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With more than 40 acres available with a wide range of habitat, biology students at Lenoir-Rhyne have an opportunity to gain experience in field research.

The university is adding women's triathlon as a varsity sport, while men's triathlon and men's and women's weightlifting will launch as club sports.

Fox studied chimpanzee behavior for the zoo to document how they interact within a group structure in order to help the zoo better care for the animals. One chimp he studied had actually appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show prior to arriving at the zoo.

Jackie Denny overcame three torn ACLs to star in two sports for the Bears. Denny ranked second in the conference averaging 1.21 blocks a game for LR's volleyball team, while her 56.3 percent shooting from the floor led the women's basketball team.

The university now offers 50 percent off tuition to any North Carolina resident who is a first-year undergraduate student with a 3.5 or higher high school GPA or to a transfer undergraduate student with more than 30 earned credit hours from an accredited North Carolina community college and a 3.5 GPA.

Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education recognized LR as a larger program due to its conferring 249 graduate degrees in 2016-17.

Chick-fil-A is taking the place of Subway and Grille Works, and Sandwich Shack will be located in Fritz-Conrad Residence Hall.

The 14,000 square-foot sports performance center features a weight room, nutrition bar and indoor turf training area, dedicated team meeting rooms, additional coaches' offices, and an enclosed pavilion and outdoor courtyard for Bears Club hospitality and engagement space.

Minor will lead the university's marketing and communication efforts, which connect LR with various audiences through an integrated and expanding platform of digital and social media channels, digital marketing and media relations.

The Bears name was adopted in 1924 after a sports reporter described the baseball team charging out of the dugout like mountain bears. The original Joe Bear was introduced to campus in 1927 as a live black bear, the symbol of the college athletics mascot.

Prior to LR, Pate served as director of athletics at the University of Illinois Springfield for five years, where she was responsible for the administration and oversight of a 16-sport NCAA Division II intercollegiate athletics program in the Great Lakes Valley Conference.

Titled "Pivoting to a New Level of Excellence," is the culmination of a yearlong campus-wide effort that outlines a set of key challenges and actions to ensure the university's success.