The Bark - September 2018

NO. 9 | SEPT 2018 | FREE

UMD FARM EXPLORES SUSTAINABILITY | PG. 6 BULLDOG OF THE MONTH: EMILY BORRA | PG. 10 AS A STUDENT: FROM THE CITIES TO THE GREATEST LAKE | PG. 12

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Word On Campus: #BulldogSummer

As A Student: From the cities to the greatest lake

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UMD farm explores sustainability

Women’s cross country and track and field coach resigns after investigation

10 Bulldog of the Month: Emily Borra

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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COVER PHOTO: MORGAN PINT

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SAILBOATS ON LAKE WOLFANG IN FRONT OF THE SALZKAMMERGUT MOUNTAINS IN SALZBURG, AUSTRIA. PHOTO: ADDIE MARZINSKE

WORD ON CAMPUS:

#BULLDOGSUMMER

By Vinny Harvieux The Bark asked Bulldogs what they did over the summer.

From hiking in Colorado, to traveling to India, here are some of the different things we heard around campus.

“I went to Spring Awakening, it’s an EDM music festival in Chicago.”

KARISSA OHLSEN

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“I went to San Francisco over PRIDE weekend.”

AMOS HEWITT-PERRY

PHOTO: ADDIE MARZINSKE

“I played rec. volleyball at Skyline lanes.”

ABBY WEISINGER

“I went to see family in Europe.”

ANDREAS ARISTIDOU

“I went to Italy, Switzerland and France.”

ZAC BEAUCLAIRE

“I went to Wisconsin Dells for my 18th birthday.”

MELANIE LANG

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PHOTO COURTESY OF UMD SAP FARM

UMD FARM EXPLORES SUSTAINABILITY

By Addie Marzinske In 2009, the University of Minnesota Duluth’s Land Lab was founded by professor Randel Hanson. The Land Lab was created to represent a 21st century attempt to battle climate change and bring back the idea of sustainable living.

The Land Lab, also known as Sustainable Agriculture Project, was created on the revitalized land that was formerly part of the Northeast Agricultural Experimental Station. The mission of the farm is to strengthen food security in the Western Lake Superior region by promoting teaching, research and engagement related to sustainable food and agricultural systems for all the economic, health and ecological benefits it brings.

“The farm is a collaborative project with many inputs and outputs,” Hanson said. “It provides education, research, food production and community engagement as well as energy from its wind turbine.”

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Professor Hanson grew up on a small farm; he’s taught environmental studies for twenty years and has been involved in campus food systems for fifteen years.

“I relocated from Arizona State University where I had some projects working with the campus on its food system, dining services and the physical plant, creating opportunities for students to learn about the environment, the food system and sustainability,” Hanson said. “When I moved here, I was interested in figuring out how to transfer that.”

It was through talking to faculty, students and community members that professor Hanson learned about the unutilized 30 acres that once was a part of the Northeast Agricultural Experiment from 1912–1976. After doing some research, Hanson realized the benefits that would come from turning those unused acres into a Land Lab for both the university and the community.

It’s doing what we wanted it to do. It gave these students experience and training and then inspired them to get into a career.

CINDY

HALE

While Hanson and many others enjoyed the idea of the Land Lab there were a few unanswered questions as in how to go about creating it, but he knew its purpose.

“What the farm is really about, or rather the land lab, is social learning,” Hanson said.

“How do we as students and faculty in collaboration with our community learn as an institution? How we can lower our ecological footprint of our food system and use that as a learning opportunity?”

Hanson wasn’t alone in his hard work in creating the farm—grad student Cindy Hale was working for the University of Minnesota’s department of forestry, but working at the Natural Resources Research Institute of Duluth when she met Professor Hanson.

“Randy understood the intersection of the ecosystem and ecology with traditional agriculture with human systems which is why the Sustainable Agriculture Project was created through the college of liberal arts; which understands human systems, economic systems, social systems, all which are really important parts of liberal arts education,” Hale said. “You can’t talk about sustainable agriculture without talking about those human systems and you can’t talk about sustainable agriculture without talking about ecological systems.”

Hale began working with Hanson in 2009 on a couple of projects out at the extension farm site.

Hale brought to the table her personal expertise which was her knowledge and previous work as an orchardist, which came in handy when they discovered the remnants of the trial orchard that had previously been a part of UMD’s agriculture farm.

