America's College Campuses

Lehigh University (Pennsylvania)

2011-09-04T20:43:00.000-07:00

Sothy Eng, who received his Ph.D. with us at Texas Tech and then did a post-doctoral fellowship at UCLA, has settled into his new position at Lehigh University. Sothy is a great photographer and has been kind enough to share some of his work here at America's College Campuses. This recent picture makes Lehigh look Harry Potter-esque. Here are some older pictures, from Sothy's initial visit to Lehigh last December.

Bowling Green State Univ. (Ohio)

2011-08-07T14:58:00.000-07:00

Bowling Green State University (BGSU) sits in northwest Ohio, a little over 20 miles south of the city of Toledo. For the last 10 miles of the trip southward, extensive farmland leads down to BGSU.

The University likes to display its initials and Falcon logo throughout campus, via shaped hedges and banners in the school colors of brown and orange.

Many of the academic buildings appear to be undergoing renovation, such as Williams Hall, which hosts a number of social-science disciplines. Note also the brown/orange shade of the bricks.

Much of the campus consists of green spaces, literally as in the case of this lawn...

...along with eye-catching designs such as the huge mural on one side of Jerome Library. Near the library is BGSU's Carillon Bell Tower, which looks similar, in my view, to the one at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Beginning this Fall term, BGSU basketball and other indoor teams will have a new home, the Stroh Center, on the front edge of campus. Immediately in front of the new arena are the Falcon statue (lower left in the following montage) and, in a "green" gesture, a number of parking places reserved for cars with desirable environment properties.

I am used to the campuses and adjoining commercial districts at Midwestern (Big 10) schools such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Northwestern, Indiana, and Ohio State being easily walkable. Despite being in the same region as these institutions, BGSU (a member of the Mid-America Conference) seems considerably auto-centric, as a car appears necessary (or at least helpful) to navigate the wide streets and highways surrounding the campus.

UMass Amherst

2011-07-11T09:47:00.000-07:00

Nestled in western Massachusetts is UMass Amherst, the flagship of the University of Massachusetts system. Hal Grotevant, a UMass professor, posted some pictures on Facebook that he had taken on campus, and he has kindly agreed to let me repost them here.

In the background is the iconic Old Chapel, a structure that apparently is badly in need of infrastructure repair.

Along with its quaint architecture, UMass also features more modern styles. Shown below is a montage of Tobin Hall, the psychology building.

UMass's W.E.B. Dubois Library, the tallest library in the U.S. at 26 stories, is famous for its falling brick chips. I had read many years ago that engineers had failed to take into account the weight of the books when calculating the physical strength requirements of the floors. The engineering flaw theory, however, may just be an urban legend. I visited UMass Amherst once, in 1996, and there were some areas outside the library that were fenced off to prevent pedestrians from walking where there may be falling brick.

Also in the realm of legends is the Minuteman Statue, shown next. Students apparently find the statue a source of good luck before exams.

Lastly, we have the Campus Pond, a UMass landmark in warm weather and in cold.

Western Michigan University

2011-03-05T19:59:00.000-08:00

This is probably my most minimal entry, as the photos were taken aboard a (mostly) moving train in snowy conditions. Nevertheless, I have a shot of a Western Michigan University athletic facility (University Arena/Read Field House), as well as of the train station in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Northern Illinois University

2011-01-24T11:17:00.000-08:00

Located about an hour west of Chicago is the agricultural town of DeKalb, Illinois, home of Northern Illinois University. One of our Texas Tech doctoral students, Katie Gerst, received her Master's degree at NIU and had some photos of the school that she was willing to share. Shown first is the castle-like Altgeld Hall, the first building on the NIU campus, named in honor of the governor who helped with the founding of the university. Katie photographed Altgeld Hall from two perspectives.

Next is the Holmes Student Center. I think it's somewhat unusual for a student-union building to have a high-rise design (which is even more noticeable on the Center's website), which suggests a lot of office space and meeting rooms, but potentially a shortage of expansive commons areas. There is something called the Sky Room on the 16th floor that looks interesting, however.

The third building, Adams Hall, was a women's dormitory from 1949-1967, until being converting to an administration building.

Gilbert Hall, a residence hall in the past and perhaps on the verge of being restored to that role in the future, is the topic of current construction planning.

Still Hall, at one point a gym, appears to host facilities in media, technology, and engineering.

The Law School's Swen Parson Hall sports a traditional academic look.

Shown last among the campus buildings is Williston Hall; like other buildings seen thus far, Williston was once a dorm and now holds offices.

Finally, every college town should have at least one quirky, colorfully decorated business establishment in the area. Maybe I'm reading too much into the picture, but perhaps the corn stalk symbolizes the human spine, which Dr. Van helps straighten out for his patients.

West Texas A&M (Canyon, TX)

2010-12-03T12:36:00.000-08:00

One of our Texas Tech graduate students, Kim Corson, gave me some pictures she took at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas, while traveling in the region (Canyon is roughly two hours north of Lubbock). West Texas A&M had been known until 20 years ago as West Texas State University, before being annexed by the Texas A&M University system. (The flagship of the system is, of course, Texas A&M University in College Station, way in the southeastern portion of the state.)

The athletic mascot for WT A&M is the Buffalo, depicted prominently in this fountain complex (below).

The inverted nature of the fountain -- that water travels down instead of up -- matches the Inverted Fountain at my undergraduate alma mater, UCLA.

What I also found stunning in the WT A&M photos is the clock tower (and its reflection), with which I formed the following little triptych.

Other attractions on the campus, as described to me by Kim, include the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum...

...with the adjacent T-Anchor Ranch log cabin (which was moved to its present site in 1975)...

...the Wind Engineering complex, which is set to receive the nation's largest wind turbine...

...and finally, this cobblestone-looking building which, according to Kim, was originally a dormitory and is now used for alumni relations.

University of Mississippi

2010-11-23T16:17:00.000-08:00

Sarah Dale, one of my former undergraduate students at Texas Tech, posted some pictures on her Facebook page of a family trip to the University of Mississippi. With Sarah's permission, I'm reprinting some of her photos. Ole Miss, as folks commonly refer to the university, is situated in the small town of Oxford, Mississippi. Oxford's population is only 19,000, although according to one of the sources I read, the larger area including surrounding counties has a total population of about 300,000. Any good college town will have an adjacent student-oriented commercial district and Oxford is no exception, with The Square (below).

I assume Square Books actually sells rectangular-shaped books. Also on The Square is the music club, the Lyric Oxford.

Information on The Square in Oxford is available at this link (when the page comes up, scroll down below the hotel information). The following building would certainly fit in architecturally on a college campus, but it actually appears to be the Lafayette County Courthouse.

Attending a football game appeared to be one of the Dale family's main priorities on the trip. Shown below is the Ole Miss Walk of Champions, through which the Rebels proceed into the stadium a few hours before kick-off.

Texas Tech football coach Tommy Tuberville, who previously held the same position at Mississippi, instituted the new "tradition" of Raider Walk upon his arrival earlier this fall in Lubbock. Finally, it's game time at Ole Miss...

University of St. Thomas (Downtown Minneapolis Professional Campus)

2010-11-06T22:09:00.000-07:00

Downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, which I visited recently for an academic conference, features not only the traditional shimmering skyscrapers...

...but also quirky features such as a building with an entire wall painted like a musical score...

....and a statue commemorating the Mary Tyler Moore Show of the 1970s, the storyline of which was that her character, Mary Richards, worked in a Twin Cities television newsroom. As those of a certain age will recall, the opening sequence accompanying the theme song culminated in Mary tossing her hat in the air in a moment of joy.

In terms of colleges, the only one I was aware of in the immediate downtown area is the professional-school campus of the University of St. Thomas (whose main campus is in St. Paul). Shown below is the Opus College of Business and environs. Note the linkage of buildings by enclosed bridge/walkway, an extensive network of which exists in the downtown area to shield workers and visitors from the city's brutal winters.

