As we begin the tour 10 years ago, there is no Bob Carpenter Sports/Convocation Center and no cheering Blue Hen Fever student section at varsity basketball games. There is no Rullo Stadium to provide first-rate artificial turf facilities for the field hockey and lacrosse teams. There are no lights, and, consequently, no night football games, in Delaware Stadium.

On the adjacent campus of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Townsend Hall is sorely in need of renovations and there is no Allen Biotechnology Laboratory to conduct the important research so vital to the region’s poultry industry.

There is a glimmer of what is to come as the University’s new first family, President David P. Roselle and his wife, Louise, see to it that bright blue and gold banners are placed along South College Avenue, waving in a new era of accomplishment, prosperity and spirit.

The banners sport the interlocking UD logo that instantly identifies the institution and can be found on flags, clothing, stationery, student shuttle buses—even on affinity credit cards and special license plates issued to alumni and friends.

Passing over the railroad tracks en route to central campus, our virtual tour group is joined by four relative newcomers to campus—YoUDee, the Fightin’ Blue Hen mascot; its sibling, Baby Blue, who hatched in 1999; a Blue Hen Ambassador, part of an energetic student team that introduces prospective students and their parents to the University; and a member of the Arrival Survival Team, a group of hard-working volunteers drawn from among students, staff and alumni who help freshmen move into their residence halls each fall.

Our stroll takes us to South College Avenue, along a beautiful red brick walkway. We pass Morris Library, the flagship of a nationally recognized University Library program that houses more than 2.4 million volumes and more than 3 million microforms and is wired for Internet access by researchers on campus and throughout the world.

Farther along, adjacent to Hullihen Hall, we find a newly constructed garden park that features a wide variety of unusual trees and plantings. It is part of a campus-wide beautification program that includes small parks, new benches and a unique study of the solar system with planets placed about campus according to their relative positions in space.

We cross over South College Avenue using the attractively reconstructed pedestrian walkway, then continue along to the Colonnade, past a newly constructed fountain, through the renovated Purnell Hall and on into the magnificent wood-trimmed lobby of MBNA America Hall. There, they show us a case study room that is fully equipped with high-tech teaching aids. All classrooms on the campus are now wired and feature such state-of-the-art instructional technology.

Following a short break under the bright neon lights in the food court of Trabant University Center, a second student union designed to serve the growing needs of a growing campus, our guides lead us to student residence halls equipped with workout areas and computer laboratories and inform us that UD has a one-to-one “port to pillow” ratio—that is, one Internet connection for every student on campus. A cable TV system also is in place.

Next, we move to the heart of campus, the University Mall, where construction is under way on a stately addition to P.S. du Pont Hall and where renovations have provided Memorial Hall an airy look, modern facilities and a basement corridor in which all can now stand tall. We enter majestic Gore Hall, where faculty members plug students in to a host of discovery learning opportunities and where students can connect laptop computers into desktop outlets.

If these visual impressions have not been convincing, consider the statistical evidence.

The University of Delaware’s standing in the annual U.S. News and World Report ranking of the nation’s institutions of higher education has climbed to 24th among state-supported colleges and universities. And, UD is aiming higher, determined to reach the top 50 among all colleges and universities, according to Roselle.

UD has a well-earned reputation as The Technology University and was second in the nation in a recent Yahoo! Internet Life rankings of the nation’s “Most Wired Colleges.”

The Campaign for Delaware, the first comprehensive fund-raising effort in the history of the institution, has surpassed its five-year goal of $225 million in half that time. As of May 2001, the Campaign had reached $258 million and was climbing.

Annual giving has jumped from $12.5 million in 1990 to more than $45 million in the last fiscal year. UD’s endowments are nearly at the $1 billion mark.

In addition, sponsored funding for research, teaching and outreach has reached a record $107 million in expenditures.

Moreover, the quality of the students UD is attracting as a result of the improved campus environment has risen dramatically.

During the course of the decade gone by, UD produced three Rhodes Scholars and saw two alumni named back-to-back MacArthur Fellows.

In the just completed academic year, UD students achieved a rare triple, with students winning yet another Rhodes Scholarship, a Mitchell Scholarship and a Truman Scholarship.

The Class of 2004 entered as the most able in history. Applications rose to a record 18,000, an increase of more than 4,000 over the previous mark. Only 49 percent of the applicants, a sizable decrease from years past, were offered admission.

The first freshman class of the century is made up of 3,188 students, and they have higher average SAT scores, higher high school grade point averages and higher class rankings than ever before.