Welcome to Beloit, Class of 2011!
Members of the class of 2011 gathered on the Pearsons Hall lawn for a group photo the day before classes got underway in August. Among the students to begin at Beloit this fall are 325 first-year students, 21 transfer students, and 22 international exchange students.
This year, students applied to Beloit College in record numbers for fall admission. The College received 2,256 applications, including 2,157 from prospective first-year students and 99 from prospective transfer students—the largest pool of applications on record and an 8 percent increase over 2006 for first-year applicants. Since 2000, applications for first-year spots at Beloit have increased 66 percent.
Thirty-eight percent of students applied to Beloit before the College initiated communication with them, a shift in the college admissions process that has been felt nationwide and which signals the powerful role the Internet plays in college selection.
| Photo by: Tom Guschl |
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This year, Beloit’s first-year students come from 39 states and Canada, China, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Italy, Nepal, Pakistan, and Japan. The class also includes dual citizens from Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, and Mexico.
In addition to being geographically diverse, the class is more racially diverse than in past years, with 15 percent identifying themselves as students of color. The class is also academically talented: 23 percent qualified as Presidential Scholars, recipients of Beloit’s most competitive scholarship program, awarded for academic excellence and leadership qualities.
Members of the class of 2011 revealed some of their talents while still in high school, when 51 were team captains, 113 were varsity letter-winners, and 32 percent belonged to the National Honor Society.
New students arrived on campus on Aug. 18—a week before returning students. As part of New Student Days orientation, the entire class read and discussed The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson’s book about the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. They also spent the week engaged in activities on- and off-campus that encouraged critical thinking, increased their familiarity with campus, and helped them get involved in the life of the city of Beloit.
RELATED LINK:
First-Year Initiatives Program - Home Page
Beloit College Admissions Program - Home Page
| Photo by: Greg Anderson |
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Laugh out Loud
Emmy award-winning humorist Paula Poundstone signs autographs after a live taping of the National Public Radio news quiz Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me! at Beloit College in October. NPR newsman and quiz show scorekeeper Carl Kasell appears to the right. Writers and humorists Roy Blount, Jr. and Charles Pierce joined Poundstone and host Peter Sagal for the sold out event in Eaton Chapel, which aired on NPR radio stations across the country on Oct. 13. Search the Wait Wait Web archives by that date to hear the Beloit program at www.npr.org/programs.
RELATED LINK:
International Performing Arts & Lecture Series - home page
Hearing Muslim Women Speak
| Photo by: Greg Anderson |
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A panel presentation focusing on the nature of Muslim women’s dress drew a packed audience to the south lounge of the World Affairs Center during Homecoming/Reunion Weekend. Student panelists Amina Ben Mansour’10 (Nabeul, Tunisia), Izlinda Jamaluddin’10 (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), and Nadia Rashed’11 (Dubai, United Arab Emirates), and community activist Adiyah Hassan, of Beloit, spoke passionately about their experiences as Muslim women. They discussed the Islamic prescription for modest dress and the ways in which that mandate is interpreted—particularly in relation to the hijab (a headscarf that many Muslim women wear).
“It is not a symbol of oppression; it’s a symbol of purity. A symbol of devotion to God,” said Rashed, who does not wear a hijab. “And although I don’t cover up, I am a Muslim in every essence.”
The panel presentation was one of four events in a series titled Muslim Women Speak, held on campus in the month of October. Associate Professor of Religious Studies Debra Majeed, shown above, coordinated the series and invited accomplished Muslim leaders to speak about a range of issues. Presenters included Farzana Hassan, president of the Muslim Canadian Congress; Aminah McCloud, director of the Islamic World Studies Program at DePaul University, and women’s rights activists Laila Muhammad and Sahirah Muhammad.
The series helped dispel stereotypes and encouraged conversation about the diversity of religious beliefs and experiences. Majeed, who teaches a popular class on women and gender in Islam, says that students benefit from hearing Muslim women speak about such issues as gender equality and the various cultures present in the American Islamic community. “Muslims are a part of the American landscape and have been for centuries,” she says. “In this dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims, our speakers reminded us that religion and culture are interconnected for all of us.”
Majeed says she organized the series to coincide with Domestic Violence Awareness Month—not to imply that Muslim women suffer more from abuse—but to emphasize that their concerns and activism reflect those of any other faith or civic community. Attendees were asked to bring contributions of toiletries, which were donated to shelters for victims of domestic violence.
