Our accomplished alumni are all over the place.

You’ll find Principia College graduates in almost every field you can imagine. They’re educators, actors, chemists, ceramicists, entrepreneurs, authors, and healers. They hold elected office, pilot airplanes, play in orchestras, command troops, and design buildings. We could go on, but you get the idea.

Year after year, our graduates tell us how well prepared they are for life after college, whether that’s graduate school or a first job. Some even say that their Principia degree—in particular, the breadth of their liberal arts training and the high standard required of their writing—landed them ahead of others in law school or on Wall Street.

One grad who went right to work at IBM described his preparation this way: “I left Prin College feeling like a Swiss Army knife: I was equipped for the business world, armed with the tools of a problem solver.”

Here’s a short list of Principia College grads and what they’ve been up to. You’ll recognize some of the names.

Robert Duvall, C’53, Academy Award-winning actor

Joel McCrea, C’54, Actor

Paul O. Williams, C’56, Author, Professor Emeritus Principia College

Christopher Shays, C’68, Longtime former congressman from Connecticut

David Cook, US’65 C’69, Senior Editor/Washing Bureau Chief, The Christian Science Monitor

Helen Elswit, C’73, Visual effects producer for Master and Commander and A Perfect Storm

James Rosebush, C’71, Author and former chief of staff for Nancy Reagan

Peter Horton, C’76, Actor, director, and producer; recent credits include The Philanthrophist

David Lovegren, US’73 C’77, Movie Producer

Melanie Stetson Freeman, C’79, Award-winning photographer for The Christian Science Monitor

Ward Patterson, C’82, Head rugby coach at the University of Connecticut

Ron Charles, C’84, Fiction critic at the Washington Post

Janna Kemp, C’86, Former Idaho State Representative, current candidate for Idaho Governor

Kristin Serafini, C’98, Children’s book author and illustrator

Erin King, C’08, Dancer with the St. Louis Ballet Company