Bowdoin College

Bowdoin’s mascot, the Polar Bear, symbolizes the spirit of Arctic exploration in which the College has played an active role for well over a century, continuing to this day with the state-of-the-art Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum on campus.
 
Scores of Bowdoin faculty members, students and alumni have voyaged to the icy North on scientific and exploration missions. The most famous were Admiral Robert E. Peary of Bowdoin’s Class of 1877, who in 1909 became the first man to reach the North Pole; and his chief assistant on that historic expedition, Admiral Donald B. MacMillan of the Class of 1898, who later made 26 voyages of his own to the Arctic circle.
 
Thus, it was only natural that the great white bear of the Far North be adopted as the emblem of Maine’s oldest institution of higher learning. The move toward this was made by Admiral MacMillan, who in 1915 presented a mounted polar bear to Bowdoin as a mascot. It is there today, preserved in a large glass case in the lobby of the College’s Morrell Gymnasium.