Thank you to all our community members who were able to attend our Fall Programming events on Friday, October 27th. We kicked off the night with the return of our Moonlight Arboretum Tours and ended the evening with a well-attended showing of Elemental in the Woods-Brown Amphitheater.  

We look forward to creating more opportunities to engage with our neighbors throughout the year! 

You can always count on Fall to bring crisp chilly mornings and an abundance of colorful fallen leaves.  For American University’s Arboretum and Gardens, Fall also brings Bulb Planting season.  All the beautiful blooming bulbs that bloom each Spring are planted the previous Fall.  This October, AU is adding another 15,000 bulbs to our planting beds.  Most of the new bulbs will be various types of Narcisus (Daffodils) with names such as Ice Follies, Cheerfulness, Pink Charm, Thalia, Tahiti, and Jetfire.  We gravitate to Daffodils because they reliably return each year and are not a favorite food of our local deer population. 

In select protected areas, we are mixing in a few Tulips along with other less common bulbs including Fritillaria, Allium, and Hyacinths. Alliums are a particular favorite in our arboretum as they form the large purple or white tennis ball sized bloom that typically is in peak bloom during Commencement weekends in May. 

We hope you will visit the arboretum throughout the year and especially in Spring when these bulbs are in their glory. 

American University's Community Liaison Committee (CLC) will hold a quarterly meeting on Tuesday, November 28, 2023. Refreshments will start at 6:30 pm, and the meeting will begin at 7 pm. 

The CLC will take place in Rooms 1-3 of Constitution Hall on AU's East Campus and is open to the entire community. Free parking is available in the East Campus surface parking lot, accessible from Nebraska Avenue. 

Please RSVP here.  

If you have any questions or need more information, please contact communityrelations@american.edu or call 202-885-2146. 

As part of the 2021 Campus Plan, AU proposed new development on the northwest quadrant of the campus to create an athletic, residential, and campus life village. Specifically, sites 3 and 5 (located adjacent to Reeves Field and behind Bender Arena) were recently approved for development by the Zoning Commission to house AU’s new Meltzer Center for Athletic Performance as well as an outdoor multi-activity court and enhanced student health and wellness facilities. The footprint of Site 3 includes the university’s outdoor tennis and basketball courts, which will be decommissioned once construction begins.   

While the full construction schedule has not yet been finalized, the tennis and basketball courts will remain open and available through the end of the calendar year. More information about this important project can be found on the project website. 

This past summer’s construction projects in the Tunnel resulted in new and improved retail options, as well as an opportunity to support American University’s commitment to sustainability. One such opportunity was the repurposing of materials left from the demolition and relocation of the former campus bookstore in Butler Pavilion to its new location in the former Eagle’s Nest space in the Tunnel. 

Capital Construction Director of Project Management Leo Casas, “During the design process of the reimagined Tunnel, we considered better ways to dispose of materials scheduled for demolition in the old construction. As much material as possible was designated to either be reused or recycled.” 

Casas worked collaboratively with Facilities Management’s energy manager Juan Allen and Zone D electricians David Lord and Caesar Caicedo to coordinate the reclamation of eighty 22-watt LED lighting retrofit kits from the old bookstore. Twenty of the reclaimed fixtures were used to replace the 120-watt fixtures in the Sports Center Complex terrace-level hallway leading to the locker rooms. This replacement alone will save 17, 520 kwh of electricity annually. That translates to a CO2 reduction of 12.2 metric tons, the equivalent of energy used in a year by 2.4 homes. The remaining LED kits will be used soon in other parts of the Sports Complex to retrofit existing fluorescent fixtures.  

Allen commented, “I was pleased that, through the collaborative effort and resourceful thinking of the various members of our team, we were able to bring about significant energy savings while supporting the university’s sustainability initiatives.” 

In September, The Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) began their last phase of work on the former Public Safety Building site on the American University campus. On October 10, the ACOE held their last quarterly Restoration Advisory Board (RAB) meeting to provide additional comments and updates to the community on the project. Information and presentation materials related to the project will be uploaded regularly to the ACOE Project Updates website.  

If you have any further questions or concerns on this project, please contact Dan Noble with the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers at dan.g.noble@usace.army.mil 

The AU Jazz Orchestra plays swing, bop, funk, and rock! Each concert features a variety of these styles. From the AU Department of Performing Arts. Tickets: Free for AU students with ID, $10 for alumni, staff, faculty, children (under 18), and senior citizens (55 and older), $15 general public.

Directed by Joshua Bayer.  

Tickets can be purchased here.

The Fall Dance Concert is a mainstage event from the AU Dance Program featuring new work by guest artist Sarah Beth Oppenheim and selected student choreographers. Oppenheim brought Hardware to our virtual stage in 2021 and returns now to create a new work with AU dancers for the Greenberg stage. Her work will be shown alongside six student-choreographed, faculty-mentored projects, created this fall in our Choreographic Laboratory. Join us as we welcome fresh choreographic voices and new student performers to the AU stage. 

Artistic Director: Erin Foreman-Murray 

Tickets can be purchased here.  

Rachel Rotenberg, an artist with roots in Baltimore who is currently living in Israel, creates abstract wood sculptures that range in scale from monumental to intimate. Several works in her exhibition are the most ambitious of her 40-plus year career. Learn how she derives inspiration by the way things touch, pull, engage, and hold (inside and outside) as well as how creating these forms in relative obscurity has allowed her artwork to develop independently and free from outside influences. 

Moderator: Jane Livingston, Curator 

RSVP through Eventbrite. 

OLLI at American University’s Executive Director, Tony Long, attended the 15th Annual Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes National Conference in San Diego, California. OLLI at AU is one of 125 Osher Institutes around the country. OLLI leaders from around the country came together to share a wealth of knowledge for the betterment of each institute, fueled by OLLI’s core values of community and curiosity. 

Mr. Long was a contributor to this exchange of knowledge, having mentored new OLLI directors and facilitating a panel discussion. Of the conference, Tony thinks, “It was yet another reminder of the reputation OLLI at AU has for academic excellence and for its lifelong learning community,” which is reflective of our host institution, American University. Some of Mr. Long’s takeaways from the conference included the importance of volunteer engagement, flexibility, and much like American University, inclusive excellence.  

To learn more about OLLI at AU, click here.   

Please consider joining the AU Neighborhood Partnership which works to provide a consensus-based forum to resolve issues affecting the communities near American University. Interested members of the community may join one of the Partnership’s five standing working groups, comprising community stakeholders and AU leadership. 

The orientation sessions served as an introduction to the partnership, explored Zoning and Campus Planning in DC and offered ways to get involved in the partnership through one of the five working groups.  

If you did not have a chance to attend the meetings, the Zoom recordings and presentation materials can be found on AU's webpage under the AUNP Orientation Materials tab. There is also a Member Interest Form that can be filled out, and a member of the AUNP partnership will follow up with you.  

More information about the AU Neighborhood Partnership and the Office of Community and Government Relations can be found online at https://www.american.edu/communityrelations/. 

Still have questions? Email us at communityrelations@american.edu.