Encyclopedia
Grinnell College is a
liberal arts college in
Grinnell,
Iowa. It was founded in 1846, when a group of transplanted New England Congregationalists with a strong social-reformer orientation formed the Trustees of Iowa College.
Grinnell has ranked in the top fifteen liberal arts colleges according to
U.S. News & World Report is a weekly newsmagazine [i]. ...
since the inception of its rankings, as well as "best all-around " liberal arts college in 2004, according to
Newsweek magazine. In 2006,
The Chronicle of Higher Education cited Grinnell as having the highest endowment amongst liberal arts colleges. .
History
The origin of Grinnell College is tied to the settlement of Iowa by the pioneers. In 1843 a group of 11 Congregational ministers, all of whom trained at Andover Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, formed to carry the gospel into the frontier. When the group arrived in Iowa later that year, each selected a different town in which to establish a congregation, their motto was "each a church; all a college." In 1846 they collectively established Iowa College in Davenport.
The letters of William Salter depict the commitment and philosophy of the Iowa Band. Salter wrote this to his fiancee back East in 1847: "I shall aim to show that the West will be just what others make it, and that they which work the hardest and do the most for it shall have it. Prayer and pain will save the West and the Country is worth it..."
Iowa College was moved from Davenport to the town of Grinnell several years later, after the college was invited by Josiah Bushnell Grinnell to move to his newly-founded town, located at the intersection of two major railroads. A railroad still cuts across the campus.
Innovative from the beginning, Iowa College was the first college west of the Mississippi River to grant a bachelor's degree and among the first to admit women and African-Americans to its course of study. Grinnell served as a stop along the Underground Railway and John Brown stayed in Grinnell prior to his raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. The College was the first to establish an undergraduate department of political science and create a 3-2 Engineering Program.
As recognition of the quality of its academic progam, the College was awarded a Phi Beta Kappa chapter, Beta of Iowa, in 1908. The following year the Board of Trustees formally changed the name of the college to Grinnell College.
In the 20th century, Grinnell continued its tradition of social engagement. The College was a center of the Social Gospel reform movement and Grinnell graduates included many prominent members of FDR's New Deal Administration including Harry Hopkins. The school’s travel-service program preceded the establishment of the Peace Corps by many years. Today a higher percentage of Grinnell graduates serve in the Peace Corps than from any other US college or university.
Campus
Grinnell College is located in the town of
Grinnell, Iowa, halfway between
Des Moines and
Iowa City. The 120-acre campus features sixty-three buildings ranging in architectural style from
Collegiate Gothic to
Bauhaus. The campus is divided into three sections: North Campus, East Campus, and South Campus. Each campus's dormitories, modeled after the residential colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, are connected by a
loggia, an architectural signature of the college.
The college maintains a 365-acre environmental research area called the Conard Environmental Research Area . The U.S. Green Building Council awarded CERA's Environmental Education Center a gold certification. The building is the first in Iowa to receive the designation.
Many building projects have been undertaken in recent years at the College including a new athletics center, the Bucksbaum Center for the Arts designed by
César Pelli, the renovation of its science building, and the Joe Rosenfield Student Center.
Academics
Grinnell is one of the few colleges with Amherst, Brown and Vassar that has an "open curriculum," meaning students are free from general requirements, with the exception of a writing-intensive "tutorial" during the first year. The open curriculum challenges students to take initiative and assume responsibility for their individual courses of study, under the close guidance of a faculty adviser. The 2007
Princeton Review college guide ranks Grinnell as one of top schools in the US with regard to the "Best Overall Academic Experience for Undergraduates".
Grinnell offers academic programs through twenty-six major departments and ten interdisciplinary concentrations. Popular majors include
biology, history,
English, political science, and
economics. Over half of the student body studies abroad. Grinnell has a campus in
London, Grinnell-in-London, as well as Grinnell-in-Washington D.C.
An unusually high proportion of Grinnell's graduates go on to earn Ph.D.'s and its students have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Watson Fellowships, and Fulbright Scholarships. Recent data place Grinnell at No. 10 of all U.S. institutions for the proportion of graduates who go on to earn Ph.D. degrees and No. 15 for graduating female Ph.D. earners.
The Wall Street Journal included Grinnell in a 2003 list of the "Top 50 Feeder Schools," which recognizes the fifty undergraduate institutions that send the highest proportion of their alumni to the top business schools, law schools, and medical schools in the US.
Grinnell is a member of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, a consortium of fourteen leading liberal arts colleges located in Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. It was founded in 1958 with the purpose of enriching the curricula of its member colleges in ways they could not accomplish alone.
Tuition
Grinnell's combined tuition, room, board, and fees for 2006-2007 academic year is $36,730. Tuition and fees were $29,030 while room and board was $7,700. For domestic applicants, Grinnell is one of a few US colleges that both offer need-blind admissions policies and meet attendees' full demonstrated need. A high proportion of students receive some form of financial aid.
As of the 2006-2007 school year, Grinnell has abandoned its need-blind policy for international applicants.
Athletics
The school's varsity sports teams are known as the
Pioneers. They participate in eighteen intercollegiate sports at the
NCAA Division III level and in the Midwest Conference. In addition, Grinnell has several club sports teams that compete in non-varsity sports such as
waterpolo, Ultimate and
rugby. The waterpolo team, the Wild Turkeys, plays in the Heartland division of CWPA and goes to nationals almost every year.
Grinnell's athletic teams are highly competitive in the Midwest Conference. The men's cross country team has won 19 of the past 20 conference championships. The women's and men's swimming and diving teams also have multi-year streaks of conference championships.
