University grounds
This morning I had a call from a friend with whom I once worked at Virginia Commonwealth University. We both started at VCU at the same time, and although she left many years before I did we still stay in touch. She called to ask about a paper I had written a few years back and after chatting about that our conversation took a turn to the informal side of life. Among questions about family and careers, she mentioned that she had read this blog. She remarked that I have an eye for minutia. Her thoughts came in response to my posts on the changes in Jones Stadium at Texas Tech. Although those changes were dramatic and hard to miss, she thought that few people would notice that handrails seen in my posts on Arizona State and the University of Denver had changed since I had initially visited. That may be so, but in a visit to the University of Tennessee in 2001 I immediately noticed that stair rails in one particular location had been painted a different color than they had been since at least 1988. Perhaps its just me. I will admit that I do pay attention to the details of things. I could not help but think again about all of the changes that have happened at Texas Tech since my time as a student there. It should come as no surprise that the institution has changed a great deal since I matriculated in 1996. Most colleges and universities have. But Tech's changes have been remarkable. The institution, which was slightly smaller than my alma mater Tennessee when I went there, is now the larger institution. In the fall of 1996, UT had a headcount of 25,086, whereas Texas Tech's headcount was 24,717. That difference of 369 people is not all that big of a deal. What is a big deal is that UT's current enrollment is 38,728 students compared to Tech's 40,969. Both institutions have grown enrollment, but the gap is now 2,241 and Tech is the larger university. Their respective university systems have also grown. In 1996, the UT System had four universities, today they have five. The Texas Tech System had three university back in the day, but today they have five as well. This fall, the Tennessee System had a total enrollment 62,148 students, whereas the Texas Tech System had 64,022. In both cases, that kind of enrollment growth means that a number of new buildings have cropped up at both schools. The growth, along with the intervening years also means that existing buildings at both places have been razed and others renovated. Sometimes that means things like handrails being changed, and sometimes the differences are more substantial. One substantive change that comes to is the modification of the front façade of West Hall on the Texas Tech campus. West underwent a renovation after I graduated. The first time I saw it afterwards, I knew something about the exterior was quite different, but assumed it was simply the addition of an accessible ramp at the front door. It was actually more than that. The entire center section of the façade was totally reworked. To show just what this change looks like, compare the photos in the first set below. The first photo was taken during my first visit to campus on June 3, 1996. The next two were taken last month. The theme is similar, but they are not alike. The change came during a renovation of the building which was completed in August 2001. I am not sure why the change was made. I assume there was something wrong with the structure of the building and removing the façade was required. Perhaps too much was broken to allow for reinstallation. I also don't know why the façade was not simply recreated. When West was constructed, a nearly identical dorm was built on the other side of the Broadway quad, Doak Hall. Doak has undergone renovations over the course of its life as well, but it has kept its original centerpiece. Again, it looks very much (perhaps identical to) the way West once looked. I have placed a (not so great) photo of its façade below. So what happened to the original features of West Hall? I am pleased to say that the university had the foresight to keep many of those elements. As you can see in the following set, they are placed in an exhibit just to the east of the main entrance to the building. West Hall is named in honor of James Marion West, a tycoon of the lumber, gas, and cattle businesses. It was the first dorm on campus for men and it stands more or less directly across from Doak which was the first residence hall for women on campus. Both have long ceased being dorms. They were funded by grants and loans from the Public Works Administration arm of the federal government during the Great Depression. Both were designed architect W.W. Watkin. It opened with the name Men's Dormitory #1. It was subsequently renamed in honor of West. A native of Mississippi, West moved with his parents to east Texas as a boy. From very modest roots, he would become the equivalent of a billionaire in today's dollars. He served on the Tech Board and was its president in 1940 and 1941. The rural community of Westville, Texas is also named for him.
In addition to noticing changes, I am also keen on noticing trends. For example, there are dozens of West Halls at colleges and universities across the U.S. Most of them seem to be dormitories, as was the case with the West Hall I covered in my post on Arizona State. Most of them are also named for their relative position on campus, which was also the case with the West Hall at ASU. I can only think of three other West Halls that are named for someone. A residence hall at the University of North Dakota which is named for John C. West the university's sixth president. The West Hall at Valdosta State University in Georgia is named for William Stanley West, who prior to becoming a U.S. Senator, was a state senator who helped establish the university. The last would be Joe West Hall at San Jose State. However, I do not know anything about the building's namesake. I only know the building thanks to the number of student deaths that have occurred in the building. Suicides are unfortunate reality in higher ed, and residence halls are a common location for these tragedies, but Joe West seems to have had more than its fair share. The building was slated for demolition as the university updates its residence facilities on campus, but it is still standing and in-use as of this writing.
