Carolina's Promise

Reprinted from the Fall 2011 edition of InterCom

The university's least kept secret was revealed on 11-11-11 when our billion dollar capital campaign — Carolina's Promise — was officially announced and celebrated. This makes the University of South Carolina one of only about three dozen institutions of higher education to ever set a fund raising goal with nine zeroes in it. The university's leadership, the campaign chairs and our fund raising consultants are confident this is a reachable goal.

There is reason to be confident. The four years of the so-called "silent phase" of the capital campaign have already raised $529 million. The billion dollar goal should be eclipsed by summer of 2015.

Our campaign goal for the college is a more modest $11.5 million. It's apportioned among these priorities: $6 million for capital improvements, $2.5 million for program enhancements, $2 million for student scholarships and fellowships, $500,000 for faculty development and $500,000 in undesignated funds. What does that mean?

• We unceasingly seek to create additional support for our nearly 2,000 students. Scholarship aid has become more crucial for many in these years of financial strain. Scholarships and fellowships may be endowed so they provide perpetual support, but they may also be continuous funding provided on an annual basis or one-time gifts. A recent anonymous gift will provide $50,000 to the School of Library and Information Science to support doctoral research.

• As a university of high research, we need to provide more resources for faculty scholars. In each of the past two years, we have been able to allocate more than $50,000 in stimulus funds to support research. But stimulus funds are exhausted and unlikely to return.

• We've created significant program enhancements through recent gifts. The Baldwin Business Journalism Endowment in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications is helping us engage students in an area of journalism that is growing in importance: understanding business and finance. The Arius3D scanner donated to SLIS opens up realms of exploration in the digitized world of archives and artifacts.

• While most of our capital improvements — a new home for the journalism school and a $2 million HVAC replacement in Davis College — are being funded by the university, we still need to continue to outfit our facilities with relevant technologies.

As you receive this issue of InterCom, we should be completing the last two approval steps to move from the Phase I design stage for the new journalism school building and into the Phase II bid and construction process next year. Our timeline anticipates a move-in date in 2014. When he took office two years ago, Dr. Michael Amiridis told me he wanted to be the provost who saw the move of the journalism school to 21st century facilities. Dr. Amiridis promises to lead the parade from the Coliseum to our new digs.

Our year-end shopping includes putting Cocky's Reading Express™ on its own wheels, thanks to a generous corporate gift. Promise not to tell Cocky yet. We don't want to spoil the surprise.

Cocky and some of his young friends were at the gala that launched Carolina's Promise last month. And every one of the now more than 37,000 Carolina school children who has received a book has agreed to Cocky's Promise to take that book home and read it every day with someone in the family. Elsewhere in this issue of InterCom, we're introducing you to Dr. Michelle Martin, the inaugural Augusta Baker Chair in Childhood Literacy. Our promise is to attack illiteracy in every way we can.

If you receive this copy of the college's magazine for its alumni and friends, you are already a stakeholder in Carolina's Promise. Sig Huitt, a 1967 journalism alumnus and president of Carolina Public Relations in Charlotte, is chairing the campaign for the college. For all of us, it's time to turn promise to pledges and pledges to practice. Our college goal of $11.5 million is not only attainable, but we ought to be able to go well beyond it. Help us meet our promise.