Applications to
Beloit: Up, Again
| Photo by:
Jesse Hayes |
 |
| Starting
the new year in style. Playing
the bagpipes, Brendan Gordon’06,
Solon, Iowa, leads the march
toward Eaton Chapel for Beloit’s
159th fall convocation, the ceremony
that marks the beginning of the
academic year. Of the 326 first-year
students in 2005, 22 have a Beloit
family connection, 12 percent
are under-represented minority
students, and 7 percent are citizens
of foreign countries. In high
school, the new students’ median
GPA tallied 3.52, while 120 belonged
to the National Honor Society,
122 earned a varsity letter in
sports, and 219 listed community
service as a significant activity
they expected to continue in
college. Also, thanks to this
year’s first-year class,
Beloit can now count 20 students
among its population who also
have a sibling enrolled. |
Beloit received 2,054 applications from prospective
students for first-year spots this year, topping
the 2004-05 total, which was also a record, and
continuing a trend of increasing numbers of applications
to the College. What’s more, students appear
to be increasingly choosing Beloit based on objective,
outside sources, says Nancy Monnich Benedict,
vice president for enrollment services.
“Most interesting from my point of view
is that 30 percent of our applicants appeared
on Beloit’s doorstep with the application,
or some part of it, as their first contact
with the College,” says Benedict. “These
are students who had not been part of our
communications plan, had not received the
viewbook, and who had decided from all outside
sources—the Web, guidebooks, various
college search engines—that Beloit
was among their choices.”
In the past, colleges predicted the expected
number of applications by the number of inquiries,
but this is no longer the case, at least
not at Beloit this year. For fall 2005, Benedict
says Beloit’s inquiries from prospective
students dropped nearly 25 percent—on
its face, an alarming decline—but in
the end, applications to the College exceeded
last year’s total by 10 percent, making
it another year for the record books.
Benedict attributes this shift to the fact
that so many college-bound students are opting
out of college mailing lists and are skeptical
of the vast amounts of marketing taking place
in higher education today.
The abundance of students qualified for admission
this year allowed Beloit to offer January
admission to a small group of applicants
for whom a delayed start would be beneficial
or welcome, Benedict adds.
Another sign that prospective students are
reinventing the admissions process: More
than 70 percent of applications this year
came in by way of the College Web site.
RELATED
LINK:
Admissions home
page
EMAIL:
Nancy
Monnich Benedict - Vice President
for Enrollment Services
Trustees Elect Sanger as Board Chair
| Photo by:
Dan Lassiter |
 |
| James Sanger |
At its annual meeting in October, the Beloit
College board of trustees unanimously elected
James Sanger (P’91, ’03) of Roscoe,
Ill., to chair the board. Outgoing board
chair Andrew Davis’79 noted that Sanger’s “passion
and dedication to the College, the time he
has already spent, and his personal commitment
to the College’s future needs characterize
his infectious enthusiasm and leadership.”
Sanger is vice president and a trustee of
the Rath Foundation, Inc., of Janesville,
Wis., a charitable foundation that supports
higher education. He is also a general partner
in a private investment firm and serves on
numerous corporate boards. He held various
positions from 1967 to 1992 at Rath Manufacturing
in Janesville, serving as executive vice
president and chief operating officer and
later as president and CEO. Sanger and his
wife, Marjorie, have four children, two of
whom are alumni of the College.
“He has inspired us all as a visionary
leader who has played a critical role on
numerous committees and in the discussion
and debates surrounding the most important
issues facing the College today,” President
Burris said of Sanger. “The Sanger
Summer Scholars Program and Sanger Merit
Scholarships, two programs established by
the family, have enriched the lives of Beloit
College students.”
Sanger has served on the Beloit board since
1997. He is currently co-chair of the campaign
leadership committee, chair of the development
committee, and a member of the audit, financial
affairs, investment, property, and executive
committees. In past years, he has served
on the College’s strategic planning
committee and the presidential search committee.
RELATED
LINK:
Alumni
and Parents home page
We The People
| Photo by:
Micheal Cullen |
 |
Thirty-seven people read portions of the U.S.
Constitution aloud in early September at
the foot of the Middle College steps. President
Burris, Wisconsin State Senator Judy Robson,
Beloit City Council President Terry Monahan’76,
publisher of the Beloit Daily News newspaper
Bill Barth, and faculty, staff, students,
and other guests from the community were
among the readers. George Lisensky, professor
of chemistry, is shown taking his turn at
the podium.
The event, which was accompanied by patriotic
music performed by the Janesville, Wis.,
Fife and Drum Corps, was held to mark the
218th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution.
For the first time this year, all U.S. colleges,
universities, and other educational institutions
that receive federal funding were required
by law to mark the event after Senator Robert
C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, inserted
the requirement into a spending bill last
fall.
Students Take Part in Hurricane Response
Beloit students sprang into action after hurricanes
devastated the Gulf Coast region this fall.
In conjunction with Bill Conover, director
of the College’s Spiritual Life Program,
they set up the Beloit College Hurricane
Relief Fund and were simultaneously planning
an appropriate long-term response, including
the possibility of forming a delegation to
work in affected areas during an upcoming
break.
