In March of 2011, Beloit received academe’s highest honor for international education—the Senator Paul Simon Award. NAFSA, the world’s largest international education association, named Beloit one of five Simon Award for Comprehensive Internationalization honorees.

The honor came the same year that Beloit celebrated its 50th year of study abroad.

In recognition of the college’s uncommon commitment to service, Beloit was one of only 115 colleges and universities named in 2010 to the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll (Beloit was one of only two institutions in the state to receive the honor).

In 2011, Beloiters working through the Campus Community Outreach Center provided more than 1,595 service hours to individuals and organizations within the surrounding community.

In its inaugural summer of 2010, and again in summer of 2011, six Beloit Sustainability Fellows logged nearly 2,000 hours overseeing and executing campus- and community-based environmental sustainability projects.

In fall 2010, Beloit’s Student Support Services (SSS) program was awarded a five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s TRIO office. The grant, which totals more than $1.4 million over five years, will support a 36-year-old program at the college that helps support the academic success of more than 100 first-generation, low-income, or disabled students each year.

In February 2011, department of economics majors, faculty, and alumni celebrated the 25th anniversary of Econ Day in downtown Chicago.

The Liberal Arts in Practice Center, or the LAPC, is one center with several offices—Community-Based Learning, Career Services, Campus and Community Outreach Center, and Center for Entrepreneurship in Liberal Education (CELEB)—that work with students, faculty, staff, and community as part of a comprehensive, intentional, integrated approach to help students tie together both academic and co-curricular aspects of their liberal arts education.

In October 2010, Beloit received a $507,000 grant award from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund the college’s “Labs Across the Curriculum”— an innovative curricular initiative which recognizes the active and collaborative learning that traditionally takes place in science labs and seeks to integrate the same hands-on intensity into students’ learning in the arts and humanities.

With the completion of major upgrades to the Strong Stadium field and surrounding track (the Karris Track & Field), Beloit expanded its suite of intercollegiate Division III teams to include men’s and women’s varsity lacrosse. A gift from a friend of the college provides full funding of both programs for the first five years.

In the summer of 2011, 13 high school students were selected as members of the inaugural class of Summer FIELDS participants at the college. The students, who applied for admission to one of three courses (in physics, creative writing, or dance), were on campus in June and July for the new summer residential program. Conceived as a complement to the college’s long-running Center for Language Studies program, the high school program was named “Summer FIELDS” to reflect the hands-on, interdisciplinary nature of the courses, all of which were taught by Beloit faculty. In 2012, the college will introduce summer courses for Beloit students as well.