New facilities, special campus events and the most talented and qualified freshman class in the 113-year history of Elon University will highlight the beginning of the new academic year. The first day of classes is Tuesday, Aug. 27.
Fifty-six percent of this year’s projected 1,200 freshmen graduated in the top quarter of their high school classes. The average SAT score of this year’s class is 1145,
20 points higher than last year.
This year’s total projected enrollment of 4,425, including graduate students, is about 100 more than last year.
Freshmen will move into campus housing beginning at 8 a.m., Friday, Aug. 23, as they begin four days of orientation sessions. New student convocation will be held Under the Oaks at 9 a.m., Saturday, Aug. 24. Residence halls open for returning students at 8 a.m., Saturday, Aug. 24.
New and renovated facilities will be ready for the opening of school. Carlton building, located at the center of campus, has been fully renovated and will house the Isabella Cannon Centre for International Studies, El Centro de Espanol, a multi-media language media center and the English and foreign languages departments.
The first two buildings in the new Academic Village, the Isabella Cannon International Studies Pavilion and the Honors Pavilion, will provide student housing and faculty apartments, creating a living-learning environment. The will also include classrooms as well as a new outdoor amphitheatre. Two new apartment buildings in Danieley Center will house a total of 64 students in eight four-bedroom, two-bath apartments. An additional 80-bed, suite-style Danieley Center building was completed in April.
Renovations have also been completed in Alamance and Duke buildings. The first floor of Alamance building will now be occupied by the dean’s suite for Elon College, the College of Arts and Sciences, while the office of academic advising has moved to Duke building. An expansion to Koury Center will provide a larger space for the fitness center and includes a new dance studio and athletics weight room. Belk Track, a new eight-lane all-weather facility for track and field located in the North Athletics Complex, is also ready for use.
The heavily-used parking lot at McMichael Center has been expanded, providing more parking spaces near Moseley Center. The project was completed in early July.
A Sept. 5 panel discussion chaired by UNC President Emeritus William Friday will feature three North Carolina journalists whose newspapers have received the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Horace Carter of the Whiteville News Reporter and Tabor City Tribune, Frank Daniels, Jr., of the Raleigh News and Observer, and Rolfe Neill of the Charlotte Observer will join Friday in a discussion about the delicate balance between reporting the news and service to their communities.
Elon will mark the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks with a Week of Remembrance Sept. 8-13. Events will include a combined worship service with area churches at 5 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 8 at the Elon Community Church; a convocation at 11 a.m., Wednesday, Sept. 11 in Koury Center; and a candlelight vigil later that day at 8 p.m. on Young Commons.
Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister of Pakistan, will deliver the address at Fall Convocation at 6 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 18 in Koury Center. Bhutto became the youngest head of state in the world and the first female prime minister in the Muslim world when she was elected in 1988 at age 35. Bhutto’s convocation address is the keynote of a Globalization Symposium that celebrates the opening of the Isabella Cannon Centre for International Studies in the recently renovated Carlton Building.