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Today's post is a return to the community college sector. I first stepped on to the Itawamba Community College campus in the fall of 2023. One of my sons plays in his high school band, and a regional competition with bands from several states was held there. The reason, aside from being in a location with general ease of access to high school bands from Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee, is that like its counterpart Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia, Itawamba has a very large campus complete with intercollegiate athletics facilities. I had wanted to explore the campus some at the time, but timing and the competition did not leave me with enough time to do so. Thankfully, I was able to return to the campus a bit unexpectedly and had the chance to take some photos for this post. Although it was not for my son's band, there was in fact another high school band competition taking place there during this visit. ICC gets its name from Itawamba County, one of the principal counties the colleges serve. The name comes from the Native American Chickasaw Chief known to European Americans by his English name of Levi Colbert and to the Chicksaw by the name Itte-wamba Mingo. The name means Bench Chief in English. Itte-wamba Mingo was born in 1759 in present day Muscle Shoals, Alabama to Scots American father James Logan Colbert and Choctaw mother Minta Hoye. He was one of seven children. Thanks to a bilingual, bicultural upbringing both Itte-wamba Mingo/Levi and his brother George (also known as Tootemastubbe in the Native tongue) became interpreters for in the negotiations of the Treaty of Pontotoc Creek (part of the larger process began with the Indian Removal Act of 1830 which saw Native Americans forced to move west of the Mississippi, with much of the original terms of the various treaties ignored by the Federal government). In addition to having the college and the county named after him in Mississippi, Colbert County Alabama, home to Muscle Shoals, is named in honor of Levi/Itte-wamba and his brother George/ Tootemastubbe as is town of Colbert's Spring, Alabama. Honoring Itte-wamba Mingo with the name of two counties, a town, and a community college is fitting, although hardly sufficient given the maltreatment of the Chickasaw and other Native American nations forced west. The treatment of Chickasaw was terrible, even more so since they had allied themselves with the U.S. during the War of 1812 and other conflicts. ICC was founded in 1948 with the name Itawamba Junior College. Public community colleges in Mississippi officially date back to 1928. But as with many things, their roots go back further. As was the case with Northwest Mississippi Community College, ICC really began its life as an agricultural high school. If you are unfamiliar with the agricultural high school, an easy analogy is a vo-tech focusing on things farming and home economics. The state passed the County Agricultural High School Law in 1908. The schools established under the law were boarding schools. Each school was required to have twenty acres of land to support agricultural education. Between 1908 and 1919, fifty agricultural high schools opened across Mississippi. This was a remarkable achievement, as prior to their establishment there were only a handful of high schools in the state and more or less all of them were located in the state’s few cities and they only had a four-month academic year. The establishment of the ag schools was a hit, and this was the start of many improvements within the public schools in the state. Mississippi continued formalizing public schools and the roles of the ag high schools began to change. In 1924, the Mississippi legislature approved the teaching of college-level courses at the ag schools with most courses being in the area of teacher preparation. These courses were a hit and served to fill a gap in the state’s growing higher education system. Indeed, the programs were so successful that in 1928 Mississippi passed the Public Junior College Law. The law sought to advance the college-level mission of the agricultural high schools and the reaction was immediately positive. When the law went into effect, ten of the high schools were launching college courses. From these seeds, the current community college system in Mississippi would grow. Over time, the mission of the schools saw them go from offering high school courses, to a mix of high school and college, to college-level courses only. The names of the institutions operating during this period varied according to these evolving standards, going from “agricultural high school” to “agricultural high school and junior college” to “junior college”. Eventually, “junior college" fell away for the modern “community college” moniker. Adoption of the various names varied by each institution based on their particular needs and offerings. Itawamba did not make the transition from agricultural high school to junior college too quickly. Although Itawamba and what would become today’s Northeast Mississippi Community College were approved to move to junior college status in 1941 this would not happen until 1948 thanks to World War II. Things were actually