MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Naperick]

Looks like IWU grad Zach Freeman ('07) is a guest blogger on the NCAA's Double-a Zone.  Here is his first post...

http://www.doubleazone.com/2008/09/zach_freeman_illinois_wesleyan_ncaa_college_basketball_germany.php

I enjoyed his post.  It's a neat story.  I wish him the best.

[markerickson]

Speaking of athletic facilities, I just read an article in the Chronicle for Higher Education related to the marked increase in "special academic services" for athletes at BCS schools. 

>Texas A+M built a $27million academic center "inside its football complex."  Alice and Earl Nye were the primary benefactors.
>U of Michigan has built the "biggest jaw-dropper", courtesy of Stephen M. Ross, a NY real estate developer and UM alum.
>U of Oregon, thanks to Philip Knight of Nike, recently started clearing space for a 34,000 sq ft facility that will open in 2010 that will surpass Michigan's.

These are just examples.  The article also lists school budgets for tutoring and academic services*.  Oklahoma's '07 budget topped all schools ($2.9mil).  Texas was the only other school at $2mil or above.

Of the schools with a budget exceeding a million bucks in '07, the Big 12 - 4, Pac 10 - 3, ACC - 4, SEC - 6, and the Big Ten - 7.  The four Big Ten school not on the list include Northwestern, Indiana, Purdue, and MN.

UConn also spent over one million, but I don't know their conferece.

Duke and Georgia did not answer the survey question, according to the article.

*Capital expenses excluded.

[Dennis_Prikkel]

These are just examples.  The article also lists school budgets for tutoring and academic services*.  Oklahoma's '07 budget topped all schools ($2.9mil).  Texas was the only other school at $2mil or above.

I'm sure you've heard about the offensive tackle who transferred from Texas to Oklahoma - he raised the IQ level at both schools.

He was the one who was so proud it took him only six hours to put together the jigsaw puzzle, when the box said 3 to 5 years.

dgp

[Wydown Blvd.]

lmao...

(and UConn is Big East)

[sac]

>U of Michigan has built the "biggest jaw-dropper", courtesy of Stephen M. Ross, a NY real estate developer and UM alum.
>U of Oregon, thanks to Philip Knight of Nike, recently started clearing space for a 34,000 sq ft facility that will open in 2010 that will surpass Michigan's.

Not sure why UM's is the biggest "jaw-dropper", it only cost $12 million, of which Stephen Ross donated only the initial $5 million dollars.  It is 38,000 sq. feet and an impressive looking building, but would still be bigger than Oregon's.  Curious.

http://mgoblue.com/facilities/article.aspx?id=71818

If you add up all that UM is spending or has spent on athletic facilities, the $12 million for the academic center is pretty paltry.  All together I'm sure they're well over $300 million for facilities upgrades to the football stadium, football practice buildings, baseball and softball upgrades, new wrestling and gymnastics building etc.


FWIW Stephen Ross also donated $100 million to the business school which they named in his honor and promtly built a very impressive and imposing new building on campus.  (Ross also holds a Taxation degree from D3 NYU)


If I'm recalling right, Michigan State was actually one of the first, if not the first school to build an all athletics academic support building, probably about a dozen years ago now.  The initial 2.5 mill gift by former Spartan basketball player Steve Smith, and is named in his mothers honor The Clara Bell Smith Student Athletic Academic Center.

interesting stuff

[Gotberg]

When all the world is sleeping......

zzzzz

ssssh - you might wake them up.

dgp

Is anybody there?
Does anybody care?

I was down at NPU a couple of days ago and the gym looks terrible - it's so sterile its hard to imagine its even a gym.

Illinois Wesleyan has won one national championship and the school has a showcase for that one team that's amazing.

North Park has won five national championships and the trophies have all been shanghied to a place where the general public is not allowed to go.

How sad.

dgp

hey Dennis, I meant to ask you actually, do you have a spare 15 million lying around?

This is the kind of stupid thinking which has characterized the on-campus mentality towards North Park athletics for the last 15 years.

Take a look "hair-challenged one" at just how pitiful North Park's athletic efforts have been in every sport (except men's soccer)  in CCIW competition the last 15 years.  Last fall the women's team failed to win one match in any CCIW sport and finished dead last in cross-country.  The school would rather drop a sport than compete/recruit in it (men's and women's tennis).  They had to go to such lengths to found a team "women's crew" that so no other CCIW team can compete against them.

But the on-campus mantra is "everything is fine" "Jack's doing a great job" "Look at the new Helwig Center" "We can't recruit because our facilities are so bad" "When do we go out for coffee?"

dgp

It looks like the women's volleyball team has a good chance of breaking the losing streak.

[Gregory Sager]

I don't know how the rest of you fared under this weekend's rain conditions, but I hope that all of you CCIW Chat posters and lurkers here in Chicagoland made it through safe and dry.

