Beloit College - Definition and Overview

Beloit College is a liberal arts college in Beloit, Wisconsin. Its current president is John Burris, and its enrollment stands at roughly 1,100 undergraduate students.

Founding

Beloit College was founded by a group called Friends for Education, which was founded by seven pioneers from New England who agreed that a college needed to be established soon after arrival in Wisconsin Territory. The group raised funds for a college to be founded in their new town, and convinced the territorial legislature to enact their charter for Beloit College into law on February 2, 1846. The first building for the college (called Middle College) was built in 1847, and it remains in operation today. Classes began in the fall of 1847, and the college's first degrees were awarded in 1851.

History

The first president of Beloit was a Yale graduate named Aaron Lucius Chapin, who served as president from December of 1849 until 1886, under whose direction the college became widely known for scholastic achievement, and for its willingness to experiment with new curricular approaches. The college remained very small for almost its entire first century, with the enrollment only topping 1,000 students with the influx of World War II veterans in 1945-1946. In 1964, the college unveiled the "Beloit Plan", an entirely new approach to the school year which emphasized year-round education -- this brought increased national attention to the college.

Among Beloit's more notable alumni are Roy Chapman Andrews, Robert Lee Morris, and Lorine Niedecker. Teresa Heinz Kerry holds an honorary doctorate from Beloit College.

Present day

Beloit College remains nationally known for its innovative curriculum, which retains many aspects of the "Beloit Plan" from the 1960s. Its Egyptology degree program is highly regarded and draws students from across the nation. In the 1990s it became known for annual Mindset Lists summarizing pop culture references which are allegedly meaningless to incoming college freshmen.

External link

• Beloit College's official web site (http://www.beloit.edu/)
• Mindset List (http://www.beloit.edu/~pubaff/mindset/)