I had hoped to also visit the nearby University of Minnesota campus, but ran out of time. For those interested in the University of Minnesota, we have a couple of photographs taken by my colleague Kazuko Behrens and displayed previously on this blog.

Virginia Tech

2010-10-25T12:01:00.000-07:00

Frequent contributor Jackie Wiersma recently sent me some photos she had taken at Virginia Tech (officially the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University). Shown first is Torgersen Hall, described by Jackie as "what you drive under when you enter the campus." If you look closely at the arch below the windows (and clicking on the photo to enlarge it would help), you can see the full name of the institution inscribed.

Next is Burruss Hall, the administration building.

Burruss Hall is one of the buildings surrounding the central campus lawn, known as the Drillfield.

Also by the Drillfield are two memorials, the War Memorial Chapel...

...and the April 16 Memorial, commemorating the Virginia Tech Massacre that occurred on this date in 2007.

Finally, and on a lighter note, we have the football stadium, without which a Jackie Wiersma campus montage would be incomplete.

University of Arkansas

2010-09-27T21:08:00.000-07:00

Jackie Wiersma, a 2008 graduate of our Ph.D. program at Texas Tech who has contributed photos from several campuses she's visited, provides us with some from the University of Arkansas (in Fayetteville), where she has just begun a faculty position. Shown first is the north tower of Old Main, the oldest building on campus and currently home to the College of Arts and Sciences and other academic units.

Next is the Home Economics building (note the engraving above the doors, which is easier to see if you click on the photo to enlarge it), where Jackie is based in the School of Human Environmental Sciences and Department of Human Development and Family Science.

In addition to the usual campus mainstays of the library (top) and student union (underneath)...

...the Arkansas campus also has some unique features. These include the Fulbright Peace Fountain (which the university captures with a live webcam)...

...the Greek Theatre (a gift to the university from the Chi Omega sorority)...

...and the Senior Walk, which is unlike anything I've ever heard of in American (or any other country's) higher education. According to a university document about Senior Walk: "Starting with the first class of 1876, every graduate’s name is etched into a concrete sidewalk that winds around campus for more than five miles." If you enlarge the picture and look carefully at the sidewalk by the lamppost, you should see an upside down "1914," where that year's graduates are listed.

Finally, we have two photos of the football stadium, one from the outside and one from the inside. If you know Jackie, you know that football is a passion of hers! On this day, the home Razorbacks narrowly lost to last year's national champion, Alabama.

University of Koblenz-Landau (Germany)

2010-08-06T07:44:00.000-07:00

Although the name of this website is "America's College Campuses," I'm in no way opposed to showcasing universities from throughout the world. It's just that neither I nor my colleagues seem to get to international campuses that often. My wife and I recently were in Germany, however, visiting her family, so I'm now able to feature the first campus from outside the U.S. on this blog. It is the University of Koblenz-Landau campus in Landau, where my wife's father taught for many years before retiring.

UKL has been characterized as "one of the youngest universities in Germany." Below are photos of the typical landmarks of a college campus, namely the library, academic buildings, and the student union. Consistent with the campus's modern architechture, many of the buildings feature extensive use of glass, making for a bright, sunny atmosphere (as long as the weather cooperates). Extensive green foliage also lends the campus a little bit of a more traditional look.

DePaul University

2010-05-17T20:26:00.001-07:00

A couple of postings ago (April 3, 2010), I alluded to DePaul University in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood as exemplifying a community that, I felt, had a unique college-town feel amidst the larger city. Last week, I was in downtown Chicago for an academic conference, so I decided to take the "L" (short for elevated trains) up to DePaul (Fullerton Ave. station). DePaul also has professional schools downtown, but I focused on the main Lincoln Park campus (see this three-dimensional map of all campus buildings). Signage is plentiful, both for the university and the surrounding community.

An interesting juxtaposition of traditional and modern is the university's Concert Hall (formerly the Chapel), which has a solar panel nearby for alternative energy purposes (shown by the third column, going left to right, of the building's facade).

Another attractive area on campus is known as The Quad and St. Vincent's Circle. I took two photos of this area, one from a distance and the other (the insert) closer to the Circle.

Most buildings on the DePaul campus are constructed in an attractive red-brick style, but the school is not exempt from what I call the "concrete jungle" appearance (an architectural style known as "brutalist").

An oddity of the campus is L train running through it, here by an athletic field.

Talking about sports, DePaul and the city of Chicago named a street on campus (on an honorary basis) for legendary former Blue Demon men's basketball coach Ray Meyer.

DePaul is situated in what is primarily a residential area, and a very nice one at that.

There are also, however, student-oriented businesses near campus (cafes, bars, T-shirt/memorabilia shops, etc.) that are characteristic of college towns. Here are some photos I took in the neighborhood south of campus (shown at the very bottom is the intersection of Webster and Halsted).

University of Southern California (2010)

2010-05-03T20:09:00.000-07:00

One of our frequent guest contributors, Sothy Eng, recently visited the University of Southern California and sent me some pictures. It looks like, in addition to getting most of the major USC landmarks, Sothy also worked in some of the school's newest architecture. First, we have the globe tower at the Von KleinSmid Center of International and Public Affairs, as described on the USC Wikipedia page...

Next are shots of two USC libraries and their respective surroundings, the Doheny Library...

...and the Leavey Library, with its adjacent Reflecting Pool and Martens Plaza...

This next photo appears to be of USC's new School of Cinematic Arts (here and here). You've probably heard the joke about how virtually everyone who waits on tables in L.A. restaurants wants to act in the movies. Actually, however, about 40% of them want to direct!

Finally, for you sports fans, we have the Tommy Trojan statue, the symbol of USC football and other athletic teams.

Book Review: The American College Town

2010-04-03T12:10:00.000-07:00

I didn't think it possible, but there's at least one person who is more passionate about studying college towns than I am! He is Blake Gumprecht, geography professor at the University of New Hampshire and author of the 2008 book The American College Town (TACT). I only recently learned of the book, and ordered and read it immediately.

At roughly 350 pages, TACT is a true academic study of its subject matter. In terms of background research, Gumprecht claims to have visited over 150 college towns (even with my own expansive definition of "college town," I've probably visited more like 45). Further, TACT offers other scholarly elements, such as formal definitions, statistics, histories, and typologies of college towns. Gumprecht's main tool of analysis, however, is the theme. TACT ultimately distills the major characteristics of college towns into eight themes, each of which is given its own chapter. Further, Gumprecht selects one particular college town to exemplify each theme. The themes and their exemplars are as follows:

*Campus as public space (i.e., green, parklike spaces; architectural and aesthetics, such as sculptures; hub of social and cultural activies). Gumprecht uses his own graduate-school alma mater, the University of Oklahoma in Norman, to explicate the public-space theme. I have never visited OU, despite being relatively nearby in northwest Texas; I'll have to get there some time!

*Off-campus housing/neighborhoods (i.e., fraternities/sororities; "student ghettos;" and "faculty enclaves"), for which TACT features Ithaca, New York, home of Cornell, as its case study. Regarding student housing, Gumprecht notes the tranformation -- in Ithaca and nationally -- toward more luxurious digs. "Where undergraduates in earlier periods would snap up cramped and dingy apartments in beat-up old houses, a new breed of students prefers modern buildings with greater amenities, while still wanting to live close to campus" (p. 96).

