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Northland Ranks in Top 250 Liberal Arts Colleges
The 2011 College Guide by Washington Monthly lists Northland College among the top 250 liberal arts colleges in the United States. The magazine says it attempt to offer an alternative to other college guides by evaluating schools' contribution to the public good in the categories of social mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students), research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and Ph.D.s), and service (encouraging students to give something back to their country). Read More

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Sarah Hingos
Restaurant Owner

For Sarah Hingos and her husband, Nathan, owning the Crooked Spoon Café in Grand Marais, Minnesota, is a dream come true. It's also a lot of hard work, but that's something Sarah says she learned about at Northland.

"Some classes like biology and statistics were really hard," she says. "You'd wonder 'how am I going to get through this.' But you learned to be determined, to keep with it; see the end goal rather than getting stuck in the middle."

Sarah also learned a lot about sustainability from her time at Northland. An interest in environmental issues was part of what drew Sarah to Northland in the first place. She graduated in 1999 with a major in environmental studies and a minor in Native American studies. Now Nathan and Sarah have incorporated a lot of that environmental knowledge into their restaurant.

The Crooked Spoon Café has a menu that changes seasonally to take full advantage of the local foods available in Northern Minnesota. Their seafood comes from local commercial fishermen on Lake Superior and their bakery items are made just down the street. Despite their best efforts, Northern Minnesota can't always offer everything a restaurant needs. When they need ingredients that can't be sourced locally, they still try to shop with in the region.

"We try to keep our money as close as we can," she says. "And we recycle everything. It sounds simple, but a lot of restaurants don't."

Neither Nathan or Sarah have degrees in restaurant management or culinary arts, but they've both gone on to pursue passions outside their fields of study. In addition to running the restaurant Sarah also works as a freelance accountant. That, says Sarah, was the real strength of their education "Northland taught us to think outside the box," she says. "It made us think 'what can we do that will lead us to what we're really happy with." For the Hingos' that means running a restaurant their own way and having time to do the really important things, like spending time with their children.

Check out the Crooked Spoon Café in Grand Marais, Minnesota!

Admissions

Sarah Hingos Restaurant Owner

Sarah Hingos
Restaurant Owner