Bidding a Memorable Final Farewell to our Fall Semester

Tonight is our fall commencement, and we are so very excited to honor Ray and Evelyn Crowley, long-term supporters of our university with honorary doctorates. The Board of Regents makes these decisions with great thought, and clearly the Crowleys are most worthy recipients. We are delighted to have state Rep. Earl Ehrhart deliver our commencement address.

I just submitted the final grades for my entrepreneurship class. I was so very impressed with the caliber of work of these seniors and particularly proud to have four study-abroad students from Germany in the class. The final business plan presentations were outstanding.

I attended Brandon Smith's final percussion performance in the past week. Brandon is a student of professor Paul Vaillancourt, and this recital was given in partial fulfillment for the Bachelor of Music degree. In the final number, Brandon was joined by fellow students Joel Castro, Lacey Guyton and Jonathan Mashburn as they performed The Invisible Men with the 1907 silent move, Les Invisibles. by the Pathe Brothers playing on the screen behind them. A truly great evening!

Finally, I received the nicest holiday note and thoughts from Tamara Comer ... This reinforces why we are all in higher education.

Days Leading up to Thanksgiving Offer Swirl of Activities

Chelsee Pike, our Student Government Association president, was kind enough to invite me to join her at Popcorn with the SGA President today in our Davidson Student Center.

This begins the crush of pre-Thanksgiving, pre-final exam commitments and gives our students some added support and nutrition during the final weeks of the semester.

Tonight is the launch of our Cougar men's basketball season, and the women's cross country team has landed at the NCAA national championships in Spokane, Wash.

Over the next week, students in our wind ensemble and our philharmonic orchestra will perform, and our fall opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, starts tonight as well. The quality of student engagement is high and that contributes to the overall quality of our university.

Coach, Runnners Enjoy Great Cross Country Weekend

Special congratulations go to Coach J.D. Evilsizer, who has been named Women's Coach of the Year by the Peach Belt Conference.

The CSU cross country teams represented CSU this past weekend with pride and honor. The Cougar men tied for first and lost on the tie-breaker. The men's team had the fastest team average in conference championship history for a CSU team. This was after having to redshirt the No. 2 and No. 3 runners coming into the season. The Lady Cougars finished in the runner-up position. They did this while suffering the loss of their top runner from the previous year due to injury. The women also had the fastest team average in conference championship history.

All the runners had either season best times or personal best times. We had three women make all-conference, and four men earned all-conference honors. Jacob Dirkman earned The Elite 15 Award for highest GPA for a male runner. He has a 4.0 GPA. Nathan Reeves and Moneque English were named to the All-Sportsman Team.

Baseball Players, Fraternity Members Work to Help Others

Over the last few days, three Columbus State University groups truly distinguished themselves. Our CSU Cougar baseball team hosted a terrific event for the Vs. Cancer Foundation, raising $10,000 to fight children's cancer.

Sigma Nu fraternity hosted a "Glow K" 5K Run and raised $11,000 for the Wounded Warrior Project.

Kappa Sigma fraternity members raised over $7,000 to fight breast cancer during their seventh annual Shave to Save philanthropy event. Both our baseball players and Kappa Sig brothers wrapped up the weekend with shaved heads for great causes. We're proud of all of these young men.

Cougar Madness Puts the Spotlight on Winning Athletic Tradition

Congratulations go to the Columbus State University Athletics Department for a great kickoff to the men's and women's basketball season with a fun Cougar Madness event at the Lumpkin Arena last night.

The celebration was proceed by a hard fought and victorious volleyball win. What great work by the Lady Cougars in their first year of NCAA play! The team is now 16-7. We also celebrated Assistant Athletic Director Jimbo Davis' 50th birthday in great style!

Men's basketball coach Robert Moore and women's coach Jonathan Norton were there with their teams and the slam-dunk contest, which followed a spirited but unsuccessful  faculty-staff team loss to the brothers of Pike fraternity, making for a wonderful evening.

It's always a treat for me to meet parents of student-athletes as well. Last night, a terrific couple from Denton,Texas was on hand to watch our volleyball win.

Discovery Day Shows why CSU's a `First Choice' School

We're so very proud of our undergraduate recruiting team and our CSU student ambassadors for the exceptional work done this weekend for our Discovery Day program.

Discovery Day is an invitation-only event for high school juniors and seniors and their families, intended to give them an earlier-in-the-year look at our campuses, a chance to visit with faculty and staff and to help them make the right university choice.

We had a great day on campus, double the attendance from the last Discovery Day, and many families elected to stay the afternoon, tour Columbus, watch Lady Cougar volleyball and get an even better feel for what makes CSU a "first choice" institution. Here's a recent video that helps tell what all CSU and Columbus have to offer:

From Stage to Playing Field, CSU is one Very Busy Campus

Professor Wendy Warner, who directs our cello studio in CSU's Schwob School of Music, is absolutely magnificent. Her recent concert with pianist colleague Irina Nuzova was mesmerizing. A large crowd at Legacy Hall was enthralled with performances from Prokofiev's Sonata in C Major to Rachmaninoff's Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 40. Wendy has been a stunning addition to our faculty, and her concert reinforced the benefits of great community support for faculty talent. Her position exists because of generous funding from the Hamer family.

Likewise, our student talent is so very impressive. Yesterday's recital by graduate piano student Alina Sarkisyan was exceptional. Alina, a student of professor Alex Kobrin, has been a stunning addition to our master's program in the Schwob school, and her performance was simply outstanding.

The Lady Cougars volleyball team was on fire last night as it won over Fort Valley State, and the Lady Cougars soccer team had a terrific road match, winning 10-0. In all, these events reflect a very busy campus.