January
30,
2004
Campaign
for Mount Holyoke Surpasses $250-Million Goal
|
President Joanne V. Creighton with (left
to right) Norman E. McCulloch Jr., Mary Graham Davis '65,
Nancy J. Drake '73, Harriet Levine Weissman '58,
Barbara Margulies Rossotti '61, and Dorothy Rooke
McCulloch '50 at the celebration dinner marking the
Campaign kickoff in October 1998. |
An ambitious fundraising campaign launched by
Mount Holyoke College in October 1998 has surpassed the $250-million
goal set in December 2001, when the original $200-million goal
was reached two years ahead of schedule.
The Campaign for Mount Holyoke College:
Advancing Our Legacy of Leadership raised
$257,033,729 in contributions from alumnae, parents, and friends. The Campaign
officially concluded on December 31, 2003. During January, the development office
finalized tabulations of gifts and pledges raised in the final months of the
largest fundraising effort in the College's history.
"The resounding success of the Campaign for Mount Holyoke demonstrates
once again how strongly alumnae and other members of the Mount Holyoke community
are committed to this extraordinary College," President Joanne V. Creighton
said. "It has been my great pleasure, during the Campaign years, to have
met and gotten to know so many dedicated alumnae volunteers and to have experienced
the collective power of the College's community mobilized around shared
goals. I am grateful to all: the faculty, staff, and students who have contributed
their ideas, time, and energy, and the many alumnae and friends who have so unstintingly
offered support."
More than 81 percent of Mount Holyoke alumnae made at least one
gift during the five years. A total of 24,131 alumnae, parents,
and friends of the College contributed to the comprehensive
Campaign. In October 1998, President Creighton kicked off the
public phase of the Campaign to support the nation's
oldest institution for the higher education of women.
According to Campaign cochairs Eleanor G. Claus '55 and Harriet L. Weissman '58,
the success of the Campaign flows not only from the deep commitment of alumnae
and friends of the College, but from the efforts of hundreds of alumnae volunteers
and staff of the College.
"Mount Holyoke alumnae reflect the nature of this institution: they are
committed, resourceful, savvy, and intensely proud of the College's heritage
as a place where intellectual excellence and leadership go hand-in-hand," Weissman
said. "Mount Holyoke women of all generations have risen to support the
College."
"The Campaign for Mount Holyoke derived great momentum from the effective
partnership among our network of Campaign volunteers and donors throughout the
country and faculty members, administrators, and the development staff," said
Claus, who also chairs the Board of Trustees. "This hard-working collaboration
ensured that the Campaign would draw unprecedented support."
The College has already realized many benefits through the Campaign:
• More than $134 million in gifts and pledges was raised
for Mount Holyoke's endowment. Support of the endowment,
the lifeblood of the institution, was a central goal of the Campaign
and is enhancing the College's ability to provide financial
assistance to talented students, to invest significant resources
in its academic program and technology, to offer competitive
faculty and staff salaries, to renew and maintain one of the
nation's most beautiful campuses, and, at the same time,
to achieve fiscal equilibrium.
• The Campaign also made possible one of the most significant
building and renovation periods in the College's history.
Nearly $43 million was raised to contribute to the "bricks
and mortar" construction costs of three major academic
building projects, which were funded primarily through the Campaign.
Of those funds, $4.2 million was raised toward the renovation
and expansion of Pratt Hall, the College's music facility.
The Campaign also earmarked $3.5 million toward the renovation
and expansion of the Art Building and Museum.
• In total, $35 million was raised in support of construction,
renovation, and endowment for the new science center, the most
significant building project undertaken during the Campaign years.
Encompass-ing 116,000 gross square feet, the science center provides
up-to-date teaching and research laboratories, classrooms, and
offices in a complex that is both energy-efficient and environmentally
friendly. This project has attracted several of the largest gifts
in Mount Holyoke's history, including a landmark naming
gift of $10 million from an anonymous alumna for the science
center's new environmentally "green" building
and hub, Kendade Hall.
• The Campaign period also saw major renovations to the
Blanchard Campus Center, although this project was not supported
through fundraising. Blanchard, reflecting the same priorities
that defined the other major building projects, is a felicitous
blend of historic renovation and new construction. Its dramatically
improved gathering spaces open out to the surrounding landscape,
bringing light, transparency, and vitality into the building.
• Record-breaking gifts have been made to the Mount Holyoke
Alumnae Annual Fund, including its reunion fundraising efforts.
