Tulane University Freeman School BLOG

I know my posting has been light (super light) recently. I have three classes but I’m finding myself busier than ever:

This week I’m prepping for the Tulane Business Plan Competition. Top prize is 10 grand / 4 team members = a non IRS declarative 2500 bucks for me! Even third prize would be $650 each, there’s five teams total so I’m hopeful. More on our venture if/when we win

The job search also continues. I was in discussions with position at a tech company and then another company offered to buy them, effectively filling my position with an internal transfer. This, combined with 80,000 jobs lost last month, 65,000 the month before, 15,000 Bear resumes floating around Wall St. as well as the other smaller layoffs (I want to say Citi recently released 2500?) leaves me and quite a few other MBA’s around the country scrambling to talk to other employers. The Career Center doesn’t have too many interviewers left coming to campus which leaves me relying more on my personal network as well as GloCAP, Doostang and LinkedIn. Email me if you want an invite to Doostang.

My internship is also keeping me busy. I found a virtual internship with a popular web site located in Atherton, CA. Virtual means I work from the Big Easy, remotely logged in to their network. I get about 14 hours a week in there, which is a lot harder than it sounds when you’re working from home, fuzzy slippers or not.

Then there’s the general stuff I have to do every day: trying to sell my furniture and slowly starting to get rid of all the stuff I’ve acquired over two short years. I had my last IM soccer game last night - we made it to the finals and lost in the first round. I’m slowly getting back in shape from my China trip, and yes, I have more stuff to post on that. The French Quarter Festival was last weekend, I didn’t get a lot of work done Jazz Fest is coming up, there’s a Prison Rodeo this weekend, I’m helping a friend move…

And I’m staring down graduation in about a month. Wow.

Ok, enough about my life.

The NY Times has an article about our new 5,000 seat baseball stadium. I’ve been meaning to get to a game to take some pictures and video for all of you. I walk by the stadium a few times a week; it’s good looking, and serves as a beautiful anchor to the northern part of Tulane’s campus. No doubt it will help to push the record level of undergrad apps even higher. Incidentally, Tulane University is ranked 50 by US News, just four spots ahead of the Freeman School.

It’s Back to Normal as Tulane Opens a New Stadium

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 13, 2008

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The crack of a baseball against the wood siding of a shotgun house has restored a sense of normalcy in an old neighborhood near Tulane University.

Residents in the historic Uptown area watched Tulane’s new 5,000-seat ballpark rise from the muck of a disaster zone while they rebuilt their homes and lives.

“It’s beautiful,” said Mike Lanaux, who lives behind the left-field wall and watches games with his wife, Lindsay, from the roof of their garage, evoking images of Wrigley Field.

“It gives you the sense that things are getting back to normal,” he said. “It’s nice to see a few thousand kids in the stands, cheering. At night, everything is just illuminated by the amount of light those light standards throw into the neighborhood.”

The stadium lights are hardly the most defining characteristic of Greer Field at Turchin Stadium, which opened for this college season — a year behind schedule because of delays stemming from Hurricane Katrina.

Lanaux speaks with the perspective of someone who returned to the neighborhood when it was eerily dark for weeks after Katrina hit in August 2005.

He lived alone, without electricity, in the upstairs of his stucco home on Audubon Boulevard, one of the more elegant streets in town. Flooding had ruined nearly everything on the first floor. His wife temporarily moved their children to Houston to put them in school.

“It was weird, the first month after the hurricane, when I’d drive from here to work in pitch black,” he said.

Only trace evidence of disaster remains in Lanaux’s neighborhood, which is easily seen from the stands as a backdrop of large live oak canopies, palm trees, arched windows and burnt-orange terra cotta ridge lines on expansive rooftops.

The $10.5 million ballpark is an architectural landmark wedged into an edge of campus where Super Bowls and Sugar Bowls were once held at the old Tulane football stadium.

With dark-green bucket seats, and a red brick design on walls behind home plate and between two levels of the infield stands, it combines a nostalgic look with modern amenities like private suites and an open-air club patio.

Along the right-field foul line, a steep pavilion — where students sit and heckle opposing players — towers over a narrow street separating the campus from a stretch of old one- and two-story wood-frame homes that sometimes take knocks from foul balls hit high enough to clear the suites.

Tulane Coach Rick Jones, in his 15th season with the Green Wave, said neighbors never complained, nor did they return any balls.

They cherish the return of baseball, he said.

“Around here you talk to people who say they grew up selling Cokes in the old Tulane Stadium during the Super Bowl, and they’re Tulane fans from birth,” he said.

Because the park is on the same spot as the old, smaller Turchin Stadium, which held about 3,500, the stands had to be built on a steeper incline, so fans in the last row have the impression of being on top of the action.

“It feels almost like you’re in an amphitheater when you’re on the field,” Jones said.

Tulane’s team held together after the storm because Texas Tech hosted it for the fall 2005 semester, setting up players with classes, housing and practice facilities.

Because much of Tulane’s campus did not flood, it reopened the next semester. The baseball team spent the past two seasons playing home games at Zephyr Field, a minor league park in the suburbs that is also home to the Mets’ Class AAA affiliate. Many students and neighborhood residents were unwilling or unable to make the 20-minute drive each way regularly, and games were usually played before a lot of empty seats.

Julia Otis has been attending games for years; she lived within walking distance of the on-campus ballpark before relocating after the flood. She drives now but still takes heart in seeing nearby residents flock to games from rebuilt homes.

“It’s a little piece of regular activity,” Otis said. “A lot of the fans here have been coming for so long, they walk over here, ride their bikes or they’re five minutes away.”

“There’s always someone sitting out there on the roof,” she added, glancing at Lanaux’s place.

Players say they are delighted because they no longer take a bus to practice or home games, and because the new synthetic turf field drains well, so typical spring showers cause only minimal delays.

The crowds are more lively as well.

“Our student section was pretty much nonexistent the last two years,” outfielder Warren McFadden said. “This adds a little life to the campus. People get excited about games. They can just walk right down the street.”

The senior outfielder Grayden Griener, who was part of Tulane’s last College World Series team, in 2005, struggled to think of a comparable college baseball stadium.

He said, “As far as the fans being on top of you and the noise level, it’s more electric than any place I’ve ever been in, and I’ve played in a lot of good places.”

Jones suspected the stadium would help him recruit, and he was not disappointed; he received commitments from the first 11 recruits who visited after it was built.

“This is something I’ve been waiting for for 15 years, and now that it’s here I have to pinch myself once in a while, because after the storm all bets were off,” Jones said. “The university didn’t have to do this and everyone would have understood, including me. There’s no manual to go by when you’re dealing with the nation’s largest natural disaster.”

Like others in New Orleans, officials at Tulane took the approach of combining needed repairs with improvements. Many at the university contend that the entire campus looks better than ever.

Certainly, the new ballpark, which will host the Conference USA tournament May 21-25, helps.

“Like it was rising from the ashes, it was amazing to watch it be built,” said Rick Lacey, who graduated from Tulane in 1971 and is a regular at games. “It’s pretty awesome. To a certain degree, a facility like this is kind of showing the way. I hope so anyway.”

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