University of Kansas

One of our Texas Tech graduate students, Jeremy Boden, recently attended an academic conference at the University of Kansas (KU) in the town of Lawrence, and he was kind enough to take some pictures of the campus for the blog. I visited KU in November 1996 to see a couple of friends from my University of Michigan grad school days who've gone on to become longtime faculty members in the Kansas psychology department. In fact, one of Jeremy's pictures is of Fraser Hall, which houses psychology and other social sciences...


Jeremy also photographed the Campanile and Potter Lake...


In doing some online research for this posting, I came across a spectacular nighttime photo showing the reflection of the Campanile shining on the surface of the lake (I don't mean to upstage Jeremy, but the evening photo was too amazing to pass up).

The conference Jeremy attended coincided with the tragic shooting spree at Fort Hood Army Base in Texas. As Jeremy captured in the next photograph, ROTC students at KU paid tribute in front of Strong Hall to those who lost their lives at Fort Hood.


Many campuses have a quaint building or two, which differ in architecture from the rest of the buildings. At KU, it's historic Spooner Hall, a building so special that a book devoted to it has just been published.


Lastly, KU is, of course, a big athletics school, led by its perennial men's basketball powerhouse. Jeremy apparently didn't get any photos of Allen Fieldhouse, the hoops home, but he did photograph the football stadium and athletic hall of fame.



How can anyone not love the Jayhawks' mascot?

University of Michigan (2009)

I visited my graduate-school alma mater, the University of Michigan, again last week. I maintain another blog, devoted exclusively to my UM days, and that is where a new set of campus photos is located.

University of New Mexico

My fiancee and I recently vacationed in Santa Fe, New Mexico. En route, we passed through Albuquerque and the University of New Mexico, home of the Lobos athletic teams. As seen in the following view from Central Avenue (part of the former Route 66), mountains dominate the horizon of northern New Mexico.


The modernistic building in the above photo, though, does not appear representative of the building style on the UNM campus. In the heart of campus, it's the adobe style of architecture that is most prominent. Zimmerman Library exemplifies this style, as shown below.


The courtyard adjacent to Zimmerman exemplifies an unfortunately all-too-frequent architectural style on college campuses, the concrete jungle. A short distance away, however, one finds that UNM also has a more scenic side, featuring the Duck Pond.


Another nice feature of the campus is its collection of sculptures, statues, and fountains.


Finally, the aforementioned Central Avenue forms the "main drag" of the adjoining college-town area. We had lunch at the vegetarian restaurant "20 Carrots" (shown in the upper-right photo below), which we highly recommend to anyone living in or visiting "The ABQ."

Washington DC Schools IV: University of the District of Columbia

To close out my four-part series on universities in the nation's capital, I offer a brief posting on the University of the District of Columbia (UDC). Of the other schools I've presented, Georgetown is clearly nationally elite, whereas George Washington and American U. are prominent at the regional level, if not also nationally. UDC, on the other hand, is a local commuter school, albeit one with an elaborate history that intersects with our nation's history in civil rights.

In all honesty, I had not originally planned to visit UDC and photograph it. Rather, my purpose for taking the subway up Connecticut Avenue NW was to visit the Politics and Prose bookstore, which is frequently featured on C-SPAN's Book TV when prominent political journalists come to do book talks and signings. One can get to Politics and Prose by taking the Red Line to the Van Ness-UDC station and then walking about a mile northward on Connecticut Ave., which is what I did. As the name of the station implies, UDC is right there, so it was no problem to snap a picture. Anyway, with all this having been said, here's the UDC...

Washington DC Schools III: American University

Situated in upper Northwest Washington, DC (the Spring Valley neighborhood, to be exact) is American University. Unlike the more bustling neighborhoods adjoining the Georgetown and George Washington University campuses, the area surrounding AU is much more residential. And it's very exclusive, too, serving as the home to numerous political and media luminaries, as well as embassy personnel from around the world. On my way to AU, in fact, I walked by the Swedish Ambassador's residence.


Not surprisingly (and as with Georgetown and GWU, as well), the study of government and politics is big at American University. Here is the banner-festooned AU School of Public Affairs.