*Student-oriented commercial districts. Establishments that appear to be more common in college towns than elsewhere include: "coffee houses, bookstores..., pizzerias, bike shops, record stores, copy shops, and ethnic restaurants," bars, "movie theaters showing independent and foreign films, art galleries, live music venues, natural foods stores, T-shirt shops..., juice bars, and outdoor recreation suppliers," vegetarian restaurants, and "student-oriented religious organizations." TACT uses Kansas State University in Manhattan (the "Little Apple") and its "Aggieville" district as the focal example. Invoking his typology of college towns, Gumprecht also contrasts the agriculturaly oriented K-State/Aggieville to the more cosmopolitan attractions of Lawrence, Kansas, home of his undergraduate alma mater, the University of Kansas (KU).

*Social, political, and environmental awareness, for which Gumprecht focuses on Davis, California and its University of California campus. TACT describes Davis's pioneering efforts in creation of bicycle lines, recycling, food co-ops, and zoning/growth-control, noting also instances where the town has failed to live up to its progressive reputation.

*Eccentric and colorful characters one encounters in a college town, using Athens, Georgia, home of the University of Georgia, as an example. "College towns provide conducive settings for people who wish to follow non-traditional life courses because they offer relatively cheap rents, lots of flexible, low-wage jobs, and a constant influx of new people with new ideas" (p. 190).

*The sports culture, especially with college football in the South, as exemplified by Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama.

*Economic development, often high-tech or biomedical, taking place adjacent to universities, as seen through the lens of Ann Arbor, Michigan, home to the University of Michigan. I attended graduate school at U of M and certainly noticed the corporate plants on the edges of campus. I don't know that economic transfer is a more salient aspect of UM/Ann Arbor than Gumprecht's other themes; however, most other college towns are probably not so heavily involved in economic development as is Ann Arbor.

*"Town vs.Gown" tensions, as seen in Newark, Delaware, home of the University of Delaware, which is near where Gumprecht grew up. TACT focuses on three inter-related sources of conflict between colleges and their host towns' local citizenry: student drunkenness/rowdiness; conversion of single-family houses into student apartments; and universities' creation (or expansion) of their own stores, restaurants, and other amenities, which some fear will hurt local businesses, increase traffic, etc.

TACT's concluding chapter offers projections on the future of college towns. Such towns have changed dramatically in some ways in recent decades. As Gumprecht notes about the host town to the University of Kansas, "Lawrence now sprawls four miles beyond Iowa Street, which was essentially the western edge of town when I was a student [in the late 1970s and early 1980s]." Other potential sources of change include online distance education and college towns' attractiveness as "bedroom communities" near large cities and retirement settings. Despite all this, Gumprecht remains confident that college towns will retain their essential character, in part because many non-student newcomers to these towns come because of their desire for the college-town lifestyle.

Repeatedly throughout the book, I kept nodding in agreement with Gumprecht (mentally, if not physically). He and I are clearly on the same wavelength in a lot of our thinking about college towns, particularly on how compactness is one of a college town's chief assets and how college-town cultures must develop "organically" (p. 345) and cannot be created simply by having real-estate developers simply open up some student-oriented establishments across the street from a campus.

As much as I liked the book -- and I highly recommend it -- I'm not without a few quibbles. Madison, Wisconsin, a town of which I've grown quite fond in recent years, was not one of those featured in TACT, perhaps because it is also a state capital and thus is not singularly dominated by the university. I would argue that Madison rates highly on most or all of the themes identified by Gumprecht, plus it offers a uniquely beautiful environment, ensconced between two lakes. Also, I am more accepting of college-town-like neighborhoods within larger cities. Neighborhoods such as Dinkytown by the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and Chicago's Lincoln Park by DePaul University, offer similar amenities as smaller college towns and, in my view, have identities separate from the larger cities of which they are a part.

In conclusion, if you live in a college town, are thinking of moving to one, or are just curious, The American College Town is a book for you.

ADDENDUM: Gumprecht maintains a website with collections of photos he has taken at numerous campuses. See the links section to the right, under "Others Who Photograph Campuses."

Georgia Southern University

2010-03-15T13:52:00.000-07:00

One of our Texas Tech graduate students, Mandy Baker, recently travelled to Georgia Southern University as part of a national project she and colleagues are working on. While there, Mandy was kind enough to take some pictures for the blog, persisting even in rainy weather. Three major elements of the campus appear to be trees, trails, and brick buildings, including the modern recreation center (upper right).

Below are three different perspectives on the entrance to campus, with a long pathway leading up to the Administration Building.

Mandy described the university as having a Georgia "low country landscape." I wasn't familiar with the term "low country," so I did some searching and came up with a Wikipedia entry entitled "South Carolina Lowcountry." Low country refers to the region being at or below sea level, and southern Georgia would not be too far from South Carolina.

Pepperdine University

2010-01-09T20:04:00.000-08:00

During a visit to Los Angeles over the holidays, I had the chance to go by Pepperdine University in Malibu. However, it was getting dark and, as it turned out, the only pictures that came out OK were ones taken of extensively lighted objects. These included university banners on lampposts...

...and the administration building...

Pepperdine has a very beautiful campus, right off the beach and going up into the hills. My photos don't do the campus justice. Here are some other photos of Pepperdine I found online (here, here, and here).

University of Kansas

2009-11-21T19:48:00.000-08:00

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)

2009-10-30T23:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-15T20:40:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-16T14:47:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-14T20:48:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-06T18:55:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-03T08:54:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-30T18:51:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-22T13:16:00.001-07:00

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

2009-06-12T22:15:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-11T08:53:00.000-07:00

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

2009-02-14T18:11:00.000-08:00

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.

University of Texas (2009)

2009-02-07T12:59:00.000-08:00

In mid-January, I attended an academic conference at the University of Texas-Austin. The last time I was in Austin, five years ago, I took pictures mainly of the downtown/capitol area, rather than the campus.

This time, I focused more on the campus, including the famous Texas Tower (shown at right).

Given the location of the conference in the Seay Building (which houses psychology and other social science disciplines) in the northwest corner of campus, my pictures are concentrated in this area. The next three photos show the Seay Building from different perspectives, including the garden in the center of the complex...

A building across the street from Seay that attracted my attention is Neural Molecular Science.

Finally, I took a picture of the UT bookstore (the Co-op) on Guadalupe, which appears to be the "main drag" of the campus area.

University of Virginia

2008-11-11T19:56:00.001-08:00

Frequent contributor Jackie Wiersma, now doing a postdoctoral fellowship at Penn State, traveled recently to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, from which she's sent some pictures.

I've been to UVa a couple times, years ago. My brother Steve went there and my family visited with him during his first year and also attended his graduation. My department chairperson at Texas Tech, Anisa Zvonkovic, also attended UVa for her undergraduate education.

Virginia is one of the nation's most storied universities, having been founded by Thomas Jefferson. So to all you Cavaliers out there, "Wahoowa!" Let's get to Jackie's photos...

Shown first is the Rotunda, a structure so prominent it has its own Wikipedia page. According to that page, "The Rotunda is the symbolic head of The Lawn and the University of Virginia. The Academical Village of which it is a part is one of only four man-made sites in the United States to be named a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (along with the Statue of Liberty, Independence Hall, and Pueblo de Taos)." It was apparently a cold, gray day when Jackie went to UVa, as a result of which the white dome of the Rotunda is obscured.

The aforementioned Lawn is shown next. Perhaps the most prestigious honor on campus for academic success is for students to be allowed to live in the housing units forming the perimeter of the Lawn (a close-up of the residential area is inserted in the lower-left corner).

We leave you with three more buildings: the Student Union (Newcomb Hall), a free-speech-type area, and the Old Medical School.

Texas A&M University

2008-04-08T13:44:00.000-07:00

In February, I visited Texas A&M University in College Station (see here for background on my trip). A&M, in southeast Texas, is almost diametrically apart from where I am at Texas Tech, in the northwest portion of the state.

Upon my return, Dinah Harriger, who did her undergraduate work at A&M and is now a graduate student in Texas Tech's highly regarded Marriage and Family Therapy program, assisted me in identifying the campus landmarks in the photos I took (it took a little while for us to coordinate our schedules, hence the delay). She also drew my attention to online information about these landmarks.

