Carleton College

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This article is about Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. For Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, see Carleton University.

Carleton College
Motto:	Declaratio Sermonum Tuorum Illuminat (Latin) (The revelation of your words illuminates)
Established:	November 14, 1866
Type:	Private liberal arts college
Endowment:	US $650 million
President:	Robert A. Oden, Ph.D.
Faculty:	198
Undergraduates:	1,958
Postgraduates:	0
Location:	Northfield, Minnesota, USA
Campus:	Rural, 1040 acres
Colors:	Maize and Blue
Nickname:	"Carls" or "Knights"
Mascot:	Carleton Knight
Affiliations:	MIAC
Website:	www.carleton.edu

Coordinates: 44°27′43″N 93°9′13.6″W / 44.46194, -93.153778 Carleton College is an independent, non-sectarian, coeducational, liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota, USA. The school was founded on November 14, 1866, by the Minnesota Conference of Congregational Churches as Northfield College. In 1871, its name changed to Carleton College in honor of benefactor William Carleton of Charlestown, Massachusetts, who donated US$50,000 to the fledgling institution. According to current U.S. News and World Report rankings, Carleton College is the #5 liberal arts college in the United States.^[1] The College currently enrolls 1,958 undergraduate students, and employs 198 full-time faculty members. Robert A. Oden is the current President.

[edit] Defining features

Academically, Carleton is nationally recognized as a leading undergraduate institution. It is consistently ranked in the U.S. News and World Report's college rankings within the top ten U.S. liberal arts schools (tied for fifth place with Middlebury College in 2007-08). The most recent middle 50 percent of admitted students received 1330-1490 on the SAT Critical Reading and Math Sections, with over three quarters ranked in the top 10% of their high school graduating classes. Carleton consistently enrolls more students in the National Merit Scholarship Program than any other liberal arts college in the country [1] and its Class of 2011 includes seventy-nine National Merit Scholars (which includes both Carleton sponsored and external National Merit Scholars) of its 512 students. The College is a leading source of PhD recipients,^{[2] [3]}and is also recognized for sending an unusually large number of female students to graduate programs in the sciences.^[4] Alumni giving, a measure of alumni satisfaction with the College, was 64% in 2006, the highest among liberal arts colleges. Carleton leads all baccalaureate colleges in the number of its students awarded prestigious National Science Foundation Fellowships for graduate study from 1990-99. Carleton competes in quizbowl and has won the National Academic Quiz Tournaments undergraduate championship twice--1999 and 2007. In 1996, 1997, 1999, 2002 and 2004, the team from Carleton received Best Delegation at the Harvard World Model United Nations competition.

Extracurriculars at Carleton are an integral part of student life. Although the Carleton student body consists of fewer than two thousand undergraduates, the school's nearly 150 active student organizations include three theatre boards (coordinating as many as ten productions every term), longform and shortform improv groups and a sketch comedy troupe, seven a cappella groups, four choirs, at least seven specialized instrumental ensembles, five dance interest groups, two auditioned dance companies, a successful Mock Trial team, a nationally-competitive debate program, seven recurring student publications and a student-run KRLX radio station employing more than 200 volunteers each term.

Carleton is committed to environmentally conscious initiatives, and in October 2007, the Sustainable Endowments Institute, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, organization involved in research on the sustainability of higher education endowments, recognized Carleton as a leader in overall college sustainability for its environmentally sound practices and endowment transparency. In the College Sustainability Report Card 2008, which evaluates the 200 colleges and universities with the largest endowments in the United States and Canada, Carleton received the highest evaluation grade of A-, putting the College in the category of College Sustainability Leader with Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Middlebury College, University of Vermont and University of Washington. The Report Card also cited Carleton as an Endowment Sustainability Leader, along with Dartmouth College and Williams College ^[5]. Carleton also receives approximately 40% of its energy from a wind turbine located near the college.

[edit] Athletics

Carleton has numerous athletic opportunities for students, including 19 varsity teams, 23 club teams, and dozens of intramural teams forming every term. Carleton competes in NCAA Division III, meaning it offers no athletic scholarships. Its men's and women's cross country teams are generally strong, with numerous all-Americans and one national championship (men's, 1980). Additionally, the Women's Swimming and Diving program is a perennial Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) conference power. In 2005, the women's volleyball team posted a 22-5 record, a runner-up finish in the MIAC. This was Carleton's first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1985. In 2006, the men's basketball team tied the University of St. Thomas for the MIAC 1st place banner, received an at large bid to the NCAA tournament, but later lost in the first round of tournament play. In 2007, the women's golf program sent its first individual qualifier in history to the Division III Women's Golf NCAA Tournament in Florida.

