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recent years has been to shift the focus of the athletic department's fundraising goals to facilities projects. "It's taken some time for that to res- onate in our community, to understand," she said. But the university has been able to raise nearly $70 million for a range of projects, including the Morgan Aca- demic Center, the Lasch Building, the basketball training table and film room and Panzer Stadium, a lacrosse-specific facility that is set to open this spring. "We've been able to secure the second- and fourth-largest major gifts in our his- tory," Barbour said. "So our community is really starting to respond to what the needs are." The biggest and most expensive proj- ect on the university's wish list is a re- designed Beaver Stadium. The massively upgraded stadium was featured in ren- derings that were made public two years ago when Penn State unveiled its facili- ties master plan. The timeline for that project was left purposefully vague, as administrators were focused on more immediate needs involving the soccer, aquatics and ten- nis facilities, as well as the develop- ment of an Intercollegiate Athletics hub called the Center of Excellence. But Barbour said athletics officials are still thinking about how the stadium project might proceed, even though other, smaller projects will break ground first. "As I've said before, playing in the background has got to be, what's the runway? What's the plan for how we [upgrade] Beaver Stadium, and then ob- viously how [will] we pay for it?" she said. "So that's got to run parallel." PARKING DIFFICULTIES One of the more vexing problems Penn State has faced the past few years has been a run of bad weather on football Saturdays. During the recently concluded season, heavy rain forced the closure of several grass parking lots around the stadium. And unfortunately for the university, lot clo- sures are a problem without a good solu- tion. "Nobody wants more for our fans to continue to have the best environment and the best game-day situation in the world. We've got the best tailgating that there is, and it's part of the passion," Barbour said. "The weather, there's not much we can do about it. I'd like to be able to call somebody up and say, 'Please don't make it rain on these seven Satur- days, or cold, or anything else.' "So what we're left to do is make as many adjustments as we possibly can. I've heard a lot of, 'You need to pave more of the lots.' If we were able to do that, we certainly would, but most of our grass lots are either intramural fields or ag fields. They aren't ours, and the purposes for which they're used the other 358 days out of the year do not allow us to pave them." Due to those restrictions, the best so- lutions, at least for now, are to provide off-site options for parking pass holders and then offer transportation to the game. "Not ideal, I totally understand, but in terms of the tools in our toolkit and our ability to take care of our fans, those are the things we can do," Barbour said. "There probably are a small number of lots that we can make some improve- ments to so that they won't be as im- pacted by weather, and we will look at doing those things. And we'll continue to listen to suggestions. We'll continue to see what tools we do have available to us. But we've got a lot of constraints." STADIUM EVENTS Penn State continues to look at holding non-football events at Beaver Stadium, but nothing is in the works this year, Barbour said. In July 2017, the stadium played host to its first concert, with country music star Blake Shelton headlining the Happy Val- ley Jam. The stadium was set up to ac- commodate 70,000 fans, but attendance was estimated at only about 30,000. Still, Barbour said university officials are open to trying again. "We keep working on all of those – the NHL Winter Classic, soccer, another concert. … It's just got to be the right situation," she said. "We're challenged with some of the infrastructure issues with Beaver on some of those. But we're also challenged with location, we're challenged with other folks' schedules, with our own schedule. If we're talking about the summer, we've got to move away from Fourth Fest and Arts Fest and some of those kinds of things. But we continue to pursue that. That hasn't gone away." BASKETBALL CONCERNS After watch- ing Penn State get off to a 7-6 start that included losses in its first two Big Ten games, Barbour acknowledged that there have been some struggles as the Nittany Lions have strived to build on last year's NIT championship season. "We stepped up our schedule and we've got a young team," she said. "Are A L L S P O R T S Penn State rises to third in latest Directors' Cup standings Penn State has moved into position to earn its 14th top-five fall finish in the Learfield Directors' Cup. The Nittany Lions rose to No. 3 in the standings re- leased in early January, boosted by the women's volleyball team advancing to the NCAA tournament quarterfinals. Penn State is seeking its 12th consecutive top-10 fall finish, having placed in the top 10 in the final fall standings in 21 of the 25 years the Directors' Cup has existed. The Nittany Lions are in line to earn additional Directors' Cup fall points from the football team, which played in the Citrus Bowl. The final fall stand- ings were set to be announced in mid-January. Stanford leads the Directors' Cup and is followed by Michigan (319), Penn State (280), Wisconsin, (275), BYU (270), Wake Forest (266), Princeton (263), Duke (251), North Carolina State (243) and North Carolina (240). ■

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