In addition to Aggie tradition, A&M is also rich on welcoming signs, as seen in the first two photos. Shown above is the Aggieland water tower, whereas to the right is one of the banners gracing the edge of campus. You'll see plenty of maroon and grey if you visit Texas A&M!

Immediately below this text is a wide shot of the Simpson Drill Field, with some academic buildings in the background. This document from the Brazos County Historical Commission provides a detailed history of the Drill Field and A&M's role in military training (see the next-to-last paragraph on the BCHC page). The Drill Field is somewhat reminicent of Ohio State University's Oval and the University of Virginia's Lawn.

Just off the Drill Field is the Albritton Bell Tower. For an evening shot of the Tower and some physical details about it, check here.

The Albritton Bell Tower, erected in 1984, has also been the site for a solemn tribute to the 12 people who died in the 1999 bonfire collapse.

The next three photos down are from the athletic part of campus. Kyle Field is one of college football's most celebrated venues, with its triple-deck configuration, 12th Man tradition of students standing the whole game (and of couples kissing after every Aggie score), and walk-on kick-off coverage team for A&M (a practice that has been modified by successive Aggie coaches).

As with other large university campuses in Texas, A&M is not always very pedestrian-friendly, with some kind of major thoroughfare bisecting Kyle Field from the adjacent part of campus. Shown below is the underground tunnel one must walk under, to go to or from Kyle Field. There are signs warning bicyclists to yield to pedestrians. Thinking that there must be a reason for these signs, as I walked under the tunnel, I kept looking around in all directions in case any would-be Lance Armstrongs might roar past me.

On the other side of the tunnel from Kyle Field is Reed Arena (below), one of the Big 12 conference's newest basketball venues. Inside, Reed is similar to Texas Tech's United Spirit Arena, in that both have two seating decks. The difference is that the USA is double-decked on all four sides, whereas Reed's upper deck only covers three sides, with the remaining side (behind one of the baskets) an open wall.

Lastly, I always make it a point to get to the "college town" area adjacent to a given campus. On the University Drive side of campus, one finds a mixture of quaint store structures and modern-day franchises such as Domino's Pizza, Potbelly Sandwiches, and Starbucks Coffee (shown below).

I hope my fellow Red Raiders at Texas Tech don't hold this against me, but I found Texas A&M a nice campus to visit!

Penn State University

2007-11-29T12:20:00.000-08:00

Texas Tech graduate student Jackie Wiersma, a frequent contributor to this site, took a side trip to Penn State University in the central part of the state while a bunch of us from our department were at an academic conference in Pittsburgh (my shots of Pitt and Carnegie Mellon are shown in the entry below).

Every campus ought to have a stately administrative building, and Penn State has Old Main.

There's plenty of modernity on campus, too, as exemplified by the new student union.

The following shot of a campus walkway reveals some early turning of the trees to fall colors, a sight that Jackie described as "gorgeous."

Jackie also photographed Penn State's Human Development and Family Studies building (the same discipline we're in at Texas Tech). Bo Cleveland, who was on our faculty at Texas Tech from 2003-2007 and moved to Penn State this fall, has his office in this building.

Lastly, we have Beaver Stadium, home of legendary coach Joe Paterno's Nittany Lion football squad.

According to the above-linked Wikipedia page on Penn State's football home:

Beaver Stadium has a capacity of 107,282, making it the second largest stadium in the United States (smaller than Michigan Stadium by 219 seats)...

University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University

2007-11-14T08:06:00.000-08:00

This past weekend, I attended the annual conference of the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR), which this year was held in Pittsburgh.

As with any metropolis, there are several colleges and universities in the Steel City, the two most nationally prominent of which are the University of Pittsburgh ("Pitt") and Carnegie Mellon University. Pitt and CMU are adjacent, just a stroll up or down Forbes Avenue from each other.

Taking advantage of the two schools' proximity to each other, I took the bus from where I was downtown to the Oakland section of Pittsburgh (here and here), which is home to the two universities plus other cultural attractions.

I have friends and colleagues at the two schools, so I was able to visit with them, as well as go sightseeing and take pictures.

Let's start with the most prominent landmark of this -- or virtually any other -- academic neighborhood, the Cathedral of Learning, on the Pitt campus. The Cathedral includes a number of interesting features, including the Nationality Rooms. According to the linked Wikipedia entry:

Standing at 535 feet (>163 m), the 42-story Late Gothic Revival Cathedral is the tallest educational building in the western hemisphere and the second tallest educational building in the world.

Close by is the Center for American Music and Stephen Foster Memorial, which given my interest in songwriting, I had to go see!

I also took a picture of a Pitt entrance sign. Given the grayness of the weather and my distance from the sign, the shot didn't come out too clearly. My attempts at cropping and playing around with the brightness may have helped a little, but not completely.

Another neat feature of the Pitt campus is that it was the home of the Pittsburgh Pirates' old baseball stadium, Forbes Field (in use from 1909-1970).

The actual home plate from Forbes Field is preserved under glass in its original location -- which happens now to be indoors, inside Wesley Posvar Hall. Also represented on the campus is a segment of the outfield fence, again in its original location. I was getting ready to take a picture of home plate, when someone standing nearby asked if I wanted her to photograph me standing by the plate. I said, "Sure," but made it clear I wanted her to get the plate in the picture, not so much me. As seen below, I had to crouch down pretty low in my pretend batter stance. After thanking my photographer, I then walked out to the outfield marker.

All in all, among the schools depicted on this website, I would say Pitt was most similar to Boston University, in terms of the urban feel and blending of campus and commercial property.

Carnegie Mellon, a smaller private institution, had a much different feel. There is a lot of green space and a more insular atmosphere, by my perception at least. The following two pictures are of CMU. In the second one, you can see Pitt's Cathedral of Learning in the background.

Right in between the two campuses is Craig Street, a hub of restaurants and other college-town amenities. I had lunch there with my friend from CMU, at a vegetarian-friendly place called Eat Unique.

The Pitt-CMU-Oakland area would probably have to be considered one of the livelier academic complexes you'd find in the United States.

University of New Hampshire

2007-08-29T15:36:00.000-07:00

Completing the "Jackie Wiersma trilogy" (see previous two entries below), today we have the University of New Hampshire, in Durham, NH, where she attended a conference over the summer. Shown below are the campus Bell Tower, along with two other buildings.

Looking at these UNH pictures, I don't think I've ever seen as deep a red-brick color anywhere else. This university publication talks about the campus architecture.

Arizona State University

2007-08-25T11:38:00.000-07:00

Entry No. 2 in the "Jackie Wiersma trilogy" (described in the prior entry below) is Arizona State University, in Tempe, Arizona (part of metro Phoenix).

In the collage below, we have Sun Devil Stadium (football) across the top, the Palm Walk on the right, and the Cowden Family Resource Building, which hosts ASU's Family and Human Development department, lower left.

University of Northern Iowa

2007-08-23T12:09:00.000-07:00

Today, we'll start what might be called the "Jackie Wiersma trilogy." Jackie is a doctoral student in our Human Development and Family Studies department at Texas Tech University. She has been kind enough to provide me with photos from the University of Northern Iowa, where she did her undergraduate work; Arizona State University, where she received a Master's degree; and the University of New Hampshire, where she attended a conference this past summer.

Going in chronological order, we first have the University of Northern Iowa (UNI), which is located in Cedar Falls, Iowa. As Jackie has conveyed to me, the two shots below are of "the famous campanile in the center of campus and then the UNI Dome and Rec Center." Jackie's a big sports fan!

University of Wisconsin-Madison (2007)

2007-08-12T16:53:00.000-07:00

I was fortunate to be able to teach a four-week summer course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this year, an activity from which I've just returned. Naturally, I took a bunch of pictures of the lovely campus and surrounding town of Madison, the state capital. The pictures shown below thus augment some I took on a 2004 visit to Madison.

