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And, he's playing in the PGA tour event in Minneapolis.   Currently 5 over.  No change he'll make the cut.  But still....

He is currently ahead of eight pros and tied with two others.  I can only imagine the pressure of playing in you first pga event, along side  guys like Justin Thomas and Tony Finau.  I wonder if any other Valpo golfers have ever tied it up in a pga event?

[featuring Indiana, Purdue, notre dame, and butler.]

The big guys would never do that. Not on a neutral court. Not even on their home courts most likely. Would be fun, never going to happen. At most there might be a one year 4 team round robin featuring Indiana, Purdue, notre dame, and butler.

[/b]

The Crossroads Classic, involving these four teams, went on for the past 11 years but will not be played this coming season.

Came across this video of all the Valpo coaches being interviewed on the day when they had their bus tour of the region.  Great to hear from other coaches as well as Powell etc.  It's about an hour long but if you want to just hear Roger, he's the first one and then Dr. Small is at the very end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PwxjyzBxVk

Holy cow!   Caleb finished 23 under!!!

http://www.valpoathletics.com/mgolf/news/2023-24/22182/vanarragon-sustains-spectacular-summer-by-winning-mga-amateur-championship-qualifying-for-3m-open/

Check out the tv interview with him starting at 1:45.  Quite the kid!

https://kstp.com/minnesota-sports/2023-3m-open-interviews-hoge-vanarragon-capan-iii/

Pretty impressive group!

Bochnowski--Retired CEO of a regional bank

Brisco--Indiana Superior Court Judge

Brunette--Pastor of a 3500 member Lutheran Church

Dobbs--Partner Arthur Andersen

Duesenberg--Harvard law grad

Jenny Ehr--International Banker

Femovich--Executive Director of the Patriot League

etc, etc, etc,!

Yes, that is sobering.   A small class starves you for a full four years.  We have to rinse three out of the enrollment total.  Wow.

So to clarify the "cliff" in 2025, does that mean that fall 2025 is the first small national freshman class?  Or does the small class land nationally on campus in fall 2026?

This article spells it out pretty well.  It will START in 2025!

https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/analysis/looming-enrollment-cliff-poses-serious-threat-to-colleges/#:~:text=Thanks%20to%20lower%20birthrates%20during,geographic%20region%20and%20institutional%20type.

I now think it was Jahari Williamson!

https://twitter.com/jjaharii

I'm thinking Nick Witherspoon

[Our goal is, in this new vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion]

Bradley University Board of Trustees
https://www.bradley.edu/offices/president/trustees/

Take a good look. Imagine Valpo with a Board full of local and regional powerbrokers like this. Totally invested in THEIR private university. The same people who serve on other high profile local boards. Connected and networked to the n'th degree with every mover and shaker in the region. People accustomed to raising money. Annual galas, golf outings, naming rights. Braced and locked in to drive campaigns, promote student growth, celebrate success, rotate in new blood, fresh ideas, and constant energy.

This and more could be Valparaiso University, once it sheds its self-imposed barriers that keep it isolated from the community in which it resides.

wh, you are a valued member of this group and I always admire the passion with which you write.  However, having written that, I think a deeper look into the Bradley experience might be in order.  True, Bradley apparently has gathered leaders, many of which have local connections.  Valpo's approach is to find successful leaders who may not be "local" though most live within a four or five hour drive of campus.  I don't know if having a guy like Robert Hansen, the retired Chairman of Dow Chemical, as Chairman is better or worse than Bradley's Kathleen M B. Holst, the Chairperson of D2K Traffic.  What I do know is that Bradley has a sizable difference in alumni base (their enrollment is listed as 5458 while Valpo's is listed as 2939) but our endowment is $15 million larger.  That points to commitment of alumni, if nothing else.

This article points to financial issues which Bradley faced/is facing, which are not dissimilar from those facing Valpo.  For example, it point to 65 to 75 people who took "voluntary separation" after the pandemic. This was followed by a "streamlining (her words) of the entire organization.

https://www.wcbu.org/local-news/2021-05-04/q-a-bradleys-new-cfo-on-the-state-of-the-universitys-finances-and-what-lies-ahead

The part of the article which you might interesting is her comments on inclusion:

TS: And we know the students want to know they're coming to an environment that is inclusive of them. And that can be a selling point for university as well. So can you talk to me a little bit about how that might all play in?

SC: Well, you know, we know what's a strength. Our goal is, in this new vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion, is to help us retain this pool of individuals. And when I say retain, you know, it's one thing to recruit. And it's very obvious we have, we're very attractive as a campus for, for this community.

Finally, you seem ready to throw President Padilla under the bus as a failure because in your view he isn't "rotat(ing) in new blood, fresh ideas, and constant energy" I'm not.  He has brought in a new team--in many part of the administration--and has been on the job since October of 2021, the day he had to shut the entire campus down.  Things are changing, perhaps not as fast as any of us would like, but they are changing.  Bring on basketball season!  Peace out!

Was flipping around different channels tonight and saw the end of a TBT game on ESPN. The Arkansas team won the game on a sweet offhand move by Brandon Wood.

Brandon Wood is just pure silk.  The guy belongs in the NBA.

Does anyone know what happened to The Cru, Valpo's TBT team? I was on their mailing list and expected to see them seeded, and then -- poof -- nothing.

Apparently there is a committee who deems a team good enough to be part of the tournament.  With a million bucks at stake there are probably many teams looking to get in.  For whatever reason, the Cru wasn't selected.

Cast it aside and survive. Hang on to it and become a distant memory in 10 years.

Great idea!  Should we become Baptist? Or just go the way of Princeton where the cross was removed from the chapel?

