Expanded facilities, special campus events and a talented freshman class will highlight the beginning of Elon University’s 115th academic year. The first day of classes is Tuesday, Aug. 31. Details...
Fifty-nine percent of this year’s projected 1,240 freshmen graduated in the top quarter of their high school classes. The average SAT score of this year’s class is 1170, 10 points higher than last year. The class has an average GPA of 3.6. A record 8,064 applications were received, up 12 percent from 2003 and 34 percent from 2001.
This year’s total projected enrollment of 4,750, including graduate students, is about 150 more than last year.
Freshmen will move into campus housing beginning at 8 a.m., Friday, Aug. 27, as they begin four days of orientation sessions. The new student convocation will be held Under the Oaks at 9 a.m., Saturday, Aug. 28. Residence halls open for returning students at 9 a.m., Saturday, Aug. 28.
New Facilities and Services
The Ella Darden and Elmon Lee Gray Pavilion, the third building in the Academic Village complex, opened in June. The pavilion will house the political science department and a state-of-the-art polling lab for the Elon University Poll.
Air conditioning was installed in Smith, Carolina and Hook, Brannock and Barney residence halls during the summer, completing a two-year project which air conditioned nine buildings.
A pedestrian safety project on Haggard Ave., the main street through campus, was completed in July. The new roadway features four crosswalks made of brick and granite cobblestones. Two of the four crosswalks are raised four inches to provide traffic calming, making the existing 25 mph speed limit the most comfortable speed through campus.
Additional parking is available in a new lot next to East Gym, near the Jimmy Powell tennis center. The pavement in this new lot is more porous than standard asphalt, reducing the amount of runoff rainwater.
Work is under way on the new recreation complex located at South Campus, near the corner of Trollinger St. and Oak Ave. This new home for club sports, which will be available for use in spring 2005, will include playing fields for men’s and women’s rugby, soccer and lacrosse; a field for the new club baseball team; and a practice field for the Fire of the Carolinas Marching Band.
A total of 571 new computers were installed on campus this summer. Technology investments included the purchase of 147 laptop computers that can be used as a tablet PC. Tablet PCs allow the user to write directly on a touch sensitive screen. The computer translates the handwriting into text, making these machines ideal for classroom use.
Belk Library will use a new Web-based system for circulation, cataloging and acquisitions. The online catalog has been updated and new databases and online journals are available.
Two separate academic majors, one in theatre studies and one in theatrical design and production, have been formed from the former theatre arts major. A minor program of study has been added in art history.
Special Events
Award-winning political essayist and social critic Barbara Ehrenreich will discuss her book “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America,” at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 14. Ehrenreich traveled the country, working as a hotel maid, a Wal-Mart clerk and a waitress to see if it was possible to survive on poverty-level wages. A contributing writer for Time since 1990, Ehrenreich’s books include “The Worst Years of Our Lives,” a New York Times bestseller, and “Fear of Falling.”
Newsweek columnist and author Anna Quindlen will deliver the Baird Pulitzer Prize lecture at 6 p.m., Monday, Sept. 27. While a columnist for The New York Times from 1981-1994, Quindlen became the third woman in the paper’s history to write a regular column for its Op-Ed page, the nationally-syndicated “Public and Private,” for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Her work, which includes “Object Lessons,” “A Short Guide to a Happy Life,” “One True Thing,” and “Black and Blue,” has appeared on both fiction and nonfiction bestseller lists. Her latest New York Times bestseller is the novel “Blessings.”