Everywhere you turn there seems to be another awards ceremony for some profession. But the award Wabash College will receive today is richly deserved, and we never knew it was coming.
This afternoon, Dean for Advancement Mark Jones and some of our colleagues will receive the CASE-Wealth ID Award for Educational Fund Raising. We're one of eight private colleges to be so honored, and we are in good company, indeed.
The Circle of Excellence Award for fund raising is higher education's way of saying Wabash handles its fund raising and other Advancement work (stewardship, alumni and parent affairs, community relations, and public affairs) in all the right ways.
Boy have we come a long way.
About six years ago when we were gearing up for the Campaign for Leadership we were a pretty unsophisticated fund raising shop. We had a strong annual giving program, but even it lacked luster and consistency. My friend Nancy Doemel always has done a nice job with corporate and foundation relations, and we routinely received bequests from alumni who had developed planned giving programs with Art Baxter.
But when Wabash needed a lot of money to construct a new facility or remodel an old one, we mounted a capital campaign and generally got the money we needed from the same 300 or so alumni and friends. It was the "old boy network" at its fund raising best! But don't get me wrong, that model worked very well for Wabash for about 150 years.
Still, if you talked with anyone in the fund raising profession five years ago about our prospects of raising that original $100 million, let alone the current goal of $132.5, they would have laughed out loud.
Here we are today. The Campaign for Leadership has raised just over $103 million. And while we're still roughly $29 million from completion, the momentum it has generated continues as strongly today as it did the night we kicked off the campaign with fireworks skyrocketing over the Chapel.
The physical reminders of the Campaign's work are at every turn on campus, whether you start in the Allen Athletics and Recreation Center, the new biology and chemistry building, or tour the renovated fraternity houses.
The less visible evidence of Wabash's campaign is happening in the classroom, library, and research labs. Faculty are creating ever more innovative ways of teaching and reaching students; internships provide real world opportunities for our men; and cross cultural immersion learning experiences across the globe prepare our men for life after Wabash.
As we prepare for this fall's accreditation visit by the North Central Association, a team of faculty has written a 100-page self-study that clearly shows just how far Wabash has come in the last 10 years. Sure, that document covers a range of activities and focuses most keenly on assessment, teaching and learning practices, and student outcomes. But evidence of the College's increased sophistication in fund raising, and along with it, attention to donors' needs and desires, is all through the self-study.
So today I'm proud of the Advancement Office, our current Dean, and Paul Pribbenow, who so carefully plotted the course of the Campaign about six years ago. And I hope the entire community shares the same pride in an institution that once again has received national attention for its practices and programs.
Jim Amidon is the director of public affairs and marketing at Wabash College, and is a member of the 29-person Advancement Office.