Speeches

Grand Destiny Keynote Address

I would like to begin by returning to the words of George W. Atherton, who was the first to speak of a Grand Destiny. He used that term in his inaugural address, as the University's seventh president, in 1883. Dr. Atherton said that a Penn State student, and I am quoting now, "should learn to look upon himself not merely as a winner of bread, but as a moral force in the world, with noble powers which he must rightly employ, with high duties which he must fulfill, and with the possibilities of a grand destiny which he must labor to achieve. It is the business of a sound education to teach him the nature of these powers, these duties, and that destiny."

Dr. Atherton further pointed out that we need not fear that students, and again I quote, who go forth to meet the problems and engage in the contests of life, with consciences thus informed and quickened, will ever go far astray from the path of duty or usefulness.

President Atherton would surely be astonished and overjoyed by the accomplishments we celebrate this weekend, and by what Penn Staters have achieved in this world. Indeed, most of us are astonished and overjoyed by the success of our Grand Destiny campaign. I don't think I have ever felt more pride in Penn State than I do at this very moment, as we come together to look back at the Grand Destiny campaign and measure its success. What a thrill it is for me to be here, in the company of so many loyal and enthusiastic members of the Penn State community. Over the next few minutes, I would like to review the goals we established for this ambitious fund-raising effort, and then assess our progress in achieving them.

When the campaign began on July 1, 1996, we gave the highest priority to increasing the University's endowment. Great universities have great endowments--special resources that encourage and enable excellence in students, faculty, and programs across the institution. We were not satisfied with the size of our endowment, or our competitive position in relation to other prestigious universities.

Within the framework of increasing our endowment, the campaign identified four University-wide priorities. All of these priorities had as their foundation the people of Penn State. We wanted to give our faculty and students more opportunities to realize their full potential as members of our learning community, and to make positive contributions to society.

Our first priority was to help undergraduates by securing more scholarships and other forms of financial assistance. Second, we aimed to secure increased support for graduate fellowships and graduate assistantships. Third, we wanted to strengthen our ability to teach students by creating more endowed chairs and professorships. And our fourth priority was to expand support for programs for our broad-based teaching, research, and outreach efforts.

At the outset of the campaign, we set a tentative working goal of $800 million. Yet even before we announced that goal, the campaign met with an extraordinary outpouring of support from Penn State alumni and friends. Within two years, we had secured half of our working goal. By the time we launched the campaign's public phase in the spring of 1999, we felt confident in declaring a public goal of $1 billion--an ambitious objective, considering that fewer than twenty universities, public or private, had dared to set the fund-raising bar that high.

The campaign was only a few months old when Bill and Joan Schreyer, in a marvelous act that displayed both generosity and vision, endowed the Schreyer Honors College. Measured by the quality and variety of the learning experience that it offers, the College has quickly become a model of its kind for universities nationwide.

Bob Eberly and his family gave unstintingly for scholarships and faculty endowments at Penn State Fayette, and later followed up with the lead gift for a new community center at that campus. Verne Willaman, an alumnus of the Eberly College of Science, endowed not only the dean's chair in that college but also several additional chairs and professorships, as well as undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships.

The philanthropy of alumni Lloyd and Dorothy Huck--two longtime University benefactors--has truly been breath-taking in its scope. The Hucks endowed faculty positions in the University Libraries and the colleges of Medicine, Health and Human Development, and the Eberly College. They also created scholarships and other student-related funds in several of these colleges, and have supported the new Life Sciences building and biotechnology research.

A donor who prefers to remain anonymous made the largest gift ever to Penn State Erie. The gift was designated for student, faculty, and program support in the School of Business and for related areas, such as libraries and information technology.

I would be remiss not to mention the amazing support we received early on in the campaign from our University Trustees. Under Ted Junker's volunteer efforts as Trustee Chair, commitments from current and emeriti trustees now total over $85 million. This is five times more than trustee giving during our first University-wide campaign from 1984 to 1990.

A fund-raising adage holds that those who give early in a campaign, give twice, simply by inspiring others to raise their own sights on what they might make possible. We were blessed with more than our fair share of early givers. It was actually on July 1, 1996, the very first day of the campaign, that Rod Kirsch and I met with campaign chair Ed Hintz, and Helen Hintz, vice chair of the campaign's Heath and Human Development component, to discuss their philanthropic interests. The Hintz family made a wonderful lead gift to build what we are proud to call the Hintz Family Alumni Center, and also to endow a number of student funds. They established a remarkable standard in their giving and in their volunteer devotion.

This is only a sampling of the donors and gifts that set the pace for the campaign, and helped to inspire other benefactors to be equally generous in their own philanthropy.

We must keep in mind that Penn State is not a static institution; it is ever changing in response to the demands placed upon it by its various constituencies. Consequently, nearly five years into the campaign, we reviewed our fund-raising goals to make sure that they reflected the changes that had taken place at the University. In that review process, we identified new objectives, particularly in the area of facilities, and raised our goal to $1.3 billion.

Around the time we raised the goal, Mr. Hintz had been elected chairman of the Board of Trustees. His successor as campaign chair, Jim Broadhurst, was eager and well prepared to take our fund-raising efforts to even higher levels of achievement. We were fortunate to have two people of such enthusiasm and talent as our top volunteers.

