The Alumni College features panel discussions and lectures by faculty members and alumni on cutting-edge scholarship, Carleton initiatives, and other timely issues. During Reunion weekend, Alumni College lectures delve into Carleton’s history and explore Carleton’s future as a leader in the liberal arts.

Friday, June 19, 2026

10:00 am – Weitz Center for Creativity Kracum Performance Hall
AI@Carleton

10:00 am – Weitz Center for Creativity Cinema
The Carleton Campus: An Illustrated and Anecdotal History
Since its establishment in 1866, Carleton has evolved from 20 acres without any college buildings to today’s substantial campus and facilities. This talk will describe multiple phases of the campus history, looking at buildings—how they were designed, built, altered, expanded, and occasionally removed—and other campus planning documents. The talk will feature many images from the college archives. Baird Jarman, Professor of Art History & Director of the Humanities Center

10:00 am Skinner Memorial Chapel
The Six Lives of the Cowling Arboretum
When we walk into a “natural” area, it can feel like we’re entering an eternal space. This can deceive. The area that is now Carleton College’s Arb has changed and changed again over its human history, and how people have regarded the land has changed, too. We’ll look at the Arboretum as Dakota land; as small farms; in its first era as Carleton’s Arboretum and Farm; in its role as a rougher, unchaperoned space in the turbulent 1960s; and in its newest transformation over the last 50 years into a treasured, organized part of the Carleton project. Nat ’88 and Ingrid ’90 Case

1:15 pm – Weitz Center for Creativity Kracum Performance Hall
Aging and Still Learning
Aging has been presented as a “demographic dividend” but also an economic, and medical challenge; it has been characterized by loss and fragility, but also as a period of reward, vitality, and accumulation of wisdom. A multidisciplinary panel of alumni and faculty who have worked on aspects of aging will speak about their approaches to the subject in order to prompt a general discussion of individual and collective experiences of growing older. Susannah Ottaway, Annette Nierobisz, David Troyansky ’76, Chuck Crecelius ’76, and Jerri Hurlbutt ’76

1:15 pm – Weitz Center for Creativity Cinema
Then and Now: We Have a Lot to Talk About
At age 87, as a proud member of the Class of 1961, Reunion will be a trip down a very long memory lane! On graduation, my class entered a world where JFK was still alive, Voting Rights and Civil Rights for Black Americans had not become law, the Second Wave of feminism had not begun, the Stonewall Uprising had not happened, and we were not up to our necks in Vietnam. It’s a measure of “then and now” that I’ll be staying at a Northfield hotel used by ICE/Border Patrol agents from Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis. Members of that contingent killed two American citizens exercising their First Amendment right to protest, whom POTUS and his aides were quick to label “domestic terrorists.” So I’m glad we’ll be together—we have a lot to talk about. Parker Palmer ’61

1:15 pm – Skinner Memorial Chapel
Juneteenth