Campus interest in Islam has grown in recent years, with many students conducting research on related topics. Muslim students have organized special events that highlight different aspects of the faith, and the Spiritual Life Program arranged a field trip to a local mosque and other events. The dean of the College and the departments of women’s and gender studies and religious studies co-sponsored the Muslim Women Speak series.
EMAIL:
Debra Majeed - Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies (Religious Studies)
Real Dirt Screens in Europe and Down Under
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The Real Dirt on Farmer John is an extraordinary documentary film about the rise and fall of a family farm and its heartwarming re-emergence as a successful subscription-driven organic enterprise. It is also a film with myriad Beloit College alumni connections.
Directed and produced by filmmaker Taggart Siegel’81, the film focuses on the unconventional life of farmer John Peterson’72, and features music by Lesley Freeman’01. The Real Dirt features footage of the Beloit College campus in the late 1960s and early 1970s and appearances by a number of other graduates, including Rosemary Palmer’64 and David Tenenbaum’71. The film’s initial release was the Beloit College Magazine cover story in the fall of 2005.
After receiving countless awards and recognition at film festivals since then, the film opened in regular theatres this past summer. This fall, Real Dirt breaks new ground when it makes its international debut. Peterson and Freeman have embarked on a 10-country, three-month tour in which the film will debut in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Holland, Belgium, Norway, and Sweden. Later this fall, Siegel will be on hand for screenings in Australia and New Zealand.
RELATED LINKS:
"Home Ground: Farmer John Gets Down to the Read Dirt" - Beloit College Magazine, Fall 2005
The Real Dirt on Farmer John - Official movie Web site
Norwegian Humanitarian to Serve as 2008 Weissberg Professor
| Photo: U.N. Photo/Mark Garten |
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Jan Egeland, the under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator for the United Nations from 2003-2006, will hold the Weissberg Chair in International Studies at Beloit College in 2008. Egeland, of Norway, has a deep commitment to human rights and peace work that spans more than 25 years.
Prior to his Humanitarian Affairs post with the U.N., Egeland was secretary general of the Norwegian Red Cross. From 1999 to 2002, he was the U.N. secretary-general’s special adviser on Colombia. Egeland’s distinguished career also includes service to his own government as state secretary in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1990 to 1997. In that capacity, he initiated two Norwegian emergency preparedness systems that have provided more than 2,000 experts and humanitarian workers to international organizations. He has also served as chair of Amnesty International, Norway, and as vice-chair of the International Executive Committee of Amnesty International. He served as director for the International Department of the Norwegian Red Cross, head of development studies at the Henry Dunant Institute, Geneva, and as an international news reporter in radio and television for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.
His residency on campus will run from March 30 to April 6.
In addition to working closely with students and making a major public address during his time at Beloit College, Egeland will participate in a panel discussion that is tentatively planned to focus on relief for human-initiated and natural disasters.
The Weissberg Chair in International Studies brings leaders of international importance to campus to interact with members of the Beloit College community. Egeland is the ninth distinguished guest to hold the residency. The Weissberg program is made possible by benefactor and Beloit College parent Marvin Weissberg (Hon.’05, P’84).
RELATED LINK:
Office of International Education - Home Page
Hispanic Community Members Find Support at Beloit College
Beloit College recently enhanced “town and gown” relationships when it partnered with Chicago’s office of the Mexican Consulate to provide services to the Stateline area’s Hispanic residents. An estimated 1,200 citizens of Mexico visited campus during four days in September to register for official passports and matricula consulars—a form of identification issued to Mexican nationals living abroad.
Senior Jessica Newcomb’07 (Orono, Maine) collaborated with Bill Conover, the director of the College’s Spiritual Life Program, and a city of Beloit-based organization called Pueblos Unidos to plan the event. Together, they orchestrated the use of space in Pearsons Hall, organized campus participation, coordinated security and parking arrangements, and promoted the consulate visit to the public. Newcomb also recruited student volunteers from a number of campus clubs, including Voces Latinas and the Spanish House, to assist.
After the first day, word spread quickly through the city of Beloit’s immigrant community and large numbers of applicants arrived on campus, often with family and friends in tow. The need for proper identification was fueled by new U.S. federal laws that mandate a passport for transit into and out of Mexico.