“Because the University of Minnesota is a land grant university it came with the obligation of providing outreach, education and training related to important agricultural issues that were also important to the economy and well-being of the state,” Hale said.

The outreach and training included research on various crops and developing new crops that would grow strong in Duluth’s climate and area.

“One aspect of that very diverse program, was that they had seedling trial orchards for apple and tree fruit. In its peak, there were five seedling trial orchards,” Hale said.

According to Hale, by the time she and Hanson got to the extension site in 2009, the field experiment station had shrunk to almost 60 acres from its original size of 280 and only one of the five seedling trial orchards of the five had survived.

The orchard had become overgrown in conifers, which made it difficult to even know there were apple trees there.

PICTURED, SOME OF THE PLANTED FIELDS LOCATED ON THE UMD SAP FARM’S LAND. PHOTO COURTESY OF UMD SAP FARM

After receiving grant money, Hale began removing some of the trees and started the restorative process of pruning the trees. That trial orchard has since been in recovery. Hale also worked to get a grant in order to plant a heritage orchard out at the SAP farm.

“We wanted to have an orchard that would be a resource for variety that perhaps would adapt well to our climate and soil but weren’t currently represented in the trees you would find in this area,” Hale said.

The heritage orchard was made up of five trees and ten different varieties of apples.

The most important part about SAP, according to Cindy Hale, is that it is a hands-on training place for undergraduate students to learn about all of the amazing things in organic sustainable technology, which may often be branded as new. Once you really start to learn about them you realize they are really old, sometimes even ancient techniques that are used to grow food organically and in a localized system, according to Hale.

MEGAN FORCIA WORKING ON SAP FARM. PHOTO COURTESY OF UMD SAP FARM

“There are quite a few students from this program that have moved on to either farm directly, or work in food and local food system job positions,” Hale said. “It’s doing what we wanted it to do. It gave these students experience and training and then inspired them to get into a career.”

Graduate Cameron Gustafson who majored in environment and sustainability and minored in environment and outdoor education had been working on the SAP farm since the fall of 2014.

“I knew I was going to UMD mostly because I love the campus and I like the size and I loved the area, but then I came across the SAP farm when browsing on the UMD homepage and I thought it was cool,” Gustafson said. “So I sent Randy an email and basically

told him I’d be up a couple of times during the summer, and so for a few days I would go up and work on the farm and that fall I got hired on.”

Cameron had some prior knowledge to farming before coming to work on the SAP farm after years of gardening with his grandma and baling hay with his uncle for several summers on his farm, but he believes he learned things on the SAP farm he could never learn in a classroom.

“I learned how many different fields of study have a role on agriculture, and how agriculture is really the commonality between everything on earth,” Gustafson said. “Everybody has a relationship with a landscape, no matter if the landscape is in the Central Valley in California or Arizona, or if it’s at the SAP farm up the road.”

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On the farm Cameron said he did everything from sprouting seeds in the spring to harvesting in the fall and everything in between. Over the winter, students working on the SAP farm collaborate with Professor Hanson and Kevin Moris, SAP’s full-time manager, to figure out what equipment they will need for the next year.

Cameron believes that the campus is moving in the right direction with its sustainability efforts, but he believes there is more work to be done and that students are the driving factor in accomplishing those goals.

“The students are the main driving force in what the university takes action on, because if the students don’t want it then there’s no reason for the university to pursue it,” Gustafson said.

don’t know how long it has been in the warehouse.”

It is not just UMD’s campus that receives produce from the farm; the elementary schools also receive some along with others in the community such as the apples grown on the community based heritage apple orchard planted by Cindy Hale.

“We are really proud of our farm and our partnership with our farm,” Engelmeier said.

SUNFLOWERS GROWING TALL ON THE UMD SAP FARM FIELDS. PHOTO: MORGAN PINT

“I took Randy Hanson’s Sustainable Foods systems class and I had always been interested in the food system,” Forcia said. “I had been vegan before and a vegetarian for many years and as someone studying environmental issues I knew how big of a deal our food systems were to contributing to climate change and so taking the class was really the spark I needed to realize that I wanted to learn more and do more with the food system.”

“The university is just like any other business, they want to satisfy their customers, and students are the customers of the university.”

Cameron graduated in the spring of 2018. He will be applying the skills he learned on the SAP farm in his job with Gale Woods farm in Minnetrista, Minnesota as a farm educator.

“You’re only here for four years, so I think it’s really important to become as active as you can, by utilizing the resources the university does have,” Gustafson said.

