Student Experience

One hundred percent of our students receive financial assistance. Our mission to provide an accessible and premier liberal arts and sciences education to all students remains unchanged, even in the midst of an ever–changing and challenging higher education landscape.

Life at Ripon

Graduates

• 172 from July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2022

• 44 double majors, 2 triple majors

• 9 Phi Beta Kappa

• 21 Summa cum laude, 24 Magna cum laude, 38 Cum laude

• Top majors: Exercise science, psychology, education, biology, political science

Class of 2026

• 2,142 first-year applications

• 1,742 offered admission

• 200 first-time, first-year students plus 12 transfer students.

• 19 legacies

• 44 as part of Local Commitment Award program

• 23% ethnic diversity

• 36% first-generation

• 36% Pell Grant-eligible

• 64% of new students are from Wisconsin, with others from 18 states and the countries of Canada and Myanmar.

Student Body

• 766 enrolled in fall 2022 vs. 812 in fall 2021

• 754 degree-seeking students in fall 2022, vs. 790 in fall 2021

Career and Professional Development

• 387 student appointments online, virtual, in-person

• 2,026 visits to Career Center

Excellence at Ripon Rankings

Faculty Achievements

Gov. Tony Evers appointed Professor of Art Rafael Francisco Salas to the Wisconsin Arts Board, the state agency responsible for the support and development of the arts throughout Wisconsin. He will serve a three-year term. Salas also has an essay in the anthology Hope is the Thing: Wisconsinites on Perseverance in a Pandemic. The collection is edited by B.J. Hollars and published by Wisconsin History Press.

Ripon College again has been placed on national rankings lists of the best institutions for undergraduate education.

• Ripon is ranked the top school in Wisconsin for promoting social mobility by U.S. News & World Report. The ranking is included in the 2022-2023 U.S. News Best Colleges rankings. It ranks 38th among colleges nationally.

ABOVE Rally Band debuted during the FY’22 academic year. The band plays at home football games and basketball games and is expanding to other events. Playing in fall 2021, are, clockwise from top left, Raquel Potter ’25 of Randolph, Wisconsin; Kylar Kinyon ’23 of Dowagiac, Michigan; Jacob Zuehlke ’22 of Whitewater, Wisconsin; Abbe Lane ’22 of Neenah, Wisconsin; and Jade Weber ’25 of Phillips, Wisconsin.

• Career events: 1,748 student touchpoints in workshops, career and internships fairs, tabling, events

• 51 Admissions Collaborations for overnight prospective students or prospective students over Zoom

• 385 student engagements with employers

• 120 donated articles of clothing for Rally’s Career Closet; 22 uses by students

Franzen Center for Academic Success

Data for both semesters

• 412 signed tutoring contracts, back in person

• 1,066 papers dropped online or brought in for review

• 25 quantitative drop-ins online

• 33 participants in PLUS (Peer Led Undergraduate Study) groups

Student Life

• 41% of students on Dean’s List in fall semester, 45% in spring semester

• 31% upperclassmen in sororities and 34% in fraternities

• 95% lived on campus

• 2,730 visitors to Health Services

• 752 counseling hours provided

• 49% student-athletes

AT LEFT In April 2022, Dameco Walker ’23 shattered the longest-standing record in school history — a 98-year-old mark in long jump set in 1924. The men’s and women’s track teams each won their indoor conference championship for the first time in program history. He also qualified for indoor and outdoor nationals. The men’s team won the MWC Outdoor Team Championship for just the second time and the first time in 98 years. The women’s team placed third, its best finish ever.

Assistant Professor of Music Erin K. Bryan won an honorable mention as a finalist in the 2022 The American Prize in Vocal Performance — Women in Art Song and Oratorio. The American Prize National Nonprofit Competitions in the Performing Arts is the nation’s most comprehensive series of contests in the performing arts. Also, Bryan’s research on the final Neapolitan operas of Niccolò Jommelli (1714-1774) was selected for a poster paper presentation at the 2022 National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Conference in Chicago in July. She has created modern piano/vocal editions of four contrasting soprano arias extracted from previously unedited scores.

Lillian Brown, assistant professor of theatre, presented a solo performance of her original play “The OREO Complex” in Ripon. She then performed the show at fringe festivals in Washington, D.C., and St. Louis, Missouri. “The OREO Complex” is an exploration of internalized segregation, a celebration of resilience, a practice of rigorous patience, honesty and veneration of ancestors from the African and black diaspora.

The State Bar of Wisconsin announced Dec. 1, 2021, that Steve R. Sorenson, adjunct professor of politics and government and a local Ripon attorney, received the Wisconsin Law Foundation’s 2021 Charles L. Goldberg Distinguished Service Award. The award recognizes a lifetime of service to the profession and the community.

Associate Professor of Art Travis Nygard has a chapter in the new book A Companion to American Agricultural History, edited by Douglas Hurt and released June 1. His chapter, “Agriculture and Art,” explores how farming has been depicted in art over the past 200 years. During the summer of 2021, Nygard mentored three students to do research at the Ripon Historical Society as part of the Summer

• Ripon is included in The Princeton Review’s 2023 edition of The Best 388 Colleges. Ripon also was named to its Best Regional Colleges list for the Midwest.

• Ripon was named to Money Magazine’s 2022 Best Colleges in America and Best Liberal Arts Colleges lists. The list ranks schools that successfully combine quality and affordability, based on factors such as tuition costs, family borrowing and career earnings.

Opportunities for Advanced Research (SOAR) program, in which students do projects with faculty.

A book with a chapter by Professor of History

Brian Bockelman made “The Shortlist” of readings recommended by The New York Times on Dec. 3, 2021. Bockelman’s contribution to Mapping Nature Across the Americas (Chicago, 2021) is “Palms and Other Trees on Maps: Exoticism, Error, and Environment, from Old World to New.” Research for the project, supported in part by grants from Ripon College, took him to map libraries in Madison, Madrid, Chicago, Washington D.C., Paris, Amsterdam, New Haven and more.

Work by Julia Meyers-Manor was cited in the article “Do Dogs Recognize Sadness?,” published in June by Newsweek, Washington Newsday and other outlets.

“Inquiry into the educational implications of voting practices of young adults in U.S. mid-term elections,” a paper co-written by Matthew Knoester, associate professor of educational studies, has been published in The Journal of Social Studies Research Michael Burke ’22 of East Troy, Wisconsin, and Ryan Hanrahan ’19 of Pewaukee, Wisconsin, served as research assistants on this project.

Ground-breaking research resulted from a collaboration between 17 students, Professor of Chemistry Joe Scanlon and Associate Professor of Chemistry Patrick Willoughby over a period of several years. An article based on the research was published in summer 2021 in the Journal of Organic Chemistry It addresses the discovery of a new chemical reaction, the aryneAbramov reaction, and how the process was used to prepare numerous molecules that had not previously existed; supercomputer calculations to understand how the reaction proceeds; and the first report of how solvents can be used to change the products formed in a reaction with benzyne intermediates, which is “fundamentally significant,” Willoughby says.