Knox College Presidential Search Specification
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PRESIDENT SEARCH SPECIFICATION “On my first visit to Knox, I thought, ‘What a wonderful, charming place to spend four such important years of a young person’s life’ . Every student comes from a unique background, has a different story to tell. It is a wealth of exposure that nourishes students hungry to learn, to step outside of their comfort zones.” – Loren Pope & Colleges That Change Lives GALESBURG, ILLINOIS KNOX.EDU KNOX COLLEGE Overview Knox College, academically the most distinguished national liberal arts college in Illinois and a paradigmatic College That Changes Lives, seeks a new President, with a target appointment date of July 1, 2021. An independent, four-year, residential baccalaureate institution of approximately 1,200 students (from 45 states and 49 countries), Knox currently offers 60 courses of study with a student-faculty ratio of 11-1. As the Prairie Fire, Knox fields 18 varsity sports in the Division III Midwest Conference, with particular recent success in women’s and men’s soccer. The College’s enduring hallmarks, dating from its founding in 1837 by abolitionists, are academic rigor; student access without regard to gender, race or financial circumstances; a social justice in launching engaged graduates, encouraging public ethos and a supportive, richly elaborated student culture service and promoting social mobility. Knox has the that inspires high affinity and loyal, active alumni most diverse enrollment among Associated Colleges devotion. The word alumni use most often in describing of the Midwest institutions: some 40% are domestic their Knox experience is “transformational.” For an students of color and almost 30% identify as LGBTQ+. aspiring, sitting or former president committed to A member of the American Talent Initiative, Knox is extending a premier liberal arts and sciences education among the most successful colleges in retaining and beyond typical elite-college matriculants, Knox offers a graduating students who are first-generation. The platform for national leadership. College ranks in the top four percent of liberal-arts- college producers of Ph.D.s. Knox touts itself as “human-powered.” Its location, midway between Chicago and St. Louis, affords both As Knox takes up its post-COVID future, it can urban proximity and a small-town setting conducive to a draw upon a history of managing successfully with close-knit campus and local community engagement. constrained resources, while always staying true to its Its academic attractions include strengths in creative mission. The new President will build on the 10-year writing, history and the sciences. Experiential education tenures of Knox’s retiring incumbent president and her and immersion terms across disciplines are well predecessor. Their leadership, together with exemplary established. The College has a strong commitment to trustee stewardship and faculty and staff resourcefulness, internationalism, including its piloting of a Peace Corps have strengthened the College’s situation and enhanced Preparatory Program that is now a model for other its sense of place. The past decade has seen notable gains American institutions. Knox is a broad-minded campus in both the College’s endowment (which nearly tripled notable for its passionate student activism, but also for its in value to $176 million) and annual fund raising. The kindness and warmth. Accolades from the New York Knox 2018 strategic plan, launched in 2013, nudged the Times and Washington Monthly cite Knox’s effectiveness College towards greater curricular differentiation in the PRESIDENT OF KNOX COLLEGE KNOX COLLEGE 2 KNOX COLLEGE admissions marketplace—including the addition of a The College and Galesburg Bachelor of Science degree, new majors in business and The paired foundations of Knox College and Galesburg, data science and the creation of five new minors linking IL had their origin in the Oneida Institute that arts-and-sciences study to career paths. Recent years also Presbyterian minister George Washington Gale saw the renovation of historic Alumni Hall (1890) as a organized in Whitesboro, NY in 1827. The Institute new gateway to the campus, the construction of the was “a short-lived but highly influential school that was Whitcomb Art Center (for art and art history) and the a national leader in the [then] emerging anti-slavery re-imagined core of the Umbeck Science-Mathematics movement,” leading the struggle for immediate Center. With the redevelopment of Seminary Street as emancipation in the United States. It enrolled black an independent shopping district, the campus is now and white male students on an equal basis, the first more deeply integrated into the life of Galesburg, IL American college to do so. Oneida would plant the (population 30,197), the seat of Knox County, a railroad seeds not only for Knox but also for Bates College, Case hub three hours from Chicago and “home to the largest Western University and Oberlin College. number of historic houses in Illinois.” In 1836, Gale’s attention turned to the west. He released Knox seeks a new President who can freshly