Now, with a little more than two months to go before the campaign officially ends, let me tell you how we fared.

Our overall objective was to increase endowment. Of the campaign gifts and pledges we have received thus far, approximately $516 million has been designated for endowed purposes. That is an astonishing figure when you consider that the market value of our endowment as of July 1, 1996, totaled just $417 million.

Even more astounding is the fact that of the approximately 3,700 separate endowed funds the University currently has, about half were created by campaign gifts.

Now let's take a brief look at those four priorities that I mentioned, beginning with undergraduate support. I am pleased to tell you that the campaign raised almost $317 million for undergraduate support.

Those gifts translate into 962 endowed undergraduate scholarships and award funds, increasing the total number of new student-related endowments by 85 percent since 1996. More than 8,500 undergraduate students are now benefiting from privately funded student aid, and that number will increase significantly as more campaign pledges are realized.

At the graduate student level, campaign gifts and pledges total nearly $60 million.

These commitments have endowed 188 scholarship, fellowship, or assistantship funds. We also have about 90 additional new scholarship endowments that we can direct to either graduates or undergraduates, wherever the need is greatest.

In the realm of faculty support, campaign gifts and pledges total $173 million. The total number of faculty chairs, professorships and fellowships has increased by about 80 percent during the campaign, from 161 such endowments in 1996 to about 290 today. I am especially pleased to note that among the new endowments are two dean's chairs, in the College of Health and Human Development, created by Raymond and Erin Schultz, and in the Eberly College of Science, established, as I noted earlier, by Verne Willaman.

In terms of program support, the results are equally gratifying. The campaign has received more than $225 million in commitments for this priority. Let me give you just a few examples to illustrate the breadth of the program support category.

When we look at the University Libraries, we find that campaign donors have created 62 separate endowments for acquisition, preservation, and other purposes. In the College of the Liberal Arts, Doug Rock has endowed the Rock Ethics Institute, and George and Ann Richards have endowed the Richards Center for Civil War Era Studies, both of which are well on their way to earning national reputations for their scholarly excellence. The start up of the World Campus was made possible in large part with grants from the Sloan Foundation.

If we exclude pledges and consider only dollars already received, the campaign total to date slightly exceeds $1 billion. Compare that figure, if you would, to the $923 million in private support that Penn State received from the time it was founded in 1855 until the Grand Destiny campaign began seven years ago. In other words, we have raised more dollars in the last seven years than in the previous 141 years! Donors, your outstanding generosity has made philanthropy forever a part of Penn State's cultural fabric!

Now, you may ask, if we add pledges to the gift total, how much support has the campaign secured for Penn State? What is the grand total? Sorry, but the Development staff is still at work adding to that figure.

Turning once more to our tangible campaign successes, some of them are almost literally etched in stone. I am speaking, of course, of the bricks-and-mortar projects that can be seen across the University.

Here at University Park, private support has enabled us to leverage millions of additional dollars in state funds for such landmark facilities as the Information Sciences and Technology Building, the Chemistry Building, and the Life Sciences Building, all currently under construction.

Private support is also an essential element in funding those buildings now in the planning stages, such as new homes for The Smeal College of Business, food science, and forest resources.

The Pasquerilla Spiritual Center, slated for dedication next week, and the MBNA Career Services Center, opened last fall, were built entirely with private funding. Just last month, we announced a lead gift from alumnus Cal Stuckeman for construction of a new home for our School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture.

At Penn State campuses across the Commonwealth, additional improvements to our learning facilities have been made possible in whole or in part by philanthropy.

For example:

• the Safeguard Scientifics Building at Penn State Great Valley
• Penn State Harrisburg's Library of the Future
• the Boscov-Lakin Information Commons at Penn State Berks
• and the Smith Chapel at Penn State Erie.

Projects currently in the works include the community center planned for Penn State Fayette, and the student union building now under construction at Penn State McKeesport.

Altogether, since the campaign began, private support has made possible the construction or renovation of more than 35 major structures on 12 Penn State campuses. Those facilities have added, or will add when completed, an astounding 2.6 million square feet of space.

I realize that I have given you a lot of facts and figures. Talking about millions of dollars and thousands of students can dull our senses to the campaign's impact on the lives of real people. Yet the essence of philanthropy is people helping people. Your philanthropy is shaping the lives of individual students and faculty.

Looking back over the last seven years, it is my view that the Grand Destiny campaign's greatest single accomplishment was to make philanthropy an integral part of the culture at Penn State. The campaign has made our alumni and friends, as well as our own faculty and students, more keenly aware that private support gives us resources that are available nowhere else. These resources will help us to attain a new level of excellence as we carry out our historic mission of teaching, research, and service. In our role as philanthropists, you and I have a chance to shape not only the future of the University, but also what kind of society we, our children, and our grandchildren will live in.

On behalf of all Penn State students, faculty and staff, I would like to say how grateful we are to all of you for working so hard and giving so unselfishly to make the Grand Destiny campaign such a wonderful success. I am especially pleased to report that 53 percent of all Penn State faculty and staff members made campaign commitments totaling some $40 million.

All of you, as donors and volunteers, have left an indelible imprint on Penn State. Your generosity is enabling us to extend the frontiers of knowledge, and to serve society, in ways that only a few years ago we had not even imagined.