Our Community

Hardly anything speaks to our sense of community better than the annual campus-wide tradition known as "Pumphandle." On the evening before the first day of class, students, faculty, and staff form a meandering line on the lawn outside Old Main, with each person walking down the line shaking everyone's hand. Your first year, you may be shaking hands with strangers, but by your senior year you'll be hugging old friends.

More than 90% of our students live on campus, mostly in housing that's arranged in suites, with a group of student rooms opening onto a common living area, good for everything from Guitar Hero competitions to debates about the rightful philosophical heirs of Reinhold Niebuhr. There you'll find students from different backgrounds sharing perspectives that broaden their points of view, sometimes changing each other's ideas and attitudes, sometimes deepening and strengthening them through reflection and debate.

Our City
The Knox community reaches beyond the boundaries of the campus to take in the city of Galesburg. In fact, because Knox and Galesburg were established at the same time by the same people, it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. In Galesburg, you'll find the same open-hearted Midwestern generosity that gives the Knox campus such an informal, friendly atmosphere.

Galesburg, population 35,000, is a classic prairie city of red brick streets and Victorian homes, yet it has many of the features usually associated with larger cities -- such as a thriving arts scene with the Knox-Galesburg Symphony, the Prairie Players Civic Theatre, the Discovery Depot Children's Museum, and the Galesburg Civic Art Center. Nearly all of our professors live within 10 minutes of campus, and many of our students work at jobs or internships in town, attend its churches and temple, and frequent its many restaurants, shops, and coffeehouses.

Knox students and professors are also active in community life as volunteers, pitching in at local organizations such as Big Brothers Big Sisters, Boys and Girls Club, Girl Scouts, Special Olympics, United Way of Knox County, Knights of Columbus, Kiwanis Club, Prairieland Animal Welfare Shelter, and at several assisted living centers, churches, and schools.

Our World
As vibrant and energized as our local community is, Knox students are so curious, you simply can't contain them in one place. Half of our students take advantage of our many opportunities for off-campus learning -- studying theatre in London, history in Barcelona, tropical ecology in Costa Rica, mathematics in Hungary, social development in Tanzania, language and culture in Japan, political science in Washington, D.C., and a host of other subjects in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the United States.

Such globalism is in keeping with our mission of challenging each other to explore, understand and improve ourselves, our society, and our world. Our Center for Global Studies not only facilitates international travel for students, but also brings guest speakers to campus who provide a global perspective.