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Campus Milestones Furman's Willie Miller: The NCAA's best-kept golf secret Furman
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AROUND CAMPUS
ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES We have settled into our trailer offices and it seems that we have always been here. We have plenty of space and the office arrangement is good. Plans will soon be made to move into our permanent location in the Earle Infirmary. There has been a great deal of activity recently in the Purchasing area. In addition to the special attention required to change the fiscal year, Lishan Yau and Linda Campbell have been busy converting our Pro Card program to PaymentTech Accounting. Many benefits are expected from this change. The Purchasing Department implemented Lunch n’ Learn sessions last year and these have been very helpful. The purpose of these sessions is to get vendors and buyers together during lunch, giving both a chance to meet informally and better understand needs, products and services. Upcoming purchasing projects include order training for office supplies, and selection and standardization of classroom furniture for Hipp Hall. One of our objectives for next year is to examine the travel program. There have been many changes in the travel industry during this past year. Revenue sharing is a thing of the past and now practically all agencies must charge service fees to survive. There are new opportunities for booking travel through the Internet, and we should also take another look at our travel card and procurement card relationships. These issues provide opportunities to review the travel process and see if we can fashion better processes for Furman’s business traveler. If you have thoughts about how Furman’s travel procedures can be improved, please give them to Rowena Belvill. On the real estate scene, we continue to be concerned about requests for zoning changes for property near campus. The university was represented at a recent hearing to rezone property at the intersection of Watkins Bridge Road and Duncan Chapel Road. Requests to change the zoning for this property have failed a number of times and we do not expect the Greenville County Council to approve the change this time. The university owns shopping center out parcels in Covington, Va., and Columbia, S.C. These properties are being actively marketed with hopes they will sell soon so the proceeds may be used to support university programs. We are in the midst of a busy summer. Construction, summer programs and the Falcons will keep Public Safety busy. Dining Services has plenty to handle with summer camps and the Falcons. The Bookstore will be getting ready for on-line ordering of textbooks, and the Golf Course staff is praying for more rain. — Jim Hudson COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SERVICES Pat Thompson has joined C&IS as administrative secretary. Pat was previously with Fluor Daniel and has both secretarial and managerial experience. Cort Haldaman accepted the academic computing specialist position, following a round of interviews which included several faculty served by this position. Cort is a May 2000 Furman graduate who worked throughout his years as a Furman student as a C&IS student staff member. According to Ken Roper, Manager of Telecommunications, new voice communications and telephone equipment is being installed to use the existing fiber cable network on Furman’s campus. This equipment will eliminate the potential for serious outages caused by lightning and other natural events that disrupt service delivered via copper wiring. Areas currently served by the new equipment include Johns Hall, Timmons Arena, the University Center, the new B.K. Bryan Center, North Village, Cherrydale and Facilities Services. All new construction will use the fiber-compatible equipment. Administrative Systems Manager Randy Dill attended Datatel training, and Wade Shepherd, scientific computing specialist, attended Linux training in June. Ken Roper attended the International Nortel Network Users Group Conference, also in June. Cathy Frazier, network administrator, will be attending Lotus Notes Administration training, and Cort Haldaman will be participating in Windows NT Network Administration training in July. The HP3000 is, at last, gone from the technological landscape at Furman. Manager of Operations Cindy Grand pulled the plug on the 3000 after the administrative programming staff certified that all the data needed for archival and historical purposes are in place for use with current systems. To accommodate the overload of demand for computer labs this summer, a temporary lab is set up in Riley Hall 101. The lab offers 20 stations of Pentium III, 550mhz systems with 128mb of RAM and nine-gigabyte hard drives. At the end of the summer, the machines will replace the systems in Johns Hall 203, which are slated for redeployment to specific administrative offices. — Susan Dunnavant FINANCIAL SERVICES Summer, ugh! We are in our craziest time of the year. We will be closing the books for one fiscal year and opening the next. Adding to this engrossing time is the process of changing our fiscal year end. We would like to thank everyone for being tolerant throughout this transition. Swimming? Nah, we will be trying to survive through the audit and gear up for the return of students in the fall. When students leave at the end of spring term they invariably say, "Have a nice break." We will try and take a vacation or two. It’s not all that wretched. We have had some good things happen to us. Amy Blackwell, formerly with Development, has joined our team as the special funds accountant. Sandra Silvers, longtime accounts payable guru, is now the student accounts representative. Kim Rhodes has been promoted to accounts payable coordinator. Debbie McNeely is now supporting both accounts payable and payroll, and we are in search of a new cashier. We are also excited about getting some new computers that can handle our monster spreadsheets