Unfortunately, this unprecedented 48-hour chain of rainstorms turned out very badly for North Park. As those of you who have followed the news may have heard, NPU and the rest of the Far North Side were deluged under about ten inches of rain over the weekend. The North Park campus is in a state of flood siege right now, and has been since Saturday evening. Two of the dorms had to be evacuated due to high water from the North Branch of the Chicago River shorting out electical transformers, and a third dorm lost electricity on Sunday. Students from two of the dorms have slept in the gym and in Helwig Rec Center the past two nights. The dining hall is closed due to flooding as well, as is the biggest classroom building on campus, Carlson Tower. Resident students have been eating their meals under makeshift conditions in Hamming Hall next to the gym. Needless to say, classes have been canceled for today, and there is an air of uncertainty about how long it will take for things to get back to normal at NPU ... not to mention how much cleanup and repair will cost. I'm sure that Mr. B and Rob Berki will be able to fill in some of the details as they hear them from President Parkyn and other administrative officers.

As bad as that is, other people in the area have it worse. The northern sections of the Albany Park neighborhood west and southwest of the NPU campus have been evacuated. I've been around for some big floods before (notably the flood of '87), but what happened this weekend dwarfs anything I've ever seen. The North Branch has essentially become a giant lake west of the campus.

Your thoughts and prayers for everyone affected by this weekend's flooding, both here and down on the Gulf Coast, would be appreciated.

[mr_b]

I'm sure that Mr. B and Rob Berki will be able to fill in some of the details as they hear them from President Parkyn and other administrative officers.

There are regular updates on the North Park website.

I stopped by campus yesterday after church just to see if my office was underwater (I'm on the ground floor of the Magnuson Campus Center, and my office window is about 20 feet from the river).  The Campus Center -- which also houses the dining hall -- was closed, but the main floor looked fine at the time.  The river was a few few below the footbridge that joins the two sides of the campus, the highest I've seen it in my 15 years at North Park.  Of course, this was well before the North Branch of the Chicago River was due to crest, so I don't know how much more water there was last night or this morning. 

Further west, maybe 3/4 of a mile, flooding is reportedly quite heavy in the low-lying neighborhoods around Avers Ave. and Foster (just east of Pulaski).  Families there would have devastating losses.

[Dennis_Prikkel]

The Rain came down and the floods came up

Some of you know I live along the far northern section of Salt Creek – it flows 150 feet behind my house.  The level top of the creek bank is about five feet below the level of the steps to my deck 150 feet away.  At 8:30 a.m. Saturday the creek came over its banks and reached within 20 feet of my house at 1:30 p.m.   There is a two-foot rise from where it stopped rising to my back steps.  Where the creek eventually stopped was about level with my basement floor.  This was the "500-year flood" line which our plat of survey showed.

Our anxiety was heightened because our electrical power line is buried about 18 inches below ground and runs parallel ten feet from the creek and comes into our house through the backyard.

The power stayed on, the sump pump worked.  We spent all day Saturday carrying everything in our basement upstairs and, starting Sunday afternoon (when the rain stopped), carrying most of its back downstairs again.

An excellent opportunity was taken advantage of to dispose of and donate several hundred pounds of unwanted and former treasures to our local charity resale shops.

* * * *

I had the opportunity on Saturday and Sunday to visit the area of Albany Park in Chicago where North Park University is located – first to pick up my son on Saturday evening and to drop him off on Sunday afternoon.

The area south of the North Branch of the Chicago River was once its flood plain and indeed I have seen archived photos which show a vast lake with people boating on it during spring floods of a bygone era.   Much of the Albany Park area lies below the top of the river's man-made channel.  In the 1930's a WPA project created the North Branch's channel which slices the North Park University campus in two.  Son Tim is living in an apartment building fifty feet from the river and the channel is very deep there because of the Kedzie Avenue bridge.  He was fortunate.  Hundreds of other have not been.

The river exploded over its banks and flooded the basement of one dormitory.  The streets by the campus were sandbagged three-high and the water was just below the top sandbag on Sunday afternoon.    The science labs along the river are flooded.  Hundreds of homes and streets in the area are flooded.   The North Branch enters the main channel of the Chicago River just two blocks east of Kedzie, but the North Branch's channel is narrow and so it is going to take time for all of the water to go down.

* * * *

Dgp

[markerickson]

I have not seen the North Branch as high or swift in my 20+ years.  The steel southern wall has never been breached, until this weekend.  Worse, NPU has been petitioning the Army Corps of Engineers for years to fix the portion nearest Anderson Hall and Magnuson Center.  Even a layperson such as myself can understand that the current compromised strength of the wall could have horrific consequences.  What if Anderson fell into the river, causing a dam?

