My topic for my research paper/exploratory essay is UW-Eau Claire’s Bill Zorn. Some background information on Zorn is he was the basketball coach at EC for almost 40 years and also contributed as football coach for a few years as well. The Zorn Arena, the basketball arena on campus, was even named after Bill Zorn (Zorn Papers, Box 12, Folder 1).
My research question is “Why was Bill Zorn so significant to UW-Eau Claire?” The reason I ask this question is because as a student at EC, I had no idea who Bill Zorn was and had no clue why the university named a building after him. All I really knew was that he had to be important in order to have a building named after him. Lastly, my question is quite broad because I do not know much about Zorn, yet. I have a lot of research to do in order to get a good grasp on my topic and possibly formulate a more solid research question moving forward.
Works Cited
Zorn, B. (1925). Bill Zorn papers.
This seems like a really interesting topic! There are a lot of different buildings here and I have no idea why they are named what they are. It’s something that majority of UWEC students would be interested it. It seems like you will be able to find a lot of reliable resources here at school. I agree with you in your post that your question is very broad and it will be easier to form a solid research question once you learn more, but you’re at a good start! My question would be; What did he do at EC to earn a building named after him? Great job!
I think that your topic of choice sounds very interesting, and although I have lived in the city of Eau Claire for my whole life, I find it fascinating that this interesting topic lies so close to home. I think that you could have fun with your topic because the resources you need are very close to you, in fact, in the exact city that everything evolved from. A good idea for your research could be to go take a few pictures of the Zorn arena and perhaps track down past players that had Zorn as a coach. To get firsthand knowledge of people that have come in contact with him would be really interesting to take advantage of.
I think that this is very interesting. I also agree that I don’t know who Bill Zorn is either, however, I want to know more about him too. Maybe to narrow your topic down, you could focus on the things that he did here in Eau Claire and why he did them. You could also find out if he was a professor, a volunteer, a dad, and other things that made him significant in Eau Claire other than him just being a good coach. Maybe he coached in another state or another school and you could write about that too. I think that it’s ok that you haven’t really narowed down your question yet, but so far, I think that you are off to a good start.
I think this will be an interesting topic to learn about seeing that it is important to our campus and Eau Claire. Personally, I don’t know anything about Bill Zorn and am really interested to learn about his background and how he became so famous on campus here. Growing up close to Eau Claire, there were a few events I attended and everytime I walked into the Zorn Arena, wondering what kind of a person Bill Zorn was. Good luck on your research question.
I like this topic a lot because it relates to all of the students here at Eau Claire. Most of us i am sure are in the same boat as you and do not know why Bill Zorn is so significant to Eau Claire. I think you could also include more background research on Zorn besides just his coaching. See if he helped out with other parts of the school, or if he was something other than the coach of Eau Claires basketball team. I am interested to hear more.