gets into something we talked about here UM Clayton a lot at Bloomberg about inequity of access or just inequalities that are out there as well. What were you seeing that was potentially holding back some students because they did not have that same access. Yeah, thanks

for that, Carol. UH. The issue of access and opportunity is a central part of our mission, and we can spend some time if you want, talking about our financial aid program. But to the to the question you asked, what we were seeing is that students would come to campus with a wide variety of hardware. Everyone would a row. I've pretty much everyone would arrive with some kind of

a laptop or tablet. But the wide variety of laptops and tablets, the wide variety of the quality of the age, the power of the memory UH was making it increasingly difficult for our faculty to be able to rely on the ability for our students to be able to do the work UH in a way that UM was going to provide them with an excellent education. And many of our students who had UH lower quality and older products were not able to do the same kind of things in the same way as students who had the very

best products for us. We really came to realize, and this was driven home during the pandemic that to be able to deliver the education that we want and act and to prepare our students for the digital world that we're going into, they all need to be working off of an excellent hardware platform and have access to excellent software and to be and to and to have a kind of homogeneous experience, to be able to all be working with the same tool UH. And that that that

drove us. Otherwise, you've got students who are who are operating in a very different, lower quality environment, and we were seeing that this is for us table stakes for a great education. Sit tight for a second. I'm Clayton. We're gonna do a little bit of news and as you know, a lot going on in the world, and they will come back and continue the conversation. We are talking with Clayton Rose. He's President Bowden College, on the phone from the school at Brunswick, Maine. Trile Master Tim

Stanovick here. We are talking with Bowden College President Clayton Rose. He's on the phone from Brunswick, Maine. We've been talking about UH, their plan to give all students a suite of the latest Apple technology and access to a full range of software to really smooth out the inequities when it comes to an inequities of access when it comes to technology and tools. Clayton, UM, glad you're still with us.

Tim and I were talking in the break about the cost of this to you guys and where the money specifically is coming. Um. Was it a gift from a donor? Like, how are you doing this? So this, UH, the funding for this GARLD will come from our operating budget. We concluded that it was so important that we do this that we needed to make room in our normal operating budget um to cover the cost of doing this. So it's not a specific gift, it's not a limited time UM.

My guess is that we'll have UH donors who find this interesting and we'll be able to help us over time. But UM, out of the box here we're covering out of our operating budget. Well, okay, will it Will it lead to an increase in tuition costs going forward? No, We're very disciplined about our our our budget, so we make choices about what's important and this is very much at the top of the list and some of the other things that we might not have done. We'll get

too later. But um, but work our way into the budget later. Can you give us an idea of how much it costs it's costing for student? Sure, it's it's been reported that this per student that have to do the math. But the total program on an annual basis is about a million and a half dollars. So if we divide that by the two thousand students, I don't know my calculator, and it's higher math, so I'm going

to miss onthing. I mean in the greater scheme of operating expenses, it's it's it's not really really significant right now. A million and a half is real money. But that's that's correct. Our our operating budget is about a hundred and eighty million dollars in a given year. Um and uh. And again, this is such an important part of ensuring that all of our students receive a great mode and education that you know, it's it's it's hard to argue

that we shouldn't be doing it. So real money, but um, but manageable in the context of the budget that we have. An incredibly important in terms of our priorities. We did the math calculator, Thank you so much for app seven fifty dollars per per student. Um I get it though, because we don't do an interview Clayton, where somehow it doesn't matter what industry you're talking about, what leader you are talking to, that somehow the conversation gets back to

technology in some ways. And so um, I get it. I get it where you come from. Yeah, yeah, And the combination of the of the notebook and the iPad is really quite powerful, and it's very interesting. When we first started, we were thinking about either or and we came to the conclusion that what you really need is to put both of these tools into our students hands. They do different things, they complement each other in very powerful ways and turning in terms of the teaching and

the learning that we do here. And it doesn't matter what discipline, right, you're saying, every student gets this. If that's exactly right, it's really interesting. I mean, you can naturally, your mind naturally moves to stem oriented kinds of and

quantitatively oriented kinds of fields. But in art as an example, one of our proposals from one of our faculty is to a craft on the iPad a three D version of an object, and then to create that object in a three D printer that we have in our our our department, and then to make a clay model of that and to imagine these, um, the sculptures that they're

doing in different media. UM, it's it's really interesting. Our theater and Dance department learned over the course of the pandemic that the camera and the editing tools provide very powerful compliments to the work that they do on stage. And they're continuing to do that now that we're back in person and doing all of our work together as we've traditionally done. Hey, languages, we don't how much time left and I want to make sure we get to

everything that we want to talk about. The performance of bode in Colleges endowment has been absolutely remarkable, according to day in the Bloomberg terminal, fourteen four point five percent annual return over the last ten years UM beating out only well not evenly beat not even beating out, but tied with M I T for for number one according to data in the Bloomberg. Are you able to do this program because of that that performance of the of

the endowment, well, that certainly helps Tim. The endowment has done incredibly well over the short, medium and long term. And we've been blessed with great people on our investment department and our investment committee, And we have amazing alumni and parents that give to the college. Our participation rate for our annual funds from alumni is among the very top in the nation. Uh. And so we're we're really

very fortunate tests Uh. You know, a great endowment and and folks that support us on an annual basis and in an endowed basis. So we need to ask you about Russia. Uh. And this is certainly as you could understand as a news organization, global news organization, just really as a global citizen, our focus on and I'm sure

you have in your student body has as well. What are you hearing from our What are the conversations you all are having at Bowden surrounding the Russian invasion against Ukraine, especially as we're seeing companies push back, nations push back increasingly.

I'm also curious what your student body is saying. So I think the the most honest thing we can say right now is that we're all taking this in and trying to understand what's going on um UH, and we're we're approaching this from perhaps the three different directions, Carol. The first is, in particular order, UH, the the educational aspect.

On last Friday of several faculty or experts in various areas that relate to this held a teaching that was, as you can imagine, incredibly well attended by members of the community, and I suspect we will continue to do

these over time. The second is that UH, we've we're putting together through UH work in our student affairs and with others, opportunities for students to come together in groups to talk about how they're processing all of this is an incredibly challenging thing to understand on the back of, you know, being in a kit pandemic and with a number of the other things that have been going on

in the world. And then the third is that we UH for students that UM require, we have individual outreach and and UH and conversations with our deans and so forth. It's a small call which we know everyone. We paid deep attention to how everyone is doing. So there's the intellectual academic engagement, there's the group and the collective community coming together, and then there's individual outreach that we do. All right, yeah, no, UM, and we really appreciate you

weighing in on that and and just so much more. Listen, Clayton, thank you so much. Hope we can reach on you again in the future, and good luck with the program. Clayton Rose, he's president of Bowden College, on the phone from Brunswick, Maine. I know, I don't want to sound like an old man here, but Carol, you and I were talking during the break and I said to you, you know, I graduated from college in two thousand and six, not that long ago. It was a big we got.

We didn't have WiFi on campus until the summer between my junior and senior year. And it's pretty remarkable to see the way that technology has just transformed education so quickly, and I think increasingly you do see the technology community reaching out, UM and educational institutions really understand the importance of kids having technology in their hands. It's just the way we operate and making it each wall is really important.

You're smiling. Why, It's just I can't believe everything's getting an iPad. It's pretty incredible. All right, have a safe and good evening, everybody. This is Bloomberg,