Apparently size matters to wh!  In that case, I presume he will really love the University of Phoenix!

University of Phoenix Online is a for-profit, online university. It is a large institution with an enrollment of 170,144 undergraduate students. The University of Phoenix Online acceptance rate is 100%.

Was flipping around different channels tonight and saw the end of a TBT game on ESPN. The Arkansas team won the game on a sweet offhand move by Brandon Wood.

Brandon Wood is just pure silk.  The guy belongs in the NBA.

If the point was to watch what coaches are doing who trained Roger then the Canyon reference makes sense whether Roger coached there or not.

[No stop at Grand Canyon.]

I see that neither Grand Canyon nor Gonzaga has made anywhere near as many 2024 2025 offers as Valpo, so Roger's strike fast, strike often recruiting approach isn't simply a copy and paste from his past. That makes me like it even more.

Roger went from Vandy to Gonzaga. No stop at Grand Canyon.

However, his former boss at Vandy is now at Grand Canyon.

Valpo will have a challenging time keeping enrollment at the same level as last fall because of the sizable Senior class.

Statistics from Fall of 2022 included 576 Freshman, 537 Sophomores, 533 juniors and 700 Seniors! The previous fall it was worse with 586 Freshman while the Senior class had 800!  I'm hoping we level off in the next couple of years and then start growing again, but that will be pretty tough as the enrollment cliff hits in 2025.

It's not just basketball. Nolan Tucker is headed to Southern Mississippi. 

It is also likely that the average ELCA pastor is far more liberal than the average member of the ELCA.

Well, as a person raised in the Missouri Synod and having left in about 1980 for the ELCA, I might have some insight here.  I have had several ELCA pastors, some male and some female and none were selling what you might consider "Liberal doctrine".  Other than the fact that some were female (suspect some here might consider that "too liberal"), all taught biblically and I never had a discussion with any of them concerning homosexuals, gay marriage or transgender folks. 

The article referenced above by wh is written by Tom Brock, a controversial guy, to say the least.  He has admitted to being attracted to men, though also saying he never acted on it and that he is a virgin.  Much of his efforts are to develop a following for a tv/radio network. He believes in "conversion therapy" for those having "homosexual urges"

Clearly the ELCA is more "liberal" than Missouri--remember that Alan Harre was "brought up on charges" for praying with others who were not Missouri Synod members, after 911.  Other Valpo professors have been forced out of Missouri, like Matthew Becker. https://www.valpo.edu/theology/about/faculty/matthew-becker/

Rather than brand the ELCA as "radically liberal", I would suggest it is more open to the "Samaritans" of Jesus' day and that is what Christians are called to do rather than put up barriers to entry to protect the "pure" nature of one sect.  Just my view of things.

Have a chat with Pastor Katherine Museus over at the Chapel.  She doesn't have horns or make blood sacrifices of children!

but photos of weekday morning chapel, with perhaps half a dozen students in attendance, makes for a rebuttal argument difficult to ignore.

Paul

No doubt that Students today worship in a different way then we did (though I wasn't exactly the model attendee by any means!)  Sunday morning is not the selection of choice for many, but rather Sunday evening at "Candlelight"--at 9 pm. or "Celebrate", every Wednesday at 10 pm. And yes, there remains a daily service from 10:10 to 10:30 during weekdays.

Rather than just making seemingly uninformed comments, perhaps exploring the worship options given to students and faculty might be a better option.

Here is the Worship options:  https://www.valpo.edu/chapel/worship/worship-opportunities/

Liberty has unapologetically stayed true to its biblical world view

To avoid falling victim to mission creep, they hire faculty and staff that hold the same values and and embrace Liberty's biblical world view.

Well, they did have that Falwell guy! Maybe he should have read the requirements!

In 1999, Mark Few, an assistant coach under Fitzgerald, was promoted to head coach after Fitzgerald's retirement.
Few's appointment marked a turning point in Gonzaga's basketball program.
NCAA Tournament Success (Late 1990s - Early 2000s):

Actually Dan Monson was Fitzgerald's replacement and during his two years at the helm put Gonzaga on the map by getting to the Elite Eight.  Then Monson made the classic college coaching mistake of thinking the grass would be greener at a Power 5--this time Minnesota.

I have to wonder - was the last coaching staff running all over the country like this?

Probably not but, not only does Powell have the full support of the AD and President, my guess is that a pretty large amount of money came into the program via the Day of Giving and other ongoing fund raising efforts once the Powell news was out.

whether that be through a slight price uptick,

I'm pretty sure the folks on this board can afford another dollar or two a month!  Get what you need so that we can get what we need!

Fantastic results from our top two golfers!  Caleb wins the Minnesota State Open, beating pros by a lot and Anthony wins his US Amateur Sectional  and now will play in the US Amateur Championship at Cherry Hills in Denver!

https://www.valpoathletics.com/mgolf/news/2023-24/22174/delisanti-wins-us-amateur-qualifier-vanarragon-captures-minnesota-state-open/?fbclid=IwAR17gd4rPU0bIbzWnUctBJUQi_UrW2kOdhD4FkdyJaGkz-qxoiPZA_SqrTY

Are international students heavily represented in undergraduate Engineering enrollments at VU? If so, your surmise is probably correct. The pandemic just slammed international enrollments at many schools, including mine at the undergrad level. I don't know if those numbers are recovering overall.

This was posted by Crusader 05 On June 27:

Pal may be able to confirm this but what I've heard is that Enrollment is stable from last year in regards to undergrads and way up(like close to double) in regards to graduate students (unclear how much of that is international).