Attending conferences is one of the best parts of my job, up there near learning about faculty members’ projects and booking grants. Many summers, I attend the annual gathering of colleagues from some (we like to think, "almost all") of the best liberal arts colleges in the country.
It’s always a great meeting, a place to gather valuable information about grantmaking to "LACs" around the country, to talk with fifty or so peers about life at and beyond work, and not least to see other campuses and college towns. Ten years into this job, I realize that a huge fraction of all the traveling I’ve done in my life has been for this conference or another, similar one that’s held in the fall. Going to one or the other meeting, I’ve been able to see Connecticut College in New London, the University of Richmond in Virginia, Siena College and Skidmore College in upstate New York; St. Michael’s College in Burlington, Vermont; Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington; Grinnell College in Iowa; Ursinius College outside Philadelphia; Denison University in Granville, Ohio; and Mills College in Oakland.
This year’s meeting was at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut – a campus I visited a couple years ago. The Wesleyan campus is gorgeous, Middletown is picturesque, and the customary "excursion" on the last night of the conference took us to a yacht club in Essex, a quaint village on the Connecticut River. It was hard not to find something gorgeous to look at:
This year I felt especially tuned in to the meeting because the Northfield colleges – Carleton and St. Olaf – are hosting this conference next year. Only 51 weeks till our friends arrive!