Campaign for Delaware update

The Campaign for Delaware is reshaping the campus, thanks to the enthusiasm of thousands of alumni and friends who are providing the University of Delaware with fresh funds to support construction of new facilities, acquisition of leading-edge equipment and provision of valuable discovery learning opportunities to students.

The influx of support also has bolstered endowments for scholarships, fellowships and professorships. That, in turn, has enabled the University to enroll the brightest undergraduate and graduate students and attract and retain the most talented faculty.

"As of May 2001, we have received more than $258 million in gifts and pledges toward the Campaign for Delaware," President David P. Roselle reports. "That is a remarkable achievement in that the funds raised now surpass 100 percent of our original goal in about one-half of the term of the Campaign.

"Additional good news is the fact that the excitement surrounding the Campaign has led to a substantial increase in annual giving," Roselle adds. "We closed FY 1999-2000 with gifts totaling nearly $44.7 million, an 11 percent increase over the $40 million given the previous fiscal year and a 49 percent increase over the $30 million contributed just two years earlier."

Perhaps the most visible effect of the Campaign for Delaware to date can be found in the new construction projects, as front-end loaders and bulldozers roll across central campus.

A recently completed project is construction of a new office building and 500-vehicle parking garage adjacent to the Perkins Student Center on Academy Street. The $13 million project was centered on a new home for the MBNA Career Services Center, and it also houses offices for Human Resources staff, University Police and Security and some faculty in the Professional Theatre Training Program.

It was funded in part by a $3 million gift from MBNA America, N.A., a company that provided enormous support to the Campaign for Delaware with an overall gift of $25 million, announced in February 2000.

More than half the MBNA gift, $15 million, is in support of scholarships, in the main for economically disadvantaged young people. Another $5 million supports the College of Business and Economics, and $2 million supports the Delaware Center for Teacher Education.

Work is well under way on construction of a $25.2 million addition to P.S. du Pont Hall, the home of the College of Engineering on UD's historic Mall. Recent commitments to support the addition include $250,000 from the Welfare Foundation and $80,000 from the Marmot Foundation. That money was added to previous commitments of $10 million from the Longwood Foundation, $2 million from the Crystal Trust and $500,000 from the Good Samaritan Foundation.

"The University has earned national attention for the revitalization of the campus, our record for modernization serving as a model for other institutions of higher education," Roselle says. And, it is a revitalization that has been undertaken in concert with the historic nature of the campus, creating an ideal situation as old and new work hand in hand to ensure the future.

Behind the bricks and mortar is a thoroughly modern computer network that has resulted in the University being ranked No. 2 in last year's Yahoo! Internet Life magazine survey of the nation's "Most Wired Colleges."

The network enables students to apply to the University of Delaware, register for courses, purchase textbooks and keep in close contact with their professors online. Statistics show that 93 percent of UD undergraduate students own a personal computer, 98 percent use computers and 98 percent use e-mail regularly. The institution has a "port-to-pillow" ratio of 1-to-1, meaning there is one Internet connection for every bed on campus.

For University staff members, the network has resulted in tremendous savings as employees can execute a wide range of administrative functions electronically.

Another key resource enhanced by Campaign gifts is the University of Delaware Library, a premier facility that includes more than 2.4 million print volumes and considerable electronic resources. The Library remains an international leader in information retrieval.

Recently, the Library received a bequest of about $3 million from the estate of the late Melva B. Guthrie, who died in 1968 at age 71 with the wish that she be remembered for her kindness. A native of Delaware, she was married to James H. Guthrie, the manager of Ire´n´ee du Pont's Cuban estate, Xanadu. Mrs. Guthrie also made an earlier $3 million bequest.

"Mrs. Guthrie's residual bequest to the Library, an enormous act of generosity, will support University of Delaware students, scholars and researchers forever," says Susan Brynteson, May Morris Director of Libraries.

Also, the Library acquired a large collection of the literary papers of the American expatriate writer and composer Paul Bowles, by arrangement with the author. The collection includes thousands of items, such as letters, manuscripts, revisions of manuscripts, translations, publishers' reports, memorabilia and numerous other items housed for many years in the author's home in Tangier, Morocco.

Another resource that will be of increasing importance is the Delaware Biotechnology Institute, a partnership of higher education, government and industry focused on developing interdisciplinary research in the life sciences.

Another key goal of the Campaign for Delaware is to provide University students with increased opportunities for discovery learning, which encompasses a variety of programs including study abroad, internships, the campuswide problem-based learning project and undergraduate research.

"We intend to offer our students the finest in discovery learning opportunities, something quite fitting for the institution that gave American undergraduates their first study-abroad experiences in the 1920s," Roselle says.