The Memorial Union at UW-Madison appears to serve on summer evenings not just as a hub for the university community, but perhaps for the town as a whole. The following shot is of the front of the Union at dusk.

Food and beer are sold on the back terrace of the Union, adjoining Lake Mendota, and on Wednesday-Saturday nights, free musical entertainment is offered. This next shot shows one such night on the terrace...

The course I taught was in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies, the same as my affilitation at Texas Tech. At Wisconsin, the HDFS main office, several faculty offices, some lab space, and a conference room have long been located in the house shown below, which is next to the larger and more academically traditional School of Human Ecology building. From what someone told me, home economics students used to live in the house and host tea receptions for the Chancellor (see this unit from the SoHE's history).

Plans call for renovating and expanding the Human Ecology building, so that the HDFS house will have to be torn down. If there's any interest in preserving some of the materials of the house, the SoHE might follow what the University of Minnesota did in re-creating the brick arch facade of its old, demolished football stadium inside its modern Alumni Center building. I mentioned this idea to a few people; who knows if anything will become of it?

Perhaps my most interesting discovery on this trip came when I wandered into the gift shop within the Camp Randall football stadium complex. There's no shortage of shops in town for buying red and white Badger paraphernalia, so I wouldn't necessarily go into every such store that I saw. In this case, however, it was on a quiet Sunday that I walked by Camp Randall and saw a sign saying the gift shop was open, so I went in. At first, it seemed like any other gift shop. As I walked further back in the store, though, I came upon the spectacular design of a large window looking directly onto the football field (below). What's also spectacular is that children from area hospitals get to watch games from the patio between the store and the field.

At the other end of State Street from the campus is, of course, the State Capitol building. The final two photos below depict, respectively, the Capitol dome (similar in appearance to the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC) as seen in the distance from State Street and the Capitol grounds during a major art fair held while I was in town (there seemed to be activities and festivals going on virtually every weekend I was there).

University of Minnesota (2006)

2007-06-26T14:54:00.000-07:00

Upon learning that I operated a website devoted to photographically documenting America's college campuses, my Texas Tech faculty colleague Kazuko Behrens sent me a couple of shots she took in 2006 at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Campus entrances and other displays identifying the school are often very attractive, and this one at Minnesota is no exception.

The other picture is of the Institute of Child Development, which relates to Kazuko's research.

The University's presence in the Twin Cities is enormous. Just for the Minneapolis component (near downtown), there are East Bank and West Bank campuses on either side of the Mississippi River (here's a map of the division of the campus). Also, some academic units are in St. Paul.

My one trip to the Twin Cities was in 2001, for the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) conference. This was before I developed my hobby of photographing campuses, so I'm grateful to Kazuko for providing these.

My main impression was that, even though Minneapolis is a big city, the area around the campus (East Bank) had a nice college-town feel to it. One of the surrounding communities has the cute name of Dinkytown.

Southwestern Oklahoma State University

2007-05-07T14:49:00.000-07:00

One of our Texas Tech graduate students, Brittney Schrick, recently went back to visit at her undergraduate alma mater, Southwestern Oklahoma State University (or SWOSU for short) in Weatherford, and she took some pictures for this site.

Most of the universities I've featured are in major metropolitan areas, so for a change of pace, here's a school a bit more off the beaten path.

As seen in the photos below, SWOSU is typical in featuring a mix of old and new buildings. Also like many campuses, SWOSU seems to be putting added emphasis on student amenities, witness the Student Wellness Center. I hope you enjoy the photos. I'll check with Brittney to see if she would like to add some captions.

Boston-Area Schools VI: Tufts University (Tina Brooks, Guest Photographer)

2007-04-13T11:49:00.000-07:00

I didn't know it until I got back from my trip, but we actually can offer photographs of a sixth Boston-area college, Tufts University, which is located in Medford (north of Cambridge). One of our Texas Tech graduate students, Tina Brooks, attended the same academic conference as I did in Boston. As I later learned, Tina had gone to Tufts during her undergraduate years, and went back to visit on this recent trip. The photos below are hers, along with her descriptions of them.

Shown above is a side entrance to the campus.

This is the library.

This is Goddard Chapel.

This is Carmichael Hall, a dorm and dining hall.

And, lastly, this is Richardson House, an all-female dormitory, where I lived in my freshman year.

Boston-Area Schools V: Harvard

2007-04-12T15:55:00.000-07:00

I closed out my tour of Boston-area colleges by taking a ride through Cambridge on a public bus route from MIT (see previous entry) to Harvard. Founded in 1636, Harvard is, according to a university history, the "oldest institution of higher learning in the United States."

From where a visitor would likely arrive on public transportation, one can enter the university through Harvard Yard. Perhaps most prominent among the buildings in Harvard Yard is the famous Widener Library, shown below.

As I walked through the Yard, quaint, picturesque buildings were apparent in all directions, as seen in the shots below.

Heading back out of Harvard Yard, one encounters Harvard Square, the touristy, commercial area by the campus. I took two photos in Harvard Square; they sort of fit together horizontally, like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, so I put them together to display (as you can probably tell, the "CAMBRIDGE SAVINGS" part of the sign at the top is from one picture, and the "BANK" is from the other; you might want to click on the montage to enlarge it).

Among other things, Harvard Square is the home of:

*The Harvard T (subway) station (on the red line, which is easy to remember, as Harvard's sports teams are known as the Crimson).

*Harvard's bookstore, the Coop (pronounced to rhyme with "hoop," not as "co-op"), the sign for which can be seen on the far right-hand side of the oval photo montage (above). The surrounding area, for several blocks, contains what has to be one of the highest concentrations of bookstores in the United States.

*A visitors' center, a newsstand, and miscellaneous other shops.

*An abundant presence of both foot and vehicle traffic.

If you ever visit Boston, an excursion to Harvard is a must!

Boston-Area Schools IV: MIT

2007-04-09T13:46:00.000-07:00

On the final full day of my trip to Boston (March 31), I headed out with my camera and took the red line of the T out to Cambridge, home of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, by the Kendall station) and Harvard University.

MIT's most iconic building appears to be the Great Dome (shown below). If you do computer searches on MIT and the Great Dome, you'll likely find a lot on "Hacks" (i.e., pranks) done in conjunction with the Dome, including putting objects on top of it.

Shown next is MIT's Wiesner Building, an I.M. Pei designed edifice that houses, among other units, the school's Media Lab.

Finally, in walking around MIT, one of the neatest things, in my mind, is the panoramic view of Boston you can get from the Cambridge side of the Charles River. In the shot below, you can see Boston's two skyscrapers, the John Hancock Tower (another Pei design) on the left, and the Prudential Tower on the right.

Boston-Area Schools III: Berklee College of Music

2007-04-05T16:02:00.000-07:00

The Berklee College of Music, which has absolutely no connection to the University of California, Berkeley, is located immediately west of the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, which is where the academic conference I attended was held.

I would guess that most Bostonians and visitors to town don't give a second thought to Berklee when they pass by its buildings. In my case, however, I took two courses in jazz appreciation at UCLA in the early 1980s as an undergraduate, so I was familiar with Berklee as the alma mater of numerous musicians.

According to this Wikipedia entry on Berklee:

At the time of its founding [1945], almost all music schools focused primarily on classical music. The original mission of Berklee was to provide formal training in jazz, rock, and other contemporary music not available at other music schools.

This emphasis on jazz and rock (including the "fusion" of the two) is illustrated by the following large display on one of the Berklee buildings.

Within jazz, my favorite instrument is the electric guitar. As seen on this list of Berklee alumni, practitioners of this instrument who went to school there include John Abercrombie, Al DiMeola, John Scofied, and Mike Stern. Another jazz guitarist, Pat Metheny, taught at Berklee as a 19-year-old, and later came back to give the commencement address.