Hanson said that the farm has a unique collaboration with UMD’s Dining Services and acts as part of their sustainability mission which is in student life. Dining Services pays the salary of the farm manager and the farm workers which comes to ca. $50,000 a year.

Claudia Engelmeier, UMD’s Director of Dining Services, was also a part of the SAP farm’s creation and played a big part in incorporating the food grown on the farm into student’s daily meals by serving it in the dining center and food court.

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Graduate Megan Forcia majored in American Indian Studies and minored in Environment and sustainability had also been working with the SAP program for many years.

A UMD STUDENT EXPLORES THE SAP FARM PROPERTY. PHOTO: MORGAN PINT

“In 2011 when we first started, we had 4,400 pounds that we bought, and every year it just depends on what the product is,” Engelmeier said of buying produce from the farm to serve on campus. “Our biggest year was 2015–2016, we purchased 13,000 pounds.

In total, we have purchased almost 65,000 pounds.”

According to Hanson, along with money raised from various fundraisers and grant applications the farm also uses revenue from ca. 20–25,000 pounds of organic produce grown on the farm to pay for the farm inputs, which include seeds, equipment, fertilizers and compost.

Before receiving produce from the farm, the school had been receiving all produce from food vendors. They tried to buy local as much as possible, but if Minnesota was to have a bad growing season the school would take what the food suppliers could provide them.

Much of the produce served on campus that has been grown on the SAP farm comes from the farm’s root cellar, things like: squash, tomatoes, beans, carrots, broccoli and watermelon.

“We don’t know as much about our food when it comes in from our vendors,” Engelmeier said.

“We don’t know how long it has been in the field and we

Megan said that farming and food systems had always been something she was interested in, but aside from being a conscious consumer had never really seen a role for herself in the food system, but after working on the SAP farm her whole career trajectory changed.

“It just opened so many doors to so many opportunities, now I work with the Healthy Foods Healthy Lives institute out of the U of M on the Twin Cities’ campus and they want to keep me on after I graduate full time,” Forcia said.

Megan believes there is nowhere else she would have gotten the hands-on experience of working on a farm in such a flexible way to work with her school schedule and be so accessible to her.

The SAP farm allowed Megan to feel really close with the people she was working with, which as

a transfer student helped her feel more connected to UMD as a campus community.

“By vocalizing support for the farm, [students] can have a tremendous impact on the future of not only this campus’ sustainability, but the sustainability of the city of Duluth and of our region,” Forcia said.

I think for the long-term health of our students and of our community it’s really necessary that we look at eating habits and the food we are providing for students.

MEGAN

Forcia and a few of her coworkers created a petition that was circulated around campus and the community to gain support for the farm.

“I think that it is increasingly important that students continue to voice to the administration how important this program is and that it should be given sustainable funding,” Hale said.

Megan believes the food system is the place to start, when trying to improve our sustainability efforts as a campus.

“The nutritional value of food grown locally is incomparable,” Forcia said. “I think for the long-term health of our students and of our community it’s really necessary that we look at eating habits and the food we are providing for students.”

A few years back when administration was considering cutting SAP from funding,

“The land lab represents an attempt to create a pathway to alter a twentieth century institution to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century and provide pathways for students to learn how difficult and rewarding it is to change these institutions,” Hanson said.

To learn more about UMD’s SAP farm visit their website: https://umdlandlab.org Editors note: This story was originally published in Lake Voice News and has been republished with permission.

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BULLDOG OF THE MONTH, EMILY BORRA. PHOTO: TIANNA DAY

BULLDOG OF THE MONTH: EMILY BORRA

By Zack Benz Emily Borra, who is the program coordinator for Bulldog Welcome Week as well as the coordinator for Kirby Student Center, is a French horn player who performs with many local Duluth groups. The groups include the Twin Ports Wind Orchestra, Northern Finest Horn Choir, and Northern Lights Music Festival.

Borra is also the Assessment Liaison for the programs within Kirby and has a small private horn studio where she teaches middle and high school students as well.

Borra grew up in Side Lake on Northern Minnesota’s Iron Range. She attended Chisholm High School, where she graduated in 2007 with a class of 42 people. Afterwards, she enrolled in the University of Wisconsin with the intention of becoming an art and music teacher. According to Borra, after classes started at UWS, she decided to drop art rather quickly.

“Music was too crazy,” Borra said. “It was way too involved. Music majors take 15 classes for four credits.”

