SELINSGROVE, Pa. - Susquehanna University will take another major step forward in the $14 million renovation and expansion of its sports and fitness complex when students, faculty, staff and friends break ground for the new Jacobs Fitness Center on Monday, February 14. The center is named in honor of retired Northumberland ophthalmologist Dr. Clyde H. Jacobs and his wife, Alice Ann Patterson Jacobs, both of whom will also be present for the occasion. An 11:15 a.m. ceremony will be held in O.W. Houts Gymnasium before guests proceed outdoors to put shovels to dirt.

The Jacobs Fitness Center will be a glass-fronted, 9,300-square-foot, two-level addition to Houts Gymnasium that will provide an attractive new entrance to the building and ample fitness areas on each level. Planned for completion in November 2000, it will offer the campus community larger, more attractive and better-equipped space for fitness training, as well as additional space for social and recreational activity. The first floor will house selectorized weight-training machines, while the upper level will house three times the amount of aerobic fitness equipment currently in use, including treadmills, stair steppers, stationary bicycles and rowing machines. There will also be a new student lounge with café dining near the lobby.

Dr. Clyde Jacobs and his wife, Alice Ann, inspect an artist's conception of the new Sports and Fitness Facilities

Dr. Jacobs is an avid tennis player, winning five senior world championships for doctors since 1980, and one national U.S. Tennis Association senior championship in 1992. His gift, which is making the new center possible, reflects his belief that education should include not only mental exercise, but physical exercise as well. A premedical student at the University of Illinois and graduate of Loyola University (Ill.) School of Medicine, Jacobs learned about Susquehanna University when investigating colleges with his son, the late Skip Jacobs. His son subsequently attended Susquehanna, graduating in 1965. Since that time, Jacobs said he has spent hundreds of hours on campus, most of them on SU's tennis courts, and has become a good friend of the University. He also points out that he met his wife, Alice Ann, at a University event. A Susquehanna graduate, she is a member of the University's board of directors and chair of the Leadership Development Program for the Susquehanna 2000: The Next Challenge campaign.

Subsequent to his specialty training at Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia, Jacobs was director of the Department of Ophthalmology at Geisinger Medical Center for 14 years before opening his practice in Sunbury in 1954. He was also an ophthalmologist at Sunbury Community Hospital from 1954 to 1988. Alice Ann Patterson Jacobs was president of the Educational Foundation of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) from 1993 to 1997 and now serves as a member of the President's Team of the AAUW Educational Foundation. In addition to celebrating the groundbreaking on Monday, the University will join the Jacobs in celebrating their first wedding anniversary - on Valentine's Day.

Susquehanna's new sports and fitness complex will also include the new Nicholas A. Lopardo Stadium which is currently under construction, a new field house and renovations to existing physical education facilities. A new baseball field has already been constructed at the southwest part of campus.

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