NEWS
Tuesday, august 27, 2013
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Theobald’s inaugural New campaign raised cash date set for Oct. 18th fundraising PAGE 1
Theobald PAGE 1 including the newly-minted Morgan Hall. Previously, the library was slated to be built on the west side of Broad Street, but Theobald said that it is going to be on the east side of Broad Street. “It’s certainly going to be on the east side of Broad and by October or November, we’ll have an exact site,” Theobald said. The master plan will be finished in February, but Theobald said a preliminary version would be announced in the fall to solicit input on any changes that could be made. Of the changes that could be made to the campus, none would be bigger than an oncampus football stadium, which Theobald said has also entered the discussion. “Every university would like an on-campus stadium,” Theobald said. “Certainly we’re looking at it and it’s under consideration.” As the 27-story Morgan Hall enters its first academic year in operation, Theobald said more residential housing would most likely be a part of the plan. “We have excess demand
for student housing, so there almost certainly will be housing of some sort [in the plan],” Theobald said. “Clearly we’re going to have more on-campus housing.” Other than working with the administration on the university’s master plan, the president is also embarking on a new freshman leadership course with his wife, Sheona Mackenzie, which will meet once a week. She was a school psychologist in Indiana and retired when Theobald took the job at Temple. He said he can share the sense of transition with the freshmen in their class. “I’m in a position now where I can share learning with them,” Theobald said. He is set to lay out his agenda and vision for Temple during his inauguration this fall, which he said will center on issues that he has harped on since he was announced as the university’s 10th president in August 2012. When he returns from Notre Dame next week, he plans to make the inauguration his top priority. Theobald said to not expect
any surprises in his inaugura address. “There are generic issues: affordability, research, competency, our role in social issues. What I need to do in the inaugural is find out where Temple specifically is in all [of this].” Though issues like affordability and student debt will be addressed as he sets his vision for the university, Temple’s role in the area also comes into question. “We’re not Penn, we’re not Villanova, we’re not St. Joseph’s. We’re Temple. We’re Philadelphia’s public university,” he said. “What does that mean and what does that imply?” He said he’s working to get a grasp of what Temple means to the area and how that affects the university’s strategy moving forward. The inauguration is set for Oct. 18 and will be held at the Baptist Temple on Broad Street. Sean Carlin can be reached at sean.carlin@temple.edu or follow on Twitter @SeanCarlin84.
$65.8 million from more than 45,000 donors. The $65.8 million raised by the university in fiscal year 2013 breaks the previous high of $63.6 million in fiscal year 2008, which coincided with the Access to Excellence fundraising campaign during Ann Weaver Hart’s tenure as president. Though officials said the record-setting year was a combination of added resources to the Office of Institutional Advancement and energy surrounding the university from the scholarship campaign, Tilghman Moyer, interim senior vice president for Institutional Advancement, said the record is in part because of a sound strategy coming into last year. “Any good fundraising results come from a good plan,” said Moyer, who took over as the interim senior vice president when David Unruh resigned from the position in December. “We will continue to focus our efforts on attracting new donors – individuals who haven’t given before – and also focus on those alumni who have given in the past and focus on asking for increased support.” Of last year’s donors, more than 3,000 were alumni who have received degrees in the last decade, a nearly 60 percent
Fling a ‘drinking fest,’Theobald says Fling PAGE 1
1900 block of North 18th Street. While Fausnaught’s death was described as devastating by administrators, Powell said the incident wasn’t the reason for the cancellation of Spring Fling. “Her death was extremely tragic and just a shock,” Powell said. “But she is not the reason for this move. It was just the culture that this is now a day to drink and that was most disturbing to us.” The ubiquitous drinking that has enveloped Spring Fling in recent years has also started to draw students from other universities to North Philadelphia because of the culture that has surrounded it. Though drinking seemed to
play much of the role in the demise of Spring Fling, administrators said its effects started to seep into the classroom. Along with scores of students who skipped their classes for the day, officials reported hearing of professors who contributed to it by canceling class. “There’s nowhere we said, ‘cancel class,’ there’s nowhere we promoted skipping class, so there’s just something wrong with this position,” Powell said. Temple Student Government Student Body President Darin Bartholomew said he was asked by administrators to make the academic case for Spring Fling, which he couldn’t because “it’s very hard to make
an academic case for an event where classes are canceled.” “If any student rationally thought about that question and tried to put themselves in my position, you can say a lot of things that quite honestly aren’t true, but if you are going to answer with any sort of integrity, it’s very hard to make that case,” Bartholomew said. Instead of Spring Fling, Student Activities, TSG and Main Campus Program Board, along with other students, are working on finding other events for the Spring, though officials warned that no single program will replace Spring Fling. “We will continue to find spring programming that will
achieve the goals that we had set: engagement in campus, feeling that sense of school spirit, providing students and student organizations the opportunity to be involved and demonstrate what it is that they’re all about,” Ives said. “We want to find a way to fulfill those goals.” Ives added that she expects to receive recommendations on spring programs within the next few months. Sean Carlin can be reached at sean.carlin@temple.edu or follow on Twitter @SeanCarlin84.
