Carleton College

Carleton College is an independent non-sectarian, coeducational, liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota, USA. The college enrolls 2,055 undergraduate students, and employs 220 full-time faculty members. In its 2013 edition of college rankings, U.S. News and World Report ranked Carleton College the 8th best liberal arts college in the United States and ranked Carleton number two for undergraduate teaching at a national liberal arts college.

History
The school was founded on May 3, 1866, by the Minnesota Conference of Congregational Churches as Northfield College. Two local businessmen, Charles Augustus Wheaton and Charles M. Goodsell, each donated 10 acre of land for the first campus. The first students enrolled in fall 1867. In 1870, the first college president, James Strong, traveled to the East Coast to raise funds for the college. On his way from visiting William Carleton of Charlestown, Massachusetts, Strong was badly injured by a train. Impressed by Strong's survival, Carleton donated US$50,000 to the fledgling institution in 1871, and the Board of Trustees renamed the school in his honor.



The college graduated its first class in 1874. The first two graduates, James J. Dow and Myra A. Brown, married each other later that year. On September 7, 1876, the James-Younger Gang, led by outlaw Jesse James, attempted to rob the First National Bank of Northfield. Joseph Lee Heywood, Carleton's Treasurer, was acting cashier at the bank that day. He was shot and killed for refusing to open the safe. Carleton later named a library fund after Heywood, and the Heywood Society is the name for a group of donors who have named Carleton in their wills.

In its early years under the presidency of James Strong, Carleton reflected the theological conservatism of its Minnesota Congregational founders. In 1903, modernist religious influences were brought when William Sallmon, a Yale Divinity School graduate, was hired as college president. Sallmon was opposed by conservative faculty members, who forced him out by 1908. After Sallmon left, the trustees hired Donald J. Cowling, another theologically liberal Yale Divinity School graduate, as his successor. In 1916, under Cowling's leadership, Carleton began an official affiliation with the Minnesota Baptist Convention. It lasted until 1928, when the Baptists severed the relationship as a result of fundamentalist opposition to Carleton's liberalism, including the college's support for teaching about evolution. Non-denominational for a number of years, in 1964 Carleton abolished its requirement for weekly attendance at some religious or spiritual meeting.

In 1927, students founded the first student-run pub in the nation, The Cave. Located in the basement of Evans Hall, it continues to host live music shows and other events several times each week.

In 1942, Carleton purchased land in Stanton, about 10 mi east of campus, to use for flight training. During World War II, several classes of male students went through air basic training at the college. Since being sold by the college in 1944, the Stanton Airfield has been operated for commercial use.

The world premiere production of Bertolt Brecht's play The Caucasian Chalk Circle was performed in 1948 at Carleton's Nourse Little Theater.

In 1963 the Reformed Druids of North America was founded by students at Carleton, initially as an excuse to avoid attending the then-required weekly chapel service. Later the group conducted legitimate spiritual exploration. Meetings continue to be held in the Carleton College Cowling Arboretum.

The popular early computer game, The Oregon Trail, was created and refined by students at Carleton in 1971.

President Bill Clinton gave the last commencement address of his administration at Carleton, on June 10, 2000.

Academics
Carleton College is accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. The next on-site review for this accreditation will be in 2018-19.

Rankings
Academically, Carleton has been nationally recognized as a leading undergraduate institution. It is consistently ranked in the U.S. News & World Report college rankings as one of the top ten U.S. liberal arts schools. In the 2013 U.S. News & World Report annual ranking, Carleton College is the 8th best liberal arts college in the United States and ranked 2nd for best undergraduate teaching among liberal arts colleges. In the Forbes magazine ranking of American colleges, which combines liberal arts colleges and national research universities, the College is ranked 31st. Among liberal arts colleges only, Carleton ranks 17th in the survey. Kiplinger's Personal Finance places Carleton at 19th in its 2012 ranking of best value liberal arts colleges in the United States.

Carleton College is part of the Annapolis Group, which has issued a group statement asking members not to participate in ranking surveys. President Robert Oden stated on September 7, 2007, "We commit not to mention 'U.S. News' or similar rankings in any of our new publications, since such lists mislead the public into thinking that the complexities of American higher education can be reduced to one number." Carleton participates in the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU)'s University and College Accountability Network (U-CAN), a co-operative effort on the part of colleges to provide data for school comparison on a variety of bases.

