Not entirely related to distance learning, but really cool! I wish they had this when I went to school! Grand Opening: Institute for Baseball Studies | Whittier College
Interesting project . . . but what an odd assortment of speakers at the opening ceremony. The world of baseball was represented by the founder of the Eddie Gaedel Institute (I trust he kept it short), Casey Stengel's grandniece, and the head of the Baseball Reliquary.
Nixon earned a bachelor's degree from Whittier College, and a law degree from Duke University. However, neither school seems particularly anxious to advertise the connection today.. Nixon played on the football team at Whittier, and was supposedly a lifelong baseball fan.
Dick Nixon's birthday was January 9th. Were he still alive, he would have been 102 years old, but he died in 1994 at the age of 81 years old.
He also had his first law office about 3 blocks away from Whittier College. They don't overly advertise him as an alumnus but they do include him in the literature and they do take pride in him. He was also one of the co-founders of one of the Whittier College Societies (local fraternities and sororities). There is a story that goes around that when it was time to start planning for his presidential library he contacted Whittier College as his first choice, but the faculty, who had a lot of power back then, voted against it. According to the accounts Nixon was deeply saddened by this and said that he had no friends left. Looking back from a revisionist perspective, I can't believe they passed up on an opportunity that would of led to a lot of positive financial and research opportunities for the college. As for the grand opening, they also had the local congresswoman present for it.