thursday, january 29, 2026
celebrating 122 years
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‘A DREAM LIFE’ Lawrence ‘Poetry’ Moten remembered as devoted girl dad, SU’s greatest scorer
Syracuse basketball all-time leading scorer Lawrence Moten died on Sept. 30 at 53, leaving behind a legacy as an elite scorer and devoted family man. daily orange file photo, courtesy of lazarus sims, courtesy of john wallace, courtesy of lawrencia moten
By Cooper Andrews
O
senior staff writer
ne night in the early 1990s, seated on a plane heading back to Syracuse, Lawrence Moten grabbed a USAir magazine from the back of the chair in front of him and ripped off its cover. The page featured a photograph of two girls, one slightly taller than the other. It reminded Moten, then a young SU basketball star, of the
daughters he yearned to raise one day. He’d already expressed his dreams of being a girl dad to his future wife, Noelene, so he stuffed the magazine cover in his carry-on to accelerate the inevitable. When he returned to his house, a small place off campus he shared with Noelene, Moten embraced his then-girlfriend, walked her to their bedroom and showed her the cover. He then grabbed a marker off their desk and scribbled a caption on the image and turned to show Noelene. “Our daughters,” it read.
Noelene hung the magazine cover on their bedroom wall, where it remained until they graduated. At that moment, she knew Moten was the right man to start a family with. Before the couple turned 30, they already had their pair of daughters: Lawrencia and Leilani, one slightly taller than the other. “He planted the seeds for our future,” Noelene said. “We planned on being together forever. Not only in this life, but even in the next.” see moten page 13
on campus
Nutrition science, food studies navigate program closures By Chloe Fox Rinka and Ally Goelz the daily orange
Michael Capous, a senior studying nutrition science at the Falk College of Sport, calls his major “underestimated.” “Nutrition is seen as just telling people to eat healthy,” Capous said. “As a nutrition science student, people often underestimate the impact in the physiology of how our bodies use and consume energy.”
Now, as his program merges with the broader nutrition major to become a specialized track, Capous said he feels the overall support for his program has “dwindled.” Audrey Small, a 2025 graduate of Falk’s food studies program, said she was one of 10 people in her major’s graduating class. After a January 2024 email to food studies students announcing the major’s enrollment pause to “thought-
fully” consider the program’s future. The program was closed three months later, Small said. “I remember being quite shocked when I received an email from my advisor and professor,” she said. “Falk was pretty vague about the whole situation, and all we were told was that the program was being put on ‘pause’ for the 2024-2025 academic year.” Scott Tainsky, senior associate dean of Falk, announced the closing of
the college’s undergraduate and graduate nutrition science programs in an August faculty meeting. During the last academic year, Falk announced the closing of its food studies program and the plan to “teach out” remaining undergraduate and graduate students, SU’s Vice President of Communications Sarah Scalese wrote in a statement to The Daily Orange. Both programs have been discontinued due to consistent declin-
ing enrollment, according to statements from Scalese and members of the programs’ faculty. A spring 2024 initiative aimed to reimagine Falk by focusing “exclusively on sport-related disciplines” and restructure or relocate the school’s human dynamics departments. Several majors, including the School of Social Work and Marriage and Family Therapy, transitioned to other SU colleges. see cuts page 7