Admissions and selectivity
For the class of 2016 (enrolled fall 2012), Carleton received 5,856 applications and accepted 1,496 (25.5%). The number enrolling was 528; the yield rate (the percentage of accepted students who enroll) was 35.3%. Of the 40% of entering freshmen who submitted class rank, 80% were in the top 10% of their high school classes; 98% ranked in the top quarter. The middle 50% range of SAT scores for enrolled freshmen were 670-760 for critical reading, 670-760 for math, and 660-750 for writing. The middle 50% range ACT Composite score was 29-33.

Carleton experienced a sharp increase in applications for the class of 2017, resulting in an acceptance rate of only 21%, making it the most selective year to date. Due to a higher matriculation rate than usual (37%), Carleton overenrolled the class of 2017 by about 50 students, for a total of 550 students. The incoming class represents forty-six states. The states with the most entering freshmen are Minnesota (92 students), California (64 students), and Illinois (52 students).

Carleton has a strong history of enrolling students who are in the National Merit Scholarship Program, often enrolling more than any other liberal arts college in the country. Its Class of 2016 includes 79 National Merit Scholars (which includes both Carleton-sponsored and external National Merit Scholars).

Graduates
Among American liberal arts institutions, Carleton College is a leading source of undergraduate students pursuing doctorates. It has also been recognized for sending a large number of female students to graduate programs in the sciences.

Extracurricular organizations
The school's nearly 220 active student organizations include three theatre boards (coordinating as many as ten productions every term), long-form and short-form improv groups and a sketch comedy troupe, seven a cappella groups, four choirs, 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, which employs more than 200 volunteers each term.

In 5 of the last 12 years, Carleton College students received the Best Delegation award at the World Model United Nations competition.

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.

In 2009 two Carleton students founded the only comics magazine at Carleton, the Carleton Comics Journal (now known as the Carleton Graphic). It releases an issue once every two weeks and has been generally well received by the Carleton community.

The school has several a cappella groups. The oldest is the all-male Carleton Singing Knights, which has toured and recorded extensively over its more than 50-year history. The Knights performed a version of Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger". Their video on Youtube has received over 4 million views. It was this cover that prompted a student to make a video for the song, titled Daft Hands. The video became an internet sensation; it has been viewed over 53 million times on Youtube and resulted in the student's appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show for a reprise performance.

The Knightingales, one of the all-female groups, are the second oldest a cappella group on campus. They performed on a special radio performance hosted by Garrison Keillor at Dacie Moses House in 2002.

Traditions
Carleton has numerous student traditions. These include painting the college's water tower. Notably, a likeness of President Clinton was painted on the tower the night before his commencement speech in 2000. Early the following morning, college maintenance quickly painted over it. The administration's view of this particular phenomenon have changed over time. For liability-related reasons, climbing the water tower is now considered a grave infraction.

A bust of Friedrich Schiller, known simply as "Schiller", has made regular appearances, though briefly, at large campus events. The tradition dates back to 1957, when two students absconded with the bust from Scoville Library during the process of vacating books from there to the new library. "Schiller" resided in their dorm rooms for a period, only to have the bust taken from them in turn. Possession of the bust escalated into an elaborate competition, which took on 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 try to capture the bust. 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, which led participants to Schiller's hidden location. The bust was stolen from the winner of the scavenger hunt. At commencement in 2006, the holders of the bust arranged for Schiller to "graduate." When his name was called at the appropriate moment, the bust was pulled from behind the podium and prominently displayed.

In March 2010, the bust of Schiller appeared on The Colbert Report. The appearance was organized by custodians of Schiller who contacted Peter Gwinn, a Carleton alumnus who is a writer for the program.

The bust also appeared on a Halloween broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion on Minnesota Public Radio.

Since 1990, Carleton students have played "Late Night Trivia," a game show broadcast over the college's radio station, KRLX, during the annual Winter Term exam period. Students compete in teams to identify songs and answer questions.

Campus
The college campus was created in 1867 with the gifts of two 10 acre parcels from local businessmen Charles Goodsell and Charles Augustus Wheaton. The campus is on a hill overlooking the Cannon River, at the northeast edge of Northfield. To the north and east are athletic fields and the Cowling Arboretum, which were farm fields in the early years of the college. Open land beyond the Arboretum is still largely devoted to agriculture.

The center of campus is an open field called "the Bald Spot," which is used for ultimate frisbee in the warmer months and flooded for skating and broomball in the winter. Most of the campus buildings constructed before World War II surround the Bald Spot (the exceptions are Goodsell Observatory and Margaret Evans Hall).