By press time, students had raised nearly
$900 for the fund, which was split between
two aid organizations, America’s Second
Harvest and International Relief and Development,
Inc.
Beloit’s fall athletic teams were responsible
for raising a third of the monetary contributions,
and student clubs and Greek houses were instrumental
in arranging grassroots fund-raising events,
from yard sales to a battle-of-the-bands
event.
EMAIL:
Bill
Conover - Director, Spiritual
Life Program
Robert Stone Holds 2005 Mackey Chair
Photo
by: Greg Martin |
 |
| Author Robert Stone is this year's Mackey Professor. |
As the Lois Wilson Mackey’45 Chair in
Creative Writing this fall, author Robert
Stone (P’86) is in residence at Beloit,
working with a small group of students in
the Mackey writing workshop and presenting
a public reading of his work to the community.
From his breakthrough first novel, A Hall
of Mirrors (1967), to his latest, Bay
of Souls (2003), Stone has created
characters that wrestle with bitter demons
even as they search for meaning.
His own life story provides ample material
for a writer. His mother was schizophrenic,
and he spent several years living in an orphanage
as a child. Just out of the U.S. Navy in
his early 20s, Stone enrolled at New York
University, began writing for the New
York Daily News, and rubbed shoulders
with the literati of Greenwich Village’s
thriving Beat scene. He was a war correspondent
in Vietnam in the early 1970s, and for the
last three decades, he has held a variety
of prestigious teaching posts, while regularly
producing new work.
Stone says that his writing is an attempt
to foster “the awareness of ironies
and continuities, showing people that being
decent is really hard, and we carry within
ourselves our own worst enemy.”
In a 1997 interview with Salon.com,
Stone talked about literature’s role
in making the world seem less lonely. “It
provides a kind of reference point, a kind
of narrative reference point. That life is
tough, things are tough all over, becomes
more apparent and one feels less alone.”
Willard Mackey’47 established the Mackey
Chair in 1987 to honor the memory of his
late wife, Lois Wilson Mackey. Since then,
the program has become one of Beloit’s
most high-profile residency programs, bringing
leading writers to campus to work closely
with students. Willard Mackey died earlier
this year.
Beloit To Welcome Ellis Marsalis
 |
| Jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis will perform at Beloit in April 2006. |
Jazz pianist, educator, and composer Ellis
Marsalis will be at Beloit in April as the
Victor E. Ferrall, Jr. Artist-in-Residence.
The patriarch of the legendary Marsalis family—and
father to four accomplished musicians, including
Branford and Wynton—the New Orleans
native is regarded as one of the foremost
jazz musicians today. As a teacher, Marsalis
can count many talented performers among
his former students, including Harry Connick,
Jr.
Marsalis will work closely with students while
at Beloit and present a public concert in
Eaton Chapel on April 29, 2006, as part of
Beloit’s International Performing Arts
and Lecture Series.
Tickets to the concert are available through
the College box office (608-363-2755).
The Victor E. Ferrall, Jr. Endowed Artists-in-Residence
Program, named for Beloit’s ninth president,
annually brings an artist or artists to campus.
RELATED
LINK:
International Performing Arts and Lecture Series home
page
EMAIL:
Mary Frey - Director of Special Events
Stocking Recognized for Arts Contributions
Marion Kingston Stocking, one of Maine’s
most-respected literary figures, longtime
editor of the renowned Beloit Poetry
Journal, and a professor emerita of
English at Beloit, was honored in June at
the home of Alden Wilson, director of the
Maine Arts Commission. The celebration was
a surprise and recognized Stocking for her
many contributions to advancing the arts.
Stocking helped shape the arts commission’s
Discovery Research Program, which inventoried
Maine’s cultural resources in various
artistic and geographic communities and helped
foster awareness of cultural life.
Stocking is probably best known for editing
the Beloit Poetry Journal. Her nearly
five decades of work on that literary publication
began in 1954 when she joined the faculty
at Beloit. In her hands, the journal helped
support the writing of some of the best-known
American poets of the postwar period, including
Sherman Alexie, Charles Bukowski, and Galway
Kinnell. Stocking and her husband, the late
David Stocking—also a professor emeritus
of English at Beloit—moved the Beloit
Poetry Journal to Maine in 1984, after
they retired. By 2002, at the age of 80,
Stocking turned over the main editorial duties
to co-editors Lee Sharkey and Beloit College
Professor of English John Rosenwald.
Stocking is now at work on her memoirs and
a collection of her many reviews for publication.
While no formal award was given at the June
event, the gathering was a celebration of
Stocking’s life, work, and her impact
on Maine’s cultural life, host of the
party Alden Wilson said. And besides, he
added, “she’s a delight to surprise.”
RELATED
LINK:
Beloit Poetry Journal home
page
Four Enter Hall of Honor
Four former standout athletes will be inducted
into Beloit’s Athletic Hall of Honor
during ceremonies scheduled for 6 p.m. on
Feb. 4.