and special application. Don’t forget FURI (Furman University Reported Information system) will be unavailable for the 2000-2001 fiscal year until around October 2000. You will be able to see the May 31, 1999, to June 30, 2000, data. Yahoo! Have you noticed a transformation in our fashion on Fridays? We are now observing casual days on Fridays during the summer! — Maggie P. Strickland TIMMONS ARENA Timmons Arena graduated from its third year into its fourth by hosting eight high school commencements late this spring. More than 20,000 students, parents and school officials capped off a year that saw us host 85 events During the spring semester we were able to show off our multipurpose capability during a one-week stretch in which we hosted the Mauldin vs. Hillcrest basketball game, the South Carolina High School Wrestling Tournament and a Christian rock concert. During that week the staff changed the arena configuration five times to suit the needs of our guests. The new fiscal year kicks off with the Kevin Garnett Basketball Tournament in July. Forty-five teams compete over the course of four days for the chance to meet the champion of Garnett’s Minnesota Tournament here in August. For people with interests other than the NFL on a Sunday afternoon, the Greenville Symphony’s return to Furman might be for you. The GSO will be performing six Sunday afternoon concerts beginning September 10 in McAlister Auditorium. (Season tickets are on sale now!!) There will be familiar favorites at Timmons next year: Hill Skills, Wedding Festival (both fall and winter), Furman volleyball and basketball, concerts, high school proms, and the graduations. — Mike Arnold ATHLETICS While preparations are well under way for the 2000-01 year, Furman can look back at the recently completed athletic campaign as one of the finest in school history. Furman’s men’s and women’s sports teams, besides combining to claim Southern Conference championships in six sports and garnering six bids to NCAA Tournament play, produced an impressive share of outstanding individual accomplishments, thereby adding to the school’s solid tradition of athletic and academic excellence. The highlight of the year was attained by Furman’s nine women’s sports, who combined to capture the program’s eighth straight Germann Cup, which is awarded annually by the Southern Conference to the school with the best overall female sports program. In winning league championships in soccer, basketball, tennis and golf, Furman’s women student-athletes further reinforced the school’s reputation as the conference’s pre-eminent female sports institution. Furman’s men’s program, meanwhile, fashioned its highest finish in the 12-school Commissioner’s Cup competition since 1991 with a second place showing that included league championships in football and soccer and solid seasons in baseball and tennis. All told, seven head coaches garnered Southern Conference coach-of-the-year honors and three were finalists for national coach-of-the-year accolades. Six student-athletes earned All-America honors and four earned academic All-America honors during the year. As much as the 1999-2000 sports year was punctuated with championship play and individual recognition, it also featured the university’s continuing effort to modernize its athletic facilities. In breaking ground in March on the new Pepsi Softball Stadium, the university initiated the final phase of an facility construction effort that within the past five years has included the addition of Eugene E. Stone III Soccer Stadium, Minor Herndon Mickel Tennis Center, REK Center for Intercollegiate Golf, Timmons Arena, and the complete renovation of the school’s track, now known as the Irwin Belk Complex for Track & Field. Furman capped its sports year in late May with solid performances by its baseball and softball teams, and by the play of sophomore golfer Jennifer Perri, who finished 18th at the NCAA national championships. Picked to finish ninth in preseason polls, the Paladin baseball squad racked up a solid fourth-place regular-season finish and advanced to the championship game of the Southern Conference tournament before losing to Georgia Southern. On the way to the title game, Furman knocked out the College of Charleston 15-13 and defending champion The Citadel 11-1. The Lady Paladin softball squad, meanwhile, rebounded from a poor 1999 campaign to finish 37-33 and make the league championship game before dropping a 1-0 decision to Chattanooga. In athletic personnel news, Chris Colvin will be joining the department full time in July as athletic administrator for facilities and game operations. Colvin, who also serves as Furman’s liaison to the Atlanta Falcons training camp, served four years as a student assistant in the department’s sports information operation prior to graduating in May. — Hunter Reid ACADEMIC RECORDS This year has been incredible for the Office of Academic Records. Last month, we experienced our first Datatel graduation and now have an on-line transcript for current students. We are also in the process of converting all former student records to CD-ROM. Amy McCarson, Susan Templeton, JoAnn Williams and Sarah Wells achieve employment anniversaries in June and July: Amy, two years; Susan, 10 years; JoAnn, 19 years; and Sarah, 35 years. Combined with Sandra Childress (22 years) and Susan D’Amato (one year), we have a total of 89 years of experience. D’Amato and Wells attended a Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) workshop June 15 at the South Carolina Department of Education office in Columbia. D’Amato and Williams attended the annual Datatel Users Group meeting in Washington, D.C., March 15–19. We are in the process of choosing furnishings for our new office in the administration building and hope to move back by the end of August. Our office is very fortunate to have Iris Lezan as a part-time data entry specialist. Her retirement from Computing and Information Services is our gain. — Sarah Wells
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