moving along quite nicely to make the transition from high school to junior college before the outbreak of the war. Works Progress Administration (WPA) funds were available to support the change, and to do their part the people of Itawamba County went to the polls on the warm Tuesday that was September 21, 1941, and approved a bond of $55,000 (about $1.18 million in 2024 value) to construct new buildings for the transition. Of course, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor less than ninety days later and the new college, like so many things, had to wait until after the war. It was not the first challenge in the institution’s history, nor would it be the last. When it comes to establishing something as large or larger than a community college, any success is due to a group of people. Despite this fact, in many cases a person or a small group of individuals are sometimes noted as being the champion or main facilitator of the institution. In terms of making the transition from an agricultural high school to a junior college one such champion was George W. Owens. Owens was an alumnus of the agricultural high school (I believe he was from the Class of 1927). He would go on to serve several terms in the Mississippi House of Representatives and later, after a failed re-election bid, would serve in the paid position of Assistant Clerk of the House. His advocacy for and support of Itawamba began when he was still a student. In 1926, a wooden structure serving as the boys’ dorm burned down. Although the national economy in 1926 was doing quite well, funds were not readily available in rural Mississippi to immediately rebuild. It was up to locals in the area to help the institution rebuild. One of the twenty people who personally signed a promissory note to get the necessary funds was Owens, who was a senior that year. Now that is loyalty and dedication! There is currently a scholarship at Itawamba called the George W. Owens and Mae H. Owens Endowed Scholarship. I was unable to find it if Mr. Owens and his wife established the scholarship, or if it was established by others to honor them. Despite the important role Owens played in Itawamba’s history, there is nothing on campus that I could find that honors him. One might imagine a building or street would carry his name, but this not the case. Today, ICC has almost 5,000 students in terms of enrollment, and an FTE of about 3,160 students across multiple campuses, and the Itawamba Indians compete in ten intercollegiate sports, five each for women and men.. The college’s catchment area includes five counties: Chickasaw, Itawamba, Lee, Monroe, and Pontotoc. Below are two views of the David Cole Student Services Building. Cole was selected as ICC's fourth president in 1993 and served in that role until his retirement in 2013. Twenty years is a very long time to president of college! He had previously served as Superintendent of the South Panola School District in Batesville, Mississippi. The building opened during his tenure in the position and was initially called the Student Services Building. Opening in 1998, the building sits on the site of the original Itawamba Agricultural High School building's location. Coming in at 63,000 square feet, it contains a dining area, administrative offices, student meeting rooms, and a variety of other spaces. It was the second building constructed during Cole's presidency. The building was named in his honor in 2013. The first photo below is the Walk of Memories. It is a pathway that separates the site of the original Agricultural High School and the first community college buildings. People can buy inscribed bricks along the walkway. The second photo, which was the best of some poorly framed ones I took with the sun in my eyes, isMagnolia Hall. Magnolia is one the dorms on the ICC campus and one of two that is on the south side of the campus. You cannot tell it from this photo, but it is a rather large L-shaped structure. It is a very new building. Groundbreaking for the residence hall was held on October 30, 2020. It was completed in 2022, and was formally opened on July 14th that year. The three-story building comes in at 71,921 square feet and can accommodate about 250 residents. It cost $19,012,938 to complete. The building was the work of architect Michael Taylor of the Pryor Morrow architecture firm. There is another dorm behind it, Sheffield Hall, which is the largest on campus. Sheffield, by the way, is named for ICC's first president, Philip A. Sheffield, who served in that role from 1948 until 1960. I didn't realize it was there during my visit or I would have taken a photo. Sheffield can accommodate nearly 300 residents. There is also an endowed scholarship at ICC named for President Sheffield. The first photo below is a central walkway between a number of buildings in the original heart of the campus. The building on the right in that photo is the Cole Student Services Building. One the left is a series of buildings that are connected via covered walkways and courtyards. The first building on the left in that photo is the E-learning Building. The distance learning unit at ICC is called elearning. The second photo shows the covered walkway connection between E-learning (which is just out