AU's Katzen Arts Center, with its funky sailboat display, also caught my eye. It turns out that the Katzen is one of AU's newest facilities.

Washington DC Schools II: George Washington

As the Media and Public Affairs webpage from George Washington University puts it, the campus is "[l]ocated in the middle of political Washington." That's absolutely correct, as the White House is just a few blocks from GWU, with the U.S. Capitol another dozen blocks (roughly) further down Pennsylvania Ave.


The Washington Monument and various government buildings (shown below in a photo I took from my hotel room) are also near GWU.


The university proudly announces its presence with statues and signage...


GWU blends in well with its urban setting, reminding me somewhat of Boston University.


George Washington also, however, has some green space...

Washington DC Schools I: Georgetown University

I've just gotten back from Washington DC, where I attended the annual Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) conference. I took some time last Friday afternoon to visit and photograph four universities in the District, all via subway, bus, and walking (including a non-stop walk from American University to Georgetown). Luckily, an afternoon rainstorm cooled things down and then dissipated, making it fairly pleasant to get around.

Let's start our series on the DC campuses with Georgetown University. Not only is Georgetown an academically elite institution (with alumni including Bill Clinton, at the undergradute level), but the surrounding neighborhood is also extremely famous. Below are a couple shots of the campus (from the 37th St. side), which my fiancee Sylvia tells me features Gothic architectural style.



Also visually interesting is the adjacent residential neighborhood, featuring an array of pastel-colored townhouses. Somewhat reminiscent of San Francisco (although with much less severe incline), one must go down a hill to get to the "main drag" commercial area.


The hub of the commercial district is the intersection of M Street and Wisconsin Avenue, NW (under L'Enfant's design for DC's street system, letter-based streets go east-west, numbered streets go north-south, and streets named after states run diagonally). Most of the stores and restaurants in Georgetown -- which appear to cater primarily to an upscale clientele -- run along M Street. That includes an Uno's pizza, at which I dined.

Nearby, running roughly parallel to M Street is the Potomac River, on the other side of which are a number of glitzy buildings in the Virginia suburbs. Washington's excellent Metro subway system does not run in Georgetown, but one can catch buses on M Street going to the subway.

The Ohio State University

At The Ohio State University, Buckeye spirit reigns supreme (including the famous dotting of the "i" in Ohio, as depicted in the statue above). OSU hosted this year's biennial U.S. Conference on Teaching Statistics, as it also did in 2007 and 2005. I have attended all three of these conferences and took some pictures this year to supplement the ones I took in 2005.

Two major buildings on any college campus are the main library and the student union. When I visited in 2007, construction had begun on renovations of both these structures. Now, two years later, both are nearing completion. The library, shown immediately below, is scheduled to open during this coming fall term.


Two of the prettier sights on the OSU campus are located between the library and the student union. One is Mirror Lake...


...and the other is the Oval. The only way I could think of to convey the scope of the Oval with my photos was to juxtapose two adjacent areas (this photo from the university's official website does a better job).


With its imposing presence, the Oval reminds me of another great expanse of green, The Lawn at the University of Virginia.

From the eastern end of the Oval, it is a short walk to High Street, which not only forms part of the OSU campus perimeter but also is one of the major thoroughfares in the city of Columbus (see this online historical slide show of High Street).

Walking south on High, one comes across the construction site of the Ohio Union, which is scheduled to reopen in 2010. The following pictorial sequence shows what the front of the union will look like from north to south.


Continuing southward on High Street, one would then encounter the South Campus Gateway, a business development that I first saw in 2007. The Gateway is anchored at one end by former Buckeye football great Eddie George's restaurant...


...and at the other by a huge Barnes and Noble bookstore and movie theatre complex (the latter is not shown).


In what I think is a nice touch, the light-blue sign from the old Long's bookstore (which was located a few blocks north on High Street) is preserved at Barnes and Noble, as shown above. Also shown is an advertisement for a bicycle-riding event with Lance Armstrong to raise money for cancer research at OSU (the name of the event appears to derive from the cycling term, peloton).

