Carleton College is an independent non-sectarian, coeducational, liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota, USA. The college currently enrolls 1,958 undergraduate students, and employs 198 full-time faculty members. In 2011 U.S. News and World Report ranked Carleton College the 8th best liberal arts college in the United States and ranked Carleton number one for undergraduate teaching at a national liberal arts college. The school was founded on May 3, 1866, by the Minnesota Conference of Congregational Churches as Northfield College. Two local businessmen, Charles Augustus Wheaton and Charles M. Goodsell, each donated 10 acres (4.0 ha) of land for the first campus. The first students enrolled in fall 1867. In 1870, the first college president, James Strong, traveled to the East Coast to raise funds for the college. On his way from visiting William Carleton of Charlestown, Massachusetts, Strong was badly injured by a train. Impressed by Strong's survival, Carleton donated US$50,000 to the fledgling institution in 1871, and the Board of Trustees renamed the school in his honor. The college graduated its first class in 1874. The first two graduates, James J. Dow and Myra A.