Laird 100

Cocurricular activities are an important component of a liberal arts education. They teach students lessons about themselves and their relationships with others that can’t be learned from textbooks or lectures. Carleton’s thriving athletics program is an excellent example of this.

At Opening Convocation this year, I spoke about what I regard as one of the most pressing challenges facing American higher education: the diminishment of thoughtful, respectful, honest, and productive discourse about divisive political, economic, and social issues both in broader society and in academic communities.

You’re likely to find backhoes and construction workers on the Carleton campus every summer. But this year we’re particularly busy as we begin to implement the first phase of the Utilities Master Plan, approved by the trustees this past fall.

“Carleton employees recognize that, no matter what we do, our responsibilities boil down to supporting these wonderful young people.”

Carolyn Livingston I was a low-income, first-generation high school student. Both of my parents had a middle-school education. My father was a factory worker and my mother was a domestic…

Three critical choices made in Carleton’s early years have resulted in the superb institution we know today.

Carleton spent much of the past academic year holding a series of small-scale, candid conversations led by trained facilitators about key topics of concern to our community.

Today, more than ever, instruction in science and the liberal arts mutually reinforce each other. Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—or STEM, as the disciplines are called collectively—pervade the national dialog. What’s missing in many conversations about education, work, and life is the broader integration of STEM, replete with the many ways of knowing and understanding our world.

Many things have changed over the 30 years I’ve worked in higher education, but one constant has been the steady stream of jeremiads calling for the end of tenure and…

Over the quarter century since I arrived at Carleton to be dean of admissions, there have been many changes, both to campus and to the work we do in admissions.…