Grinnell College

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Grinnell College
Motto	Veritas et Humanitas (Latin) (Truth and Humanity)
Established	1846
Type	Private
Endowment	$1.4 billion (Sept '05)
President	Russell K. Osgood
Faculty	156 full-time, 43 part-time
Students	1500
Location	Grinnell, Iowa, USA
Campus	Rural, 120 acres (486,000 m²)
Colors	Scarlet and Black
Nickname	Pioneers
Affiliations	formerly Congregationalist
Website	www.grinnell.edu

Grinnell College is a small liberal arts college in Grinnell, Iowa, United States. It was founded in 1846, when a group of transplanted New England Congregationalists formed the Trustees of Iowa College.

The college is ranked fourteenth among liberal arts colleges by U.S. News & World Report.^[1] as well as "best all-around " liberal arts college in 2004, according to Newsweek magazine.^[2] In 2006, The Chronicle of Higher Education cited Grinnell as having the highest endowment amongst liberal arts college.^[3]

Contents 1 History 2 Academics 3 Tuition 4 Athletics 5 Campus 6 Social activities and organizations 7 Notable Alumni 8 Virtual communities and social networking websites 9 References 10 External links

[edit] History

In 1843 eleven Congregational ministers, all of whom trained at Andover Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, set out to proselytize in the frontier. When the group arrived in Iowa later that year, each selected a different town in which to establish a congregation. In 1846 they collectively established Iowa College in Davenport.

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.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Academics

Grinnell has an "open curriculum," meaning it does not have general distribution requirements for students, with the exception of a writing-intensive "tutorial" during the first year.

Grinnell has 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.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Tuition

Grinnell's combined tuition, room, board, and fees for 2007-2008 academic year is $42,422. Tuition and fees were $34,392 while room and board was $8,030. For domestic applicants, Grinnell is one of a few US colleges that both offer need-blind admissions policies and meet full demonstrated need. Grinnell also offers significant merit based aid with about 90% of students receive some form of financial aid.^[4]

As of the 2006-2007 school year, Grinnell has adopted a "need-sensitive" policy for international applicants.

[edit] Athletics

The school's varsity sports teams are named 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 water polo, Ultimate and rugby.

In February 2005, Grinnell became the first Division III school featured in a regular season basketball game by the ESPN network family in 30 years, when it faced off against the Beloit Buccaneers on ESPN 2.^[5] Grinnell was narrowly defeated 86 to 85.^[6] Grinnell College's basketball team attracted ESPN due to the team's unique style of playing basketball, known simply as "The System." Coach David Arseneault's "system" incorporates a continual full-court press, a fast-paced offense, an emphasis on offensive rebounding, a barrage of three-point shots, and substitutions of five players at a time every 35 to 40 seconds. "The System" been criticized for not teaching the principles of defense. However, under "The System," Grinnell has won three conference championships over the past ten years and have regularly placed in the top half of the conference. Coach Arseneault's teams have also set numerous NCAA scoring records and several individuals on the Grinnell team have led the nation in scoring or assists.^[7]

[edit] Campus

Grinnell College is located in the town of Grinnell, Iowa, halfway between Des Moines and Iowa City. The 120-acre campus contains 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.^{[citation needed]}

The college maintains a 365-acre environmental research area called the Conard Environmental Research Area (CERA). 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.^{[citation needed]}

Many building projects have been undertaken in recent years at the College including a new athletics center, the Bucksbaum Center for the Arts, the renovation of its science building and the Joe Rosenfield Student Center. Noted architect César Pelli designed the athletics center, the Joe Rosenfield Student Center, and the Bucksbaum Center for the Arts.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] 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 ("AltBreak") 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.^[8] The college also runs its own post-graduation service program known as Grinnell Corps in Grinnell, China, Namibia, Lesotho, Greece, Macau and Nepal, though the Nepal program is suspended for safety reasons.^[9]

The Scarlet and Black is the campus newspaper and KDIC (88.5 FM) is the student run radio station.

[edit] Notable Alumni

Main article: List of Grinnell College alumni

Thomas Cech, 1970, Co-winner of 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry ``for [...] discovery of catalytic properties of RNA, president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. ^{[10] [11]}

Gary Cooper, 1926, Actor, best known for High Noon, received five Oscar nominations for Best Actor. ^[12]

John Garang, 1969, leader of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army, later Vice president of Sudan. ^[13]

Herbie Hancock, 1960, Jazz musician and composer who has won an Academy Award and multiple Grammy Awards, member of Miles Davis's "second great quintet". ^[14]

Harry Hopkins, 1912, senior advisor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, principle architect of the New Deal, WPA administrator. ^[15]

Robert Noyce, 1949, nicknamed "Mayor of Silicon Valley", co-founder of Intel, co-inventor of integrated circuit.^[16]

Joseph Welch, 1914, Head attorney for the United States Army during the Army-McCarthy Hearings. ^[17]

[edit] Virtual communities and social networking websites

GrinnellPlans is a virtual community consisting of 3,302 members as of February 26, 2007.^[18] Most members are current students or alumni, but faculty, staff members, and (by invitation) other friends of the College have also joined.

In 2003, Information Technology at Grinnell College ordered that GrinnellPlans not be hosted on Grinnell College property because of the College's concerns regarding possibly illegal content on the system. GrinnellPlans moved to an off-campus host. It is supported through user donations and is not affiliated with Grinnell College.

The first virtual community to ever exist at Grinnell was started in 1990, and ran for several years. It was a primitive, student-created, bulletin board system called "The Trashcan". It was hosted on the College's VAX system and functioned essentially like Internet forums still operate today, with users posting messages to various threads. The community only had a few dozen members, and was once featured in a parody in The Grinnell Spectator, an underground newspaper that operated on campus in the early 1990s.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Grinnell College Homepage
• GrinnellPlans
• Grinnell Gallery

Midwest Conference
Beloit • Carroll • Grinnell • Illinois College • Knox • Lake Forest • Lawrence • Monmouth • Ripon • St. Norbert