Berklee's alumni stretch beyond the aforementioned musical genres, however, to include country. In fact, Dixie Chicks lead vocalist Natalie Maines, from my home base of Lubbock, Texas, received some of her training at Berklee.

Boston-Area Schools II: Boston College

2007-04-03T15:27:00.000-07:00

If one were to get on a Green Line B train in the middle of Boston University (see prior entry below) and take it all the way west, one would end up at Boston College, in Chestnut Hill. On the hockey rink -- and probably elsewhere -- BU and BC are major rivals. Further, in contrast to BU's urban/commercial location, BC offers a more traditionally verdant and idyllic campus.

Entering BC from the T (train) stop puts one on the lower level of the multi-tiered campus, which among other things includes this student commons.

A fairly substantial hike up some stairs then took me to a busier part of campus. The next three photos were taken in O'Neill Plaza (on which BC features a live webcam). The first photo features an expansive view of the plaza (or at least attempts to). Seen in the distance is St. Mary's Hall.

Where the shadow is on the right-hand side of the above picture is the O'Neill Library, named after the former U.S. House Speaker. The library appears below.

Depicted last is Gasson Hall, perhaps the most famous building on the BC campus and located across from the library.

Getting to BC and getting around the campus make for a pretty formidable trek, but I would say it's worth it for aficionados of college campuses.

Boston-Area Schools I: Boston University

2007-04-02T15:02:00.000-07:00

Boston is the state capital of Massachusetts, as seen below with the State House building in Boston Common. With its high concentration of colleges and universities, Boston also is arguably the U.S. capital of higher education, at least for private institutions.

I was recently in Boston for an academic conference and, during some free time, I rode around on the area's subway/streetcar system, known as the "T," visiting a number of institutions of higher learning. Riding "neath the streets of Boston," I got to Boston University (BU) and the Berklee School of Music within the city, Boston College (BC) in Chestnut Hill, and MIT and Harvard in Cambridge.

Today, I start off a five-part installment on Boston-area higher education with a brief photo essay on Boston University. BU is the quintessential urban university, nestled in near the major interesection of Commonwealth Avenue and Beacon Street, near the Massachusetts Turnpike. Along with BU, the area features Fenway Park, home of the city's beloved Red Sox, the famous Citgo sign that can sometimes be seen beyond Fenway on baseball telecasts, and Kenmore Square, home to one of the city's busiest T stops. Several bars and clubs make this a raucous night spot, or so I'm told.

Perhaps because the main stretch of campus down Comm Ave. looks a lot more commercial than collegiate, BU provides a ready supply of red school banners, reminding passersby that they are in fact on a college campus.

This next photo vividly shows, I believe, the urban mix in which BU is located. Surrounding BU's School of Management (left) are Comm Ave. and the streetcar tracks in the middle of the street, the aforementioned Citgo sign, and, to the right and a little further in the distance, the thin square Prudential Tower, one of Boston's trademark highrises.

A segment of BU's student housing supply comes from former apartment buildings immediately south of the academic buildings. According to the Wikipedia:

The area is almost entirely brick, walk-up buildings and brownstone townhouses, although over the last 20 years almost every residential building in Kenmore has been purchased by Boston University and turned into dorms, especially in the Audubon Circle area between Beacon Street and Commonwealth Avenue.

Other than perhaps some schools in New York City and elsewhere in the East, I'm hard-pressed to come up with as strong an example of educational urbanicity as BU.

University of Arizona

2007-02-20T11:38:00.000-08:00

I hadn't been to any new college campuses in recent months, hence the lack of postings. However, this past weekend I was at the University of Arizona in Tucson, attending an academic conference, so I have some photos to share. It was my first visit back to the U of A since my sister Lynn's graduation in 1987, and boy do things appear to have changed in 20 years!

The U of A campus is coherently organized, with large grass fields forming a line up through the middle of the campus (as shown above, with the historic Old Main in the middle of campus). In planning my visit, I simply made mental notes of whether a particular building was to the right or left of the grass strip.

The Student Union, a modern, multi-building complex with a spectacular bookstore, is just off the grass strip, near Old Main.

Across the grass from the Student Union is another impressive modern structure, the new Chemistry building.

The area adjacent to the main campus entrance, known as Main Gate Square, has a lot of typical college-town amenities, such as restaurants and stores selling school clothing. The above photo looks down University Ave., as one moves away from the campus entrance at University and Park Ave.

There's another nice bookstore just off campus (shown in foreground to the right, with the campus off to the left), selling all the U of A Wildcat paraphernalia you could want, as well as textbooks. The off-campus store is located in yet another modern facility, the Marshall Building.

Unless you love scorching temperatures, I would suggest you visit the U of A in winter (and even then it was fairly warm, reaching 80 degrees during my visit).

Texas Tech University (Sothy Eng 2006)

2006-11-14T10:58:00.000-08:00

One of our graduate students at Texas Tech, Sothy Eng, just took some fantastic photos of campus. Here's a link to the November 2006 archive of his photography blog, which contains the campus photos. Some of the photos are under the November 14 heading and others, under the November 13 heading. Some older photos I took of the Texas Tech campus are available here.

University of Texas-Austin -- January 2004

2006-09-20T14:40:00.000-07:00

As is the case with many of my visits to college towns, my most recent trip to Austin took place in conjunction with an academic conference.

Like Madison, Wisconsin, featured in my entry immediately prior to this one, Austin hosts a huge, state university flagship campus, the state capitol building, and state historical society/museum. Pictured below is a collage of the famous Texas Tower from the UT campus, the Texas capitol building, and Texas State History Museum, all located in close proximity to each other.

Downtown Austin and environs have a lot going on, all within walking distance (if you like a good walk). Austin is the self-proclaimed "Live Music Capital of the World" and home to the PBS music show Austin City Limits. Many visitors will want to go into some of the clubs on Sixth Street, but it's fun even to just walk up and down the blocks, which allows you to hear a new band's music coming out the front door every several seconds.

Another great thing about Austin is its relatively new airport, converted from the former Bergstrom Air Force Base. It's one of the most attractive airports I've ever seen, and has plentiful shopping venues, all, I'm told, based in local businesses.

[UPDATE: I visited UT-Austin again in 2009 and have some photos of that trip.]

University of Wisconsin-Madison -- July 2004

2006-08-09T13:56:00.000-07:00

The University of Wisconsin-Madison, in my opinion, represents the best combination I've seen of aesthetics, blending of a university and town, and walkability. I visited "Mad-Town" twice in the late 1980s while I was in graduate school at the University of Michigan, and did not get back until 2004, when I attended an academic conference.

The central area of Madison is an isthmus, defined by the Wikipedia as "a narrow strip of land that is bordered on two sides by water and connects two larger land masses."

On one end of the isthmus is the Wisconsin State Capitol building and at the other, just blocks away, is the UW campus. Between the two is State Street, an automobile-free pedestrian mall. Here are some shots I took of the capitol and State Street.

When entering the campus via State Street, one encounters a traditional-looking quad, as seen in the bottom photo of the following set...

The little red arrow is pointing to the Wisconsin Historical Society, a straight-on view of which is shown directly above the arrow.

The little green arrow is pointing to the student union, a more direct shot of which is shown above that arrow. The back of the union faces Lake Mendota, one of the two bodies of water forming the isthmus. As can be seen, the union offers lakefront dining and entertainment (notice the stage).

The other body of water in the area is Lake Monona, where a lovely new conference center called Monona Terrace is located. One night at the conference, dinner was served in the glass-enclosed portion of the facility, then we had dessert up on the roof.

Note: I have added some new photos of the University of Wisconsin and the town of Madison from my recent (July-August 2007) visit, which are available here.