Students participate in the Spring Fling fair this April. University Administrators announced that the fair and other Spring Fling activities will be cancelled in 2014 while they look for alternatives. | TTN FILE PHOTO
2013 fundraising dollars reach an all-time high. | John Moritz TTN
increase from the previous year, according to the university. Along with a strategy to identify new donors and keep tapping into frequent donors, Moyer said the scholarship campaign provided some of the energy and support to encourage people to donate. The plan was announced in August 2012 while Richard Englert was acting president, and aimed to raise $100 million for student scholarship in five years. Of the funds raised last year, $16.5 million was directed to support for scholarships – the type the $100 million campaign aims for. While that only represents roughly a quarter of what donors gave to Temple, it rose 88 percent from fiscal year 2012, when $8.8 million was directed to student scholarship. “The scholarship initiative gave something that many people could identify with, so that aided greatly,” Moyer said. “A successful fundraising operation doesn’t happen in a vacuum, it happens because of a lot of buzz and awareness.” Moyer noted that added resources to Institutional Advancement aided the office’s ability to advertise and court donors to give to the university. Almost three years ago, Hart approved a three-year investment plan for the office after an extensive review of its operation. Moyer said during the past two years, the office has built a “strong team,” and last year’s success shows the beginning of a “payoff on this investment.” A more unified leadership has also led to confidence in the university which aided in fundraising, Moyer said. Since fiscal year 2013 began, the university has named a president, filled its interim provost position and named a slew of deans to positions which had been previously been held by interim deans. “It gives the appearance of senior leadership being solidified,” Moyer said. One of the factors that contributed to the successful fundraising effort was President Neil Theobald’s understanding of how fundraising works. At Indiana University, Theobald was in charge of a seven-year capital campaign that generated $1.2 billion for the university. While Theobald was impressed by the record-setting fundraising year, he said he was more astounded by the amount of donors who gave to the university last year. “It wasn’t just the amount of money we raised, which was
fabulous, it was the number of people that donated,” Theobald said. “You’ve got more alumni seeing really good things going on here and they want to give back.” Temple is in the process of overcoming an institutional mindset that previously did not place fundraising on its list of top priorities, Moyer said. Fundraising only became a top concern for the university over the last 10 years, he said. Though fundraising has been a larger concern for the university, it has still largely fluctuated since fiscal year 2004. Since the previous high in 2008, fundraising dropped off to $42.4 million in fiscal year 2009, rose to $50.9 million in fiscal year 2010, and dropped to as low as $38.8 million in fiscal year 2012. While fundraising dipped from $49.6 million in 2011, to $38.8 million in 2012, officials said the pervious administration still held fundraising as a top concern. “There was no less focus from the pervious administration,” Moyer said. “It’s been a steady emphasis on fundraising. Despite the $17 million increase from 2012 to 2013, Temple still lags behind other institutions like Penn State – which raised more than $260 million last year. Moyer said he attributes this to the tradition of fundraising at those schools. “Those institutions, in particular Penn and Penn State, have invested in their institutional advancement offices long before we have,” Moyer said. “It’s only been the last 10 years that Temple has made a significant investment in alumni outreach and fundraising.” “Part of it is it just has not been a priority of the institution at the level it has been at those institutions,” Moyer added. “That has changed.” Since Temple has only made fundraising a top priority since the early 2000s, Moyer said it gives the university an opportunity to study and learn from its peer universities. “When we look at schools like Pitt and Penn State, other state-related universities that look like us, [we ask] ‘Why are they able to raise so much more money than we are?’” Moyer said. Sean Carlin can be reached at sean.carlin@temple.edu or follow on Twitter @SeanCarlin84.
Morgan aimed at keeping students out of community neighborhoods with students and community members.” “What we heard from community members was very clear. They said: ‘Build more on-campus housing, stop the students from moving in to our neighborhoods.’” Morgan Hall, Betzner said, was the university’s answer- a building designed to keep students on campus, a self-sustaining environment that allowed the community to come in, but kept students from buying up properties on the booming west,
and, especially, south ends of campus. The sheer height of the structure- a North Philadelphia record of more than 25 storieswas also a response to community concerns. “Community residents told us, ‘Don’t buy up a lot of land around you,’ So we had to go up, since we couldn’t go out,” Betzner said. But although Morgan Hall drew nearly 1,300 students out of those neighborhoods, Betzner was quick to point out
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that the Good Neighbor initiative still holds true, especially on a campus where an estimated half of roughly 14,000 residential students call off-campus neighborhoods home. “There’s no doubt about the fact that Temple continues to interact with the neighborhood around us,” he said. In addition to providing the requested barrier between students and the local streets, Morgan Hall’s dining facilities have also brought more than 100 new jobs to North Broad Street. So-
dexo, the company that operates Morgan Hall’s array of new restaurants, brought on 120 new hires to staff the facilities. Asked how many of those hires were local, Associate Vice President of Student Affairs Michael Scales said he couldn’t say for sure. “But you can bet it’s at least 99% probably 100%,” he said in an e-mail. Betzner said that since the original sit down with community members, frustration with off-campus student housing has died down. But, he said, the de-
mand for on-campus housing is still high. “Even if we’re not hearing as strongly from local residents about students moving in to the neighborhood as we did, say four, five years ago, we’re still hearing from students that they want to live on campus,” he said. “So that will probably continue to be a factor.” Despite the questions brought on by Morgan Hall, Betzner said Temple continues to consider Philadelphia an integral part of its college experi-
ence. “I don’t know how granular it gets when you’re talking about the four streets around us.” he said. “But, we’re Philly…if we wanted to separate ourselves from the community of Philadelphia, we couldn’t do it.” Ali Watkins can be reached at ali.watkins@temple.edu or on Twitter @AliMarieWatkins.