of view) and the Language Building. The walkway leading to this area has the marker you see in the third photo, commemorating the Agricultural High School Class of 1927. The fourth photo shows the Language Building (on the left) and the Community Relations Building on the right. It's neat how all of the buildings in this group have offices and classrooms that open directly to the outside without a central hallway. The fifth photo is the backside of the Community Relations Building as seen from its courtyard area. The sixth photo is the Administration Building again, this time on the other side where the building is connected to the Community Relations Building. It is a little difficult to tell it from this photo, but there is a small fountain in the circular area where the stone sits. The seventh photo is the courtyard area by the Administration Building. The last photo was taken by the Administration Building looking back in the direction where the first photo in this set was taken. Unfortunately, despite some considerable time sleuthing online, I was not able to find out anything about these structures. Across from the Administration Building and next to the Cole Student Services Building is the ICC Library, the subject of the next set. The library was closed that day, or I would have went in and browsed around some. The two photos of the next set are of the Student Activities Building. I didn't realize it as I toured campus, but this is actually the oldest currently standing building on campus. It opened in 1961 and comes in at about 13,000 square feet of space. It has been updated a number of times over the years, but it reopened this past August after a significant renovation that came with a $4.1 million price tag. It will be supplemented by a new 9,000 square foot conference and food building currently under construction with an anticipated opening date of sometime in the spring of 2026. The next set of photos are all of residence halls. First up is Monroe Hall. I would have guessed from its appearance that they building opened in the mid-1970's. It just has that kind of vibe architecturally. In fact, it opened in 1968. Monroe recently underwent a renovation which upgraded the interior. The rooms in Monroe were originally designed with double occupancy rooms, but now after the renovation are meant for single students. Architect Michael Taylor of the Pryor Morrow firm did the design work for the renovation. The work was completed in July 2024. The name reflects Monroe County, which is part of the ICC catchment area and which supports the college. The county, and hence the dorm, is named after President James Monroe, the fifth president of the U.S. The second photo is the Monroe Hall Annex, which sits adjacent to its namesake to the north. I was not able to fully discern if it was renovated along with Monroe, but I have the impression from what I did find online that it was not. Despite the fact that it an "annex", it seems as big or bigger than Monroe Hall itself. I was not able to find out anything about the building. The third photo is Lee Hall. It looks very similar to Monroe with the exception that it is one story taller. Its name is derived from Lee County, Mississippi, and another of the counties that fall within the ICC catchment area. The county is named after Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The fourth photo is Pontotoc Hall, a men's residence hall. Pontotoc Hall receives its name from the eponymous county which is part of the ICC catchment area. Pontotoc is a Chickasaw word meaning “place of the hanging grapes”. I was not able to find out much of anything about the building, but it was apparently open in 1969 as I found a comment on a social media post from the college to that effect. Pontotoc is another county within the ICC catchment area. The fourth photo is Chickasaw Hall. I believe it also underwent a recent renovation, but the information I found online about it was sketchy so I cannot say for certain. I could find no real information about the building. The last photo is Itawamba Hall. I am not certain when it was built, but it was recent enough that the architecture firm McCarty Architects still has a page dedicated to it on their website (see here). Itawamba houses up to 200 women in its 42,500 square feet of space. I could find no other information about the building online. The first photo below is the Boggs Humanities Building. It takes its name in honor of Wythel E. Boggs (commonly called "W.E."), a long serving faculty member and administrator at Itawamba. Indeed, his career at Itawamba spanned some forty years from 1961 until 2001. Boggs was interim president of the college during the 2000-2001 year. His wife Gwen was also an instructor at ICC, teaching courses in the Department of Social Sciences. The building was named in their honor in 2005. The second photo is the John S. Crubaugh Technical Education Building. Crubaugh joined the ranks at ICC in 1948 when he was hired to be Dean of Students. During his time at Itawamba he was principal of the Agricultural High School, coached the women's basketball team, and the baseball team. He became the second president of ICC in 1960 when then president Sheffield passed away while in office. He