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Borra said that she was a music education major for a long time but eventually changed her major and decided to attend graduate school for French Horn Performance.

“I love playing the French horn,” Borra said. “I got into my top grad school, the Jacobs School of Music [JSM], at Indiana University.

It’s one of the top three music colleges in the country.”

Borra said that once she started at JSM, she realized that she was “bored out of her gourd” and needed more of a challenge.

“I decided to talk with an advisor at Indiana U about doing a double masters degree,” Borra said. “One in French horn and another in higher education and student affairs.”

Borra said that she really fell in love with the student affairs side of things and enjoyed thinking about how she can make improvements on college campuses.

When Borra graduated, she moved back to Duluth and started her job at Advisement and Registration in 2016. When

We are all each our own unique humans.

E M I LY

Borra started the position, it was under the Office of Students in Transition [SIT], which was dismantled in the spring semester of 2018.

Borra, who is now coordinator for Bulldog Welcome Week, said the transition from SIT to the Kirby Leadership Institute was hard in the beginning. According to Borra, students involved in SIT were very hesitant at first

BORRA

about the program dismantling.

“It was very hard for students to be losing that space,” Borra said. “I know the students within the program felt a lot of grief and a lot of uncertainty with what was going to happen once [Bulldog Welcome Week] moved to Kirby.”

Borra thinks the transition ended up being very great, stating that she now has easier access to simple things that weren’t as available when the program was under SIT. “I was able to print off gigantic schedules that were two-feet by three-feet and hang them in more places on campus,” Borra said. “We didn’t necessarily have

this ease of access before in SIT.” Borra also worked with students through the transition.

“Welcome Week is Welcome Week,” Borra said. “When it lived in SIT, it was, and now it’s in Kirby.”

According to Borra, one of her favorite things about UMD is the diversity.

LEFT TO RIGHT: LAUREN KOTZ, EMILY BORRA, JACOB G. LARSEN, AND PAUL CERAR AT WELCOME WEEK 2018. PHOTO: NICK VITTORIO

“We are all each our own unique humans,” Borra said. “There is a place for every person. There’s a lot of diversity within UMD that allows people to explore different parts of their identity.”

Some advice Borra would give students still deciding on a major is to embrace every moment.

“Take the time,” Borra said.

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Borra said to explore your options and figure out what’s right for you as a student.

“It might be the right choice, it might be the wrong choice,” Borra said. “You’re not going to know until you figure it out.”

EMILY BORRA AND THE NORTHLANDS FINEST HORN CHOIR PLAYING AT THE EVENT HOMEGROWN IN 2016. PHOTO COURTESY OF EMILY BORRA.

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“I feel that society right now is really rushing us to make decisions. Everything is so fast paced.”

AS A STUDENT:

FROM THE CITIES TO THE GREATEST LAKE

By Rachael Nunemacher A year ago I transferred from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities to the Duluth campus, and the impact positively changed my life.

Initially, I absolutely hated living in Duluth. Duluth felt small and too much like a hometown for me to enjoy it. I missed living in the big city. I am from a small town, and moving to a large metropolitan area was always a dream I had for my life. So to have to tear myself away from obtaining that dream was heartbreaking. I missed my friends, and I missed Minneapolis. I was angry at how things had turned out for me and I wanted nothing more than for college to be over. I isolated myself and struggled to find “my place” in Duluth.

I was seriously unhappy.

When I started college at the U of M Twin Cities, I had made the most amazing friends, which made it tremendously difficult to leave Minneapolis behind. I had a great roommate, a great dorm experience,

UMD

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I was in a film club I enjoyed, and I left that year having created more positive memories than negative. But I knew that I wasn’t happy with my education.

Initially, I was not studying music, and it made me feel out of place. Music has always been the biggest thing in my life. I was classically trained as a pianist for eleven years, and competed in piano competitions as a child. So deciding whether or not to major in music was more or less a no brainer for me.

Even though I have received classical training, my heart has always been in songwriting in the pop & country genre’s. I have written songs since I was twelve.

I was in the process of auditioning for the School of Music, but the further into the audition process I got, the more I realized that my style of music was not something they actively cultivated in their students.

I write pop songs and have a

strong background in musical theatre, so applying to a classical School of Music clearly wasn’t going to work out. Since I had neglected my research, I was blindly aiming for a goal that wasn’t meant to come to fruition.

