At Homecoming/Parents Weekend, more than 1,800 members of the CC family celebrated The Year of the Tiger. During the weekend, President Richard F. Celeste and others reported on the progress of the Achieving Our Vision campaign, thanked donors for their support, and outlined what more there is to do.
The strategic vision the campus community developed in President Richard F. Celeste’s first year, which became known as Vision 2010, outlined three priority areas for attention. Recent developments in each of those areas will shape the college and its students for years to come.
Jessica Hunter Larsen '90, Curator of the I.D.E.A. Program
Enhancing the Rigorous Intellectual Experience: Endowment for the Curator of the I.D.E.A. Program
“The I.D.E.A. Program has enjoyed a very exciting launch. As an alumna of Colorado College, I believe that creating alternative learning opportunities and fostering experimental thinking are what Colorado College does best.”
— Jessica Hunter Larsen ’90, curator of the I.D.E.A. Program
The college also is celebrating a recent major commitment of funding for the arts, a final investment in a years-long $21 million campaign to develop space and program funding for the interdisciplinary arts. In 2004, the Robert & Ruby Priddy Charitable Trust provided a million-dollar challenge for the creation of the InterDisciplinary Experimental Arts (I.D.E.A). Program and to endow the curator’s position. Recently, many members of the Colorado College Board of Trustees and their family members personally committed individual pledges to meet the match. Together, their funding and that of the Priddy Trust establishes a $2 million endowment that will sustain the four-year-old program.
Through innovative collaborations, visual art exhibitions, performances, speakers, and events, I.D.E.A. programs encourage impassioned dialogues and interdisciplinary investigations that extend far beyond gallery walls. The new endowment, coupled with the I.D.E.A. Space, funded by trustee Susie Burghart ’77 and her brother Will Smith ’74 in the new Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center, ensures that interdisciplinary arts learning will be sustained at CC long into the future.
Jeff Keller '91 attended the forum and announced the funding commitment on behalf of the family, including his brother David '95.
The popular venture grant program for student research awards approximately 100 grants each year for CC students to imagine, articulate, and embark upon their own original research or creative project. The program has grown dramatically over the past several years, thanks to the support of the Keller family. At the venture grant forum in November, President Celeste announced that the program will be named the Keller Family Venture Grant Program for Student Research, in recognition of the family’s commitment to fund the program indefinitely.
Creating a Diverse, Respectful Community: $10 Million Matching Grant
The Walton Family Foundation is partnering with Colorado College in a new affordability initiative that will make significantly more scholarship funding available to students with financial need. The foundation and college hope to inspire others to partner in growing the scholarship funds to help realize a CC dream for more talented students who could not otherwise afford to attend.
The Walton Family Foundation has awarded the college a $10 million matching grant for students with significant financial need. The college community of alumni, parents, and friends are challenged to match the grant with an additional $10 million, creating a $20 million infusion of new endowed scholarship funds over the next five years. When the grant is completed, an additional million dollars annually will be available for scholarship support in perpetuity.
“A hundred times every day I remind myself that my life at Colorado College depends on the sacrifices my scholarship donors chose to make in order to give me the privileges I have now and I can only hope to give the same measure as I have received in the future.”
— Samuel Zemedkun ’10
“Scholarship support not only opens the door for many students who wish to attend CC, but it also gives them the freedom to focus more closely on their academics and pursue activities outside class,” said President Celeste. “This addition to our endowed financial aid will generate a dramatic and sustainable difference over time in what we can provide for prospective students.”
Anyone who shares the vision of making a CC education possible for highly qualified students regardless of their ability to pay can participate in the $20 million effort. Gifts of any amount to need-based endowed financial aid will be matched 1:1 by the foundation. Designate your gift for the “Walton Family Foundation Scholars Fund.”
Those who are in a position to respond to the 1:1 matching challenge by establishing a named, endowed, need-based scholarship or by adding to an existing scholarship should contact the development office at (800) 782-6306, (719) 389-6752, or supportcc@coloradocollege.edu
Continuing a long and generous history of support to Colorado College, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation awarded a $250,000 Special Opportunities Grant to bring the college close to creating a $1 million dollar endowment for CC’s Public Interest Fellowship Program (PIFP). This grant will be applied to the Randleigh Charitable Trust Challenge Match. Just over $50,000 remains to be raised to meet the Randleigh challenge.
Gifts to the Randleigh Challenge Match for the PIFP Endowment can be made online at www.coloradocollege.edu/giving or by calling (719) 389-6753. Please note your gift designation.
Artist's rendering of new Fitness Center
Providing a Next-Generation Campus: $1 Million Commitment to Fitness Center
The family of the late Ritt Kellogg ’90 has made a $1 million commitment toward the college’s new Fitness Center. This generous gift carries on the legacy Ritt’s family and friends have created at CC, including the Ritt Kellogg Climbing Wall, which will be expanded and improved in the new facility. The gift brings the total funding available for this project to $8 million toward the $22 million project. There are still investment opportunities available for supporting the Fitness Center.
The project will renovate and update El Pomar Sports and Recreation Center and add modern fitness facilities to serve the entire campus. For details on the current plans for the new facility, go to www.coloradocollege.edu/vision/healthfitness.php.
“To maintain our status as a nationally ranked liberal arts college, our athletic buildings must be up to date. Ninety-three percent of our students are involved in organized recreational activities, and 15 percent of our students are NCAA athletes, making training and fitness resources critical. Our emphasis on developing the whole individual, both mind and body, helps ensure their success during college and after graduation.”
— Ralph Bertrand, professor of biology, NCAA faculty athletics representative chair, CC Athletics Board president
Achieving Our Vision “On the Road”
President Celeste and select college faculty and staff currently are traveling around the country to share news of and to celebrate the impact of everyone’s efforts to Achieve Our Vision. During the past eight years, you’ve read about many of these successes: The dramatic increase in tenure-track faculty; the growing interest in CC by top high school students around the country; increases in international study and international students; increased support for faculty and faculty/student research; increased support for internships, including college-funded paid internships with non-profit organizations; the renovations and updating of beloved campus buildings and the completion of the Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center; and more.
Please check http://www.coloradocollege.edu/alumni/ to see upcoming tour locations. In addition to meeting and hearing from some of our incredible faculty and students, participants will have the opportunity to meet President Celeste while he describes some of the exciting initiatives their support has made possible. They also will have the opportunity to meet our new director of alumni and parent relations, Jay Engeln ’74, P’03.
