{"id":1905,"date":"2013-02-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-18T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/blogtest\/centennial-campaign-hits-62-million-mark\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T14:18:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T19:18:11","slug":"centennial-campaign-hits-62-million-mark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/centennial-campaign-hits-62-million-mark\/","title":{"rendered":"Centennial Campaign Hits $62 Million Mark"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><p>Our Centennial Campaign continues to maintain great\u00a0momentum and is generating lots of enthusiasm among\u00a0supporters. At the end of the calendar year, the campaign\u00a0had achieved more than $62 million in commitments toward\u00a0its $80 million goal.<\/p>\n<p>A couple of key highlights from the past year include<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>bequest from the late Ken Shipp (\u201950) valued at more than\u00a0$3.5 million, dedicated for need-based scholarships;<\/li>\n<li>an anonymous $1 million commitment supporting a\u00a0number of initiatives on campus; and<\/li>\n<li>several new scholarship endowments and faculty awards.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We\u2019re also seeing greater interest from our alumni and friends\u00a0as the number of donors continues to increase each year. As\u00a0of December, more than 15,000 donors have contributed to\u00a0the campaign. Most impressively, our graduating seniors have\u00a0embraced the Senior Gift Challenge; 17 percent of the December\u00a0graduating class made their first gifts to MTSU through\u00a0the program.<\/p>\n<p>While the dollars are obviously important, this campaign is also\u00a0about engaging our friends and alumni in more meaningful\u00a0ways. In talking with many of our donors, the one thing most\u00a0apparent to me is that their gifts were the result of a lifelong\u00a0relationship with MTSU. Many still speak fondly of the important\u00a0role certain faculty members had in their lives. They\u00a0say they give so that future students might enjoy that same\u00a0connection with members of our MTSU community.<\/p>\n<p>Joe Bales, vice president for development and university\u00a0relations, often reminds us that we begin developing a relationship\u00a0with our students the day they first apply for admission.\u00a0How we treat them and the effort we make to help them\u00a0achieve their goals are the most important influences that can\u00a0turn them into alumni who want to give back to their alma mater.<\/p>\n<p>The results of our Senior Gift Challenge show that we are\u00a0doing the right things for many of our students, but it also\u00a0shows that there are opportunities remaining. How each of\u00a0us chooses to interact with students in and out of the classroom\u00a0is crucial to our efforts to build a stronger community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our Centennial Campaign continues to maintain great\u00a0momentum and is generating lots of enthusiasm among\u00a0supporters. At the end of the calendar year, the campaign\u00a0had achieved more than $62 million in commitments toward\u00a0its $80 million goal. A couple of key highlights from the past year include bequest from the late Ken Shipp (\u201950) valued at more than\u00a0$3.5 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":96,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1905"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3047,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1905\/revisions\/3047"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtsu.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}