held that role until 1972. Unfortunately, I was not able to find out anything about the building. The last two photos are of the W.O. Benjamin Fine Arts Center. The building opened in 1978 and was renovated in 2021/2022. The building has exhibit space and a large auditorium and comes in at about 24,000 square feet. The building is named in honor of former ICC President Winston Odean Benjamin. I was not able to find out anything more about the building. There is a lovely large green space on campus and it is home to the Crane Pavilion, which can be seen in the first photo of the following set. I know the pavilion opened sometime during the 1990's, but I was not able to find out exactly when. Beyond the pavilion is a small belltower which you can see in the second photo. I assume it was constructed at the same time, but I found no information about it online. Just to the west of the Crane pavilion is Academic Hall, which can be seen in the third photo. I could not find out anything at all about the building unfortunately. The last two photos show the front of the Natural Sciences Building. It opened in 1996. Beyond that, I was not able to learn anything about the building. The first photo in the set below is the Carrie Ball Williamson Recreation Center. Opening in 2006, the Williamson Center is a multiuse facility. In addition to having traditional weight training and cardiovascular exercise equipment spaces, it also contains classrooms and a gym. The $2.6 million (about $4.1 million today) facility was designed by Tupelo-based McCarty Company Design Group. McCarty has designed numerous collegiate structures including buildings at Mississippi State University, Northeast Mississippi Community College, the University of Southern Mississippi, and the University of Mississippi. As you can see the Williamson is physically connected to the Bud and Buster Davis Event Center by a walkway on each building's second floor. The second and third photos are of the Bud and Buster Davis Event Center. Named for iconic ICC basketball coaches Windle “Buster” Davis and Kindle “Bud” Davis, the Davis Event Center is a relatively new structure. Opening in 2007, it is the home of the ICC basketball programs (men’s and women’s). It has a total seating capacity of 3,500 including 2,800 with chair-back seating. The ICC commencements are held in Davis, and it is used for other events like concerts. The building cost roughly $15.6 million (roughly $23.8 million in 2024 dollars) to construct. It was also designed by the Tupelo-based firm the McCarty Company Design Group. As fate would have it, ICC won the first game played in the facility when the Lady Indians beat the Holmes Community College Lady Bulldogs on January 11, 2007. The building was not open during my visit, and I took the third photo of the interior through the door (hence the rather dark tone of the picture). The last photo of this set is the back of the building along with the rear of the Williamson Recreation Center. The individuals you see in this photo are students from the various high schools on campus getting ready for the band competition. The next set is of the ICC football stadium. The stadium takes its name in honor of Aaron Colus “Butch” Lambert. Lambert was an alumnus of the institution when it was still the Itawamba Agricultural High School (Class of 1941). He joined the Navy during World War II and when he was discharged he went to the University of Mississippi where he played football. An injury in 1946 ended his playing career early. Then Ole Miss head coach Johnny Vaught kept Lambert as a student manager. After completing his work at Ole Miss, Lambert started the football program at ICC, then known as Itawamba Junior College, in 1949. He served as athletic director at the college for three years. He remained active in collegiate sports for decades thereafter but not in a coaching capacity. He was an official for the SEC, refereeing both football and basketball for the conference. He was an SEC football Line Judge from 1953 to 1982 and an SEC basketball referee from 953 to 1973. He was the SEC's Chief Line Judge in 1980 and 1981. He officiated twelve bowl games including two which determined national champions - the 1975 and 1982 Orange Bowl games. He was a state legislator and state tax commissioner. Lambert was also president of the National Junior College Athletic Association. He passed away on January 26, 1995 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease). The stadium opened in 1994. Next are two views of the ICC softball stadium. The stands, press box, and locker room facility in the middle are new, having opened in September of this year. The new space was added to an existing softball field. As you can tell, the dugouts are older. The press box has 1,500 square feet of space, and there is a 4,500 square feet locker room facility underneath which also serves the tennis team. It can seat 380 people and has deck areas on either side of the press box. I will close with a photo of the ICC lamppost sign. The Itawamba campus is nice and it has some cool features to it. The ICC campus in Tupelo has seen a good deal amount of construction as well, and if I am ever in the vicinity, I will swing by to take a tour and post about it.
