The John A. Morrison faculty award recipient, Dr. Dale Bales, was announced at the annual May luncheon before Bales retirement started while Jan Schmidt was presented the Morrison staff award at the opening session in August. The John A. Morrison award recognizes service to Anderson University as exemplified by Dr. Morrison, the University’s first president. Dr. Morrison had a vision for Christian higher education and gave his time and energy to creating the foundation of what is now Anderson University.

A crew of volunteers swarmed around the residence halls on Anderson University’s campus Thursday waiting for a car, any car, to be unloaded.

As Dean Branson, director of student programming, pointed tightly-packed vehicles toward temporary parking spaces, returning students and some experienced parents waited for any chance they had to help another freshman into the dorms.

“They’re responsible for unpacking, but we get their stuff up to the room as quickly as we can,” Branson said.

Cars came loaded with all the comforts of home — lamps, rugs, television — downsized to fit into each of the single rooms that most students must share with an unfamiliar roommate.

“We have to know that the people coming here have never done this before,” Branson said. “So we have to make them feel at home.”

Hominess is what attracted Nathan Breneman to AU. The freshman from Dublin, Ohio, said the size of the campus made the school seem like a good fit. He was settling into Dunn Hall on Thursday, but said he wasn’t nervous about starting classes, although he was worried that living without his own car would take a lot of getting used to.

His parents were also wondering about how their lives would be different with their oldest son out of the house.

“I just know the home will be a lot quieter,” said Jenny, Nathan’s mother. “He’s the talker. He’s the one who always has something going on.”

Nathan is one of an estimated 600 new undergraduates enrolling at AU this fall, the school reported. The university expects the size of its full-time freshman class to increase between 12 and 15 percent this year, but exact figures will not be known until late September.

Approximately 80 percent of new undergraduate students are coming from Indiana or neighboring states, but 47 states and 30 countries are represented in the total undergraduate population of about 1,850 students, the university reported.

Callie Zelber and Kelly Thomas moved into Rice Hall on Thursday. Strangers less than a year ago, the two girls met though Anderson University’s new social networking site for accepted students, a Web site that lets people seriously considering AU to talk.

Admission’s counselor Christy Kihm said lots of students had found roommates using the site. “It was a big hit.”

Zelber, of Indianapolis, and Thomas, of Miamisburg, Ohio, said they connected over their shared love of the Disney princesses, and now their dorm room is festooned with images of Belle from “Beauty and the Beast.”

The girls said it was a challenge to decide which clothes to bring, and they both made a point to pack photographs and their beloved teddy bears.

With five days left before classes start, Kelly said she’d be using the time to relax, meet some new people, and if there’s time, find out where her classes are. dresser to herself, she joked that it was a good excuse to go buy more clothes.

VIEW FLICKR PHOTO ALBUM OF 2008 MOVE-IN DAY

—Barrett Newkirk is a reporter for the Herald Bulletin. Story republished with permission.

Anderson University is a private Christian university of 2,700 undergraduate and graduate students in central Indiana. Anderson continues to be recognized as a top Christian college: in 2008, U.S. News and World Report ranked Anderson University among the best colleges and universities in the Midwest for the fourth consecutive year. Established in 1917 by the Church of God, Anderson University offers more than 65 undergraduate majors and graduate programs in business, education, music, nursing and theology.

Faculty, staff and returning students are on hand today to unload cars and vans as new students and families arrive on campus.  Across all academic units, Anderson University will welcome a total institutional population of approximately 2,800 undergraduate and graduate students when classes open on September 2.

Although precise numbers are not available until the third full week of classes (week of September 22), the university is projecting an increase of 12-15 percent for first-time freshman over last year.  Within this year’s enrollment are approximately 600 new undergraduate students and a total undergraduate population of roughly 1,850 students.  The AU undergraduate student population includes persons from more than 30 international countries and 47 states.

US News and World Report has again ranked Anderson University among the best universities in the Midwest offering master’s level degree programs. Institutions in this category offer a full range of both undergraduate and master’s level degree programs.  The magazine’s 2008 guide to “America’s Best Colleges” marks the fifth consecutive year that Anderson University has been listed among the best in its class.

A bacteria, E. coli, has been the culprit in a wide range of food poisonings.

Bruce Applegate, an associate professor of food science at Purdue University, thought there must be a safer, cheaper way to detect the food-borne pathogen.

Visitors to the AU website can now get automatic news updates through RSS (really simple syndication) feeds. Users can track the latest news about their major or favorite AU sport or see upcoming calendar events by subscribing to RSS feeds.

“This technology makes it easy for anyone to keep track of what’s going on at AU according what interests them most,” said David Hynds, Web Content Specialist.

Rebecca Vanatta has only two children in school, yet her annual spending on clothes and supplies sometimes tops $15,000. [Editor's note: Rebecca is a M.Ed student and currently working on her school administration license in the School of Education].

That’s because the art teacher at Anderson High School spends money out of her own pocket to make sure the kids in Anderson’s public school system get what they need — whether it’s for books, belts or field trips.

For the first time, Anderson University is hosting a summer camp for teenagers considering careers in the music industry.

The camp, an offshoot of the university’s student-run recording label Orangehaus Music, offers campers early exposure to sound engineering, music marketing and other skills not usually covered outside of a recording label office or college class.

AU School of Theology honored Rev. Adrienne Holmes with the 2008 Distinguished Alumna Award, James Cook with the 2008 Distinguished Ministries Award, and Dr. John Aukerman with the 2008 Distinguished Service Award.

About 300 people at the Anderson University Heritage Dinner sang together in honor of David Coolidge and his wife, Shirley.

“God our maker, God most holy” rang through the L-shaped Shield Dining Room. The song was most appropriate since the verses were written by David Coolidge in 1962.