Campus buildings
Several of Carleton's older buildings have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). These include Willis Hall, the first building on campus, which was constructed from 1869 to 1872. Originally it contained the men's dormitory, classrooms, library, and chapel. The building was gutted by fire in 1879, after which it was entirely rebuilt within the existing stone shell. The original front of the building became the rear entrance with the construction of Severance Hall in 1928. As new buildings were constructed, academic departments were located in and out of the building. Beginning in 1954, it was the college student union, until it was replaced in 1979 by the Sayles-Hill Student Center. It now houses the Economics, Political Science, and Educational Studies offices. The college's clock bell tower and the main college flagpole, along with the radio tower for KRLX, are located on the roof. Goodsell Observatory, also on the NRHP, was constructed in 1887 and at the time was the largest observatory in the state of Minnesota. It was named for Charles Goodsell, who donated land for the campus. Goodsell Obeservatory replaced the college's first one, built in 1877. That was razed in 1905 to make room for Laird Hall. From the late 19th century to the end of the World War II, Goodsell Observatory kept the time for every major railroad west of the Mississippi River, including Northern Pacific Railway, the Great Northern Railway, the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad, and the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba railroads. Goodsell served as the headquarters of a state weather service from 1883 to 1886.

Scoville Hall (originally Scoville Memorial Library), completed in 1896, is on the NRHP. Replaced in function by the Gould Library, it was adapted for use as the cinema and media studies department, the media center, and the academic support center.

Four nineteenth-century buildings have been demolished: Gridley Hall (1882) was the main women's dormitory for many years, and was demolished in 1967 for construction of the Music and Drama Center. Williams Hall (1880) was the college's first science building; it was demolished in 1961. Seccombe House (1880) was used for music instruction until 1914, and was located near the site of the current Skinner Chapel. The first Observatory (1878) was replaced in 1887, and the facility was demolished in 1905 to make way for Laird Hall.

Skinner Memorial Chapel, completed in 1916, is on the NRHP. Carleton built a new 80000 sqft Recreation Center in 2000. A full indoor fieldhouse is located above a fitness center, which includes a climbing wall and bouldering wall.

In the fall of 2011, the Weitz Center for Creativity opened up in a renovated middle school. It includes a cinema, a live theater, and is the new home of the Cinema and Media Studies (CAMS) department, and the associated recording and production studios. It is also the home of Presentation, Event and Production Services (PEPS).

In the fall of 2012, Evans Hall was refurbished to modernize the internal layout and add more rooms.

Cowling Arboretum
The Cowling Arboretum, "the Arb", was initially created from lands purchased in the 1920s by President Donald J. Cowling. As the college was having difficult financial times, it was first called "Cowling's Folly" but later became his legacy. After Carleton Farm was closed, its acreage was added to the Arboretum.

Since 1970 acreage has been removed from cultivation in sections. The Arboretum has approximately 880 acre of restored and remnant forest, Cannon River floodplain, bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa) savannah, and tallgrass prairie. The Arboretum is divided by Minnesota Highway 19 into the larger Lower Arb to the north (so called because it includes the Cannon River valley) and the smaller Upper Arb. Pedestrian trails are located throughout the Arb, as well as the school's cross-country running and skiing courses, and a paved mixed-use bicycle/running trail in the Upper Arb.

Sustainability
Carleton is committed to environmentally conscious initiatives. In October 2007, the Sustainable Endowments Institute, a Cambridge, Massachusetts organization, recognized Carleton as a leader in overall college sustainability. 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, Brown 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. A wind turbine located near the campus generates the equivalent of approximately 40 percent of Carleton's electrical energy use; it is configured to sell this power back to the local grid for the most efficient use system wide. Over the life of Carleton’s turbine, it is estimated that the College will reduce CO2 by 1.5 million tons. In late 2011, Carleton installed a second wind turbine that provides power directly to the campus, providing for an additional 30 to 40 percent of the college's electrical energy use.

Athletics
Carleton has athletic opportunities for students, including 19 varsity teams, 23 club teams, and dozens of intramural teams (including 40 separate broomball 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 have produced a number of all-Americans and one national championship (Fellahs', 1980).

The Men and Women's Swimming and Diving program participates in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) conference.

The football team won the conference championship in 1992 with a 9-1 record and received one of 16 bids to the Division III National Championship Tournament.