All of this was a huge blow to my confidence. Deep down, I knew that I wasn’t a strictly classical musician, and I needed to be honest with myself. I have always been an extremely driven person and believed that if you work really hard for something, it was bound to turn out in your favor. This was not the case with my college education. And although I completely threw myself into theatre and music at the U of M Twin Cities, in the end, it wasn’t meant to be.

Before I considered transferring to UMD, I heavily considered dropping out of college. I was truly stuck. I cried a lot. I felt saddened by the lack of support from my friends who, in their defense, really had no idea I was struggling so much. But ultimately, when I auditioned for the school of music at UMD in late March, I felt a significant pull that was difficult to ignore.

And believe me, I tried.

A year later my life is very different, but in a very good way.

I applied and made it into UMD’s Honors Program, and

received an Undergraduate Research Opportunity Project (UROP scholarship) that I plan to use to study how Broadway Musicals are conceived and written, along with writing and drafting my own version of one as an experiment. I am excited to see what happens.

I received a scholarship to study abroad in May 2019 with the School of Fine Arts in Italy, completing my Advanced Music History course while our traveling classroom explores the beautiful country. This will be my second time having traveled to Europe for music.

I have successfully integrated myself into the School of Music at UMD and I strongly believe I made the right choice. At the end of the year, I was nominated for the “Outstanding Musician” award. I was blown away, truly.

I would have never even been nominated if it wasn’t for my friends and professors who helped me with my music courses and put in their valuable time to help me succeed.

I have incredible professors and have found my educational experience to be one of much more growth, both academically and personally, than the

one I had at the U of M Twin Cities. I have nothing but love for Minneapolis, though. I am grateful for what I learned during my first year of college and truly believe that the experience served a purpose in my life.

Although it took me a while, I eventually found friends both inside and out of the music department. A huge light in my life was joining UMD’s Student Association, where I currently serve as the senator for the School of Fine Arts. I made so many amazing friends through UMDSA, and I feel very fortunate to be surrounded by such a motivated and kindhearted group of people. I learned to lean on others for support, and they helped me in a lot of ways and they didn’t even know. Between offering me rides, and helping me move to a new house halfway through the school year — I opened myself up to allowing others to help me instead of putting everything on my shoulders all the time. I left Duluth in May feeling like I had truly conquered an enormous challenge.

For the summer, I moved back to Minneapolis and am currently working as a music intern and usher for Historic Theatre Group (It’s the organization that runs the State, Pantages, and Orpheum theaters on Hennepin Ave!), where I get to observe amazing artists every time I “work.” I love my job, and I gush about it whenever I get the chance. I mean, how can I complain when I get paid to watch Broadway shows? Additionally, I was hired to intern for Hopewell Music Cooperative North, a non-profit music organization based in North Minneapolis.

It’s been interesting yet wonderful to be back in Minneapolis for the summer.

Ultimately it was a blessing to be to see everything come full-circle. I feel extremely grateful to have been given the opportunity to reunite with old friends and spend time in the city for the hot months.

Consequently, I am excited to travel up north for the upcoming school year come late August.

If you read this far, thank you for your attention. I want to express my love and gratitude

to those who have supported me throughout this very difficult, yet fantastic year of growth. I feel very fortunate to do what I do, the way I do it. I have some projects in the works (including recording some of my original songs) and I am looking forward to supporting my fellow artists in their projects and creative endeavors, both in the Twin Cities as well as Duluth.

At the end of the day, all I want is to create and put great art out into the world.

Whether that art is a painting, a recorded music project, a reformed social condition, or anything else, the only real goal worth chasing is make sure that whatever we do, it fosters hope and encourages people to grow and move forward.

There is enough space in this world for everyone to achieve success, and there is no use in competing with one another. I am so fortunate to have many amazing, artistically-inclined friends who are in on the same mission, and my hope is that many other young artists will choose to feel inspired by their peers and cheer on each other’s successes. We will all be better because of it.

“I am not interested in competing with anyone. I hope we all make it.” — Erica Cook

U of M TC

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WOMEN’S CROSS COUNTRY AND TRACK AND FIELD COACH RESIGNS AFTER INVESTIGATION to help strengthen their allegations against her.

By Vincent Harvieux Joanna Warmington, head coach of UMD women’s track and field and cross country, has resigned following reports of sexual misconduct towards student-athletes.