This past weekend I was in Lubbock, Texas during homecoming weekend. The Red Raiders suffered an unexpected and decisive defeat at the hands of the Baylor Bears. It was a tough loss particularly since it was homecoming, The university had far more events and activities on campus for the game and losing after all of the celebration was tough. In my post last month, I shared some photos of campus and Jones Stadium from September 7, 1996 in a post called Texas Tech Memories. I wanted to recreate some of those photos to show the difference in Jones Stadium and the other spots on campus covered in that post and how they appear now. I did not get the exact framing of the academic buildings on campus, although they are pretty close. That was on me. I didn’t pull up the post on my phone to see exactly where I had been standing when I took those photos back in the 90’s and just kind of guessed where they were taken from memory. I could have done so, and probably should have as it would have made for a better post. I blame my lack of focus on the loss. I was also unable to get the exact shot of Jones Stadium. That was not due to a lack of trying on my part, but rather the fact that Jones has been completely transformed. The spot where I took the photo in that post no longer exists. Jones was a completely different stadium then. It had exposed metal framing the way Neyland Stadium at my other alma mater Tennessee did. It was not entirely encircled with seats, with the one end zone completely void of seating. It wasn’t a bad stadium by any means, but it had far less capacity and was plain in the same way that many, perhaps most, college stadiums were at the time. In a future post, I will provide a more detailed before and after of the stadium. Regardless, the nearest place you can stand which gives you a similar view as the one seen in my last post on Jones Stadium can be had from the current Gate 6 entrance to Jones AT&T Stadium. The set below shows the area of Gate 6. The place where I was standing in the photo of 1996 would be to the left in this photo under the new south endzone portion of the stadium. Thus, the most similar view to that of the 1996 photo would be the one you see in the second picture. If you compare the second photo with the one from my September 8th post, you can see that the break in the wall on the far right in that photo is the same as the single one in view in this photo. That is where the stairs are located to go down to the lower seating area. In the older photo, there is a ramp in front of where you see the ice freezer in this photo. Although it has been removed, the hand rail is the same in both photos. The photos in this set are of the east side of the stadium in the vicinity of Gate 6. The south end zone area is brand new. It has club, loge, and suite seating. It is a spectacular addition! The photos in this set are of the south end first from the outside, then three view of just inside the gate, and finally of the pedestrian bridge that connects the stadium to the Sports Performance Center (see below). The sixth photo is from June, 1996. I took it during my first trip to Lubbock when I was looking for an apartment for the following August. There was once a sports bubble training facility where the new Sports Performance Center now stands. This photo shows part of that structure as well as the Double T sign where it once stood on the old south end of the place. The seventh photo is a better view of the sign as well as the east side of the stadium as it was in 1996. The last photo is also from 1996, and it gives you a view of the west-side stands. The next set gives a few additional views from the seats in front of the box on the east side of the stadium by the Tech Club. The Tech Club is very nice, by the way, and it has something that would have been unthinkable in most college football stadiums during my undergraduate years and even later when I was in graduate school: a full restaurant and bar with great food and drinks. We had things like hotdogs, burgers, and nachos back in the day. Today, you can enjoy a chef curated menu and a glass of fine bourbon or wine if you choose. Gone are the days of sitting in the weather – hot sun, rain, or cold. You can sit inside an air-conditioned box suite watching the game live in the same comfort as in your own home. It’s quite nice. Plus, if you are a member, you can go there for lunch and dinner any time (except Mondays when it is closed at lunchtime). Such things come at a price, of course, and although general seating tickets at most colleges have reached stratospheric prices, getting a box costs more than a college degree did back in my day. Progress is not cheap, let me tell you. But, if you can swing it, it's worth it. This area gives a tremendous view of the field, and although you are not on the home side of the stadium, you do get to look straight at the Tech bench area. It is an incredible place to watch a game. I did not include photos of the Masked Rider statue in my September post because it did not exist in 1996. The piece stands behind the Frazier Alumni Pavilion and in front of the Marsha Sharp Center for Student Athletes just southwest of Jones AT&T Stadium. The piece is the work of artist Grant Speed and it was installed in 2000. The Masked Rider is one of the Tech mascot's. each year a student is chosen to be the new Masked Rider and they climb aboard a black American Quarter Horse and dash out on to the field at the beginning of each football game. The Masked Rider appears at all manner of other events and is a big deal on campus. All of the colleges and universities in Texas seem to have some hand sign to indicate their school. The University of Texas at Austin has the Hook 'em Horns sign, Texas A&M has the Gig 'em sign, and many others, several of which who have only recently developed them, have theirs as well. Ours has been the "Guns Up" sign, and that is what you see the Masked Rider doing here. Although the statue appears to be a male figure, many of the most recent Masked Riders have actually been women. The statue of Racer 1 at Murray State University in Kentucky reminds me of this statue. This final set follows my previous post from September 8th in terms of the buildings and views. First is a photo of Memorial Circle and the Administration Building today. It was taken a little closer and to the left (east) of where I was standing in 1996. It is obviously a closer photo as well. The big difference between the two would be the addition of a significant number of trees in the Circle as well as the addition of a the large Pfluger Fountain. The addition of the fountain also necessitated a change in the location of the flagpoles. Whereas before they stretched along the -west axis of the center of the circle, today they stand on the west side.
