Knox in the News

From the Register-Mail:

A Knox College official said this morning she hopes to begin an effort almost at once to add Galesburg to the newly created Barack Obama Trail….

According to The State Journal-Register of Springfield, the capital city and Chicago are the only two cities on the trail at this time. Galesburg already is a stop on the Reagan Trail, as is Monmouth. There also are Lincoln and Grant trails in Illinois.

President-elect Obama, as a U.S. senator, delivered the 2005 commencement address at Knox in June of that year. Once he is inaugurated, he will be just the third U.S. president to be awarded an honorary degree from Knox; the other two being Abraham Lincoln and Bill Clinton. Heartlein said the honorary degree was the first undergraduate honorary degree for both Lincoln and Obama. Obama earlier had been awarded an honorary graduate degree from another institution.

Obama has a number of connections to Galesburg. He visited Knox just two days after winning the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in 2004. That same year, he mentioned Galesburg and the closing of the Maytag plant here during a speech at the Democrats’ national convention. That address is cited by many as Obama’s first moment in the national political spotlight.

From the Decorah Newspapers (Decorah, IA):

The Associated Colleges of the Midwest, a consortium of academically excellent, independent liberal arts colleges, welcomes Luther College as a new member in 2009.

In making the announcement, Roger Taylor, president of Knox College and chair of the ACM Board of Directors, said “The Board is pleased to welcome an outstanding college that, like all of the ACM member colleges, is dedicated to excellence in the liberal arts and sciences and to international education. We believe that students, faculty, and staff at all of the ACM colleges and at Luther College will benefit from our association.”

From the Evanston Review (Evanston, IN):

The NCAA has named Katie Schneider (Evanston, St. Scholastica Academy), a 2008 Knox College graduate, winner of a 2008 NCAA Division III Conference Sportsmanship Award.

Currently working at Knox as co-director of sports information, Schneider participated in both varsity softball and track.

“Katie Schneider has been a true leader at Knox College,” said Chad Eisele, Knox’s director of athletics, who nominated Schneider for the award.

Each conference in the NCAA selected one male and one female nominee for the NCAA.

From the Courier News (Elgin, IL):

“Hail, Knox all glorious! Unto thee we sing” filtered through Kimberly Scanlon’s second-grade classroom at Hanover Countryside Elementary School Thursday.

Even though Knox College in Galesburg is not yet their alma mater, these second-graders are daring to dream the college life.

The song was the students’ way of welcoming Knox’s president, Roger Taylor, who visited the class to deliver a hard-to-find Knox T-shirt and work with the students on their own personal college seal.

“Knox College changed my life,” Taylor told students. “I grew up on a farm in western Illinois and I was the first to get a college degree. My dad died, but my mom, grandma and grandpa encouraged me to think about going to college….

Students may not comprehend what the real benefits of college are, but they’re trying.

Knox and its president have adopted Scanlon’s classroom after Hanover Countryside was selected as a “No Excuses University” school. That means that students at Hanover Countryside constantly encounter reminders that each of them is expected to work hard, behave responsibly, and achieve impressively — no excuses to not go on to college.

From the Daily Herald (Streamwood, IL):

Knox College President Roger Taylor might be considered a member of the educated elite. But it wasn’t always that way.

“None of my family had gone to college, but from as early as I can remember I was encouraged to study hard so I could go,” the leader of the Galesburg school said.

On Dec. 4, Taylor will pay it forward to Kimberly Scanlan’s second-grade class at Hanover Countryside Elementary in Streamwood, helping students work on a personal aspirations project.

As part of the “No Excuses University” program, which encourages students to work hard, behave responsibly, and begin readying for college at an early age, each of Hanover Countryside’s classrooms have adopted a college.