“We had people lining up outside Pearsons as early as
3 a.m.,” Newcomb says, noting that more than 100 passports and 200 identification cards were issued each day. The process of obtaining the documents took several hours, as consulate officials worked with the Mexican nationals to verify citizenship and file the required paperwork.
Newcomb was pleased by how smoothly the operation unfolded. “It was really important that community members had a positive experience,” she says, explaining that many of the people who passed through campus during those four days had never visited the College before. “Our hope is that down the road we’ll have more events that people will come to, because they’ve already visited campus and feel comfortable on it.”
Although she is graduating in December, Newcomb anticipates that similar initiatives will take place in the future. “I feel like it was a definite success, and we were excited to bridge the gap between the College and the community in a new way,” she says.
Robert Lee Morris'69 to Chair Film Festival
Internationally known, New York-based designer Robert Lee Morris’69 will return to Beloit in January to serve as honorary chair of the 2008 Beloit International Film Festival.
| Photo by: Dan Lassiter |
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While many will recognize the Robert Lee Morris name and connect it to
groundbreaking jewelry designs worn by everyone from Oprah to Andy Warhol, most may not realize that Morris started out making films and nearly pursued that as his life’s work. As an undergraduate at Beloit, Morris made more than a dozen films, experimenting with unconventional techniques, including painting directly on film, and exploring themes such as the alienation of youth. Morris cast classmates in his films and then set up campus screenings for which he charged admission and received immediate feedback from fellow Beloiters.
In a special filmmaker showcase at the festival, Morris will screen three of his films and show a montage of film shorts that he made while he was a student.
Despite January weather, Beloit’s film festival has drawn throngs of people to see films around the city and on campus and to meet filmmakers through receptions and facilitated discussions about their work. From its debut in 2006 to its second year in January 2007, festival attendance jumped 40 percent.
In 2008, 125 films from around the world will be shown over a four-day period.
The Beloit International Film Festival, slated for Jan. 17-20, is presented by the Hendricks Group in association with Beloit College.
RELATED LINKS:
Beloit International Film Festival - Home Page
"Existentially True" - Beloit College Magazine, Spring 2007
Robert Lee Morris - Home Page
Major Grants Enrich Beloit's Core Programs
International, interdisciplinary, experiential. These are the central elements of Beloit’s academic program. All three will be enhanced when the international education program expands its interdisciplinary and experiential dimensions with the assistance of a three-year, $200,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that supports the curriculum integration of international study experiences.
The new Mellon grant is focused on the Cities in Transition program, Beloit’s dynamic approach to study abroad. The new program directly confronts one of the challenges of studying abroad by finding ways to move students beyond the comfortable, program-defined spaces of classrooms and host institutions abroad. From what was once a combination of relocated course work and guided tourism, study abroad becomes a significant and focused exploration of the lived realities of another culture.
According to Director of International Education Elizabeth Brewer, “This is the challenge for all of us: ensuring that students are able to apply the knowledge they have gained in the classroom to real world contexts.”
The program promotes engagement with the cities in which students live and study by encouraging them to expand their knowledge of the host country and to integrate that knowledge with observation and analysis based on experience.
“The cities serve as a framework for engagement, encouraging students to adopt multiple disciplinary perspectives on historical and cultural questions, such as tradition versus modernity, gender roles, wealth distribution, migration, and contemporary social problems,” says Brewer.
The Mellon grant is one of 19 major grants of more than $50,000 received from foundations, corporations, and government agencies thus far during the College’s Classic. Daring. Life-Changing campaign. The grants total more than $6 million. In the first 18 months of a five-year effort, Beloit’s comprehensive campaign has achieved 57 percent of its $100 million goal.
RELATED LINKS:
Classic. Daring. Life-Changing. Campaign - Home Page
"The City as Text: Studying Cities in Transition" - Beloit College Magazine, Fall/Winter 2007
Dancing for Good Causes
Beloit College dance alumnae Maggie Koller’06, Forest Park, Ill., standing in the photo, and Allisa-Zee Hartmann’04, Chicago, Ill., came together this fall to perform duets in Dance for Cancer, a September benefit concert held in the Sentry Theatre in Stevens Point, Wis., and in Arts for Life, an October AIDS benefit concert held in Maddox Theatre at Rockford College in Illinois.
| Photo by: Trevor Johnson'08 |
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The piece, titled “Redundant,” came out of a unique creative collaboration between two Beloit College faculty members: It was choreographed by Chris Johnson, associate professor of theatre arts (dance), and inspired by a painting of the same name by George Williams, Jr., associate professor of art and art history. Johnson created the piece by putting the dancers in a mirror image of Williams’ painting, which is abstract but contains two identifiable figures. “I allowed the movement and relationship between the dancers to evolve out of and back into that shape,” Johnson explains. “The choreography is simultaneously simple in shape and complex in relationship.”