The second, third, and fourth photos are the Mechanical Engineering Building, now called the Mechanical Engineering Building South thanks to a new structure which was built behind it to the north. The shrubs from 1996 are gone, but the large tree to the right of the main entrance is still there. You can see the Double T sign on Jones AT&T Stadium on the right in the third photo. The building on the right in that photo is the Terry Filler Petroleum Engineering Research Building which was not in existence in 1996. The fifth and sixth photos show the spot where the English-Philosophy Building once stood. Today, the area is the end of a pedestrian mall extending to student housing to the west. The sculpture you see here is "Lapstrake", the work of noted artist Jesús Moroles. You can watch a video about the piece wherein he discusses the piece here. Although you really cannot tell it in these the piece is massive, standing twenty-three feet. It was odd to stand here admiring this piece while trying to remember exactly what it was like to be there when the English-Philosophy Building was still standing. There is a connection between the artist and another building on campus. Moroles created the Houston Police Officer's Memorial in the Buffalo Bayou Park area in Houston. Many individuals donated funds for this memorial, and among the larger donors was the Neva and Wesley West Foundation. Wesley West was the second son of James Marion West. James Marion West was a Houston-based oil, lumber, and ranch tycoon, who served on the Texas Tech Board from 1935 to 1941 and was president of that body in 1940 and 1941. West Hall on the campus is named in his honor. The next six photos are of the Electrical Engineering Building. The first two do not match any of the photos in my September 8th post. But, I love the arches so common on the older buildings at Tech I had to include them. The sixth photo shows the building looking northward. The dedication plaque is in the last post on the south end of these arches. The eighth and ninth photos are close to being in the same spots and angles as those from my earlier post. After lunch today, I was reading some of the news outlets for higher education and I ran across a piece noting that Duke University was celebrating its centennial this year. The centennial part caught me by surprise. After all, the university traces its roots back to the Brown School which was founded in 1838. Indeed, Duke's seal carries the 1838 date. That would mean, of course, that Duke is 186 years old, not one hundred. As I read the piece, I realized the centennial commemorates the massive donation by James B. Duke on December 11, 1924 which transformed it from the small quiet school known as Trinity College to the powerhouse research university it is today. Every year is an anniversary of some sort, of course, and when I thought about it, I could come up with twelve colleges and universities which are celebrating their centennial this year. The first one that came to mind was High Point University, since it is just a little over an hour's drive from Duke.
I think its great when colleges and universities take the time to celebrate important milestones. If you have read this blog, you know that I have academic memorabilia of all kinds, and although it is not a huge percentage of my collection, I do have a number of items related to anniversaries. I completed my master's degree at the University of Tennessee in 1994, the bicentennial year of the university. I picked up a number of items for the anniversary back then. One of them is the first item you see below, a short photobook on the bicentennial. As it happens, everyone who graduated that year has a memento of the event as all of our diplomas not only carry the anniversary date but the official bicentennial logo as well. You can see it on my diploma in the second photo. Its odd to think it, but since it is 2024 it has been thirty years since that all of that happened. As I noted in early posts this year, I visited the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill this spring. While there, I stayed at the university's on-campus hotel, the Carolina Inn. It is a lovely hotel and the people there were great during both of my stays. As it happens, the Inn is celebrating its centennial this year, a fact noted by my room's key card as seen in the third and fourth photos. Last year, my doctoral alma mater Texas Tech celebrated its centennial. I have a number of items from that celebration including the book you see in the fifth photo. Last year was also an anniversary year for the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL). UMSL is a young institution, and it was celebrating its sixtieth anniversary last year. I was on campus and snagged the sticker with the official anniversary logo on it you see in the sixth photo. Texas Tech, of course, is the flagship institution in the Texas Tech University System. Another of the five universities in that system had its fiftieth anniversary, or its semicentennial, in 2019. The Texas Tech Health Sciences Center Lubbock was fifty that year, and I picked up the t-shirt marking the anniversary you see in the seventh and eighth photos during a visit. I have a number of other things associated with numerous college and university anniversaries, far too many to take the time to photograph for a quick post. Many of them are lapel pins, something I have a lot of for colleges and universities in general and not merely for their anniversaries. A good example would be the last photo in this set, an anniversary lapel pin for Mount Union College (now the University of Mount Union) which was celebrating its sesquicentennial in 1996. Anyway, the Duke story started my thinking on these things. Happy anniversary to Duke and the many other colleges having an important milestone year in 2024! So yesterday was September 7, and my alma mater Texas Tech was on the road and lost a game to Washington State University. It was