In all, $49 million was raised during the Campaign to support
the College's annual operating budget; the Mount Holyoke
Alumnae Annual Fund provides between 9 and 10 percent of the
College's operating budget every year.
• The Weissman Center for Leadership and the Liberal Arts
was dedicated in the spring of 1999 to increase students' understanding
of the challenges facing today's leaders and thinkers.
The public programming of the Weissman Center has brought dynamic
and inspiring speakers to campus and greatly enhanced the College's
connections with the world beyond the gates. The Center's
Speaking, Arguing, and Writing Program has grown to serve as
many as 1,300 students this year. In addition, other programmatic
initiatives have also been successfully developed with Campaign
support, including the Center for the Environment and Mount Holyoke's
new global initiatives effort. The Center for the Environment
has made great strides in developing the campus as a laboratory
for landscape ecology.
Campaign goals were successfully animated by the wide-ranging
Plan for Mount Holyoke 2003, a comprehensive planning document
that articulated the collective aspirations of the College. The
Plan, developed by the College community and approved by the
Board of Trustees in May 1997, has now drawn to a highly successful
conclusion, setting the stage for the implementation of another
comprehensive plan for the school, The Plan for Mount Holyoke
2010.
The Plan for Mount Holyoke 2003 set ambitious goals, articulating
the need for a stronger endowment, state-of-the-art facilities,
increased support for annual giving to the College, and support
for a range of new curricular initiatives. The Plan also defined
other strategies and goals for the College that have led to
success on numerous fronts, including record-breaking numbers
of applications for admission from increasingly more diverse
and capable prospective students and greater institutional
visibility. In addition, initiatives such as the College's
widely supported decision to make submission of
SAT scores optional resulted from
the commitment to educational
leadership called for in the planning document.
"The Plan for 2003 reaffirmed the College's historic mission linking
liberal arts with purposeful engagement in the world and set forward ambitious
goals representing our collective aspirations for the College," President
Creighton noted. "The ensuing Campaign was not just about financial support;
it was also a campaign about ideas, about moral and intellectual imperatives,
about the abiding connections to the College of our extended community of alumnae
and friends around the globe."
A Look at The Campaign for Mount Holyoke
October 1998 to Present
Photo: Jim Gipe
The stairway in the luminous
Marion Craig Potter '49 Atrium, Kendade Hall, a
40,000-square-foot building that is the physical and
social center for the sciences at Mount Holyoke
National Campaign Cochairs
Harriet Levine Weissman '58 (left) and Eleanor
Graham Claus '55 enjoying the festivities at the
kickoff dinner with their husbands, Paul and Clyde
Photo: Jim Gipe
The Pittsburgh Collective,
led by assistant professor of music David Sanford, played
to a packed house in the Great Room of the newly renovated
Blanchard Campus Center.
Photo: Jim Gipe
Kendade Hall's Tower
Classroom, a generous gift of Margaret Bloete Shilling '61
and A. Gary Shilling
Students
plan and practice oral presentations in the Speaking,
Arguing, and Writing (SAW) Program at the Weissman Center
for Leadership and the Liberal Arts.
The newly renovated McCulloch
Auditorium, a generous gift of Dorothy Rooke McCulloch '50
and Norman E. McCulloch, was unveiled at the Pratt Hall
dedication, during A Weekend Celebration of Music, March
2-3, 2001.
Left to right: Professor
of Art Michael T. Davis; Mount Holyoke Trustee and Campaign
Cochair Harriet Levine Weissman '58; Mount Holyoke
Art Museum Director Marianne Doezema; Member, Campaign
Steering Committee, Paul M. Weissman; Mount Holyoke Art
Museum Advisory Board Chair and Trustee Susan Bonneville
Weatherbie '72; and President Joanne V. Creighton
break ground on the Art Building and Museum renovation
project March 31, 2001.
Photo: Jennifer Adams Students at lunch in Wilder's
kosher/halal dining hall, made possible by a grant from
an anonymous alumna
Caroline R. Hill Gallery,
Art Museum
Photo: Jim Gipe Anne Pitt Heckel '34
and Robert Heckel Staircase
Photo: Jim Gipe
The science center includes
Shattuck Hall, Kendade Hall, and Carr Laboratory.
Photo: Jim Gipe
Genetics and Molecular
Biology Teaching Lab, a generous gift of Dr. Marilyn
Dawson Sarles '67 and Jay Sarles
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