Expanded facilities, special campus events and a talented freshman class will highlight the beginning of Elon University’s 114th academic year. The first day of classes is Tuesday, Aug. 26.
Fifty-seven percent of this year’s projected 1,220 freshmen graduated in the top quarter of their high school classes. The average SAT score of this year’s class is 1160, 15 points higher than last year. The class has an average GPA of 3.5. A record 7,052 applications were received, up 8 percent from 2002 and 31 percent from 2001.
This year’s total projected enrollment of 4,525, including graduate students, is about 100 more than last year.
Forty-four new faculty members have been hired, joining 17 new administrative personnel and 13 new office support staff.
Freshmen will move into campus housing beginning at 8 a.m., Friday, Aug. 22, as they begin four days of orientation sessions. The new student convocation will be held Under the Oaks at 9 a.m., Saturday, Aug. 23. Residence halls open for returning students at 9 a.m., Saturday, Aug. 23.
New Facilities and Services
Expanded and renovated facilities are ready for the opening of school. Air conditioning was installed in Sloan, Virginia and West residence halls, as well as Chandler, Colclough and Maynard residence halls in Story Center. Security cards access has been added for use by students in nine residence halls.
Improvements to Moseley Center, the campus center, include expanded office space for the Student Government Association and the Kernodle Center for Service Learning. New enclosed spaces in Harden Dining Hall will be available for student meeting areas.
The first floor of McEwen Dining Hall has been converted into a sports-themed facility called Varsity. It will include a new menu and a Direct TV satellite system feeding 14 televisions and a large-screen television.
Ground will be broken Aug. 26 for the next pavilion in the Academic Village, a living-learning center for the liberal arts and sciences. The new pavilion, scheduled to open in summer 2004, will be the home for the political science department and the Elon University Polling Center.
Several new e-commerce options are now available to students, faculty and staff. New services include online parking registration, a mass data storage system on the campus network and online print shop capabilities.
Special Events
A Sept. 4 panel discussion chaired by UNC President Emeritus William Friday will feature leading advocates for reform in intercollegiate athletics. Panelists will include Myles Brand, president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA); Len Elmore, a 1974 All-American basketball player at the University of Maryland and noted college basketball analyst for ESPN; Thomas Hearn, president of Wake Forest University; Daniel Morrison, commissioner of the Southern Conference; and Kay Yow, head women’s basketball coach at North Carolina State University and member of the basketball Hall of Fame.
Thomas Friedman, foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times and a three-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, will deliver the Baird Pulitzer Prize lecture during fall convocation at 6 p.m., Monday, Sept. 29. Friedman served as chief economic correspondent in the Times’ Washington bureau and as chief White House correspondent. His most recent book, “Longitudes & Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11,” a New York Times bestseller, is a collection of the columns for which he won his third Pulitzer Prize.
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