Beloit College - Academics

Academics

Beloit College's curriculum retains many aspects of the Beloit Plan from the 1960s, emphasizing experiential learning, learner agency, and reflective connection-making between out-of-classroom and in-classroom learning experiences, or "the liberal arts in practice." Academic strengths include field-oriented disciplines such as anthropology and geology. More Beloit graduates have earned Ph.D.s in anthropology than graduates of any other undergraduate liberal arts college not affiliated with a university, and the school ranks among the top twenty American liberal arts colleges whose graduates go on to earn a Ph.D. in general. The geology department continues a tradition in geology that began with T. C. Chamberlin more than a century ago. Today the department combines a course load with mandatory field methods and research. The department is a member of the Keck Geology Consortium, a research collaboration of several similar colleges across the United States, including Amherst College, Pomona College, and Washington and Lee University. The Consortium sends undergraduate students worldwide to research and publish their findings.

In 2011, Beloit was ranked both 55 overall and a "Best Value" in the category of National Liberal Arts Colleges by U.S. News & World Report, and it ranked 125 of the top 600 schools by Forbes in 2010. In the 2006 college rankings by U.S. News & World Report, Beloit was shortlisted for "Study Abroad" (56% of students participate) and "First-Year Initiative". The 1999 National Study of Student Engagement ranked Beloit in the top 20% of five benchmark categories measuring the quality of the student experience, one of just four schools to achieve this ranking.

The college long hosted the Beloit Poetry Journal, but the editor, Professor Emerita Marion K. Stocking, now deceased, had retired to Maine and operated the journal from there. In 1985 the complementary Beloit Fiction Journal began, publishing an annual collection of short contemporary fiction every year since. The establishment of the Mackey Chair in Creative Writing has brought a new nationally-known author to campus annually for several years, including Billy Collins, Bei Dao, Ursula K. Le Guin, Amy Hempel, Denise Levertov, and Robert Stone. Beloit biology faculty member, John Jungck, along with Nils S. Peterson, CEO of From the Heart Software, co-founded and run the BioQUEST, and Brock Spencer maintains ChemLinks. Both are special-interest groups on the reform of science education. Beloit has had a faculty and student exchange program with Fudan University in China since the 1980s.

Psychology is one of the most popular majors at Beloit. The Psychology Department started with Guy Allen Tawney, a student of Wilhelm Wundt, who taught from 1897 to 1906. A study abroad program to Morocco and Estonia is targeted at psychology majors (although any student may apply for the program), where they engage in cross-cultural studies.

Beloit College completed a 120,000 sq ft (11,000 m2) Center for the Sciences in the fall of 2008. The building was designed to achieve a minimum Silver Level LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) green building certification and was ultimately awarded platinum level certification. It also won a Design Excellence Honor Award in Interior Architecture from the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) on October 30, 2009.

In the fall of 2010, Beloit College opened the Hendricks Center for the Arts, a 58,000-square-foot (5,400 m2) structure that holds dance, music and theater facilities. The building previously held the Beloit Post Office and later the Beloit Public Library. The renovation and expansion of the facility is the largest single gift in the college's history. The building is named after Diane Hendricks, chair of ABC Supply of Beloit, and her late husband and former college trustee Ken Hendricks. "The architects and designers, who worked closely with a group of faculty and staff to identify needs and priorities, stayed true to the building’s history throughout the project. Original support beams, exposed brick walls, and vintage terrazzo tile floors are juxtaposed with four new studio classrooms, a state-of-the art film classroom, faculty offices, and design and staging labs."

In 2011 Beloit College received the Senator Paul Simon Award for Comprehensive Campus Internationalization. In its award statement, NAFSA, the Association of International Educators, noted: "Internationalization efforts at Beloit College in Wisconsin are centered on its long-standing institutional commitment to international education and its urban setting, as the school’s programs reach out to cities in transition around the world."

Since 2010, the Beloit College Philosophy Department has hosted prominent, well-known philosophers through the Selzer Visiting Philosopher Series. In 2010, Martha Nussbaum visited. In 2011, Daniel Dennett.