Basements and streets were flooded in Skokie as well.  I do not understand why basements to the north, west, and south got flooded but my abode was spared.
The system simply could not hold all the water, according to the Public Works Dep't.  Based on my knoweldge and observations, I'm not convinced at all.
 
I've heard a rumor that the northern portion of the water network released water instead of holding it, which contributed to the North Branch's swelling.  I don't know of a lock network in the Winnetka/Northfield area (or further north) so I'm just passing a rumor, which is not unprecedented here. 

[Dennis_Prikkel]

I have not seen the North Branch as high or swift in my 20+ years.  The steel southern wall has never been breached, until this weekend.  Worse, NPU has been petitioning the Army Corps of Engineers for years to fix the portion nearest Anderson Hall and Magnuson Center.  Even a layperson such as myself can understand that the current compromised strength of the wall could have horrific consequences.  What if Anderson fell into the river, causing a dam?

Basements and streets were flooded in Skokie as well.  I do not understand why basements to the north, west, and south got flooded but my abode was spared.
The system simply could not hold all the water, according to the Public Works Dep't.  Based on my knoweldge and observations, I'm not convinced at all.
 
I've heard a rumor that the northern portion of the water network released water instead of holding it, which contributed to the North Branch's swelling.  I don't know of a lock network in the Winnetka/Northfield area (or further north) so I'm just passing a rumor, which is not unprecedented here. 

The north branch of the Chicago River drains and immense area - just across the Wisconsin border.  It is dammed in many places, but flows through a lot of parks and forest preserves.

Like you, I don't know if the lakes north of Chicago are formed by dams with over the top spillways (which is the case with the lakes draining in to Salt Creek behind my house) or they are dams that can be opened to control runoff.  While Ohare registered just over 6 inches of rain Friday to Saturday - the Wilmette reading was over 8 innches and the north branch, me thinks, flows pretty close if not through wilmette.

dgp

I'm wondering how the ground floor of the gym held up, if water went into the sciences labs along the river, the gym ground floor is on the same level.

I imagine I'll get a full report from my son this evening.

dgp

Also when they rebuilt North Park's campus bridge over the north branch they raised it up about a foot.  The water I saw late Sunday afternoon was just about a foot under the new bridge - so the old one would have been swamped and acting as a mini-dam, making the flooding at the campus even worse.

I've been around NPC/U for 43 years and this obviously was the worst I've seen the river.

dgp

[mr_b]

I'm wondering how the ground floor of the gym held up, if water went into the sciences labs along the river, the gym ground floor is on the same level.

A positive development on that front is that Carlson Tower is open as of noon today (see announcement), so that would seem to bode well for the gym and labs.

[markerickson]

NPU hosted a vball tourney this weekend.  The gym's roof leaked, causing some tourney games to be held in the Helwig "Arena."  NPU went 5-0 in the tournament.

[robberki]

We're making due on campus today. Classes are cancelled, some buildings are not useable right now, there is an electrical risk because of a submerged transformer and we have some power out in addition to the obvious flooding issues. This morning, the river was a little lower than it seemed to be on Sunday(according to reports) so I think the worst may be over. It had a nice current going, I was tempted to jump in and see where the north branch would take me!
I asked the dean if she could hold off on fixing up Magnuson until thursday because I have a Wednesday night MBA class that's held there and if we couldn't have class that would be fine with me!
All in all, it's been a pretty crazy couple of days!

[Gregory Sager]

NPU hosted a vball tourney this weekend.  The gym's roof leaked, causing some tourney games to be held in the Helwig "Arena."  NPU went 5-0 in the tournament.

If there was a silver lining with regard to the leaks and flooding in the Carlson Tower complex, it's that the Saturday football game and the volleyball tournament took place before the water got into the locker rooms early Sunday morning.

This morning, the river was a little lower than it seemed to be on Sunday(according to reports) so I think the worst may be over. It had a nice current going, I was tempted to jump in and see where the north branch would take me!

Out into the lake and, thus, through lakes Huron and Erie and over Niagara Falls, eventually. Don't forget your barrel, Rob.

I talked to a number of NPU students in church on Sunday (where we had a little bit of water seepage in the building's basement on Sunday, in spite of the fact that my Covenant church is well inland, a mile northeast of the North Branch and a mile and a half west of the lake), and their reactions were interesting. The more thoughtful ones were well aware that there were people nearby who were much worse off than them -- the aforementioned hapless homeowners and renters in northern Albany Park -- and expressed their concern for those people.

The other NPU students, in the inimitably blithe manner of youth, thought of it all as a grand adventure. Can't say that I blame them, because that's the way most young people with no responsibilities naturally react to temporarily life-displacing events. Any grumblings they might have about being inconvenienced are generally secondary to the thrill of being a part of something extraordinary. Twenty years from now they'll see each other at reunions and say, "Remember the big flood of '08, when the dorms shut down and the school closed and we had to sleep in the gym?"