Orediggers doing great stuff!

The Orediggers have it going on. I’ve loved the Colorado School of Mines ever since I went to my son’s convocation there – after all, the President spent three days at an outdoor camp with the students and referenced them by name during the ceremony – and now I love them even more that I’ve reviewed their website (and I moved to Golden!)

I love how they arranged their header – Sports, then Rec Sports, then the rest of the athletic department. It’s a very simple way to elevate the recreation part of their department while also keeping much of the important varsity athletic side easily available. The staff are listed in leadership roles in the department directory.

If I have a qualm, it’s a small one – I still struggle with the focus on sports as the main component of recreation. This is particularly true at Mines where their outdoor program simply crushes it. International trips, world class climbing, ski areas everywhere, mountain biking from campus and tubing in town. It’s an outdoor mecca and it would be great to have it highlighted a bit more (to their credit, they do pull out the outdoor center on its own – it’s just the concept of sport being more highlighted that I would love to see addressed).

Ok, one more – I wish in the slider in the varsity home page that one of the slides was about recreation. That would be dreamy.

Mines also gets kudos for how they promote Recreation on their health and wellness page. In this case they start with counseling and dental and Rec Sports is about the 5th program mentioned, but it’s on the same page and given lots of room. What is fun writing this blog is that when a department is great like this, that a small suggestion – like upgrading the language to say that recreation is a key component to helping students deal with stress and anxiety – is easy to make because the core of recreation is well represented. And, if you’re at Mines reading this, update that page to talk about the connection to wellbeing and mental health so students and parents can make the connection…

Another point leading to a high ranking – the recreation department is listed as a primary Campus Health and Wellness resource on the Health Center site – simple and effective.

The Student Life page also includes Recreation even though it is not in Student Affairs. Here is my favorite part of the site – when you click on Sports and Recreation, it highlights what is possible for the majority of students to actively participate in – so it lists all of the recreation opportunities available on campus and then lists the varsity opportunities to watch. I think that mirrors the priority of developing the whole student – yes, Athletic can be a unifying factor, but so is exercising or adventuring or playing. That’s what I love to see!

Mines is doing such a great job that really there is not much more to analyze – so, I’ll get right to the rankings.

Here is where things stand for Rec represented by Athletics – The Orediggers jump into the top 3 – if that had the slide on the home page they might have eased past Colgate – but congrats to our first DII school!

1. Claremont McKenna

2. Colgate

3. Colorado School of Mines

4. Boston College

5. Northwestern

6. St Thomas

7. Penn

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

9. Wesleyan – they should be higher, but I can’t get over the lack of clear information once you find the recreation information

10. Vanderbilt

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

12. New Mexico

Big change here for Recreation represented in Student Health and Wellbeing as I had a chance to go back and revisit the list. Claremont takes a big fall now that we have some more information. Mines enters the top three and Oakland claims the top spot. Here are the new rankings for Campus Recreation represented in Student Wellbeing. The top three are almost interchangeable.

1. Oakland

2. Rhode Island

3. Colorado School of Mines

4. Northwestern

5. St Thomas

6. Colgate

7. Boston College

8. Penn

9. Vanderbilt

10. Wesleyan – almost non-existent

11. New Mexico