A Trip to Beloit

Yesterday I took a 5 hour road trip to Beloit, Wisconsin to attend a Beloit Snappers baseball game and catch up with an old Carleton professor of mine.  It was an easy drive considering the weather was perfect and it was smooth freeway jaunt via the Prius.  The actual time there was very enjoyable indeed.

I left after breakfast at 9:45 and after a short lunch break, arrived at Beloit College around 3:15.

I arrived on campus and spend about 35 minutes walking around common pedestrian areas of campus.  Here’s a map for you:

 

I then headed to Middle College, the first building built on campus in 1847, to visit the my old Carleton economics professor, Scott Bierman.  Scott taught price theory, game theory and public sector economics at Carleton and he led the seminar that I spent in Cambridge, England that I participated in 2001.  However, Scott has gone on the bigger and better things, for he is currently the President of Beloit College.

When I met with Scott, he graciously accepted me like it was 10 years ago.  We spoke a few minutes in his office and then he invited me for a walk around campus with him and his spouse.  I said sure thing.  So we left the office and to the President’s House where we met his spouse, who also graciously accepted me like it was 10 years ago.   Starting with the President’s House, Scott provided a full scale tour of campus.  Here’s a video that Beloit College released that sampled many of the buildings that Scott showed me.  I take a disclaimer for the contents.

On this tour, Scott provided me some interesting nuggets about Beloit College, such as:

• Four buildings on campus are registered as a National Register of Historical Places.

• The first president of Carleton College, James Woodward Strong, was a Beloit College alum.

• They will be the first “selective” D-III school to have a lacrosse team this fall.

• The academic side and the residential sides of campus are completely separate.

• The student body is about 1100 students and the comprehensive fee (tuition, room, board) is about $46K, which makes my final year at Carleton at $30K look like a bargain by comparison (its $56K now).

• Beloit College is switching over to Bon Appetit for its food service next year. 

I really enjoyed my time catching up with Scott.  I also enjoyed the fact that despite being a man fully engrossed in higher education, he still as down to earth and has the same appreciation of markets that I remembered he had as a professor.

The Snappers baseball game didn’t have much to it.  Here’s the lineup I saw (which was changed right before the game):

The Snappers are the full-season A ball minor league affiliate of the Twins.  They have two players that Twins fans need to pay attention to: Miguel Sano and Eddie Rosario.  Here’s a post from an earlier trip that references them.

The game itself wasn’t too much to write home about.  The Snappers lost to the Lansing Lugnuts (2-0).  Snappers starting pitcher David Hurlbut had a great outing (8 strikeouts and 5 hits allowed in 8 innings), but the offense looked awful. Sano looked really bad swinging the bat Rosario did not play.  Not a great night capper.

So as I returned to the Twin Cities today, I thought it was a weekend well spent.