UConn Roots

While 60% of University of Connecticut undergraduate degrees may turn out to be in Liberal Arts, the foundation of the school was agriculture, and the pastoral setting of the campus sustains the agricultural fields.
In addition to the lovely farm lands with cattle,

 chickens, pigs and sheep, there are also impressive greenhouses where plants from several of the world's micro-climates are on display. I learned the Sago palms in my back yard originated in Africa, and I saw the miracle fruit, which takes away the tartness of anything tasted afterwards, turning vinegar into something that tastes like apple juice, and limes into candy.

Besides these lower greenhouses, which are open to the public, there are others located on the tops of science buildings, accessible only to students and faculty, where experiments on plants are carried out.More than agriculture, however, UConn is known for its basketball teams. 

 

The men's team lost to Michigan in the finals this year, but they were handicapped by having to play that last game in Detroit in an arena packed with 70,000, most of whom were locals cheering on Michigan as some sort of hope for resurgence for an area seemingly spinning down the drain.  

The women's team won the national championship again, although by the racks of logo wear celebrating that fact hanging on half-price racks, that apparently doesn't have the same cache as the men's championships.  

It's the same kind of gender bias I experience when I proudly display my blue ribbon for "Most Icing" that I won in a bake off at Amy's elementary school long ago.  I see very few people wearing tee shirts mentioning that fact, and shockingly I never received a dime from endorsement deals.