Northfield Middle School art teacher John Bade and his students will join Carleton College psychology professor Neil Lutsky and his students to present the results of their recent collaborative art project entitled “Northfield Runs the Numbers” on Tuesday, Jan. 17 from 7 to 9 p.m. The presentation and reception, which is free and open to the public, will be held in the Erling O. and Geneva E. Johnson Room in the Carleton College Weitz Center for Creativity.

In mid-December, college representatives Fred Rogers and Alan Norton from Carleton and St. Olaf, respectively, presented city of Northfield officials mayor Mary Rossing and city administrator Tim Madigan with the colleges' annual donation to its host city. Each college gave $75,000 to Northfield, continuing a long-standing and unique tradition.

Carleton College’s annual holiday Craft and Custodial Bake Sale will take place on Friday, December 2 from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Commons of the Weitz Center for Creativity. A wide variety of hand-crafted items and baked goods will be available for purchase, ranging from jewelry, afghans, baskets, outerwear, candles, and much more. Vendors will donate a portion of the proceeds from their sales to the Carleton College Custodial Scholarship Fund. This popular annual event is free and open to the public. 

We caught up with Donald Hasseltine, Carleton’s new vice president for external relations. Hired in mid-August of this year, Don started his new position on November 7. Learn about his background, why he and has family chose to relocate to Northfield and Carleton, and his early impressions of his new community.

On Saturday, Nov. 5, approximately 25 Carleton and local high-school students gathered for an all-day Youth Empowerment Workshop, led by Carleton students Mahal Burr '12 and Nick Welna '12 (Evanston, Ill.) at the Weitz Center for Creativity. Sponsored by the Center for Community and Civic Engagement (CCCE) office, the workshop taught attendees a wide variety of leadership skills and capped with the formation of working groups to futher examine issues facing young people in our community.

The Cowling Arboretum staff, along with parent volunteers of the Northfield High School cross-country ski team, is once again collaborating on ski trail grooming. Assuming we have snow like we did last year, users can look forward to great snow conditions as parent volunteers and arboretum staff work together to maintain the ski trail conditions.

While Halloween traditions both young and old endure at Carleton, one tradition has quietly grown into the culture of the College near the end of October every year: giving back to the Northfield community. Whether it's trick-or-treating in Musser Hall, partaking in the athletic department's "Halloween Knight" event of Mortar Board gathering food for Northfield's food pantry, Carleton students are finding ways to give back to the community at the end of October. 

The Carleton Board of Trustees has approved a construction project that will renovate Evans Hall, an existing residence hall located near Bell Field on the eastern edge of campus. According to director of facilities and capital planning Steven Spehn, construction is slated to start in June 2012, right after Carleton’s alumni reunion weekend. The residence hall will be off-line, or unoccupied, from that point until the end of the calendar year. The plan has students returning to the facility in January 2013, while adding 40 beds to the College’s residential housing capacity.

Work has commenced on a parking lot at the corner Second and Union Street. The 47-stall parking lot should help alleviate parking pressures around the Carleton campus and reduce on-street parking, which impacts the College’s neighbors and upgrades a previous "informal" parking area into a more formal parking lot with more spaces and improved circulation.

Carleton will dedicate its second utility-grade wind turbine on Friday, Oct. 21. Carleton’s second wind turbine is made possible thanks to a generous gift from Laurie Weiss Kracum ’76 and Richard Kracum ’76 of Chicago. The new wind turbine will provide power directly to Carleton’s electrical grid and is expected to produce 4,000 - 5,000 MWh of electricity per year. With a footprint of less than one-quarter acre, the new turbine will serve one-third the annual power needs of nearly 2,000 full-time students plus hundreds of staff and faculty and will reduce Carleton's carbon footprint by approximately 10 percent.

The 13th annual "Halloween KNIGHT” Carnival takes place on Sunday, Oct. 30 from 3-5 p.m. at Carleton’s Recreation Center. This free activity for pre-school through elementary-age children (and their parents) includes game and activity booths. Attendees are encouraged to come in costume.

Two ongoing film series being shown at Carleton College this fall allow students and the general public to take full advantage of the College’s new cinema at the Weitz Center for Creativity. All screenings are free and open to the public.