Northwestern University -- August 2002

2006-08-07T11:44:00.000-07:00

With my sister and other relatives living in the Chicago area, I visit the Windy City on a roughly annual basis. One thing I always try to do is get to the Evanston campus of Northwestern University.

Northwestern is one of the most paradoxical universities in the nation, in my view. It is an academic powerhouse, ranked No. 12 for overall undergraduate education by U.S. News & World Report, for example.

Yet, I expect many would agree that the facilities are not up to what would be expected for such a great institution. Much of the campus is beautiful, modern, or both. But, as you'll see in a photo below, some departments and programs are located in old houses across the street from the core campus. Even on the main campus, some buildings are not state of the art. Part of the problem may have to do with space -- being on the lakeshore, there is a physical limitation of land. In fact, the Evanston history page linked above notes that, "In the 1960s Northwestern expanded its property by constructing a 74-acre landfill, altering the Lake Michigan shoreline." I've also been told that some buildings have been designated as historic sites, thus preventing their removal or renovation.

With my background introduction now out of the way, here are some shots of the Northwestern campus. What better place to start than this gate, the symbolic, if not literal, entrance to the campus?

The campus also contains what, to my untrained eye, looks to be Gothic architecture.

The Department of Statistics, shown next, is but one of a row of house-based academic units spanning along Sheridan Road (another being the Institute for Policy Research).

Finally, as can be seen throughout this blog, many of my campus visits have a sports tie-in. When the above photos were taken in August 2002, collegiate competition would have been on summer vacation. I've visited Northwestern a couple of times since then, however, and during my May 2006 trip, I took in some softball action, photos of which are shown on my softball blog. Northwestern ended up finishing second in the nation at the 2006 NCAA Women's College World Series.

Stanford University -- June 2003

2006-08-03T14:39:00.000-07:00

As with my previous entry (below) on the University of Oregon, my trip to Stanford was in conjunction with a Track & Field News tour, to the 2003 USA national championships.

I've found when conversing with people about attractive college campuses that Stanford is frequently mentioned. The beige-brick style of the buildings, red-tile roofs (or is it "rooves"), and abundant use of arches give Stanford a very distinctive look, as shown in the following pictures (on which you can click to enlarge them).

Don't get me wrong -- Stanford's is a nice-looking campus. However, I did not feel mesmerized by the aesthetics and ambience. While visiting with a couple of my former Michigan psychology professors who had moved to Stanford, we agreed that Stanford did not have the "buzz" of energy and excitement that Michigan has. In large part, this is because the UM campus blends seamlessly with the Ann Arbor community, whereas Stanford's size and clear demarcation of its perimeter left me feeling distant from its Palo Alto surroundings.

A better parallel may be between Stanford and Texas Tech, where I'm on the faculty. No less an authority than Red Raider basketball coach Bob Knight, whose son Tim went to Stanford, told a story on Larry King Live (transcript) about how they thought the Texas Tech campus looked similar to Stanford's. You can judge for yourself (albeit based on a small number of photos) by comparing the Stanford shots in this entry to pictures of Texas Tech I posted in an earlier one.

This entry wouldn't be complete without a photo from the track meet, so here's one of Texas Tech's Jonathan Johnson in the men's 800 meters (second from the right, wearing red).

University of Oregon -- June 2001

2006-08-01T09:45:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite sports is track and field (for which, believe it or not, I don't have a blog). The magazine Track & Field News organizes tours to major meets, and I've gone on a few of them. One of the meets I went to with T&FN was the 2001 USA national championships, at the University of Oregon in Eugene. In fact, Eugene calls itself "Track Town USA," and there are establishments with names such as "Track Town Pizza." Here are some photos I took on that trip.

As is typical for the Northwest, UO's campus is very lush and green, with a mixture of old and new buildings (the photos below are kind of small, but you can click on them -- or any others -- to see a larger version).

On the athletic side, here's a picture I took at the meet. Leigh Daniel, a former student of mine at Texas Tech, is shown on the far left of the pack in the women's 10,000 meters.

More recent information on Leigh is available here and here.

I also went by the legendary McArthur Court, also known as "The Pit," which is the home of Duck basketball. It was open, so I went in. The seating area takes the form of overhanging decks. The only problem (as shown below right) is that the decks hang so low, the view from the lower level is obstructed. I'm all for tradition, but in the case of Oregon basketball, it's probably time for a new arena!

The Ohio State University -- May 2005

2006-07-27T15:18:00.000-07:00

The weekend of May 19-22, 2005, I visited The Ohio State University to attend the U.S. Conference on Teaching Statistics (USCOTS). While there, I also gave a talk to the Group for Attitudes and Persuasion on the Election '04 Study I organized, visited the Ohio Statehouse (state capitol), attended a Buckeyes' baseball game, and went into the Jack Nicklaus Museum (adjacent to the baseball stadium on campus). You might say I like to get the most out of my trips!

I took a lot of pictures at Ohio State. In order to have this website load relatively quickly, however, I try to hold it down to three or four pictures per entry. What I did here, therefore, is edit sets of pictures into collages in PowerPoint, then save each collage as a singular photo. You can click directly on the photos below to make them bigger.

One lovely area of the campus includes Lazenby Hall, home of the social psychology program, and Mirror Lake. There's also a campus historical marker, which can be seen in the lake photos on the left-hand side.

The OSU campus was just teeming with what appeared to be new buildings, a sign of the university's vitality. The building on the left, below, is the new Physics Research Building, which I took note of because of my layperson interest in physics.

No trip to Ohio State would be complete without the famous "Horseshoe," also known as Ohio Stadium (and I say this as someone who's grown critical of the violence and injuries in football over the years). Also, back in the spring of 1984, when I visited OSU to look at it for graduate school (I ultimately chose Michigan instead), the OSU social psychology program was located under the stands in an office component of the football stadium.

I had posted a set of OSU photos in a different location previously, which was discovered by someone named David Burns. He e-mailed me some web links with historical information on Ohio Stadium and its design (well worth a look).

I also like to show a little bit of the area surrounding a given campus, which ideally will mean plenty of pizza places and bookstores! As some of my Texas Tech colleagues who previously spent time at Ohio State had told me before my trip, the campus is ringed by a number of local establishments and very few national franchises. Among those I visited are captured in another collage I made...

Flying Pizza and Long's Bookstore (as of the time I photographed it) are both on High Street, on the eastern border of the campus. The Varsity Club is on Lane Avenue, on the northern border, by the athletic facilities. As of my visit, Long's was slated to be moving south a few blocks, part of being blended into a huge new Barnes and Noble's.

Finally, here's a shot of the state capitol building in downtown Columbus; it can be reached easily by a bus that goes down High Street.

Indiana University Bloomington -- May 2006

2006-07-19T15:21:00.000-07:00

Two months ago, I attended a conference on networks at IU Bloomington. I had visited previously in the spring of 1984 to consider Indiana for graduate school, but after 22 years, I really didn't remember much about the campus or town, other than that I had had a favorable impression of both.

On my return visit in 2006, the campus and town didn't disappoint (by "town," I refer to the restaurants, shops, etc., catering to the college community and not the residential parts). In fact, the campus and town were contiguous, which is not always the case around the country.

Coming up Kirkwood St., which seemed to be the "main drag," one enters campus at the Sample Gates (at some point IUB will presumably put in real gates, just kidding).

Just about anywhere, the student union plays a major role, although on some campuses more than others. Here in Hoosier land, the Indiana Memorial Union plays a huge role, as it is said to be one of the largest student unions in the world.

Another thing about the IUB campus that is lovely, but which initially made it hard for me to find my bearings, is that large amounts of space are devoted to natural beauty (e.g., trees, grass fields, streams), befitting of a national or state park. One example is shown below...

