MOUNT VERNON — Cornell College will celebrate its start 150 years ago with a Founders March on Thursday, Nov. 13, to commemorate the 1853 processional from the Mount Vernon Methodist Church by faculty, students and townspeople to open Old Sem, the college’s first academic building.
At 10:45 a.m. the bell atop College Hall will start ringing 150 times to signal the end of morning class and the formation of a processional of faculty — led by actors representing historic Cornell characters — on the campus pedestrian mall. The processional will add Cornell students, Mount Vernon community and church representatives, and other distinguished guests as it travels through Old Sem to King Chapel for an 11 a.m. convocation. President Les Garner will tell the Cornell story, and speakers from the community, the Methodist Church and Cornell’s faculty, student body and alumni association will give brief remarks.
In September 1853, classes began at Cornell — then called the Iowa Conference Seminary — in the old Methodist Episcopal Church because construction was not finished on the first academic building on the new 15-acre campus. Once the Seminary Building was complete, on the morning of Nov. 14, 1853, faculty and students walked in procession through the village and took formal possession of their classroom facility. Today, the Seminary Building, which eventually became known as Old Sem, houses administrative offices.
Cornell’s campus includes 41 buildings on 129 acres and is one of just two U.S. campuses named entirely to the National Register of Historic Places.