Tech's second game of the season and that makes them 1 and 1 overall. They have a tough schedule and an unusual one given the shakeup in the Big 12. In addition to the usual suspects over the last several years, they have Colorado, Arizona, and Arizona State on their schedule. Only time will tell how the season will go. But the game and the date had me thinking. I remembered that I had been on campus on September 7, 1996. It stands out to me because that was the semester I began my doctoral studies and despite the fact that the Red Raiders played their second game of the season that Saturday, neither of them had been on campus. We lost our first game that year on the road at Kansas State. The second game had been at a neutral stadium. We beat Oklahoma State that morning at Texas Stadium, the then home to the Dallas Cowboys, 31 to 3. I didn't have cable at the time, but I listened to the game on the radio. That afternoon, I went to a friend's house and watched my other alma mater Tennessee beat UCLA at home. I had to run by campus to pick something up and walked across campus to the Jones Stadium and took some photos along the way. To say that it doesn't look the same these days is an understatement. It doesn't have the exact same name either. Although commonly called "Jones Stadium" in those days, it opened as the Clifford B. and Audrey Jones Stadium. Jones was on the then-named Texas Technological College board when it opened in 1923. He would became chair of the board in 1927. Twelve years later, he was chosen as Tech's third president. It was during his tenure in that role that the Texas Tech Foundation was established. He didn't stay president for long, especially given the time most presidents stayed in office during that era. He stepped down in 1944 due to health concerns. He was named President Emeritus and stayed active in his support for Tech. He and Audrey gave $100,000 (about $1.6 million in 2024 value) to aid in the construction of the stadium. The stadium opened in 1947 and the first game there took place on November 29th. The Red Raiders won that game, beating the Hardin-Simmons Cowboys 14 to 6. The official dedication took place at half time during the game. The stadium had a capacity of 27,000 when it opened. It has been enlarged numerous time Back then, Tech's athletic teams were known as the Matadors, not the Red Raiders. They had that name from 1925 to 1936. The football team donned new red uniforms on a road trip to Los Angeles on October 26, 1934 where they beat heavily favored Loyola Marymount. A local sports reporter in LA referred to them as a "red raiding team" and the description stuck. Below is a view looking northwest inside Jones Stadium that day twenty-eight years ago. Jones has been enlarged a lot since then. In fact, it really doesn't look the same at all from the outside. It has also seen its named changed. A licensing agreement with SBC Communications (Southwestern Bell Corporation) saw it renamed Jones SBC Stadium in 2000. AT&T bought out SBC so in 2006 it was renamed again to Jones AT&T Stadium. It still carries that moniker. I don't know for certain what Jones' capacity was in 1996. It was somewhere around 53,000. I know this because I remember thinking it was just about half or so of Neyland Stadium at the University of Tennessee at the time. Below are some photos I took along the way to Jones Stadium. Back then, not all statistical software was available on desktop computers. Personal computers of that era were just beginning to be able to cope with the size and processing demands of such things, so anything of substance was still frequently ran on a main frame. My major professor had ran some analyses the previous day and asked me to swing by and pick up the results. The main frame was in the Computer Science Building and I was on my way to pick up the print outs from her stats run. The first photo below is looking southward across Memorial Circle toward the Administration Building. The second and third photos are of the Mechanical Engineering Building, taken on opposite sides of a quad known as the Engineering Key. It sits on the northern edge of the Key. The arches are really cool and I love the look of them. Arches like that are seen all across campus. The fourth photo is the since razed English and Philosophy Building. When I was on campus in the late 90's, the people I knew who were interested in campus architecture did not like the English and Philosophy Building. Well, that's not quite correct. They didn't like it where it was. The Engineering Key, as you can see from these photos, pretty much carries the Spanish architecture them in a traditional sense. English-Philosophy carried the blonde brick theme, but that was it. Otherwise, it was a mid-century piece that had nothing much in common with that part of campus. I understood that complaint, but it was not the only mid-century on campus, and it was not at all the least attractive. There were and are a number of mid-rise buildings on campus that have nothing in common with the Spanish theme except they too are clad in the same brick. Several of those buildings are simply plain; a couple of them are, in my opinion, rather ugly. They would be acceptable and not terrible on another campus, but given the beauty of the Spanish-styled structures on Tech's campus they really stand out and not in a good way. None the less, I always liked the building. Photos five and six are the Electrical Engineering Building. I love the archways on that building as well. You can just see the Computer Science Building in the background of the first photo. I don't remember why I did not take a photo of that building. It may have been that since I was going inside of it I didn't think to take a photo. It is also a modern style building and not too attractive so I may have deliberately chosen not to take a photo of it.
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January 2025
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