Carey Croneis had a distinguished career in Geology at the University of Chicago before taking presidency of Beloit College in 1944, during the last year of World War II. Carey Croneis recruited a young faculty to meet the demands of a growing student body and an expanding curriculum. Genial in his personal relationships, the President had a particular affection for each incoming class, and annually composed a poem in celebration of each addition to the corpus of the college.

Dr. Croneis presided proudly over the year-long festivities celebrating the Centennial of the College, 1946-1947, and he embellished the campus with needed facilities: the Field House, and new women’s dormitories: Centennial (now Aldrich) and Maurer Halls, as well as with several fraternity and sorority houses. The College’s reputation grew widespread through its enhanced role in Anthropology, Athletics, Art, the Theatre, as well as through expanded work in the sciences and the humanities.

In the Croneis years Beloit College reached the level of the largest student body it had ever known in its more than century-long life. Resigning in December of 1953, in the following year Dr. Croneis went to Rice University as Harry Carruthers Weiss Professor of Geology to create an outstanding department in that discipline.