In 2006, the men's basketball team tied the University of St. Thomas for the conference championship and received an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.

In 2007, the women's golf program sent its first individual qualifier to the Division III Women's Golf NCAA Tournament.

In 2008, the men's soccer team won the conference championship, thereby receiving an automatic NCAA bid. They reached the Sweet 16 of the tournament, marking one of the most successful seasons in Carleton history.

The women's soccer team won the MIAC Playoffs in 2008, receiving an automatic NCAA bid. They attained the Elite 8 of the tournament, marking the first time in Carleton sports history. The women's soccer team has since won the MIAC regular-season championship twice (2010, 2011) and once again revisited the NCAA tournament in 2009 and 2010, making it through the first- and second round, respectively.

In 2012, the men's soccer team won the MIAC regular-season championship and lost the playoff championship in penalty kicks to Gustavus Adolphus College, but still received a bid to the NCAA tournament for only the second time in the history of the program. The Knights, who were ranked as high as 12th nationally throughout the season, hosted the first round but lost the close match.

Carleton hosted the 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 College by a score of 43-0. The event was the last to fill Carleton's Laird Stadium.

Club sports
The student-run Ultimate frisbee clubs have had the most competitive success; most notably, the school's top men's team, Carleton Ultimate Team (CUT), and women's team, Syzygy, are perennial national contenders in the USA Ultimate College Division. CUT has qualified annually for nationals since 1989, and won the National Championship in 2001, 2009, and 2011. Syzygy has qualified for women's nationals all but one year since 1987, and won the National Championship in 2000. The other men's Ultimate team, the Gods of Plastic, won the 2009, 2010, and 2012 Division III National Championship tournaments, and the second women's Ultimate team, Eclipse, won Division III nationals in 2011.

In the fall of 2011, the women's rugby team was undefeated in their league and region. This led them on to win Division 3 national playoffs. After winning their league, the team was bumped up to Division 2, where they will compete in the fall of 2012.

The spring intramural softball league is known as Rotblatt, in honor of baseball player Marvin Rotblatt. Once a year a day-long game, also known as Rotblatt, lasts the same number of innings as the number of years since Carleton's founding. In 1997, Sports Illustrated honored Rotblatt in its "Best of Everything" section with the award, "Longest Intramural Event."

In fiction and popular culture

 * Pamela Dean set her fantasy novel Tam Lin (1991) at a fictional "Blackstock College", based on Dean's alma mater, Carleton. Dean's author's note begins, "Readers acquainted with Carleton College will find much that is familiar to them in the architecture, landscape, classes, terminology, and general atmosphere of Blackstock." Blackstock's buildings were given names that reference their counterparts at Carleton (e.g. Watson Hall becomes Holmes Hall, referring to Sherlock Holmes; Burton Hall becomes Taylor Hall, referring to the marriages of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor).
 * Carleton College is mentioned in scene five of Wendy Wasserstein's 1988 Pulitizer-Prize winning play, The Heidi Chronicles.
 * The Schiller bust was briefly featured on the TV show, The Colbert Report, on March 29, 2010.
 * On June 2, 2010, an unknown group of students transformed Goodsell Observatory into a giant R2D2. Maintenance staff did not respond positively, and the decorations were removed a few hours later, but not before students took some widely-circulated photographs and videos.
 * A group of Carleton students set a no-longer-current Guinness world record for the largest number of people spooning (529) on June 4, 2010.

