Cole

Field House

It has hosted Elvis Presley, President Kennedy, a groundbreaking ping-pong match and
basketball games that made history. But the William P. Cole Jr. Student Activities Building,
better known as Cole Field House, doesnt house just Marylands memories. Today, the building
holds the universitys ambitions.

TEXT: PROUD PAST

GW: I remember walking out onto the court and if it was a big game, you could feel the noise.
The noise would go right through you as you came out of the tunnel to get ready for the game.

GW: That was special about this place in terms of competing and of course, I think we beat 6
teams ranked number 1 in the country in here. Every time we did, much to the displeasure of
the administration, the students just slammed the floor every time after the games. I
remember thinking a couple things; how great it was, number 1 and number 2, how do I get out
of here without getting hurt? I really believe this place, the students, the fans, helped us win
a lot of games during my time I coached here. It was that type of place.

TM: I remember the Chinese ping pong team that came here and that was the first sports
team to come here from the People's Republic of China. My most memorable moment was my
senior year. We had beaten Virginia in the last game of the season and then the fans came
running down on the floor and picked myself and Len Elmore up and paraded us around the
floor and we cut down the nets. It was a very magical moment because it was sort of the end
of my career and Lennie's career here and something that I'll always remember.

TM: Well, it's such an iconic building and when I'm standing on these steps, I think of the
countless times I had to run these steps because Coach Driesell was training us a little extra
hard in practice.
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TM: Cole Field House was unique because when it packed up and you had the fans down on
the floor, I mean, they were literally on top of you and also, there was no air conditioning in this
place so it would get very, very hot. It had a special magic to it. I've played in a lot of arenas
over my career and I can say Cole was one of the all-time best arenas to play in.

What if Cole Field House could once again be a dynamic center of campus? What if Cole Field
House could be a truly innovative place, that brings together athletics and research and
academics? That is the vision for a reimagined Cole Field House.

TEXT: FEARLESS FUTURE

The new Cole Field House will bring together athletics, collaborative research, and innovative
academics. First, the facility will house the Terrapin Performance Center.

KA: Quotes about Athletics here.

The facility will also house the Academy of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Charged with
exposing every Maryland student with courses in innovation and entrepreneurial thinking, the
Academy collaborates with all 12 colleges and schools to teach all students how to be
innovators, to prepare them to tackle our worlds toughest challenges by teaching creativity,
innovation, and collaboration.

DC: Those qualities, creativity, collaboration, entrepreneurial skills and mindset, those are the
skills that every sector is looking for, whether it's an industry, large companies, or government
and public policy or nonprofits. That's why it's so important that all 37,000 students in all 12
colleges and schools learn these skills.

DC: Traditionally the University of Maryland has a 25-year rich history in innovation and
entrepreneurship.What we really lacked to date is a central resource and a central location
that engages all students of all majors from all schools and colleges. One of the great things
about Cole Field House, it's in an easily-accessible location, right in the middle of campus. The
Academy for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is going to be housed in some of these central
locations like Cole which will allow students from different majors to come together and work
on team-based projects, real-world projects in these large flexible classrooms that we really
haven't had to date. That's a sorely missing piece of our ecosystem and something that can
really help elevate University of Maryland to a next level of leadership and innovation and
entrepreneurship.

DC: Let's say you're working on some sort of prosthetic. Well, not only can you continue to
work on your project or product or prototype in class, you can go down the hall and talk to
world experts in sports science and human performance and actually go to a field to go and test
some of these things, all in the same facility. That really hasn't existed anywhere on campus
and unlikely to have existed anywhere at any school for that matter.

DC: What Cole represents is never have we had this experiential opportunity for students to
try those things, learn from what doesn't work, try again, iterate, pivot and gain this experience
that will allow them to contribute to the workforce and immediately upon graduation. There's
no other place that offers this safe environment for those things that don't work, those failures
that they learn from. The consequences aren't as drastic when you're in school as when you
enter the workforce. Cole is going to play a really important role in preparing our students to
have an impact on the world when they graduate.

The third element of the new vision for Cole Field House is the Center for Sports Medicine,
Health and Human Performance. A first-of-its kind facility, the Center will bring together the
faculty from the University of Maryland, Baltimores School of Medicine with the faculty from
the A. James Clark School of Engineering, School of Public Health, and others in College Park.
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TM: The word is collaboration. This will be the signature program, the signature project for
them working together. It is a tremendous example of how cross disciplinary cooperation can
occur and I think this facility will really set an example for other universities across the
country.

The collaborative research planned for the Center is wide-ranging, including the study of
nutrition, muscle physiology, biomechanics, occupational health, robotics, concussion and
neuroscience.

BH: I think what you really have is an opportunity here for team science. When you start to
break down those boundaries of individual departments and you start to bring together the
entrepreneurial mindset, the engineering and physical sciences, with the medicine, with
kinesiology in public health, and others. Others, just can reach to, but when you start to bring
together teams that are coming together on a particular issue, yes, I think thats what the
advantage of the center is, is that team-science approach.

AP: For us in medicine its very important for us to be able to interact with the scientists in the
various disciplines. In the school of public health and department of kinesiology, we are
interacting with people who study and understand how muscles work in people to [inaudible
00:02:40] with base level. As surgeons and doctors who take care of athletes, we're obviously
clinically applying what they're learning and what they're studying and we are both studying for
us to bring the relevance of the patients to them and for them to bring the basic science
discipline to us allows the two of us to work together in a way that develops the best possible
science.

BH: For example, people might have hypertension, high blood pressure, or they are
recovering from stroke. Or, elderly people who have some kind of cognitive decline. When you
have those physicians in a medically-safe environment, and you have the great scientists here
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at College Park in conjunction with them, then it opens up an opportunity to do some really
important and significant forms of research.

BH: I believe that what's unique about the center is this unique chemistry of the academic
element with athletics. Athletics is a great partner, not only in terms of some resources which
we can leverage to do some of these things we've talked about, but the expertise thats in the
athletic department, in sports medicine, in coaching. Again, I'd go back and say thats what the
university is all about, turning people onto learning, and brining these units together. Again, I
believe, is we could think of this as a new model for the 21st Century.


A world-class athletic performance center. A home for university-wide innovation and
entrepreneurship. A cutting edge collaborative research facility that brings together two
powerhouse higher education institutions. That is the vision for the new Cole Field House.

TM: Well, Cole Field House is about as old as I am. You think about it, when it was built in the
'50's, it was very, very forward thinking.Today we're at a point where ... this is a major part of
the campus and to re-purpose this building and put it back into a facility for the 21st century I
think is an exceptional opportunity for the university.

GW: We have this vision for Cole Field House, that this will be a learning center, that it will be
a center for students, student athletes, to figure out how to do a great job once they leave
here, how to find a profession, something they like to do. All those things will be a part of this
building. Plus, when you say Cole Field House, you're saying a place that anybody in the last 50,
60 years connected with the University of Maryland, knows what you're talking about when you
mention Cole Field House. We have to maintain this place, make it better, and make it a
central part of the university What it will be, will be special.


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