From a snow day to Flunk Day to College rankings and a new center on campus, we invite you to revisit highlights from the past 12 months. We published dozens of stories this year, but the following items were the most widely read and shared among the Knox community.  

1. Snow Day! Knox experienced a rare campus closure in late January when temperatures dropped to a frigid -23 degrees. By the end of winter term, the novelty had worn off: It snowed 21 days, a full 40 percent of the term.

2. Office of Communications flubs Flunk Day predictions. Every year, the Office of Communications attempts to predict the date of Flunk Day, and every year, we fail. One day we’ll perfect the formula, but until then, know this: We don’t think it will be Thursday, April 23, 2020. (That’s the date scheduled for the second coming of #KnoxProud Day.)

3. Knox earns high rankings. This year, U.S. News & World Report awarded high rankings to Knox for the quality of its undergraduate teaching and for affordability. Meanwhile, the Princeton Review included Knox among its best U.S. colleges.

4. The HOPE Center opens on campus. The House of Peace and Equity, known as the HOPE Center, opened in April 2019 to serve as the new home of the Offices of Intercultural Life, Spiritual Life, and International Student Services—and offering a space for students from all backgrounds and traditions to come together.

5. Alumni working at Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft return to campus to advise computer science students. "There are a lot of ways that the non-programming parts of the liberal arts education come together to do the parts of programming that we don't talk about," said Paige Anderson Lowe ’14.

6. Bridget Coughlin ’94 addresses the Class of 2019. The Shedd Aquarium CEO advised graduates to be like the “small but mighty pilchard,” which moves in vast schools: “Keep moving, stick together, and you will be bigger. You will be more.”

7. Michael Schneider was appointed Provost and Dean of the College. He will serve a three-year term, building upon his experience as a history professor and former interim dean, director of the Eleanor Stellyes Center for Global Studies, and chair of the Asian Studies and international studies programs.

8. Knox launches a new minor in archaeology. Program director Danielle Fatkin said, “Archaeology is, in a sense, the perfect liberal art because in order to do it well, you actually have to be an artist, a humanist, a social scientist, and a natural scientist."

9. Olive the therapy dog begins seeing students. Pet therapy is one of the self-guided therapy options now available through Counseling Services.

10. Knox Soccer dominates the Midwest Conference. Both the women’s and men’s teams came out on top during the regular season, with the women winning a fourth consecutive Midwest Conference championship.