Cedar Rapids in full leaf may be most beautiful on these campuses.
Iowan education is good, much better than I knew before I visited this state. It has great K-12 schools of all kinds, colleges, and major research universities. Around Cedar Rapids, I found two private four-year colleges particularly enchanting (although sadly, tunnel-less): Coe College and Cornell College.
I’ll start with Cornell College. During my days at Piedmont College in Georgia, I heard about Cornell College frequently because of my involvement with Piedmont’s local honor society called The Torch of Piedmont. Ms. Margaret Taylor, the society’s founder and first sponsor, patterned it after a national organization at Cornell known as The Torch. Browsing through Instagram posts with Cedar Rapids tags, I found Cornell College and realized it’s only about twenty minutes away in Mount Vernon, Iowa. Who knew?! I had to visit.
Unfortunately, much time has passed since the 1930s when Margaret Taylor visited Cornell. Although our Piedmont Torch history says the Torch at Cornell was a national honor society or organization, the only Torch I could find at Cornell was the Mortar Board honor society chapter named The Torch. After emails and phone calls and web stalking, getting nowhere, I visited campus for myself.
It seems the Mortar Board society at Cornell College is not very active right now; as student organizations tend to do, they have gone in and out as the years pass. No one knew of Ms. Margaret Taylor or our Torch of Piedmont in Georgia. However, all signs seem to point to The Torch organization at Cornell actually being a forerunner of the official Mortar Board chapter that it is today. It became officially chartered with the national organization in 1943. At that time, Mortar Board would have still been an exclusively female society. It only became co-ed with the passing of Title IX.
The campus made me feel like taking a nap in the grass. The towering Gothic-style chapel dominates the other traditional, sedate brick school buildings and the modern-style newer additions as well. Everywhere the well-designed landscaping pleased the eye. The school color is a dark purple, which played well with the purple-blooming spring trees on campus. What a beautiful place!
If I’d had more time (I was late for work and my phone’s GPS hardware failing me), I would have explored more of downtown Mt. Vernon.
On to the next campus: Coe College!
I’ve driven by Coe College every single day I’ve been in Cedar Rapids, seeing its towering dormitory building proclaiming “COE COLLEGE” from the highway overpass. But it wasn’t until I happened to pass by on the ground that I noticed how beautiful the campus is. I particularly enjoy visiting around sunrise and sunset, when the light is most ethereal.
Side note: the campus squirrels are the size of gophers and even derpier than most squirrels in spring. I couldn’t resist chasing them. Just a little.
~ The Dauntless Princess ~