Club sports at Carleton are very active; turnout for teams like men's and women's rugby will often exceed 40 players per team. Of the club teams, the student-run Ultimate clubs have had the most competitive success; most notably, the Carleton (Men's) Ultimate Team (CUT) and women's team Syzygy have been national contenders every year. CUT qualified annually for nationals from 1990 to 2005 and won the National Championship in 2001. Syzygy qualified for nationals fifteen of sixteen years (1989-2002, 2004-2005), winning the National Championship in 2000 and taking second place in 1998, 1999 and 2004.

[edit] Campus

Gould Library

The college campus was created in 1867 with the gift of two ten-acre parcels, one from Charles Goodsell and the other from Charles Augustus Wheaton.

The Cowling Arboretum, created from lands purchased in the 1920s during difficult financial times by then president Donald J. Cowling, was first called "Cowling's Folly" and, later, his legacy. It consists of approximately 880 acres (3.6 km²) of forest, field, and floodplain, and it includes many miles of trails. Also, the conceptual framework of the arboretum was based on the works of Christopher Williams (artist), a notable Grinnell College alumnus.

Carleton built a new 80,000 square-foot Recreation Center in 2000, with a full indoor fieldhouse located above a state-of-the-art fitness center complete with a climbing wall and bouldering wall.

[edit] Historic sites

Skinner Memorial Chapel.

Several of Carleton's properties have been recognized for their historic value. The National Register of Historic Places lists Willis Hall (1868), Goodsell Observatory (1887), Scoville Memorial Library (1896), and Skinner Memorial Chapel (1916).

[edit] Traditions

Carleton's history has given rise to several notable traditions. Many of these are pranks, such as painting the college's water tower. Most notably, a remarkably accurate likeness of President Clinton was painted the night before his commencement speech in 2000, and painted over by college maintenance very early the following morning. Administrative attitudes toward this particular phenomenon have changed over time. For liability-related reasons, even climbing the water tower is now considered a grave infraction. Streaking also remains a ubiquitous phenomenon, even and most impressively in winter temperatures that average about 15°F (-9°C), and occasionally reach lows around -25º (-32°C).

President Emeritus Laurence Gould is briefly reunited with the bust of Schiller in this undated archive photo from The Carletonian

More perplexingly, a bust of Friedrich Schiller, known simply as "Schiller", appears frequently, though briefly, at large campus events. The tradition dates back to 1957, when a student appropriated the bust from an unlocked storage area in the new Gould Library, only to have the bust stolen from him in turn, an exchange which soon escalated into a high-profile conflict that eventually took on by necessity a high degree of secrecy and strategy. These days, Schiller's appearance, accompanied by the shout "Schiller!", is a tacit challenge to other students to pursue in an attempt to capture the bust (which has, understandably, been replaced at least once; the currently circulating bust of Schiller was retrieved from Puebla, Mexico in the summer of 2003). In 2006, students created an online scavenger hunt, made up of a series of complex riddles about Carleton [2], ultimately leading participants to Schiller's hidden location. The bust was subsequently stolen from the winner of the scavenger hunt. At Commencement in 2006 the holders of the bust arranged for Schiller to "graduate." His name was called at the appropriate moment during the awarding of diplomas, the bust was pulled from the podium and prominently displayed.

Finally, a softball game known as Rotblatt, in honor (or open mockery) of player Marvin Rotblatt, is held every spring. The day-long celebration features free t-shirts and a good deal of requisite drinking, and the number of innings played coincides with the College's current anniversary. In 1997, Sports Illustrated honored Rotblatt in its "Best of Everything" section with the award, "Longest Intramural Event."

[edit] Alma Mater

O, Carleton, our Alma Mater,

We hail the Maize and Blue;

Thy name is ever dearest

Thy children ever true.

O, Carleton, our Alma Mater,

To thee we sing our praise;

For thee we fight,

To thee we pledge

The strength of all our days!

[edit] Trivia

• The nation's oldest student-run pub, The Cave, was founded at Carleton in 1927 in the basement of Evans Hall, and continues to host live music shows and other events several times each week.
• The College's format-free student-run radio station, KRLX, founded in 1947 as KARL, was recently ranked by the Princeton Review as one of the nation's ten best college radio stations. KRLX broadcasts continually when school is in session.
• The popular early computer game The Oregon Trail was first created, and later developed, by students at Carleton in 1971.
• The Chicago Reader, one of the first alternative weeklies, was founded in 1971 by a small group of recent Carleton graduates. They later started the Los Angeles Reader (no longer published) and the Washington City Paper. In July 2007, the founders sold the Reader to Creative Loafing.
• The Reformed Druids of North America was founded at Carleton in 1963, initially as an effort to be excused from attending the then-required weekly chapel service, and later as legitimate spiritual exploration.
• Peter Tork of The Monkees was a student of English at Carleton for three years until he dropped out to pursue music full-time.
• Popular PBS and National Geographic TV zoology host Chris Kratt received his BA in biology from Carleton.
• Carleton hosted the first and only NCAA-sponsored metric football game in 1977. The game was dubbed the "Liter Bowl" and was measured in meters instead of yards. Carleton lost the game to St. Olaf by a score of 42-0.
• The world premiere production of Bertolt Brecht's play The Caucasian Chalk Circle was performed in 1948 at Carleton's Nourse Little Theater.
• The popular indie band Tapes 'N Tapes formed at Carleton in the winter of 2003.
• The school's all-male a cappella group, The Carleton Singing Knights, performed a version of Daft Punk's Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. The video([3] on Youtube has received over a million views.
• A scene from the movie D3: The Mighty Ducks was filmed in Carleton's Great Hall.

