President Harker told the freshman, “You’re a student today, but you’re a Blue Hen forever. You’re tied to this University and its people, and to all the virtual strangers sitting way too close to you right now.”
The students all received gold t-shirts which featured the University’s new slogan, Dare to be first. Harker commented that he hoped the Class of 2014 would dare to make the world a more innovative, more humane, more beautiful place to be.
After the ceremony, the students were treated to a meal just outside the Field House and all freshman were encouraged to sign their class banner. The banner, sponsored by the UD Alumni Association, will be displayed at class-specific events over the course of the next four years, in particular Commencement 2014. Check out the photos of the newest Blue Hens engaging in this newest UD tradition.
So the students are back and photos from move in day and all that will be posted eventually, but before we get to the Sturm und Drang of Arrival Survival and lugging refrigerators up flights of steps, the UD Alumni Relations Blog feels compelled to tell you, loyal reader, about an amazing development in the University of Delaware dining halls.
UD Dining Services has taken macaroni & cheese, added a 21st century twist and created Le Mac, an entire menu around variations on mac & cheese. Blue Hens now have a station that offers 10 wide-ranging variations of mac and cheese with all kinds of ingredients including several cheeses (pepper jack, cheddar, Monterey jack, fontina, bleu), spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes, grilled chicken, hot sauce, tuna, onion, red peppers and more.
While the UD Alumni Relations Blog is in awe of this major culinary achievement, we are frankly outraged that this was not available when we were in school. All we got was cheddar! For any student not to have these options in the dining hall is an ABSOLUTE TRAVESTY! AHHHHHHH!
(deep breaths)
Anyhoo – you can best believe this semester that we’ll be sneaking out of Alumni Hall and sneaking into Russell or Pencader Dining Halls to dominate Le Mac. When we do, we’ll make sure to bring you every mouthwatering bite.
Off campus Blue Hens have been coming back to Newark throughout the week. Student-Athletes have been in the dorms since preseason started. And some students have been on campus because they’ve been taking classes. But all that isn’t the same as move-in day.
Yesterday marked the beginning the what the UD Alumni Relations Blog has dubbed The Return as early move-in kicked off. Check out the photos below and see for yourself. Pencader Dining Hall looked to be filling up and the Independence Turf (Pencader Dorms, RIP) hosted some bros playing sports.
We have to admit it – summer in Newark is pretty nice without the students:
There’s little traffic on Cleveland Ave.
Newark Bagel doesn’t have a permanent line out the door.
Semi-suicidal jaywalkers don’t roam the street, jumping in front of your car.
One need not dodge bikers riding on the sidewalk (when they shouldn’t be!).
That said, it’s great to see campus getting ready for the return of the kids. There’s an energy in air when Newark’s population increases by about 15,000 Blue Hens that is simply awesome.
With that in mind, check out the photos of the Rodney Residence Hall Complex – the dumpsters are a give away that this weekend marks the return of students. Stay tuned, loyal readers, more photos chronicling “The Return” will be posted throughout the next week.
The 272-acre (!) site was purchased for approximately $24 million in November 2009 and was possibly home to a zombie attack in the same year. UD has since announced plans to develop a new research and technology campus on the site to reshape the southern entrance to campus. The UD Alumni Relations Blog has put forth its own plans to develop the site – plans which include a giant skate park, several water slides, a polo ground with stables (see above) and, of course, a monorail. Sadly (for humanity), the University has not granted our proposal a formal hearing.
URS will be responsible for the decommissioning/cleaning of equipment, asbestos abatement, demolition of buildings and removal/recycling/disposal of all materials. Approximately 95 percent of the material from the site will be recycled and most of the work is expected to be complete in November 2011.
We will continue pressing our plan (polo ground, monorail, et al) and we would love to hear your thoughts, loyal reader. Drop them in the comments.
Shark Week is always great and , thanks to UD’s College of Earth, Ocean and Environment, it is especially awesome at the University of Delaware. There are lots of reasons why Shark Week rocks and it’s a big hit on campus.
