Grinnell College

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Grinnell College

Image:Grinnell College Seal.jpg

President Russell K. Osgood
Established 1846
School type Private
Religious affiliation None
Location Grinnell, IA, USA
Satellite Image
Enrollment ~1400 on campus, another ~100 abroad
Faculty ~150
Campus Rural, 120 acres (486,000 m²)
Mascot Pioneer
School colors Scarlet and Black
Endowment $1.3 billion

Grinnell College is a selective, four-year undergraduate liberal arts college located in Grinnell, Iowa. The college, originally known as Iowa College, was the first college to grant a bachelor's degree west of the Mississippi River. It was founded on June 10, 1846, when a group of transplanted New England Congregationalists with strong social-reformer backgrounds organized themselves as the Trustees of Iowa College. Grinnell College has consistently been named among the top 20 liberal arts colleges by the magazine U.S. News & World Report during the past 15 years.

Contents

History

Grinnell College was founded as Iowa College in Davenport, Iowa in 1846 and was known by that name until 1909 when the Board of Trustees officially adopted the name Grinnell. Iowa College had moved from Davenport, Iowa to the town of Grinnell in the mid-19th century, after difficulties with residents in Davenport forced the college to relocate. The college was invited by Josiah Bushnell Grinnell (to whom Horace Greeley purportedly gave his famous advice, "Go West, young man") to move to his newly-founded town, located at the intersection of two major railroads. Today a railroad still cuts across the college campus.

Grinnell was from its inception a progressive institution. It 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 stopped in Grinnell prior to his raid on Harpers Ferry, West Virginia in 1859.

In 1882, the campus was destroyed by a tornado, or as such phenomena were referred to in those days, a cyclone. However, rebuilding began immediately and the student yearbook is today known as The Cyclone.

In the 20th century, Grinnell maintained its reputation for social action. The College was a center of the Social Gospel reform movement and Grinnell graduates included numerous prominent members of the New Deal Administration. The later parts of the 1960s saw campus unrest and commencement was cancelled in 1970 after the shootings of student protesters at Kent State and Jackson State University. Today, campus politics continue to be solidly left-of-center, an orientation some students, employees, and alumni worry may stifle discourse or distort student ambitions.

In 2004, the Kaplan/Newsweek Special Education Edition named Grinnell the "Best All-Around College in the U.S." [1]

Campus

Image:Gates Hall.jpg

Grinnell College is located in the town of Grinnell, Iowa, roughly halfway between Des Moines and Iowa City and approximately four hours drive from Chicago, Illinois and Minneapolis. The campus features sixty-three buildings and students have access to an off-campus 365 acre (1.5 km²) environmental research area. Grinnell's campus is notable for featuring rows of dorms connected by loggia that create open quadrangles. Numerous new buildings have sprouted up on Grinnell's campus in recent years including a new athletic facility and a performing arts center designed by César Pelli.

Academics

Grinnell is one of the few colleges in the United States with an "open curriculum," meaning that students are free from distributional requirements. However, all students are required to take a writing-intensive "tutorial" during their Freshman year. Grinnell offers academic programs through twenty-six major departments and eleven interdisciplinary concentrations. In recent years the most popular academic programs have been Biology, History, English, Political Science, and Economics.

An unusually high proportion of graduates go on to earn Ph.D.'s and Grinnell 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.

Athletics, social activities, and organizations

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 ultimate frisbee and rugby.

In February 2004, Grinnell became one of the first Division III schools to broadcast a a non-championship basketball game on national television when it faced off against the Beloit Buccaneers on ESPN 2, in which Grinnell lost 86 to 85. There has been much speculation as to why ESPN 2 would come to such a small liberal arts college (such as the NHL lockout at the time leaving large gaps in programing time), however the official reason is due to Grinnell's unique style of playing basketball, known simply as "The System." Ironically, in a fashion much like a 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" has received criticism as "bastardizing" the game and not teaching the principles of defense or the short shot. However, under "The System," Grinnell has won numerous championships over the last 5 years, as well as broken numerous NCAA individual and team scoring records.

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The Scarlet and Black is the campus newspaper and KDIC broadcasts college radio.

Service organizations are popular. The Altbreak program takes students to pursue service initiatives during school holidays and Grinnell produces more Peace Corps volunteers per capita than any other college in the nation. The college also runs its own post-graduation service program known as "Grinnell Corps" in China, Namibia, Lesotho, Greece, and Nepal.

Social activities tend to be informal and centered around campus, primarily drugs and alcohol, 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. However, the coolest party of the year is known as "Block Party" in which a 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. Students proceed to take several beers to the face while sitting in the street playing drinking games.

Grinnell College is one of several liberal arts colleges that have an active campus-wide blogosphere community. The system used at Grinnell is an unofficial service known as GrinnellPlans. Membership is 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 (which was actually built to look like a dining hall at Oxford College) -- 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 Black's 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 (and only 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.

A very widespread rumor in 2003 claimed that Darby Gym, scheduled to be demolished and replaced with a new gym, would be used in the filming of one of the Matrix movies and exploded in the process of that.

Budget

Grinnell has a large endowment relative to most other institutions, and one of the highest per-capita endowment levels in the country. In raw size it is within the top forty in the country, and has had one of the top return rates in recent years. Warren Buffett, a Grinnell trustee, helped guide the endowment in the late 70's and early 80's. Today, endowment revenue is split between the base budget and Capital Reserve Fund (which helps pay for the extensive construction currently occuring on campus). However, for much-debated reasons, Grinnell's comprehensive fee has grown much faster than inflation in recent years.

Prominent alumni

External links

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