Johnson’s interest in raising awareness and support for eradicating cancer is highly personal. Her father died from lung cancer in 2003 and her sister was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005. Johnson met the producer of Dance for Cancer when she participated in the Laban Movement Analysis program at Columbia College, Chicago, which she completed in March 2007.
Both Koller and Hartmann are now based in Chicago. Koller was a double major in dance and psychology at Beloit, graduating summa cum laude and with departmental honors. She dances with The Dance COLEctive and The Space/Movement Project, both Chicago-based modern dance companies. Her full-time job is as a copywriter for Central Coast Advertising in Oak Park, Ill.
Hartmann majored in dance and theatre arts at Beloit, where she had the opportunity to debut some of her choreography. One of her dances was selected for the prestigious American College Dance Festival Association gala concert in 2004, a national honor. She is currently dancing with The Space/Movement Project and Thread Meddle Outfit in Chicago, while building her own repertoire of dances and working on costume design with modern dance choreographers.
Johnson says she is interested in doing more professional work with Beloit dance alumni and is planning a concert for July 2008. “This was an excellent opportunity to begin the process, reconnect with these two incredible dancers, and do some good,” she says.
RELATED LINKS:
"In the Moment" - Beloit College Magazine, Summer 2006
Theatre Arts-Dance - Home Page
EMAIL:
Chris Johnson - Associate Professor of Theatre Arts-Dance
George Williams, Jr. - Associate Professor of Art and Art History
Multi-Cultural Center Changes its Name, Raises Visibility
Formerly known as the Multi-Cultural Center, the Beloit College Intercultural Center has done more than change its name to better convey its purpose.
The center, which exists to promote intercultural communication and understanding on Beloit College’s campus, has been launching initiatives and hosting events at a heightened pace under the leadership of new director Cecil Youngblood.
One of the center’s new programs pairs first-year students of color with host families in the Beloit area.
Patterned after the successful international student-host family program, the Domestic Minority Student-Host Family Program strives to match two Beloit College students to each participating Beloit-area family. The idea is to smooth the transition to college by providing students with a home away from home that they can share with one of their peers.
In its inaugural year, Youngblood says the optional program attracted 26 students and 14 local-area host families.
Daksha Howard, secretary in the Intercultural Center, coordinates the program, and has also opened her home to an international student from Japan and an American student of Cambodian heritage. With two young children at home, Howard says it’s been a great experience for her family and for the Beloit students they are hosting.
“Our children love it, and they’re learning so much from it,” she says of the program. “I think hosting students with different backgrounds is the best education we can give our children. It’s a window into another world for us.”
The students the Howard family is hosting have also become good friends and shared many of the adjustments that come with transitioning into college life.
“We believe interacting with our students is a very worthwhile experience for the host families that choose to take part in this,” says Youngblood. “Host families are also important to our domestic students of color as they make the successful transition into their new environments at Beloit.”
The Intercultural Center invites students and host families to several informal events throughout the year, but the nature of the relationship is determined by the families and students. Many host families invite students to join them on family outings and to come to their homes for dinners and holiday celebrations.
Beloit-area families interested in finding out more about the program may contact Howard at howardd@beloit.edu or 608-362-7208.
EMAIL:
Cecil Youngblood - Director, Intercultural Center
A Redesigned Magazine
Over the summer, Beloit College Magazine staff held meetings and focus groups with campus constituents about the publication, while also implementing a readers’ survey among the alumni community. In the meantime, members of the editorial staff have pored over other college magazines to see just how Beloit stacks up.
You may have helped us by taking our phone call over the summer, when we asked for your opinions about the magazine. If you offered comments and feedback, we sincerely thank you. When the next issue appears in your mailbox in March of 2008, it will feature a fresh new look as a result of the valuable observations we have been soliciting over the past months.
We look forward to the debut of the newly designed Beloit College Magazine with great anticipation and hope that you do, too. And, of course, we always want to hear what you think. The editorial staff welcomes email any time at belmag@beloit.edu or letters addressed to Beloit College Magazine, 700 College St., Beloit, WI, 53511.