Warmington also cited a lack of due process throughout the investigation. She said that 15 of the 32 witnesses did not sign statements, confirming that the information they gave was correct. Most of the evidence for violations were because there was more than one witness who said it was true. UMD did no further analysis of the statements made by the witnesses.

In her statement August 20, Warmington says on March 28 she was put on a leave of absence that she said was “under the pretext that there were complaints by student athletes regarding my coaching behavior.”

She also said that she repeatedly asked for a copy of the complaints, but didn’t receive them until June 20, which was after she was interviewed for the investigation.

Earlier in August, the Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action completed their investigation.

The Duluth News Tribune received a copy of the report and that the EOAA, “concluded that Ms. Warmington’s conduct was unwelcome because it was unsolicited, made multiple student-athletes feel uncomfortable, and taken together, created an unwelcome sexualized environment in which some student-athletes felt compelled to tolerate unwanted conduct of a sexual nature in order to maintain a positive relationship with their coach.”

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JOANNA WARMINGTON, FORMER HEAD COACH OF THE UMD WOMEN’S TRACK AND CROSS COUNTRY TEAM. PHOTO COURTESY OF UMD ATHLETICS

In her statement, Warmington stated that she is in contact with nationally recognized law firms. She alleges that there are a variety of NCAA violations, as well as violations of Title IX against UMD. Warmington also said that during the investigation, “it became clear that UMD was coordinating an effort through my supervisor, the Men’s Head Coach for Cross Country and Track and Field, and our shared assistant coaches (all males) to remove me from my position as Head Coach.”

She also said that the coaches and student-athletes accessed her personal files through her electronic devices

Warmington believes UMD took it’s time with the process to “capitalize on the highlyrated recruiting class that has arrived on campus.” The athletes now have to redshirt – sit out their freshman season in order to retain that eligibility – or transfer, instead of then having the option to decommit and go to a different school.

Later in the statement, Warmington sited two examples of UMD coordinating her termination.

The first involved an athlete who was injured before the season and hired their own personal trainer. The athlete then wanted to compete as a UMD athlete in the spring, a violation of NCAA rules.

Warmington said, “the athletic administration had already preselected the student athlete as the female senior athlete of the year, they wanted to cite her career-long success as part

of its marketing and publicity campaign. As a result, after a joint decision amongst training staff and my supervisor to allow the athlete to compete independently was delivered by me, UMD athletic administration reversed course and required me to revoke the joint decision.”

The second instance she said was when Athletic Director Josh Berlo let her know that the school was terminating her contract.

“Berlo provided to me this past Saturday indicating that the University would be terminating my employment, but that it would keep the contents of the investigation secret if I agreed to release the University from all claims,” Warmington said in her statement.

Following former women’s hockey coach Shannon Miller’s verdict, Warmington wrote a “Local View” op-ed for the News Tribune supporting Berlo and UMD Administration.

In her statement, Warmington shared a different version of that story.

“I was intimidated while standing in front of other employees and felt I must comply. I was gravely concerned that my student athletes would lose their ability to compete if my program would have to be cut in order to fund the cost of the jury verdict, and I would also lose the job that I love.”

SUDOKU NO. 6

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the rights of all concerned in this situation. Therefore, we are not in a position to comment further.

UMD Athletics will undertake a search for Warmington’s replacement immediately and are exploring options to bring in someone to guide the program until the search is completed.”

BARITURE IGBAH PLACED THIRD IN THE WEIGHT TOSS AT THE 2018 MAVERICK INVITATIONAL IN MANKATO. PHOTO COURTESY OF UMD ATHLETICS.

According to the News Tribune, “Miller, Wiles, the school’s former women’s basketball coach, and Banford, the exsoftball coach, have a separate lawsuit pending against UMD on the grounds of sexualorientation discrimination.”

Lynne Williams, the University Marketing and Public Relations Director for UMD, released a statement following Warmington’s decision.

“The details of the investigation remain private data. However, we can say that complaints were made to the University, and a thorough investigation was conducted by an outside law firm. With respect to the other concerns included in her letter, UMD remains strongly committed to providing athletic programs of excellence in compliance with all Title IX and NCAA requirements. We respect

During her tenure as head coach, Warmington had national success. In seven of her eight seasons, UMD qualified for the Division II Cross Country Championship.

In 2014 they placed third, the best finish in program history. They also racked up Central Region champions in 2013 and 2014, along with Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference championships in 2013 and 2015. The track team captured the NSIC indoor championship in 2014.

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