Shifting considerably west, one can say of the OSU campus that "a river runs through it," the Olentangy River to be exact. On one side of the river is the legendary Ohio Stadium football palace (shown in my 2005 photos) and most of the rest of the campus. Among the structures on the other side are a number of athletic facilities, including Value City Arena/Schottenstein Center (shown in the distance immediately below in my river pictures).


Lastly, from just south of Ohio Stadium, one gets a look at the "skyline" of the OSU Medical Center.

University of Illinois (2009)

Erika Brooks, one of our Texas Tech graduate students, recently traveled through the Midwest. She has kindly allowed me to display some photos she took at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, which are cross-posted from her Facebook page. Illinois is one of only three Big Ten schools I've never been too, so it's nice to have Erika's photos. First, to the right, we have the new McFarland Bell Tower, which is described in this article. I did a little research in preparing this write-up and learned that UIUC already has a bell tower by Altgeld Hall. Now students will have to be more specific than just saying, "I'll meet you at the bell tower."

Next, Erika provides us with a crisp, beautiful shot of the Illini Union, which looks really quaint. You've got to love a student union that has a bowling alley.


Lastly, there's a shot of a campus entrance. It's a little fuzzy; perhaps it was taken at a distance.

University of North Carolina

Whether it's the picturesque scenery, the Tar Heel sports teams' signature powder blue motif, or the bars, restaurants, and shops of Franklin Street, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill is one of the nation's most vibrant institutions of higher education. I recently had the opportunity to make my first visit to UNC (to the state of North Carolina, overall, in fact) to attend an academic conference. Naturally, I took the opportunity to walk around the area and take some pictures.


If I had to describe UNC in two words, they would be traditional and green. The campus also has a consistency of building style, featuring red brick, which I think adds to a school's appearance. Below are large photos of two buildings, plus a montage of additional ones.




The aforementioned Franklin Street is the commercial hub of the UNC area, extending several blocks in either direction from the East/West dividing point. Featuring restaurants to fit a wide array of tastes, coffee houses, ice cream parlors, and, of course, plenty of stores to buy Tar Heel clothing and paraphernalia, Franklin Street compares favorably in my mind to other "main drag" college-town streets around the nation.


Few (if any) college-town thoroughfares would be able to exceed Franklin Street's volume and variety of establishments, I would guess. One downside, however, is walkability. Unlike Madison, Wisconsin's pedestrian-friendly State Street, for example, from which automobiles are banned, Franklin Street is five lanes wide, with plenty of cars zooming by. Thus, you'll probably spend a fair amount of time waiting for "Walk" signs at intersections.

There probably aren't many U.S. cities in which you'll see fire trucks painted Tar Heel blue, though. Chapel Hill naturally is one of them!


Finally, by coincidence, today's New York Times ran its weekly "36 Hours in..." travel feature on North Carolina's Research Triangle region, which includes Chapel Hill. A couple of Franklin Street eateries were mentioned, as was the Carolina Inn, which hosted the conference I attended.

University of California, Riverside

Sothy Eng, a graduate student with us at Texas Tech and a superb photographer, was kind enough to let me post some photos he took on a visit to the University of California, Riverside on this blog. Sothy's pictures are concentrated around the "HUB" (which stands for Highlander Union Building). UCR is a relatively new institution as far as major universities go, having been established in 1954, and there's also been a lot of recent construction on campus. Here are Sothy's shots, which also feature UCR's clock tower (only a tiny amount of which consists of the clock) and verdant, flowery setting.

Florida State University

Downtown Tallahassee is home to the Florida capitol building (above), the most noteworthy feature of which is probably the display of dolphin statues at the front (also shown enlarged). I took this photo standing in front of another somewhat famous building, the Florida Supreme Court, while in town to attend an early February academic conference at Florida State University. From downtown, one can also see FSU's Westcott administration building in the distance (circled in the next photograph).


As one approaches the FSU campus, either on wheels or on foot, one finds a university that looks like it belongs in, well, Florida. The campus is very green, with a variety of trees, including palm.



As the host of the conference informed the visitors, the signature area of the campus is Landis Green and the associated Legacy Fountain (photos below).



Finally, we have the FSU bookstore complex, which is located right by -- but not actually in -- the student union area.