Reviewers' Notebook: Grinnell College: Overview

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Founded in 1846, Grinnell College is a highly selective, residential, nonsectarian, undergraduate institution offering the Bachelor of Arts degree in twenty-five major fields. Our mission is to graduate liberally educated women and men who apply their understanding and ability for the common good.

In its early history, the College developed a thoughtfully progressive tradition in forming the structure and character of its student body and its curriculum. In 1857 the College became coeducational, and awarded its first bachelor of arts degree to a woman in 1857 and to an African American in 1871. Grinnell established the first major in political science in 1883 and pioneered the 3-2 program in engineering in the 1930s. To maintain cultural and socioeconomic diversity in its student body, Grinnell maintains a completely "need-blind" admission policy: Students are admitted solely on the basis of their academic qualifications.

The College now enrolls an average of 1500 highly qualified students from across the U.S. and about forty foreign countries, and provides an outstanding liberal-arts education stressing academic excellence and social responsibility. These priorities are reflected in Grinnell's low student-faculty ratio (9:1), its open curriculum, and its strong advising program. We have about 160 full-time faculty, almost all of whom hold the Ph.D. or terminal degree in their fields.

The College is governed by a Board of forty-eight trustees, forty-one of whom are alumni of the College. Our extraordinarily strong endowment reflects the trustees' financial acumen, dedication, and faithful service. The Board holds three regular meetings during the academic year, an occasional retreat during the summer months, and monthly conference calls.

Executive authority for all administrative functions and decisions throughout the College is vested in the President. The Academic Affairs Office, headed by the Dean of the College (who also has the title of Vice-President for Academic Affairs), is responsible for support and coordination of the academic program.

The two central governing committees of the faculty are the Executive Council and the Personnel Committee. All non-administrative faculty members on these committees are elected representatives of the faculty. The Executive Council determines matters of academic policy and college-wide governance. The Personnel Committee makes recommendations to the Dean of the College and the President concerning faculty contract renewals, tenure, and promotions. The Chair of the Faculty, who is elected by the faculty for a two-year term, serves on both committees.

The College's academic programs are organized into three divisions (Humanities, Science, and Social Studies), comprising twenty-five departments. Normally, a student fulfills the requirements for a major offered by one of these departments. (A few students instead design and complete "independent majors," which are individually evaluated and approved by the Academic Affairs Office.) Double majors are fairly common, and it is also common to combine a major with an "interdisciplinary concentration" consisting of thematically related courses drawn from several departments. The College currently offers eleven such concentrations, each overseen by a faculty committee organized for that purpose.

Apart from the completion of a major, the only College-wide requirements for graduation are successful completion of the First-Year Tutorial course, a total of 124 credits, and a cumulative grade-point average greater than or equal to 2.0. A student may not receive more than forty-eight credits for course work in any one department, even her major department, nor more than ninety-two for course work in any one division. There are no other distributional requirements.

Four credits are awarded for most College courses, and students normally graduate after eight semesters of study, so students generally enroll for four courses each semester.

Following College policy and tradition, most departments set the minimum credit requirement for a major at thirty-two, though in some cases departments tacitly increase the effective minimum by requiring courses with prerequisites.

The normal course load for a full-time faculty member is five courses a year. There is no accommodation for teaching a course with more classroom hours, such as a lab course. Many faculty members, however, receive course reductions, to compensate either for exceptional administrative responsibilities (chairing a department or division, for instance) or for otherwise uncredited teaching work (directing summer research students, supervising independent projects, etc.).

The Grinnell College campus covers 120 acres, with sixty-three buildings, of which nineteen are student residence halls. The College also owns and operates a 365-acre environmental research area, comprising several distinct ecosystems, located approximately fourteen miles from central campus. Campus buildings range in age from Goodnow Hall, built in 1885 and most recently renovated in 1996, to several recent constructions: four East Campus residence halls (2004); a new athletic facility (2005); the Joe Rosenfield '25 Center (2006); and a major expansion of the Noyce Science Center (2007).