One summer day in 1991, a group of us were huddled in Bill
Barker’s office at Bowdoin College, working on a proposal for this huge grant
for a statewide systemic initiative to improve K-12 mathematics and science
education that the National Science Foundation had solicited. This was a five year, $10 million dollar
grant and we hoped we would get it as part of Cohort 2. I remember I got to the proposal drafting
session late and had wood shavings in my beard.
That summer was when the governor of the state had a feud with the
legislature about the state budget and closed state government, laying off all
state employees for several days. It
turned out that that was the summer we were building our house so I was able to
do some carpentry to fill the furlough days.
It seems to me that Jackie Mitchell and Bill Barker, Dale
Syphers, and Kathy Bunge (all Bowdoin College faculty and staff) and maybe Rol Fessendon were there and
we emerged from the meeting with another draft proposal. So we put the ‘days off’ to good use.
Tom Keller
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