Notable alumni

 * Cordenio Severance, class of 1880, former president of the American Bar Association
 * 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 to 1919 and from 1933 to 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 Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership
 * Ben C. Duniway, class of 1928, prominent American federal judge
 * Warren P. Knowles, class of 1930, governor of Wisconsin from 1965 to 1971
 * Ray Wendland, class of 1933, experimental petrochemist and academic
 * 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
 * Kinsey Anderson, class of 1949, pioneer space physicist and member of the National Academy of Sciences
 * Anthony Downs, class of 1952, author of An Economic Theory of Democracy
 * Hal Higdon, class of 1953, runner and writer
 * Eleanor Kinnaird, class of 1953, North Carolina State Senator
 * 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 to 2002, and former chairman of the board of trustees
 * Michael Gartner, class of 1960, journalist
 * Eric Pianka, class of 1960, biologist, herpetologist and well-known evolutionary ecologist known as "the Lizard Man." Pioneered work on r/K selection theory.
 * Jack Barnes, class of 1961, the leader of the Socialist Workers Party (USA)
 * Joyce Hughes, class of 1961, first Black female tenure track law professor at a majority white law school. Currently professor of law at Northwestern University
 * Parker Palmer, class of 1961, author
 * 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
 * John A. Gale, class of 1962, Secretary of State of Nebraska since 2000
 * John Lavine, class of 1963, dean of Medill School of Journalism
 * Donella Meadows, class of 1963, lead author of Limits to Growth
 * Peter Tork of The Monkees (then known as Peter Thorkelson) was a student at Carleton from 1960 to 1963
 * James Loewen, class of 1964, historian and author of Lies My Teacher Told Me
 * Peter Schjeldahl, class of 1965, art critic for The New Yorker
 * Susan Golding, class of 1966, two-term mayor of San Diego
 * Barrie M. Osborne, class of 1966, producer of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy
 * Peter H. Schultz, class of 1966, Brown University Geology professor and co-investigator to the NASA Science Mission Directorate spacecraft Deep Impact. Awarded the Barringer Medal of the Meteoritical Society in 2004.
 * 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 1999
 * Kai Bird, class of 1973, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer
 * Karen Tei Yamashita, class of 1973, novelist
 * Patricia Collins Wrede, class of 1974, fantasy writer
 * Kirbyjon Caldwell, class of 1975, pastor of the Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston, Texas, and a spiritual advisor to Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama
 * Pamela Dean, class of 1975, fantasy writer
 * Thomas Mengler, class of 1975, President of St. Mary's University (Texas), former Dean of Law at University of St. Thomas and former dean of the University of Illinois College of Law
 * Jacob Lew, class of 1976, United States Secretary of the Treasury and 25th White House Chief of Staff. Transferred to Harvard College after his freshman year
 * Lincoln Child. class of 1979, writer of techno-thrillers
 * Jack El-Hai, class of 1979, writer and journalist
 * Jane Hamilton, class of 1979, novelist and winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award
 * Piotr Gajewski, class of 1981 founder, director and artistic director of the National Philharmonic Orchestra
 * Brian Freeman, class of 1984, suspense fiction author
 * John F. Harris, class of 1985, Editor-in chief of The Politico
 * Grace Llewellyn, class of 1986, author of The Teenage Liberation Handbook
 * T.J. Stiles, class of 1986, winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the 2009 National Book Award for Nonfiction
 * William G. Moseley, class of 1987, writer and professor of geography
 * Stephen Six, class of 1988, Kansas Attorney General
 * Jonathan Capehart, class of 1989, journalist, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing
 * Clara Jeffery, class of 1989, Editor of Mother Jones magazine
 * Jay Rubenstein, class of 1989, historian, recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship
 * Christopher Kratt, class of 1992, TV and film producer and host
 * Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl, class of 1992, James Beard Award-winning food writer
 * Peter Gwinn, class of 1993, writer for The Colbert Report
 * Paul Tewes, class of 1993, political consultant
 * Jimmy Chin, class of 1996, photographer
 * Laura Veirs, class of 1997, singer-songwriter
 * Masanori Mark Christianson, class of 1998, musician/art director
 * Tom Nelson, class of 1998, former Wisconsin State Representative and Assembly Majority Leader
 * Anthony Myint, class of 1999, Restaurateur, Founder of Mission Street Food, Mission Chinese Food and Commonwealth in San Francisco. Author of the book Mission Street Food

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.
 * Ian Holbourn, writer and Laird of Foula. Instrumental in creating the art department.
 * 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 to 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.
 * 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.
 * H. Scott Bierman, professor of economics, department chair, academic dean, game theory expert, currently President of Beloit College 2009–present

Points of interest

 * Carleton College Cowling Arboretum
 * Goodsell Observatory
 * The Cave
 * Weitz Center for Creativity

Presidents

 * 1) James Woodward Strong, 1870–1903
 * 2) William Henry Sallmon, 1903–1908
 * 3) Donald Cowling, 1909–1945
 * 4) Laurence McKinley Gould, 1945–1962
 * 5) John Nason, 1962–1970
 * 6) Howard R. Swearer, 1970–1977
 * 7) Robert Edwards, 1977–1986
 * 8) David Porter, 1986–1987
 * 9) Stephen R. Lewis Jr., 1987–2002
 * 10) Robert A. Oden Jr., 2002–2010 (retired June 30, 2010)
 * 11) Steven G. Poskanzer, 2010–present