The University of Louisville Alumni Magazine: for alumni, faculty, staff, students and anyone that is a UofL Cardinal fan.
Issue link: https://louisville.epubxp.com/i/43017
COVER STOR Y Thirty years ago, when Paul Shaughnessy was a student at the University of Louisville, on-campus food service meant buying chips to go with your brown-bag lunch. Classroom space, well, it didn't look much different from high school. And living on campus was so foreign to the commuter clientele that Shaugh- nessy's parents thought he was "crazy" when he decided to bunk at his fraternity during his sophomore year. "You're only 15 minutes from home," they told Shaughnessy, 83A. Don't misread the memories. Shaughnessy loved attending his hometown university and was as involved in campus life as anyone, serving as president of Phi Kappa Tau fraternity and as a representative in both the A&S; Student Council and the university's Student Sen- ate. But comparing UofL then and now seems as strange as searching for similarities between bread and cheese. "It's like going back to your childhood neighbor- hood and seeing everything that you remember being so much smaller. Except when you go back to the University of Louisville it's so much bigger than you remember," said Shaughnessy, executive director of Louisville-Kentucky Business Coalition on Health, Inc. Evidence of the evolution is everywhere: Billboards, banners, sculptures and tree-lined walkways that an- nounce the perimeter of the once-disconnected Belknap Campus; new residence halls and student gathering spots that attract young adults from diverse backgrounds and distant homes; and renovated learning space that includes state-of-the-art equipment and amenities. "When you drive by on the interstate, you look around and say, 'That's my university,'" Shaughnessy said. Change is a constant part of any university setting where seasons, students and seminar topics seem to pass by in a blur. But what's happened at UofL, particularly in the last half-decade, can rightly be called a transfor- mation. Scholarship, standards, buildings, research, campus environment, athletics, advising and student health services — they have literally grown up around the people who matriculated and then matured in the backyard of their alma mater. Transformation implies not only a radical shift in thinking and behavior, but also awareness of a bigger purpose. To learn and work at UofL today means proceeding consciously toward greatness. Ambition backed by vision has helped the university evolve from a private, liberal arts college, to a public, urban research institution, to an aspiring global higher education community with signifi cant international reach. As Shaughnessy notes, shepherding UofL "to where it is now, there was a lot of leadership along the way." Transformation