UNCA Raises $11.1 Million in First
Comprehensive Campaign;
Surpasses Goal by $3.1 Million
UNC Asheville wrapped up its first
comprehensive campaign on Tuesday, Feb. 12, raising $11.1 million
and exceeding its $8 million goal by 39 percent. The final figure
was announced that evening at a "thank you" celebration
for the community at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium. The celebration
included an hour-long concert by Grammy-award winning performer
David Holt.
The four-year campaign, "UNC
Asheville: Moving to First in Our Class," raised more than $3
million for scholarships, as well as funding for enhanced
technology, service learning, and faculty and creative initiatives.
"With the success of this
campaign, UNC Asheville leads among public liberal arts colleges,
and that is where we belong -- in the lead, setting the pace,"
said Chancellor James Mullen.
Donations came from many sources.
UNCA received $2.4 million from corporations and foundations, $2.3
million from community and national friends, and $1.5 million from
UNCA Foundation Board and UNCA Board of Trustees. Statewide alumni
campaigns in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Texas, along with
donations from other alumni, faculty and staff and parents, yielded
another $1.2 million. In addition, the UNCA Planned Giving Office
has secured $3.7 million in planned bequests.
The campaign donations will translate
into many benefits for UNCA's students.
The $3 million for direct and endowed
scholarships includes 36 new endowed scholarship funds established
to support students majoring in disciplines ranging from management
and mass communication to theater and music.
Among the gifts for campus technology
enhancement was $100,000 grant from the Bank of America which will
provide "smart classrooms" for Owen Hall, home to the Art
and Management departments. The "smart classrooms" will be
equipped with computers with high-speed Internet connection and
superior sound systems, multimedia projection equipment and VCRs,
enabling professors and students to maximize the effectiveness of
the teaching-learning process. Another grant of $80,000 from Eaton
Corporation Foundation supports the UNCA-NCSU engineering-mechatronics
program with an endowed scholarship fund and state-of-the-art design
laboratory for students in engineering, physics, chemistry and other
sciences.
Gifts to faculty initiatives include
funds to establish the Glaxo Wellcome Endowed Professorship in
Undergraduate Science Research, which will increase collaborative
research activities and cross-disciplinary work. "The greatest
impact from this endowment will be on student learning, because it
will offer students an opportunity to conduct research under the
mentorship of an outstanding scientist already engaged in
significant projects, an opportunity usually reserved for the
graduate level," said Bert Holmes, who holds UNCA's Philip
Carson Distinguished Professorship in the Sciences.
A $500,000 gift from the Adelaide
Worth Daniels Foundation early in the campaign was used to establish
a center for service learning that coordinates volunteer activities
of students and faculty with teaching and learning in academic
classes. "Students work with established nonprofit
organizations such as Manna Food Bank, the public schools and United
Way agencies, and they find original ways to make a difference in
the community and their own education," said Margaret Downes,
UNCA literature professor and director of the Key Center for
Service-Learning.
The campaign, a joint effort of
UNCA's Foundation Board and the Board of Trustees, was co-chaired by
Robert Peterson, UNCA Class of 1957, a UNCA Foundation director and
retired Sky City Stores CEO, and Pamela Mills Turner, area civic
leader and former chair of UNCA's Board of Trustees. "It was
wonderful to see the wholehearted support of both boards for this
endeavor," said Turner, who now sits on the Foundation Board.
"We couldn't have done it
without the many volunteers, including friends, alumni and community
leaders who were solidly behind this effort and the outstanding work
by the UNCA staff," said Peterson.
UNCA's Campaign Executive Committee
included Dorel A. Abbott, Luther E. Barnhardt Jr., Frank Giordano,
Maralee Gollberg, Alice Green, Fred Groce Jr., Bruce Larson, Walter
McConnell, Michael J. McCue, Duane McKibbin, Sue H. McClinton,
Charles McKnight, Norma Messer, Linda Nelms, Sally Pearlman, Eugene
L. Presley, Jesse G. Ray Jr., Michael S. Tanner, Harriette Winner
and Julienne Winner.
NORTH CAROLINA
CENTER FOR CREATIVE RETIREMENT PREPARES FOR NEW HOME
For the last
14 years the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement shared
temporary space in various locations at the University of North
Carolina at Asheville. In
the summer of 1998, volunteers from the Center began a fund raising
campaign to raise $3.5 million to establish a home of their own. This campaign announced success late last year with more than
$3.9 in cash and pledges.
On December 9,
2001, officials from the University of North Carolina at Asheville
and the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement broke ground
on the new home. Chancellor
Jim Mullen and Center Director Ron Manheimer announced that their
20,000 square foot home will be called the “Reuter Center” after
Jeannette and Irving Jacob Reuter, who began the Janirve Foundation
in Asheville. A major
gift for the new building was contributed by that foundation early
in the campaign.
Campaign co-chairs
Dorothy Murphree and Beth Lazer led a comprehensive process to
design the buildings, prepare for new and improved programming,
arrange financing, and also to find sources to complete the
campaign. Fund raising
co-chairs Alice and Art Green were in charge of the successful
effort.
Now spread all over
the city, the programs involving more than one thousand retirees
will be concentrated in one place.
Located near the new entrance to the university, a short walk
from the campus, the Reuter Center will house a program with a
national reputation for excellence and creativity.
The new building will house a computer lab,
technology-enhanced classrooms, a multi-purpose room, a computer
lab, and several common areas including a café’ as well as
offices and meeting spaces. It
will be a true student center for older learners who not only take
classes themselves but interact with college students and even
younger children as UNCA develops its concept of an
“intergenerational campus”.