The induction of Eriko Sugiura Latimer’95,
Rochester, N.Y., Josh Rosen’95, Chicago,
Ill., Anna Marie Hughes McCarthy’93,
Beloit, Wis., and Mark Sobczak’93,
Oconomowoc, Wis., will increase the hall’s
membership to 103.
Latimer was a nationally ranked women’s
tennis player who was a two-time Midwest
Conference champion in both singles and doubles.
She led the Buccaneers to a pair of MWC championships
in 1992 and ’94. Rosen was a four-year
soccer player who was Beloit’s first
All-Region performer in the sport. He was
a three-time first-team All-MWC selection
and earned the league’s Roy LeClere
Award, given to the top two-sport athlete
with the highest grade point average. He
also played basketball. Hughes McCarthy was
a four-year letterwinner in both soccer and
softball and earned All-MWC honors four
times in soccer and once in softball. Sobczak
earned four letters in basketball, two first-team
All-MWC selections and was the league’s
North Division player of the year and a first-team
all-region player in 1993. He ranks seventh
in career scoring at the College.
RELATED
LINK:
Athletics home
page
2006 Brings Housing Options
 |
| A preliminary design for the new townhouse residence halls at Beloit College. |
This fall, Beloit College broke ground on
its second townhouse residence for students.
The two-building complex, designed to fit
into the existing residential neighborhood
at the corner of Clary and Park Ave., is
expected to be finished and ready for 16
students to move in by the beginning of the
spring semester in January.
The College also purchased two existing homes
to be converted into student housing on Park
Ave., around the corner from the townhouses.
As part of the renovations and new construction,
about 20 off-street parking spaces will be
added behind the buildings, and a new park
will finish off the visible corner.
The siting and design of the new buildings
were a direct result of discussions with
residents of the College Park Historic district,
directly east of campus.
The construction and renovations will open
up living space for 32 students, helping
to alleviate some of the crowding in residence
halls.
RELATED
LINK:
"A Blueprint for a Green Campus," Beloit College Magazine, Fall/Winter 2005
Going International with Faculty/Student
Research
 |
| From left:
Laura Horsch'01, Traci Sherdell,
Professor of Psychology Larry White,
Brenna Greenfield, Maggie Koller'06,
and Alex Marsden at the University
of Tartu in Estonia. |
Students and faculty collaborating on research
is nothing new at Beloit. “Including
students as much as possible in research
is part of the faculty culture here,” says
Larry White, professor of psychology.
Recently, White took that philosophy farther
afield by organizing and leading a team of
students to Estonia, where they spent three
weeks conducting intensive research on personality,
behavior, and culture at the University of
Tartu (Tartu Ülikool). The
initiative was unusual in that it teamed
undergraduates from American liberal arts
colleges with faculty mentors at a research
university, allowing them to collaborate
on research projects in an international
setting.
The project was made possible by a $25,000
grant awarded to White by the National Research
Council. White’s was the only psychology
project, and the only project from a small
liberal arts college, to receive such a grant. “Psychology
departments at small colleges usually don’t
have enough money to support summer research
programs,” explains White.
He recruited students from private liberal
arts colleges in three academic consortia
by notifying colleagues of the competitive
opportunity, and more than 40 students vied
for four coveted slots.
Participants included Beloit senior Maggie
Koller (Oak Park, Ill.) and students from
Carroll College, St. Olaf College, and The
University of the South. Also joining the
American contingent was graduate assistant
Laura Horsch’01, who is pursuing a
Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University.
The group arrived in Estonia in early August
and immediately set to work with University
of Tartu associates. Guiding mentors included
White’s research partner, Raivo Valk,
a doctoral student and lecturer in psychology,
and Anu Realo and Jüri Allik, both members
of the psychology faculty. Professor Allik
is one of the most highly regarded research
psychologists in the Baltic region.
According to White, major goals of the program
included helping the students understand
how research psychologists think and involving
them in the practice of scientific research.
Three teams were set up, with Koller and
recent Carroll College graduate Traci Scherdell
collaborating with White and Valk on a study
examining the relationship between time-orientation
and personality traits in Estonia, Morocco,
and the United States. During the last week
of the program, each team created a research
poster and made a presentation at a small
conference that was open to others at the
university.
Koller welcomed the opportunity to immerse
herself in scientific inquiry, which helped
her realize that her true interests lay elsewhere. “I
felt that research psychology was somewhat
disconnected from the experiences of people,” she
says. “Now I know that I would rather
get a deeper understanding of the psychology
of people in a therapeutic environment.”
White says that summer research programs are
intended to help students enhance research
skills and clarify plans for graduate study.
He is glad that two other participants in
the Beloit/Tartu program plan to apply for
Fulbright scholarships in the hope of returning
to conduct research there. And, he notes,
University of Tartu faculty who listened
to the students’ research presentations
offered positive assessments of the program
and its outcomes.
“Several mentioned that our students
set a high standard for their own students
to meet,” White says.
EMAIL:
Larry White - Professor of Psychology
EMAIL:
Susan Kasten - Editor, Beloit College Magazine