tell and his “Circular & Plan,” formally announcing the extend the College’s story. The position demands incorporation of a “Prairie College,” as Knox was enthusiasm for Knox’s particular access mission, first known. www.knox.edu/about-knox/our-history/ location, history and traditions. Knox needs its new circular-and-plan. Gale stated his intention to open the President to be an enterprising ambassador for the college to women, which he would do with the College in pursuing new admissions pipelines and construction of a coordinate Female Seminary in 1844. securing financial support—promoting its excellence The Plan’s subscribers, who became Galesburg’s first and distinctions not only to prospective parents and settlers, organized the town around Gale’s philosophy students but to secondary schools, admissions counselors and vision for the college—town and gown grew up and potential benefactors and trustees outside the together rather than in tandem. The College’s 1837 Knox community. Faculty and staff members typically chartering launched classes in a cabin, even as outperform the resources at their disposal—they hope Galesburg’s new residents organized the state’s first for an advocate and champion. The new President needs anti-slavery society and the proto-feminist Female Moral to be visibly present on campus and a booster for the city Reform Society, all undeterred by the Panic of 1837. Not of Galesburg as the College anchors downtown renewal. only did residents believe that slavery was wrong, but many were willing to put themselves on the line by breaking the laws of the time: Gale was indicted in 1843 for harboring runaway slaves. Knox’s first president traveled to Britain to raise money from rich anti-slavery evangelicals. His successor sought financial support and students from Congregational and Presbyterian abolitionists in New England and New York. Galesburg became a hub for the commercial railroad that arrived in 1854 and a haven for the Underground Railroad. A national, and soon, international enrollment gave Knox and Galesburg a cosmopolitanism that persists to this day. By 1857, Knox had the wherewithal to hire a Swedish-born, New York-trained architect to design the present-day “Old Main” as its signature campus PRESIDENT OF KNOX COLLEGE KNOX COLLEGE 3 KNOX COLLEGE landmark. Its distinctive synthesis of the Classical and Gothic Revival styles then competing for American college campuses made it a fit setting for the fifth Lincoln- Douglas debate. When Knox awarded its first honorary doctorate to presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln in 1860, it was the first academic honor of any kind for the self-educated Lincoln, who reportedly said on climbing through a window in Old Main to reach the debate platform, “At last I have gone through college.” Fast- forwarding to 2005, Knox was the site of the first college commencement address that then-Senator Barack Obama ever gave, remarks that were later included in an anthology of greatest speeches by African-Americans. whose Spoon River Anthology found its inspiration In the latter half of the nineteenth century, a succession nearby. Ellen Browning Scripps, founder of Scripps of nationally celebrated faculty members established College and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Knox’s reputation for academic excellence. But it was graduated in 1859. Dorothea Tanning, Surrealist painter student initiative—and occasionally rebellion—that and wife of Max Ernst, was a Galesburg native in the lay the groundwork for the ethos of undergraduate class of 1934. activism, creative expression and self-determination that Twentieth- and 21st-century Knox benefited from still define Knox today. The co-founder of The Knox several long-serving presidents with professional Student newspaper, S. S. McClure ’82, headed to experience at pre-eminent colleges and universities. New York after graduation. There he enlisted Knox President Carter Davidson arrived from Carleton classmates to publish McClure’s Magazine, which College in time for Knox and the town’s joint centenary inaugurated investigative journalism and ushered in in 1937, updating the curriculum and improving faculty the Progressive Era. Missionaries and Muckrakers is salaries. The 24-year presidency (1949-73) of Sharvy accordingly the title of the College’s standard history. Umbeck, previously Dean at William & Mary, brought Knox students staged the first U. S. intercollegiate significant national recognition and improvements to the debating contest in 1872. Their rival Gnothauti and campus. His successor, Inman Fox (1974-82), previously Adelphi literary societies acquired splendid new Dean at Vassar College, tripled Knox’s endowment. quarters and an auditorium for their lecture series with John McCall, a Princeton-trained, Guggenheim- the 1891 construction of Alumni Hall, among the first fellow Chaucer scholar, completed the $24 million student unions. Baseball arrived by 1861, and Knox Sesquicentennial Capital Development Program and played its first reported intercollegiate football game brokered Knox’s 1993 decision to drop the College’s against Monmouth in 1885, a contest that continues.