Awarded September 20, 2025
2025 Young Alumni Award

Calago Hipps is an activist for equity and access in education. His passion for transformational teaching and its role in student learning may have led him to his current role of “teaching the teachers,” but his heart will always be in a classroom.
One of his former students had this to say about Calago: “He is an astonishingly hard-working teacher who I have been blessed to receive knowledge from.”
After discovering his love of teaching through City Year AmeriCorps, he started building his resumé with a strong foundation in pedagogy. He has risen as an educational leader in a variety of settings after earning advanced degrees, culminating in a doctorate in educational leadership and administration.

Calago’s current position as a senior faculty developer for Georgetown University’s Dialogue Initiatives weaves together one of his core beliefs about student learning - that the best outcomes emerge from classrooms that are anchored in justice and mutual respect. His work addresses an important challenge of our time: teaching professors how to lead their students in civil dialogue across disagreements. By helping Georgetown faculty infuse dialogue into their teaching around hot button topics, Calago is advancing skills that matter. He is also a role model, a mentor who advocates for the support and retention of Black male professors in higher education.

Calago came to Beloit from a small rural town in Central Florida to play football and quickly became a student leader. With two Beloit classmates, he co-founded Students for an Inclusive Campus (SIC), which focused on racial equity and continues to thrive today. During its fledgling year, SIC successfully advocated to diversify the college’s senior leadership team. He also engaged in Sustained Dialogue when Beloit introduced the program his junior year, a throughline to his current work of communicating across differences.

Calago has already done well in his career, but he is also doing good, embracing everything he does with a coaching attitude and living by a motto of paying forward the privileges he has earned. The Beloit College Alumni Association is pleased to recognize him with the Young Alumni Award.