WHEELING – Who and what is Nova Southeastern University, and where can it be found on a map of the United States? Those were the popular questions when it was announced last week that highly successful West Liberty men’s basketball coach Jim Crutchfield was leaving the hilltop and making NSU his destination. For starters, Nova Southeastern is not in any way affiliated with Villanova University. Secondly, you won’t find any hills or snow on campus, but you are likely to encounter palm trees and bikinis. Located in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Nova Southeastern’s main campus is minutes away from Fort Lauderdale’s beach, South Beach, Los Olas night life and the Everglades. It’s home to a diverse student enrollment of 25,000, with 1,200 being international students that come from 116 countries on five continents. Currently NSU, a private non-profit university, consists of 18 colleges and schools offering more than 175 programs of study with more than 250 majors. The school, which has an annual tuition cost of $27,660, has produced more than 170,000 alumni. The university was founded in 1964 as the Nova University of Advanced Technology on a former Naval Outlying Landing Field built during World War II. In 1994 the school merged with Southeastern University of the Health and Sciences and assumed its current name. Its endowment is listed as $102.7 million. Nova Southeastern is classified as a Doctoral/Research University Carnegie Foundation and was ranked by the Washington Monthly as the 259th-best national university. In 2000 and again in 2014, Nova was ranked third for the highest debt burden amongst its students. In 2014, NSU carried the highest debt load compared to all other students at non-profit universities. “You have to have a 3.0 grade-point average just to get in,” Crutchfield said. “Under grad is about 9,000 students and there are 16,000 in the various graduate programs — they pretty much have one for anything you want to do.” NSU boasts a vibrant campus life and only “highly credentialed” professors teac