Dear Alumni and Friends,

I am reborn in the fall; it is my spring of sorts, my new beginning. Personally, I love it when summer temperatures finally back off, the air turns cool, leaves fire up their unique Colorado colors and the word “brisk” is spoken fondly once again. Working on a college campus just serves to fuel this excitement, where the fall semester marks the start of another academic year. Students return, their cars suffocating with can’t-live-withouts, while new students move into residence halls for the first time, their parents filled with mixed emotions as they help unload and learn to let go.

This fall, aside from the trees, the UNC landscape itself is changing—transformed in much the same way the university transforms the lives of its students. The most ambitious building project in UNC’s history, the West Campus Residence Hall Complex, is taking shape along 11th Avenue. In August, the first new residence hall welcomed its first students. Once complete in fall 2009, the entire project will accommodate 721 students. (See page 10.)

Of course, saying hello oftentimes means having to say goodbye. As we welcome a distinctive new residence hall complex that will help define the UNC experience for years to come, we also mark the end of an era as UNC said farewell to McCowen Hall. McCowen Hall was built when dorms were still dorms. More than 25,000 students have called McCowen home over the past 45 years. Couples such as Chuck and Judy (Mattingly) Russell met during one of McCowen’s social dances and later married in 1965. For alumni such as them, the change is bittersweet but they see and understand the need. “We’re sad to see it [McCowen Hall] go, but the new facility looks wonderful!”

There is an old brick house, with an old plank wraparound porch, that sits on a plot larger than a mound yet smaller than a hill, at 921 West Jefferson Street, on the campus of Florida State University, in Tallahassee, Florida. I lived there from 1988-1992, with 16 other guys, during my undergraduate days at FSU. Although we weren’t Greek, we considered ourselves part of a special fraternity, and our house had a starring role. Selby III, as it was named, had what we all called “character.” I remember the wood-burning fireplace, full-size attic, its panel and plaster walls, and our British-style telephone booth (yes, telephone booth), as much as I do the memories and friends I made. It was, and still is, my McCowen Hall. Sixteen years later, the house still stands, although I imagine the old house will eventually be demolished to make room for more parking or for a newer, more modern facility. Admittedly, I’ve looked up the address on Google® maps. Although you can only see the roof and a cast of oak trees it gives me comfort knowing the house is still there. Selby was my home. It was my home away from home, and it’s a place that helped shape me into the person I am today.

McCowen was that same force for so many. McCowen Hall, may she never be forgotten—that Home Away From Home. Home is in your heart. As long as it’s there, no machine can tear it down and no one can take it away, no matter how many years may pass.

Once a Bear. Always a Bear.

MIchael "Sully" Soloway, Editor

 

We’d love to hear from you. Send letters to northernvision@unco.edu or Northern Vision, University of Northern Colorado, Judy Farr Alumni Center, Campus Box 20, Greeley, CO 80639.