Maggie Gray

Any Lehigh student would say Rivalry Week is the best time on campus. Every year it lands on a perfect fall week right before everyone heads home for Thanksgiving break, when Pennsylvania’s brisk weather first hits and the last of the colorful foliage lingers on the Lehigh Valley trees. The week encapsulates the college student experience.

Bed Race teams spoke with The Brown and White about why they are participating in this Rivalry Week tradition and what it means to the Lehigh community. Q: Why are you participating in Bed Races? BLT (Best Lehigh Team): Kaitlyn Hemmer, ‘29: We’re freshmen, so we really wanted to get involved. On every single tour we all went on, they pretty much said the most fun part was Rivalry Week, especially Bed Races.

Professor Phillip Coles’s supply-chain knowledge about improving efficiency and business growth did not stem from watching it in action — it came from working on a mushroom farm. Coles studied insects as an undergraduate entomology major at Penn State University. One of his teaching assistants at the time was conducting research on mushrooms, and Coles was intrigued by how they were grown. From there, he got an internship at a mushroom farm, working to reduce pesticide usage.