Northwestern

I’ve been to Northwestern twice when I was the sport administrator for Stanford Fencing – the Ryan Fieldhouse is stunning, I mean stunning, and is linked directly to the Rec Center – a great symbiotic relationship that plays out a bit in their web-presence.

The review starts well with the drop-down on the university home page under Campus Experience having only Athletics and Recreation and Libraries and Collections as the two Highlights (when you go the page though, it adds Performances & Exhibitions and Clubs & Organizations, but that is for another review). That tells me what is important, and of course I am glad to see the pairing of the varsity sports with the recreation program.

The University also prioritizes Health and Wellness as one of four categories under Life on Campus – off to a great start so far – let’s see where it goes.

Clicking on the Athletics and Recreation page it takes you to a page with a big Hero picture – in this case of an NCAA team. The picture footer unfortunately says “Division I athletics with best-in-class support for student-athletes.” All they had to do was add “and world-class recreation opportunities” and then it would show that the student at Northwestern is equally important as the student-athlete. Later in the page they reference Club Sport and Intramurals, noting you don’t have to “play varsity sports to be a student-athlete.” I understand that sentiment – and it’s a nice attempt at bridging the gap – but to compare what an intramural sport student gets and what a varsity athlete gets, well, that’s a disservice and not grounded in today’s reality.

This would make a great conversation on campus – does this approach actually help students feel more connected? Maybe – but my experience at Stanford would lead me to believe that maybe not. Students knew the difference, and in some cases were okay with it, but in others it felt like a big power differential.

Before leaving this topic, I have to note that the links on the page only go to Club Sports and Intramurals – not even directly to their own, in-house, recreation program (complete with their own brand and logo). This feels pretty typical of how the sport side of recreation gets the primary publicity at these departments that are in athletics – leaving out the rest of the recreation programs – fitness, aquatics, outdoors, open-rec - that see way more students, faculty/staff, and community participating.

Overall though, not bad for a Power 4 school, but not ideal and not as aligned as some of our top-ranked programs. With a few tweaks I think they could make students feel more connected and valued and move up the leaderboard.

Switching to Health and Wellness under the Campus Experience I have to give Northwestern a thumbs-up! At a minimum they include the recreation program on the page (I could nit-pick about the headline being about Fitness instead of movement, but let’s take the win). I am also really happy to see recreation as a tool for student-success in both Athletics and Health on this page.

On the actual Health Center page there is a drop down to a Wellness section. And I must say that the information there is better than most and probably in a pretty good scale related to the overall responsibilities of the Health Center. The Wellness page uses the relatively easy-to-understand eight dimensions of wellness which of course includes Physical. They do a good job highlighting movement in their video, while also acknowledging the other aspects of physical wellness. In their FAQ, the actually have a question about how to find fitness or sport opportunities – brilliant to see! To be a top contributor towards having exercise be a vital part of student wellness there are a couple more steps they could do (like have a PE requirement or a referral program) – but comparatively they are ahead of the game.

Oh my gosh, I got so caught up in the good stuff that I almost forgot to look at the Varsity site itself. Once again, Northwestern does a nice job placing recreation in context. Like Rhode Island, they don’t overcomplicate everything on their web-site – under Athletics it just has People and then two lists of Departments, of which Fitness and Recreation is listed. It’s not under Other and it’s not buried. I might just leave it at Recreation and drop the Fitness, that is what the department appears to be called – but this is a much better approach than many schools. I’m torn because the way Rhode Island called them the wrong name frustrated me more than this instance does.

Overall, pleasantly surprised Northwestern – for a Power 4 school, with a couple of tweaks here and there this could be one of the top websites for rec departments who are in athletics.

In the overall ranking the placement of Rec in regard to athletics is 5th out of 10.

In terms of the university capitalizing on recreation as a tool to solve the health problems on campus, they debut at 4th out of 10.

Here is where things stand for Rec represented by Athletics – some big changes now that we have more data.

1. Claremont McKenna

2. Colgate

3. Boston College

4. Northwestern

5. St Thomas

6. Penn

7. Rhode Island – the wrong department name really hurts.

8. Vanderbilt

9. Oakland – revisited and they are not on the Varsity site at all even though they report there

10. New Mexico

Here are the rankings for Campus Recreation represented in Student Wellbeing. The top four are almost interchangeable. Claremont gets the nod for now due to the PE requirement, but I am going to keep thinking about that as a factor…

1. Claremont McKenna

2. Oakland

3. Rhode Island

4. Northwestern

5. St Thomas

6. Colgate

7. Boston College

8. Penn

9. Vanderbilt

10. New Mexico

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