Carleton College News

Steven Schier, the Dorothy H. and Edward C. Congdon Professor of Political Science, told USA Today on Feb. 8 that the recent low Republican turnout threatens the candidacy of Mitt Romney and is due to voter apathy towards the party's field. "Republicans are upset with their field," Schier said. "If you look at national polls, a large percentage would like other candidates. It's too late for that and many are stuck with unappealing choices. That produces low turnout and that's a real threat to Romney."

Carleton College will host a faculty and guest artist concert featuring the Chiarina Piano Quartet on Friday, Feb. 10 at 8 p.m. in the Concert Hall. Performers include Mary Budd Horozaniecki (violin), Nancy Nehring (viola), Mark Rudoff (cello), and David Viscoli (piano). The program will feature Ludwig van Beethoven's Quartet in C Major, Lee Hoiby's Dark Rosaleen, Rhapsody on an Air by James Joyce, and Johannes Brahms' Quartet in C Minor. This concert is free and open to the public.

Michael Coughlin ’12 (Burnsville, Minn.) of Carleton College has earned one of the 14 Churchill Scholarships, providing him a full scholarship to earn his master’s degree at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University. It is awarded to graduating seniors and recent graduates demonstrating exceptional academic talent, outstanding personal qualities, and a capacity to contribute to the advancement of knowledge in the sciences, engineering, or mathematics. Coughlin is the lone student from a Minnesota college or university to earn the award, worth between $45,000-50,000.

Dan McAlister '13 checks in with the Carleton Student Experimental Theater Board and their 24-Hour Show project. The team of students writes, casts, rehearses and performs a series of plays in a 24-hour time period, making for some interesting, creative work and a sleep-deprived group of Carls.

Student photographer Maria Kjellstrand '15 covered Ebony II, giving us an inside view of the ever-popular Carleton event. Ebony II is a student-run dance company open to beginners, experienced dancers, and everyone in between. All dance styles are welcome, and each term the company performs student choreography in a performance open to the entire campus (and attended by most of campus, too).

Dan Ariely, psychologist and author of the New York Times bestseller “Predictably Irrational,” will speak at Carleton College at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 9. Entitled “Free Beer: The Honest Truth about Dishonesty, How We Lie To Everyone—Especially Ourselves,” Ariely’s presentation will take place in Olin Hall, Room 141, and is free and open to the public. Copies of Ariely’s popular books will be available for purchase at the event, and in advance at the Carleton Bookstore, at a 15% discount.

A new series of exhibitions are on display in Carleton College’s Gould Library this winter, showcasing objects and images generated both by students and drawn from the library’s extensive collection. The four new exhibits—“Masquerading Politics,” “Cryptolibrary,” “Fovea Centralis,” and “Vietnam 2011”—are currently on display through March 11, 2012. Access to the Gould Library is free and open to the public.

Professor Myron Orfield, Executive Director of the Institute on Race & Poverty at the University of Minnesota, will present “Segregation in Schools and Housing in the Twin Cities” on Thursday, Feb. 9 at 4:30 p.m. in the Carleton College Gould Library Athenaeum. This event is free and open to the public.

Carleton College professor of history William North will give a lecture entitled “A Rare Look at Papal Ecumenicism in the Sixteenth Century: He hagia kai oikoumeniké en flõrentia genomene sunodos (1577) in Context” in the Gould Library Athenaeum at 5 p.m. on Tues., Feb. 7. This event is free and open to the public.

Michelle Alexander, a civil rights lawyer and scholar currently in residence at Ohio State University, will deliver Carleton College’s convocation address on Friday, February 10. Alexander is the author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” (New Press, 2010), which will be the subject of her address, focusing on the continued legacy of discrimination against African Americans, particularly through the mass incarceration of black men. Convocation is held from 10:50-11:50 a.m. in the Skinner Memorial Chapel, and it is free and open to the public. A booksigning will follow Alexander’s presentation and copies of “The New Jim Crow” will be available for purchase at the event.

Fay Vincent, former commissioner of Major League Baseball and a Board of Trustee member at Carleton College, penned a Feb. 1 opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) titled "Price Controls for Harvard." In the piece, Vincent lays out the myriad of problems associated with implementing tuition price caps in American higher education, including merit vs. need-based financial aid, schools with large vs. small endowments, and the cost borne by the U.S. government to implement such a program will be passed along to students and families.

