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Lake Forest College, founded in 1857, is a liberal arts college located in Lake Forest, Illinois. The college has over 1,300 students of whom about 40% come from the state of Illinois. The remainder of the students come from all over the United States and world as 46 other states and 47 additional countries are represented in the student body. The college is referred to as "Chicago's National Liberal Arts College" due to its location 30 miles north of Chicago. The college was initially known as Lake Forest University until the 1900s. [1]

The College's current Chair of the Board of Trustees is financier Peter G. Schiff, a graduate with the class of 1974. [2]

Lake Forest College is located at 555 North Sheridan Road, Lake Forest, IL 60045. U.S.A.

• As of 2007, Lake Forest College is a member of The Princeton Review's 361 Best Colleges, appears on the lists of Best Midwestern Colleges and the Best Value Colleges, and ranks 6th in the country for Students Happy with Financial Aid [3]
• Lake Forest College was ranked as 95th in a list of the top liberal arts colleges in the country by US News & World Report for its America's Best Colleges 2007 Edition. [4]

Lake Forest was founded in 1857 by Reverend Robert W. Patterson as a Presbyterian (though it now maintains no religious affiliation) alternative to the Methodist Northwestern University in Evanston. After stopping the train heading north from Chicago, Patterson and fellow Presbyterians decided to establish a town and university upon the highest bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. (The area directly north of present-day Lake Forest is, coincidentally, Lake Bluff.) After hiring St. Louis architect Almerin Hotchkiss, the town of Lake Forest was laid out, with Hotchkiss using as guidelines the ravines and forest to create a layout that seemed consistent with the natural boundaries and paths. Although this had an endearing intial effect, this led to a lack of roads leading into and out of the town, which later encouraged isolationism. [5]

Young Hall, the tallest building in the city of Lake Forest, houses most of the humanities departments on campus

The first step toward a university was Lake Forest Academy, a school for boys housed on what is now the College's South Campus.

• Reverend Daniel Gregory, 1878-1886
• Reverend William C. Roberts, 1886-1892
• Dr. John M. Coulter, 1893-1896
• Reverend James Gore King McClure, 1897-1901
• Richard D. Harlan, 1901-1906
• John S. Nollen, 1907-1917
• Herbert M. Moore, 1920-1942
• Ernest Johnson, 1942-1959
• William Graham Cole, 1960-1970
• Eugene Hotchkiss III, 1970-1993
• David Spadafora, 1993-2001
• Stephen D. Schutt, 2001-present

With a student-to-professor ratio of 12:1, Lake Forest offers opportunities for close association with professors. Unlike other colleges, Lake Forest may boast that no classes are taught by Teaching Assistants. 98 percent of the faculty hold a doctorate or equivalent degree. At the end of every semester, students fill out questionnaires surveying their professors' abilities. The surveys are then returned to the Dean of the Faculty to determine, among other things, tenure.

Notable professors include:

• Robert Archambeau
• Michael Ebner
• Carol Gayle
• Kent Grote
• Janet McCracken
• Ronald Miller
• Ahmad Sadri
• Davis Schneiderman
• Stephen D. Schutt
• David Spadafora
• Ghada Talhami
• David Boden
• William B. Martin

There are four regular publications on campus:

• The Stentor, the official student-run weekly newspaper, which also publishes The Chive
• Tusitala, a yearly literary magazine
• Collage, which features works primarily written in foreign languages
• Eukaryon, an award-winning scientific journal

• There are currently four NPC sororities, Alpha Phi, Delta Delta Delta, Delta Gamma, and Kappa Alpha Theta, and one traditionally Black sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha.

• With the official removal of Delta Kappa Epsilon in May of 2007, there is only one official fraternity on campus, Delta Chi, although there remain on campus student members of DKE, Kappa Sigma, which has its charter taken in 2005, and Phi Pi Epsilon, a local fraternity that was asked to cease actions in 2006.

• Marsha E. Barnes, Diplomat, former U.S. Ambassador to Suriname
• Nate Berkus, interior designer and decorator
• Blair Butler, G4 host, comedy writer
• Jacqueline Carey, bestselling fantasy author
• Allan Carr, producer of the movie Grease
• Andrea Day, reporter at WNYW-FOX 5 New York
• James C. Foster, chairman and chief executive officer of Charles River Laboratories, Inc.
• Susan Garrett, Illinois State Senator 29th District
• Steve Goodman, folk singer
• Ed Janus, independent audio producer, interviewer, and journalist
• Philip Klinkner, political scientist
• Michael Lane, Maritime Judge
• Peg Lautenschlager, former Attorney General of Wisconsin
• Colin McComb, game designer
• Trevor Kampmann, artist, producer for Cat Power, theme music for CNN's Anderson Cooper 360
• Blaise A. F. Mibeck, Research Scientist
• Diana Nyad, Distance swimmer and sports commentator
• Lloyd John Ogilvie, former United States Senate Chaplain
• Nicholas J. Pritzker, Chairman of the Board and CEO of the Hyatt Development Corporation
• Penelope Rosemont, Surrealist artist and writer
• James Edward Stewart III, Test Pilot
• Casey Urlacher, Professional Football player
• Gerald Vizenor, Native American writer, activist, academic and literary critic, began his teaching career at Lake Forest
• Richard Widmark, popular post-WWII era actor

• Lake Forest College web site.

• Ebner, Michael H. "North Shore Town and Gown," Chicago History, Summer 2007, pp.4-29
• Schultze, Franz, Rosemary Cowler & Arthur H. Miller. Thirty Miles North: A History of Lake Forest College, Its Town, and Its City of Chicago. Lake Forest College, 2000, ISBN=0963818961