GRINNELL COLLEGE

private, coeducational institution of higher learning in Grinnell, Iowa, U.S. It is a liberal arts college that awards the Bachelor of Arts degree only. Students can study abroad in China, England, France, Greece, or Russia. Facilities include the 365-acre (148-hectare) Conrad Environmental Research Area. Total enrollment is approximately 1,300. Grinnell, founded in Davenport, Iowa, in 1846, was the first four-year liberal arts college west of the Mississippi River. It was founded by a group of transplanted New Englanders and named after an early benefactor, Abolitionist minister Josiah Bushnell Grinnell, when it moved to its present location in 1849. Women were first admitted to the college after the American Civil War. Later in the century Grinnell became one of the first undergraduate colleges in the United States to establish a political science department. It was also the first college west of the Mississippi to host collegiate baseball and football games. Notable alumni include New Deal statesman Harry Hopkins, actor Gary Cooper, computer engineer Robert Noyce, and Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Thomas Cech.