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Summer 2003 - in review
 Media Credit: Eric O'Link Landwehr Construction Foreman Tom Kenning and members of his crew study the utility tunnel entrance to the Miller Center Wednesday, July 30. The tunnel eventually connected the library with Hill- Case Hall and the Performing Arts Center.
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 Media Credit: Adam Masloski Curt Hickorytech deals with the mass of wires in the basement of Stewart Hall as part of the installation process for SCSU�s new phone system.
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 Media Credit: scott theisen Nicole Barthell burns a pair of sparklers as she waits for the July Fourth St. Cloud fireworks display to start.
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If the summer of 2003 will be remembered for one thing at SCSU, it would be construction.
Various construction and remodeling projects consumed campus throughout the previous three months and provided a backdrop of news throughout the summer.
June
June began with the news that SCSU appointed two interim deans: Wayne Wells to the G.R. Herberger College of Business and David DeGroote to the College of Science of Engineering.
Both deans will serve for the 2003-04 academic year; SCSU expects to hire permanent deans in time for the 2004-05 school year.
In mid-June, phone service across campus was intermittent for several days as SCSU converted to a new telephone system.
Mankato-based Hickory Tech Enterprise Solutions won the contract to be SCSU's new phone service provider. The new service is expected to save SCSU about $600,000 over the next five years.
A new campus-wide telephone exchange of 308 was the most significant change to come with the phone system. The new prefix is applicable to all phone lines across campus and replaced several old prefixes like 255, 202, 654 and 534. The last four digits of on-campus numbers generally stayed the same.
On-campus dialing also changed; all calls made from one campus phone to another must be preceded by an eight. The phone system also brought voice mail to all SCSU phones.
After two weeks of set-up, the phone system was in place July 1.
Hickory Tech was still working on the phone system in late June, when the United States Supreme Court made a ruling on affirmative action that was quickly called one of the most important civil rights decisions in 25 years.
The ruling involved the University of Michigan's admissions policies; the school was sued in 1997 for an admissions system that gave minority applicants extra points because of their ethnicity. Those points carried more weight than some academic considerations.
The Supreme Court ruled on two different cases; it struck down the points system in a 6-3 vote but narrowly upheld the law school's admissions policy. Ethnicity may be considered in the application process, the court said, but only on a case-by-case basis.
The court's decisions quickly sent colleges and universities across the nation scrambling to revise their admissions policies. No such thing occurred at SCSU or other Minnesota schools, however.
The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) board prohibits admissions questions regarding age and race, SCSU Associate Director of Admissions Katie Landwehr told University Chronicle. That makes the Supreme Court ruling interesting to Minnesota schools, but not significant regarding policy.
"Any time we go to conferences, people are blown away that you can't ask race information in Minnesota," Landwehr said. "I think Minnesota is ahead of the game in saying, 'We don't want to know anything about you that you don't want to tell us.'"
The Lemonade Concert and Art Fair came to SCSU on the heels of the court ruling. It was the 30th anniversary of the event, which featured a plethora of artisans and vendors filling the SCSU campus for a day. The official opening ceremony of St. Cloud's Wheels, Wings and Water Festival and an outdoor performance of the St. Cloud Symphony Orchestra ended the day's festivities.
July
July opened with a spectacular July Fourth holiday weekend. Minnesotans of all ages spent the weekend soaking up sun and enjoying fireworks both large and small.
The week after Independence Day, SCSU hosted 240 of the nation's top 17-year-old hockey players when the USA Hockey Select Festival came to campus.
The camp-turned-competitive festival has been held at the National Hockey Center since 1990. Players were split up into 12 regional teams and were evaluated by coaches and between 100 and 200 scouts from both college and professional levels.
"The facility we have makes it advantageous for the USA hockey people because we have two rinks, food service and housing, all within walking distance," said SCSU Men's Hockey Coach Craig Dahl.
In other hockey news, men's hockey forward Matt Hendricks announced in late July that he would stay at SCSU in lieu of leaving to pursue a pro career.
SCSU also received a July confirmation on $10 million in state funding to remodel Centennial Hall. The 161,000 square foot building, which now sits mostly vacant, housed the SCSU library from 1971 to 2000.
Renovation will allow several university departments and various academic student services to move to Centennial when the project is complete. The English and philosophy departments and the College of Business are probable tenants when the project is completed in the fall of 2005.
August
Much of August passed quietly at SCSU - except for the day that terrorists released mustard gas outside Halenbeck.
The "disaster" was a drill - a training exercise for multiple local emergency agencies to test their response skills to such an attack.
About 114 volunteers of all ages participated in the drill, in which emergency crews set up a full-scale decontamination shower unit from a fire truck. Some mock victims were "injured" while others were labeled "dead."
The drill gave St. Cloud Police, fire fighters, the St. Cloud Hospital, SCSU Public Safety and SCSU Health Services an idea of what dealing with such a disaster would be like.
Volunteer coordinator Lissa Staples said the event was a success, especially since rescue crews could look back on their mistakes and learn from them.
"The thing that everyone learned is that communication (between departments) is the key and we have a lot to improve on," she said.
Construction
SCSU was never without piles of dirt or the sound of construction equipment this summer.
The expansion of Atwood Memorial Center progressed on schedule and will continue throughout this school year. Dust from the project frequently set off Atwood fire alarms throughout the summer, disrupting orientation programs on at least one occasion.
Half the Miller Center Parking lot and the intersection of Third Avenue and Sixth Street were torn up for all of August as crews installed a concrete utility tunnel between the library, Performing Arts Center and Hill-Case Hall.
But perhaps most significant of all, after a year, major construction and remodeling of Lawrence Hall wrapped up in mid-August. Most finishing touches were in place just a week later.
Students and the Center for International Studies moved in to Lawrence's brand-new rooms last week and the campus celebrated with an ice cream party on the Lawrence lawn.
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