The campus seems to alternate between clusters of academic buildings and these open spaces; thus, when as a newcomer you find yourself in the middle of the nature areas, it can be hard to get oriented again as to where the buildings are. Also, other than on one side (by the hotel component), the huge Indiana Memorial Union complex has no signage. I spent a half hour trying to find the IMU on the first day of the conference, only to learn that I had walked by it several times unknowingly.

On the whole, though, Bloomington is a neat town, and IUB, a great campus.

University of Southern California -- Guest Photographer

2006-07-18T15:17:00.000-07:00

After I posted a notice about my Texas Tech photo display on the RaiderPower.com chat site (the school's sports teams are known as the Red Raiders), someone who goes by the moniker "Raider Aficionado" commented about being at the University of Southern California recently and posted some pictures he or she had taken of the USC campus (the University of South Carolina also, of course, goes by USC). Raider Aficionado also kindly stated that I could use the photos for this blog, and so I'm posting some of them (as can be seen in all of my earlier postings, I'm generally limiting the number of photos per campus to three or four, so that the page will come up relatively quickly on most computers).

The central icon of the Southern Cal campus, of course, is the statue of Tommy Trojan, the school's athletic mascot. As documented here, Tommy needs to be protected from possible mischief by supporters of cross-town rival UCLA in the days leading up to the schools' annual football showdown.

Next is a shot of the Student Activities Center, which I believe Raider Aficionado took to illustrate the abundant trees on campus as much as the center.

Finally, we have the L.A. Memorial Coliseum, located within walking distance of USC. In addition to being the home of the Trojan football team, the Coliseum has hosted two Olympics (1932 and 1984) and used to host L.A. Rams (now in St. Louis), L.A. Raiders (now back in Oakland), and UCLA Bruins (now at the Rose Bowl) football games. Also in the athletic realm, after many years of playing at the decaying L.A. Sports Arena near campus, the Trojan basketball teams will inaugurate a new on-campus facility, the Galen Center, this season.

Texas Tech University -- Assorted Photos

2006-07-14T15:00:00.000-07:00

I've now displayed photos of UCLA and the University of Michigan, my undergraduate and graduate alma maters, respectively, in earlier postings. Now it's time for me to post some photos I took of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, where I've been a faculty member for nine years.

Texas Tech is very big on traditions, which comes across in some of these photos.

The shot above is of the Administration Building, viewed from the south. In the extreme lower left of the photo, all that can be made out is some type of white structure. What this can be seen to be, if one walks away from the building and toward the structure, is a bench in the shape of the school's famous Double-T logo. In between the bench and the building (facing the building) is a statue of former Texas governor Preston Smith, during whose tenure Texas Tech was upgraded from a college to a university.

Here are two shots of the Will Rogers statue with his horse Soapsuds (Will Rogers's connection to Texas Tech is described in the "traditions" link above). The statue is located in a pretty, circular garden plaza. In the wider shot (above), one of the towers of the Administration Building is visible in the background, whereas the picture below provides more of a close-up of the statue.

Finally, here's a shot of the new wing of the Student Union (only a few years old), as viewed from the side by the library. Prior to its major renovation project, I used to tell people that the Texas Tech Student Union was state of the art... circa 1940!

On the RaiderPower.com site, which is devoted to discussion of all things Texas Tech (heavily, though not exclusively, sports-related), someone who goes by the moniker "TTU Red" periodically posts links to pictures he or she has taken of the campus, which are a lot nicer than mine (what I hang my hat on is getting to a lot of campuses and taking pretty good pictures!). You can access Red's pictures by clicking here, then scrolling down a bit and clicking on "TTU Campus."

I consider Texas Tech to be one of the nicer campuses I've seen. However, its flatness, lack of more greenery, and absence of water -- I'm referring to streams, rivers, or lakes, not a lack of drinking fountains -- keep it from rising to my personal top tier of campuses.

University of Michigan -- Assorted Photos

2006-07-13T20:47:00.000-07:00

As noted in the sub-heading at the top of this page, I went to graduate school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, earning a Ph.D. in social psychology in 1989. So deeply do my feelings run for the maize and blue that I operate another blog devoted entirely to reminiscences on my UM years (and updates of what people from my era are doing now).

In the 17 years I've been away from Ann Arbor, I've generally managed to come back for visits every couple of years, give or take, and on my last few trips back, I've taken pictures of the campus and town. In recent months, I've posted some of these pictures on my Michigan retrospective site. Thus, the easiest thing for me to do is just provide links to my UM pictures on the other site.

If you click here, you'll see an entry that includes photos of some assorted UM campus landmarks. And if you click here and scroll down a bit, you'll see a picture of the Graduate Library, which faces the "Diag," a central gathering spot on campus through which two major walkways cross, you guessed it, diagonally.

Unlike many college campuses around the nation that have clearly defined perimeters, where there would be no mistaking if you were on or off campus, the University of Michigan campus has few, if any, sharp demarcations. Rather, campus buildings blend in with the town's businesses and residential sections.

As some of you may know, the UM-Ann Arbor campus actually consists of three non-contiguous tracts of land, the Central Campus, North Campus (containing among other things, the Schools of Engineering, Music, and Art, and a large graduate-student housing set-up), and South Campus (containing the athletic facilities).

When I refer to blending of campus buildings with the town, I do not mean the areas between the Central, North, and South Campuses. What I'm saying is that the Central Campus, itself, mixes seamlessly with commercial and private establishments.

Welcome to the Site (Part II) -- Recent U. of Washington Photos

2006-07-10T12:22:00.000-07:00

As part of the same West Coast trip that took me to Los Angeles and UCLA (see entry below), I also went to Seattle for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) conference. While there, I visited the University of Washington (known as "U-Dub" to locals) and took some photos.

As can be seen from the main entrance (above), the U-Dub campus is very verdant. The Husky Union Building or "HUB" (student union) is one of many buildings with a nice lawn adjacent to it (below).

Here are a couple of other buildings around the HUB...

Finally, here's a shot of the University District, just west of campus on University Way (which is sometimes called University "Avenue"). The main bookstore for U-Dub students is here, rather than in the HUB, plus there are lots of restaurants and other amenities. Being in a big city sometimes detracts from the college-town feel of a community, but I think the U-District does a nice job of preserving that feel.

Welcome to the Site (Part I) -- Recent UCLA Photos

2006-07-06T14:47:00.000-07:00

I'm an academic, through and through. I've always enjoyed visiting college campuses and, more recently, photographing them. I've put various photo collections on the web over the years, but I've decided that I should have a central repository for my college campus photos. Hence, this blog. I recently was home visiting in Los Angeles. Therefore, to start things off, here are a few shots of my undergraduate alma mater, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Pictured above is Royce Hall, one of the four original buildings on UCLA's Westwood campus. Royce's front exterior often serves as a symbol for UCLA as a whole.

Next is Kerckhoff Hall, which adjoins the Ackerman Student Union and houses many offices of the type that would be found in a student union. I was a sportswriter for the Daily Bruin and our offices were in Kerckhoff. Nowadays, I would go to Kerckhoff primarily for its Coffee House, which also includes an ice cream component.

Immediately to the south of UCLA is Westwood Village. Up through, I would say, the 1970s (during my childhood and adolescence), Westwood had a bunch of quaint, traditional college-town business establishments. In more recent decades, however, things have gotten considerably more high-end (which also seems to be associated with a high turnover of businesses in some locations). In the photo above, which looks north along Westwood Blvd., you can see in the background a hint of the red-brick exterior to the UCLA Medical Center (which is slated to be replaced in about another year or so).

Finally, Westwood is one of the main movie-theater hubs in Los Angeles (along with Hollywood, of course), and while I was there, in fact, Westwood hosted the annual L.A. Film Festival. If they showed exclusively comedies, then the acronym LAFF would make sense, but they didn't. Pictured above is the Fox theater, a bit west of Westwood Blvd.