[edit] Notable alumni

See also Category:Carleton College alumni

• Thorstein Veblen, class of 1880, American economist and author of The Theory of the Leisure Class.
• Pierce Butler, class of 1887, Supreme Court Justice from 1923 to 1939.
• Ernest Lundeen, class of 1901, U.S. Representative from 1917-1919 and from 1933-1937. U.S. Senator from 1937 until his death in 1940.
• Karl E. Mundt, class of 1923, U.S. Representative from 1938 to 1948 and U.S. Senator from 1948 to 1973.
• Robert K. Greenleaf, class of 1926, corporate management expert, the founder of the Robert Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership
• Warren P. Knowles, class of 1930, governor of Wisconsin from 1965 to 1971.
• Sheldon B. Vance, class of 1939, U.S. ambassador to Zaire
• Melvin R. Laird, class of 1942, President Nixon's Secretary of Defense from 1969 to 1973.
• Anthony Downs, class of 1952, author of An Economic Theory of Democracy.
• Hal Higdon, class of 1953, runner and writer
• Michael Armacost, class of 1958, former Under Secretary of State (Policy), former ambassador to Japan and the Philippines, president of the Brookings Institution from 1995-2002, and current chairman of the board of trustees.
• Michael Gartner, class of 1960, journalist.
• Jack Barnes, class of 1961, the leader of the Socialist Workers Party (USA).
• Garrick Utley, class of 1961, journalist, former host of Meet the Press.
• Walter Alvarez, class of 1962, geologist credited with the theory that an asteroid impact was the likely cause of the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event.
• Donella Meadows, class of 1963, lead author of Limits to Growth
• Thomas Mengler, Dean of Law at University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) and former dean of the University of Illinois College of Law
• James Loewen, class of 1964, historian and author of Lies My Teacher Told Me
• Barrie M. Osborne, class of 1966, producer of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy.
• Mary-Claire King, class of 1967, human geneticist
• Rush D. Holt, Jr., class of 1970, U.S. Representative for New Jersey's 12th congressional district since 1996.
• Kai Bird, class of 1973, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer.
• Jane Hamilton, class of 1979, novelist and winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award.
• John F. Harris, class of 1985, Editor-in chief of The Politico
• Stephen Six, class of 1988, Kansas Attorney General
• Clara Jeffery, class of 1989, Editor of Mother Jones magazine
• Jonathan Capehart, class of 1989, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist.
• Tomkin Coleman, class of 1991, national advocate for gay marriage
• Christopher Kratt, class of 1992, TV and film producer and host.
• Laura Veirs, class of 1997, singer/songwriter.
• Masanori Mark Christianson, class of 1998, musician/art director.
• Parker Palmer, class of 1961, author.

[edit] Notable faculty

• Ian Barbour, professor emeritus, 1989–91 Gifford lecturer on religion and science, and winner of the 1999 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.
• David Bryn-Jones, biographer of U.S. Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg, taught history, economics, and international relations at Carleton from 1920 to 1951.
• John Bates Clark, a famous American economist, was a professor at Carleton, and taught Thorstein Veblen.
• Frank Daniel, Czech Born writer, producer, director, and teacher; developer of the sequence paradigm of screenwriting.
• Burton Levin, Former United States Consul General to Hong Kong and US Ambassador to Burma from May 1987 to September 1990, is currently the SIT Investment Visiting Professor of Asian Policy.
• Laurence McKinley Gould, who was second-in-command to Richard E. Byrd on his first landmark expedition to Antarctica, served as a professor of geology at Carleton and later as College President from 1945-1962.
• Roy Grow, Kellogg Professor of International Relations and the director of the International Relations, is a former military interpreter and analyst in Asia. He is often heard on programs such as Minnesota Public Radio's Midday.
• Howard Swearer, Carleton's president for several years in the 1970s, later became president of Brown University.
• Paul Wellstone, a U.S. Senator from Minnesota from 1991 until his death in 2002, was a professor of political science at Carleton from 1969 to 1990.
• Reed Whittemore, acclaimed American poet who taught English at Carleton

[edit] Points of interest

• Carleton College Cowling Arboretum
• Goodsell Observatory
• KRLX
• The Cave

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Carleton College
• CarlWiki - An unofficial student-run wiki
• Northfield Visitor Information
• Carleton College featured in the Donga Daily (Korean Newspaper)