In February 2005, Grinnell became the first Division III school to broadcast a non-championship basketball game on national television when it faced off against the
Beloit Buccaneers on ESPN 2. Grinnell College's basketball team attracted ESPN's due to the team's unique style of playing basketball, known simply as "The System." In a fashion much like an
ice hockey match, "The System" incorporates constant full-court press, continual running, hard rebounding, near constant three-point shots and repeated substitutions of entire squads. "The System" been criticized for not teaching the principles of defense or cultivation of the short shot. However, under "The System," Grinnell has won numerous championships over the last five years, as well as broken many NCAA individual and team scoring records.
Institutional Philosophy
Self-governance is a guiding principle of student life at the college. As described by the school , self-governance asks that members of the campus community take responsibility for their actions, accept an obligation to help one another, and address problems by reaching "shared understandings" rather than relying on external authorities to impose structure.
Students serve on departmental educational policy committees and the Faculty Curriculum Committee. Students regulate the residence halls in consultation with professional residence life coordinators and serve on committees that determine social policy and regulations. Until 1998, the campus did not maintain a full-time security force.
Social Activities and Organizations
The organizational structure of the Student Government Association covers almost all aspects of student activity and campus life. There are no sororities or fraternities.
Service organizations are popular. The Alternative Break program takes students to pursue service initiatives during school holidays, and as of 2005, Grinnell had more alumni per capita serving in the
Peace Corps than any other college in the nation. The college also runs its own post-graduation service program known as Grinnell Corps in Grinnell,
China, Macao,
Namibia,
Lesotho,
Greece, and
Nepal.
The
Scarlet and Black is the campus newspaper and KDIC broadcasts college radio.
There are also a number of student groups on campus. These include everything from an improv comedy troupe to video game clubs to an active
belly dancing group to a
Family Guy appreciation group to a boffer-sword fighting group similar to Belegarth to the newly founded Grinnell
Nerf. In addition, there are a number of musical groups on campus, including four a capella groups, the G-Tones, Vox, Con Brio, and the Young Gifted and Black choir .
Social activities tend to be informal and centered around campus, but several major campus-wide events take place each year. 10/10 is a "campus-unity" themed party that takes place on October 10th and features an all-campus shot at midnight. "Mary B. James," named for a South Campus dormitory, is a popular cross-dressers' ball. There is an annual "Disco" celebration and two formal "waltzes" are held each year. Another significant party is "Block Party," in which the block on High Street directly south of campus is closed off on the last day of finals and a beer truck arrives at 11 am.
Grinnell College has an active, but unofficial, campus-wide online community known as GrinnellPlans. Membership is generally limited to students, faculty, and alumni.
Myths and Legends
Like most colleges, a large body of myths has accumulated over the years.
One of the most persistent was the notion that the Quad Dining Hall, with its high ceiling, dark wood paneled walls, and stained glass windows, was supposed to be a church. The legend claims that money was bequeathed to the college to build a chapel, but the college needed a dining hall, so it built something that could be used as either. The Legend of Quad -- complete with details such as an annual carrying-in of pews for a church service -- was born.
In the early 80's the Campus had several meetings over the hiring of a football coach who actually wanted to win games, and also the restoration, after many, many years, of a female cheerleading squad. Grinnell students at the time wanted none of that.
Another story, apparently started in the late 80s, was that the football coach was fired after being denounced in the student newspaper "for winning too many games." The Scarlet and Blacks editors were concerned about what they perceived as an over-emphasis on athletics compared to academics, but the coach in question was not actually fired.
Another myth involves the idea that there are three things that will result in instant expulsion from the school irrelevant of any other factor. Exactly what the three things are varies somewhat -- the most commonly mentioned offenses are jumping a ride on a train passing through campus, entering the steam tunnels, and gaining access to the roof of an academic building.
An unverifiable story passed around in the 70's was that sometime in the 50's, students had hooked up the transmitter for the college's radio station, KDIC, to the railroad tracks that cut through campus, and that the station had been picked up as far away as Brooklyn, NY before being shut down by the FCC.
Prominent Alumni
...
, Nobel Laureate chemist, president of the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute- Amy Clampitt, poet
- Tom Cole, U.S. Congressman
- Mary Sue Coleman, President of the University of Michigan
- Gary Cooper, actor
- Peter Coyote, actor
- Hallie Flanagan, playwright, educator, and director of the Federal Theater Project
- John Garang, former leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Army and former vice president of Sudan
- James Norman Hall, author
- Herbie Hancock, jazz musician and composer
- Curtis Harnack, writer
- Edward Hirsch, poet
- Harry Hopkins, WPA administrator and architect of the New Deal
- William S. Kenyon, politician, U.S. Senator
- Walter Koenig, actor
- George Moose, diplomat
- Hap Moran
Francis Dayle "Hap" Moran was a halfback who played football for Carnegie Tech [i], Grinnell College [i] ...
, professional football player
...
in 1922.
...
, Olympic track and field medalist
- Charles R. Wall, General Counsel of Altria Group.
- Otha Wearin, politician, U.S. Congressman
- Joseph Welch, attorney who represented the U.S. Army in Army-McCarthy Hearings
- Alan Wheat, politician, U.S. Congressman
- Yabuki Sugataro, See Sen Katayama
Virtual Communities and Social Networking Websites
GrinnellPlans is a virtual community consisting of 2,994 members as of June 24th, 2006 . Most members are current students or alumni, but faculty, staff members, and other friends of the College have also joined.
Numerous other Grinnell College virtual communities exist, such the , another , the , and the . , which opened to Grinnell College in November 2004, is also popular with students.
External links
