Leatherneck Nation

We live in the Quincy area- maybe 75 miles from Macomb, and have Comcast basic cable. It's amazing, SIU-e has been on one of the Fox Sports stations at least five times this year- usually a home game. A lot of OVC games televised. Kind of sad SIU-e gets all of this exposure in our area, with WESTERN so close. Just one of things that makes you scratch your head.

SIU-Edwardsville has 9 games that will be televised on Fox Sports Midwest this season.

Nice modern new facility, that usually looks full, and vocal. They are in a large metro area and one of the fastest growing universities in the state. It has become a competitor for WESTERN in this area- and likely winning for new or transfer students.

The SIU-Edwardsville arena has 4,000 seats. They had 3,145 there for Saturday's game with Murray State.
http://www.siuecougars.com/facilities/v ... basketball

SIUE started as an extension of Carbondale, much as our QC campus is an extension of Macomb. In time, it became it's own campus with President, etc., within the SIU system (think UofI system in miniature). With the ~400K population of the Quad Cities area, there would seem to be opportunity for a similar thing. Yes, I know, everyone worries about how it would hurt Macomb, but it could grow Western. And you already have a great area for indoor sports and facilities for outdoor sports, to be a non-football school. Thoughts?

I'd take a pretty good amount of sustained growth to get WIU-QC to the point where they could be their own full-fledged university. Current enrollment is ~1,200, although the new and future additions are supposed to increase enrollment capacity to ~3k students.

Currently the smallest state university is UIS (Illinois-Springfield) which has 5,431 students (http://news.uis.edu/2014/09/uis-reports ... nt-in.html). UIS competes in Div. II in the GLVC currently. I think the potential is there, if the QC campus continues to grow and if the administration and other political "higher-ups" decide that they want to go that direction. The QC area does have some nice facilities already if they were able to gain the use of them (Basketball at the iWireless Center, Golf at TPC Deere Run, etc.). I do think that some of that expansion would probably come at the expense of the Macomb campus though...they'd probably have to add in some student housing and make it less of a "commuter" campus, which would pull away some of the "traditional" students from Macomb.

Valid points, ST. There are some folks in the SIU system who believe e has hurt enrollment at Carbondale, and they are likely correct.

It all comes down to what the Mission Statement is for the QC campus. At one time, the mission was to create a non-residential college which is what we currently have.

With the State's current financial situation and with Governor Rauner now in charge, I would not expect to see much money being spent in new programs and facilities.

Not all of the State's universities have intercollegiate athletics. Long-time Western fans will remember that Northeastern Illinois University was a member with us in the Mid-Continent Conference. They dropped athletics in 1998. They now operate sports clubs instead.

Leatherface,

I view Carbondale as having hurt themselves far more than Edwardsville having hurt them. SIUC has had fiasco after fiasco while SIUE has made smart move after smart move. SIUE is showing more growth than any other public university in the state as a result of bold, but well reasoned decisions to move forward, not languish in the past. I guess it helps that they're barely 50 rather than over the century mark of the other state schools.

Tere,
You are absolutely correct. Carbondale has brought most of their issues upon themselves. e became a good option, and yes, the "newness" of the e campus is a big draw too.