That said, the UD Alumni Relations Blog thinks that it’s time to recognize the animal that truly rules campus – the mighty squirrel (dun dun dunnnnnnn). Squirrels basically own the University of Delaware and while we have chronicled it before, it is easy to forget.
Check out the photos below for evidence of their fearlessness as this squirrel did everything but kick us in the shins. Stay vigilant, Blue Hens, for any day now they will rise up and attack!
Stark, a Rhodes scholar and former Assistant U.S. Attorney, was nominated to the court earlier this year by President Barack Obama and even though the nomination faced no opposition, it took over a year for it to be approved.
Nonetheless, when we read the news we couldn’t help but get choked up as Stark is a model Blue Hen. In addition to having served as president of the UDAA, he was awarded the Outstanding Alumni Award in 2009 and is featured on UDconnection.com in an alumni spotlight (hard to top that!). So this weekend, the UD Alumni Relations Blog will surely raise a glass to Len Stark because he’s doing a great job representing (and representin’) Blue Hens around the world.
This year we’re gripped with shark fever again and the only cure is more Sea Talk – ocean news from the University of Delaware. Check out the one-minute video below, loyal reader, and learn about the sharks of Delaware.
The UD Alumni Relations Blog is always on the lookout for Blue Hens who are doing great things. Since we’re lazy we don’t look that diligently and we rely on the help of others to clue us in to the amazing work alumni do.
Avi Amon ’08 sent us an email the other day to clue us into the work of Jenny Somers ’07 and Tyler Somers ’07 who are in the midst of putting together their third full length album of music that a fan dubbed ‘soulgrass’ (soul + bluegrass, geddit?). Jenny & Tyler were on campus only a few months ago performing in Mitchell Hall, but now they’re back in Nashville getting ready to take the music world by storm.
Amon, who recently visited Jenny & Tyler, put together a video (he’s the one at the piano) so you, loyal reader, can get a behind-the-scenes look at what the duo is all about. Check out the video below – simply put, after watching it our heart grew three sizes seeing Blue Hens following their dreams and achieving them. Our advice is to get on the Jenny & Tyler bandwagon now so when they get huge you can dismiss all their new fans with such hipster classics as, “I liked their early work better” or “I remember seeing them in [insert small venue name] and it was far more intimate” or the like.
The UD Alumni Relations Blog agrees that children are to be seen and not heard. In fact, it’s even better when they are not seen. We keep our student workers chained to their desks in the basement of our office – it’s good preparation for life in the real world
So you can imagine how our world was rocked when a University of Delaware professor stated in a recently published book that we need to listen to kids more and lay off the draconian punishments when disciplining them, particularly in school. In Homeroom Security: School Discipline in an Age of Fear, Aaron Kupchik, associate professor in the UD Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, found that disciplinarians followed what he calls excessive and counterproductive strategies for dealing with students’ misbehavior, one of the worst of which is the popular notion of zero tolerance.
Kupchik’s book outlines suggested strategies, based on data, for making schools safer. Among them: mandatory tutoring rather than suspension and involving students in rule creation. Not among them: dunce caps and shoving bamboo chutes up the fingernails of poorly behaved students.
@leah_x3 etudiez avant la classe! nous sommes desolees de ton programme mysterieux 20 hours ago
Good luck!! RT @UDMB: Scripts-check; pizza-check; buses-check; bullhorn-check; Rehearsal @ football practice fields @ 2 PM. BRING IT UDMB! 20 hours ago
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So you can imagine how our world was rocked when a University of Delaware professor stated in a recently published book that we need to listen to kids more and lay off the draconian punishments when disciplining them, particularly in school. In Homeroom Security: School Discipline in an Age of Fear, Aaron Kupchik, associate professor in the UD Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, found that disciplinarians followed what he calls excessive and counterproductive strategies for dealing with students’ misbehavior, one of the worst of which is the popular notion of zero tolerance.