Jonathan Zimmer, a New York University faculty member, penned a Jan. 31 article for the Los Angeles Times, "Are college students learning?" The opinion piece, in response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech, called upon American higher education to use assessment better and more regularly to prove students are actually learning. Zimmerman pointed out Carleton's Writing Portfolio requirement: "At Carleton College in Minnesota, for example, students are required to submit a set of papers that they wrote during their first two years at the school. Carleton then assesses each student according to a set of faculty-developed standards, and also provides assistance to the students who do not meet them."

The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation is awarding $189,902 to Carleton College in support of the Summer Connections project, which will provide need-based scholarships for high-achieving, low-income high-school students to attend Carleton summer academic programs. The grant, renewable for up to three years, will increase Carleton’s ability to make summer programs available to students who otherwise would not be able to attend due to financial reasons. In summer 2012, the grant will provide scholarship funding for 41 eligible students. The grant will also provide support for national publicity about the program and staffing to help administer scholarship program expansion.

Shelton Johnson, a ranger with the National Park Service for 25 years and author of the fictional memoir Gloryland (Sierra Club Books, 2009), will deliver Carleton College’s convocation address on Friday, February 3. Johnson’s presentation, entitled “Gloryland: Using History and Literature as Tools for Social Change,” will look at his book, a portrait of a fictional African-American “buffalo soldier” in the 19th-century U.S. cavalry. A booksigning will follow the presentation, with copies of Gloryland available for purchase at a 15% discount. Convocation is held from 10:50-11:50 a.m. in the Skinner Memorial Chapel, and is free and open to the public.

The Jan. 20, 2012, broadcast of KYMN (1080 AM) Radio's "Art Zany! Radio for the Imagination" featured special guest Laurel Bradley, Director and Curator of the Perlman Teaching Museum 
and Senior Lecturer in Art and Art History, talking about the current art exhibit “A Complex Weave: Women and Identity in Contemporary Art.” Bradley was joined by Martin Rosenberg, co-curator of the exhibition and Professor of Art History at Rutgers University. On display, through March 11, 2012, “A Complex Weave” reveals the ongoing vitality of the Feminist artist movement with works by contemporary women artists of varied backgrounds exploring aspects of identity through painting, drawing, needlework, photography and other media.  

Carleton College’s Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, along with the Asian Studies Program, will present a lecture by Maki Isaka, a professor at the University of Minnesota, on Friday, Feb. 3 from 5:15 to 6:15 p.m. in the Gould Library Athenaeum. Isaka’s talk, “Why Can’t Women Do the Job? The Art of Femininity in the Kabuki Theater,” will discuss the significance of femininity in traditional Japanese Kabuki theater. Isaka’s talk is free and open to the public.

Dr. Jane Nofer Poskanzer, of  the Fraser Child & Family Center, will present “Autism Spectrum Disorders: What Should A Liberally Educated Person Know?” on Thursday, Feb. 2 from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Carleton College Gould Library Athenaeum. This event is free and open to the public.

Members of the Northfield community will come together to discuss the educational achievement gap in local schools in a “Who is Northfield?” panel discussion taking place on Thursday, Feb. 2 at 12 p.m. in Carleton College’s Severance Great Hall. This event, which includes a complimentary buffet lunch, is free and open to the public.

The 1/25/12 edition of "All Things Considered" on Minnesota Public Radio includes a feature story on the current Perlman Teaching Museum exhibit, "Running the Numbers," on display through March 11 in the Kaemmer Family Gallery in the Weitz Center for Creativity. "Running the Numbers: Portraits of Mass Consumption" is the work of Seattle artist Chris Jordan, who presents huge color photographs -- assembled from thousands of smaller photographs -- based on statistical facts about American consumer culture. The story on Minnesota Public Radio features Laurel Bradley, director and curator of the Perlman Teaching Museum, and Neil Lutsky, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Psychology, who first encountered Jordan’s artwork in 2010, and was impressed by the way in which it found creative ways to present quantitative data.

Michael Gomez, a professor at New York University and one of the United States’ leading experts on the history of Africa and its diaspora, will deliver the Winter 2012 Herbert P. Lefler Lecture in History at Carleton College. Entitled “Early West African History through a Different Optic,” his talk will explore the history of the region and its relationship with Islam. The lecture will be Monday, Jan. 30 from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. in Leighton Hall Room 305. This event is free and open to the public.