Veterans Day: Remembering Elon’s First Fallen Hero
Shannon Tennant November 11, 2013 We celebrate Veterans Day on November 11 because it marks the end of World War I, when hostilities formally ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918. The first Elon student to die in the service of our country did so during this conflict, nearly 100 years ago. This Veterans Day, let us remember Charles N. Whitelock.
Read MoreHats Off to Elon College’s First Homecoming King
Julia Mueller November 6, 2013 In 1993, the first Homecoming King at Elon College was crowned. David Bynes (Class of 1997), a Communications major, represented the Black Cultural Society. Holly Good of Alpha Omicron Pi was crowned Homecoming Queen. The nominees represented twenty organizations, and the theme of Homecoming was “Hats Off to Hollywood.” Each nominee wrote a personal statement and was interviewed by a Student Government Association Homecoming committee. This constituted 40% of the score. Popular vote accounted for the remaining 60%.
Read MoreKCSL Celebrates 25 Years!
Julia Mueller October 30, 2013 This academic year the Kernodle Center for Service Learning is celebrating its 25th anniversary! The Kernodle Center for Service Learning and Community Engagement provides a variety of volunteer opportunities to students, faculty, and the community. The goal is to promote leadership, student learning, and citizenship through community engagement. The Center for Service Learning was founded in 1988 when Habitat for Humanity was chartered at Elon College. In 1989, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter promoted Habitat for Humanity during his visit to Elon. In 1990, Elon Volunteers (EV!) was founded as a part of the Chaplain’s Office. In 1992, the Center for Service Learning hired its first paid staff member, which was funded through a grant given to the college from the United Church of Christ. The academic year from 1992-1993 were the first years that volunteer hours and number of volunteers were tracked. The Service Learning…
Read MoreAdvertising Elon
Shannon Tennant October 28, 2013 Think back to when you first heard about Elon University and first considered coming here. What influenced your decision? At some point in the process, you saw an ad that extolled the virtues of the school. In magazines, on billboards, in brochures, on the internet – Elon’s advertisements are everywhere. Universities have come to realize that they are businesses, and they need to reach prospective customers. Elon has to market its image to attract top quality students in this competitive environment. But what that image is, and how to best present it, has changed over the years. Here is an ad from the Asheville newspaper in 1917. Some of the attractions Elon lists seem amusing now. Well water is not so important when we all drink bottled water. What about no outbreaks of “dangerous sickness?” They obviously don’t mean the cold that you caught from…
Read MoreThe Big Move: McEwen Library Opens
Randall Bowman October 11, 2013 The 1960s brought many changes to Elon College, not the least of which was a new library. With one reading room that could only seat one hundred students at a time, Carlton Library was now too small to serve the growing college of 1200 students. A new library, with space for a larger book collection, was needed. Plans for the new facility were drawn up by the architectural firm of Guy Crampton and Associates of Raleigh, North Carolina. Abrams Construction Company of Greensboro, North Carolina was the general contractor. McEwen Library, as it would later be named, cost $700,000 to build, and was part of a large campus expansion that took place in the mid-1960s. On Parent’s Day, Saturday, November 4, 1966, on the same day the Long Student Center and three other buildings were dedicated, the ground-breaking ceremony for the library took place. By…
Read MoreJulia W. Covington
Katie Nash October 4, 2013 Julia Wilson Covington was Elon College’s first full-time African-American professor. She joined the Business Administration faculty in 1970. Covington taught at Elon until August 1971 when she resigned to spend more time with her family. Julia W. Covington was born in Cheraw, South Carolina on May 11, 1940. She was married to Francis A. Covington. In July 1970, she listed on her Elon personal data form that she had a two-year old daughter, Roxanne E. Covington. Correspondence from July 1971 states that she was expecting another child in the coming months. In May 1962 she received a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, SC. In August 1963 she received a Master of Business Administration degree from Atlanta University in Atlanta, GA. During the summer of 1962 she was a bookkeeper with Allied Federal Savings and Loan Association…
Read MoreColonnades Literary Journal: Writing at Elon
Julia Mueller September 20, 2013 The first issue of the Elon Colonnades was released in May 1937. Elon College owned a printing press making the publication of the annual literary journal possible. Students exclusively contributed to the content, which included poems, fiction, non-fiction, and art. In 1951, the title was formally changed to Colonnades. There were several years in the 1950s when the journal was not printed, but in 1962, Professor Franke J. Butler and Mrs. Nancy Butler restored the tradition. From the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, Colonnades also published planners and calendars displaying art and photography. In 2002, the first issue with a theme was published. The theme was “Snapshots of Life.” Today, Colonnades is an award-winning journal and continues to be entirely operated by students. The goal of the journal is to promote creative expression among students. Students develop a theme in the fall for the upcoming…
Read MoreThe Story of Carlton Library
September 13, 2013 Randall Bowman Housed on the second floor of Elon College’s original Main Building was a one-room library and reading room, the first library on campus. The infamous fire on January 18, 1923, destroyed this room, along with most of the college’s library collection. But more than just books were lost that day; irreplaceable records of both Elon College and the Christian Church of the South, Elon’s parent denomination, were lost. A free-standing library was among the five new buildings planned to replace Main Building. The Carlton family of Richmond, Virginia, donated the funds to build the new library. On June 22, 1923, less than six months after the fire, ground was broken for the new library, which would be located next to Whitley Auditorium.
Read MoreThe story of the Martin Alumni Center (MAC)
Katie Nash August 27, 2013 Ever wonder about the history of the white house on the corner of Haggard Avenue and O’Kelly Avenue on Elon’s campus? It’s one of the few older houses still standing on Elon’s campus, and to trace its history we have to travel back in time to 1965. Records show that in October 1965, a gift agreement was set-up between Algier Lloyd Rich, his wife Minnie Allene Patton Rich (Class of 1911), and Elon College in which the Rich family gave their home and land (which included a barn!) to the College, while still able to live in their home and maintain lifetime rights. The house was built between 1938-1940 and upon the death of Mr. Rich in 1986 and Mrs. Rich in 1987 the house became officially part of the Elon College campus.
Read MoreHistoric Elon video now online!
August 9, 2013Story written by: Taylor Sharp ’16Please note that this story first appeared on Elon University’s E-Net website. Elon’s archive of historic video recordings is being digitized and made available online through a special project of the Elon University Archives and Special Collections in Belk Library. The first set of recordings is available through the archives website at: http://elonuniversity.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/search/collection/p16128coll4 Work began on digitizing the video files in late 2012. There are currently more than 4,000 audio and video recordings in the archives, including on-campus performances, lectures, Elon annual events and a walking tour of campus by President Emeritus J. Earl Danieley. Linda Lashendock, video archive technologist, and Katie Nash, archivist and special collections librarian, developed the procedures, policies and workflow for digitizing the collection. The first files selected for conversion include concerts by the Emanons musical group, the annual Faculty/Staff Awards Luncheons beginning with 1986, and recordings of President…
Read More