That first program was developed by Prof. Raymond Watson Kirkbride with the backing of University President Walter Hullihen and the financial support of noted benefactor Pierre S. du Pont. Kirkbride, a member of the University of Delaware modern languages faculty, had served in France during World War I. The idea for a foreign study program came to him during postwar studies at the University of Grenoble.

The Delaware Foreign Study Plan was duplicated in later years at many colleges and universities and now is usually referred to as the Junior Year Abroad.

Participation is limited only by an individual student's financial situation, and the University received a $300,000 gift from the Starr Foundation to fund study-abroad scholarships. The gift helps extend the program to additional students.

A total of 21.6 percent of UD students participated in the study abroad program during the 2000-2001 academic year, far exceeding the national collegiate average. The University is ranked among the top 10 research institutions in the percentage of students who study abroad and sends students to all seven continents.

The University also stands at the forefront of involving undergraduates in research, an initiative that now involves all departments and 70 percent of all faculty members. Furthermore, more than 500 UD faculty members in all disciplines are trained in problem-based learning, an instructional method that challenges students to learn how to learn, working cooperatively in groups to seek solutions to real-world problems. The problems are used to engage students' curiosity and initiate learning the subject matter.

Attracting and retaining the finest professors to teach those students is another vital goal of the Campaign for Delaware.

At the opening of the Campaign, the University had fewer than 10 faculty chairs with endowments in excess of $300,000. By 2003, the University expects to have about 100 such endowments in place.

"Such chairs help us attract and retain leading professors, thus deepening our pool of instructional and research talent and further enriching our community," Roselle says.

Two important new endowed faculty chairs have been filled. Charles Elson was named the Edgar S. Woolard Jr. Chair in Corporate Governance and directs the Center for Corporate Governance, and Leland Ware was selected to fill the Louis L. Redding Chair for the Study of Law and Public Policy.

Elson, a law professor, joined the College of Business and Economics faculty from Stetson University, where he earned an international reputation for his work in corporate governance.

Ware, also a law professor, joined the College of Human Services, Education and Public Policy faculty from St. Louis University, where he received praise for his work as an expert in the field of civil rights.

In addition, the Unidel Foundation has committed $10 million for named chairs; philanthropist Edna Bennett Pierce has given $1.5 million to honor her late husband with an endowed chair in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; Martin A. Pomerantz has given $500,000 to create an endowed professorship in the University of Delaware-Bartol Research Institute; and Sandy and Bruce Hammonds have given $250,000 to create an endowed professorship in the College of Human Services, Education and Public Policy.

The James R. Soles Jr. Citizenship Endowment is yet another opportunity, one aimed at honoring the political science professor who has long been a positive presence on campus.

Students, colleagues and friends of Soles are working to raise a total of $1 million and, to date, they have gathered about $350,000 in gifts and pledges.

There are three distinct but related programs contained within the citizenship endowment: the James R. Soles Professorship in Political Science, the James R. Soles Undergraduate Citizenship Stipends and the James R. Soles Graduate Fellowships in Political Science.

The University of Delaware campus also is being reshaped by the increased scholarship support provided through the Campaign for Delaware. Invigorated financial resources are helping the University attract the most talented students from around the nation.

"Indeed, we are already reaping the benefits of this accelerated support," Roselle says.

The Class of 2003 had an average high school grade point average of 3.5, nearly all were ranked in the top half of their high school classes, and 26 percent were in the top one-tenth of their high school classes. The middle 50 percent of all students admitted to the University had SAT scores from 1090 to 1250.

For the 3,200 members of the Class of 2004--admitted from among more than 18,000 applicants--those figures rose even further. The middle 50 percent had SAT scores from 1110 to 1260. Perhaps even more telling was the fact that more than half of the class members indicated volunteer community services as an extracurricular interest.

"While we are excited about the success of the Campaign for Delaware, that enthusiasm is tempered by the knowledge that our original goals were based, not on a full accounting of the true needs of the University of Delaware, but on the amount of money we thought we could raise," Roselle says. "The happy news is that we underestimated the commitment of our friends and alumni to helping us fully meet the needs of the institution."

Moving forward, Roselle says, the Campaign for Delaware will emphasize as its most important scorecard not simply the funds raised but the needs of the institution that have been met and the opportunities that have been provided for students, staff and faculty.

"We are confident that, come October 2003, we will be able to report not only that we have raised substantially more than $225 million but also that we have achieved a litany of institutional improvements that are the direct result of the generosity of the alumni and friends of the University of Delaware," he says.

"I believe that when we reach the conclusion of the Campaign for Delaware in October 2003," Roselle says, "we will be able to take great pride in the fact that we have provided the University of Delaware the tools it needs to flourish in the 21st century and beyond."