Grinnell Colloquium and Campus Celebration on August 23

Dear Grinnellians,

Campus has been coming to life with our student-athletes, IPOP, PCPOP, and New Student Orientation. I write to remind you that everyone is warmly invited to mark the beginning of the academic year with the Grinnell Colloquium and our all-campus celebration Welcome Dinner on Wednesday, Aug. 23.

Due to excessive heat advisories over the next few days, we will modify some of our previously announced plans. All students, faculty, and staff — along with faculty and staff families — are invited to an indoor all campus welcome dinner on Wednesday and a re-scheduled festival on Sunday:

Moved Indoors for Wednesday, August 23:

All Campus Celebration Welcome Dinner service in the JRC Dining Hall with seating around the building, and hours will be expanded to 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. to help with service logistics

Enjoy a barbeque dinner with all of the trimmings! Gluten free, Vegan, Halal, and Kosher options will be available. Multiple barbeque service lines will be open; get your meal and find a place to sit with friends in the dining hall or any of the following JRC classrooms: 202, 203, 209, 224A, 224B, 224C, 225, 226, and 227. Tables and chairs also will be scattered around the second floor for additional seating.

Re-Scheduled to Sunday, August 27:

Campus Festival on Kington Plaza, 3:30-7:30 p.m.

Come celebrate the beginning of the school year with some fun activities hosted by Student Involvement. There will be a rock-climbing wall, pirate ship, balloon art, basketball shootout and more!

Grinnell Colloquium:

Wednesday, Aug. 23, sessions at 11 a.m., 1 p.m., and 2 p.m.

Faculty, staff, and students are invited and encouraged to participate in the Grinnell Colloquium, a set of convening conversations that will mark the start of every academic year. As we gather into our community of inquiry, we have the opportunity to take time to delve together into consequential topics for our experiences of the College as these connect to higher education and our global, multi-cultural society at large. In a continuing effort to render senior leadership work more visible, these topics will purposefully intersect with on-going considerations and processes of senior leadership members and their campus partners.

This year’s sessions will be held on Wednesday, August 23, and distributed throughout the day. All faculty, staff, and students are invited to attend all sessions either in person or virtually. All sessions will also be recorded and posted to the Senior Leadership GrinnellShare site. A Q&A period is reserved at the end of each session, and we welcome questions afterwards as well.

This year’s three topics are:

Colloquium Topic 1: College Finances: FY24 Budget, New Endowment Formula, Philanthropy

11 a.m.-Noon HSSC Auditorium

This session will present the FY24 budget (its process, its allocations and revenue sources); the new endowment spending formula (how it works, its protections for the endowment); and the philanthropy in our business model (comparative data; metrics).

Colloquium Topic 2: Responding to the SCOTUS Decision on Affirmative Action

1-1:45 p.m. HSSC Auditorium

This session will discuss the result of last year’s preparations for the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action by ASFAC and senior leadership; a legal summary of the decision; and what we are doing this year and going forward in response to the decision.

Colloquium Topic 3: Renfrow Hall, Civic Innovation, and Student Housing

2-2:45 p.m. HSSC Auditorium

This session will trace how Renfrow Hall came to be as well as plans for student housing over the coming years; it will feature the research findings by students working on Black history in Grinnell; and it will delineate civic innovation and this year’s working groups for Renfrow Hall.

We look forward to seeing you at this year’s Grinnell Colloquium, and to shaping these consequential topics with you and through your questions. We hope that you will also join us to celebrate the incoming class of Grinnellians at the festival and the all-campus welcome dinner.

Many thanks for being a part of this community and for making Grinnell College a meaningful and impactful institution.

Anne F. Harris
President