Shattering Expectations: The Campaign for Liberal Arts

SHATTERING EXPECTATIONS OF WHAT A LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGE CAN BE. There could not possibly be a time where the liberal arts are more vibrantly relevant to the challenges facing individuals in our country and around the world.

In a time of hyper communication and intense conflict over fundamental questions, the liberal arts will play a central role in the future evolution of our economy, our democracy, and our society.

These issues are what we train our students to study, what our scholars research and redefine.

Our work is our strength.

Through this campaign, we’re not only trying to shatter your expectations of us, we hope to help you shatter your own expectations for what you can accomplish—as an organization, as a business, as a community, as a leader.

At its root, our vision to become a destination college is about what we are accomplishing for other people—there wouldn’t be much reason to be doing what we’re doing otherwise. We’re driven to help you achieve your goals, to support our communities, and help our societies thrive.

Thank you for all that you have done, and continue to do, to ensure CLA is a vital force for the next 150 years.

John Coleman, Dean

WHY STOP AT POINT B?

PREPARING THE MOST DESIRABLE CANDIDATES ON THE JOB MARKET Students today will begin their post-college lives in a world of breathtaking opportunity and unpredictable change. The World Economic Forum predicts they’ll have more than fifteen jobs during their lifetime, and that 65 percent of those jobs don’t even exist yet.

You can help leverage our Twin Cities business, nonprofit, and arts communities by providing internship, research, and service learning opportunities that help students translate their academic experiences in applied settings.

Our goal is to prepare students for meaningful careers. Not just their first career, but every career they choose.

That’s why we’re focused on teaching core competencies like thinking critically and with imagination, communicating clearly, and solving complex problems.

You can also help level the playing field for the 30 percent of our students who are the first in their families to attend college and often lack the well-established social networks and financial resources needed to make these experiences possible.

This is good news for Minnesota. In the face of workforce shortages, we have a unique opportunity to meet our state’s needs. CLA educates more students than any other Minnesota college, public or private. We take this responsibility seriously, but we can’t do it alone.

For Minnesota and beyond, we will produce the best candidates on the job market to keep our companies and communities strong well into the future.

Meet tomorrow’s workforce From the Fast Horse headquarters in downtown Minneapolis (pictured here) to a United Nations site in Quito, Ecuador, CLA students are on the move. Nidhi Khurana, Henry Zurn, Matt Lace, and Mariam Salama were inaugural recipients of the Mulhollem Cravens Leadership Scholarship, established with a gift from Paul Mulhollem (BA ‘71) and Valerie Cravens.

Matt conducted research with the United Nations in Quito, Ecuador. Henry interned at the U.S. Capitol.

Mariam worked in a clinic in Kabale, Uganda. And Nidhi took part in the Wells Fargo Leadership Pipeline Program, right here in Minnesota.

“This summer was an absolutely great experience for me,” says Henry, an English and political science double major. “I was tested professionally, personally, and intellectually each and every day. I am confident now that I could find a job in a new city, relocate, and ultimately succeed in my career.”

“The research project I worked on in Uganda has the potential to improve lives around the world,” writes Mariam, a global studies and physiology double major.

“It’s humbling to realize that the investment made in me was never meant to stop at just me.”

LAND OF 10,000 PERSPECTIVES.

OUR GOAL IS TO ENGAGE EVERY VOICE IN THE DRIVE TO DISCOVER By 2050 there will be no ethnic majority in the United States. But as we become a more diverse nation, we’re becoming a more divided one too. In CLA, our job is to ensure our students and community members have the experiences and perspectives they need to become compassionate, fairminded citizens.

women, and sexuality studies; African American and African studies; Chicano and Latino studies; and American Indian studies.

Our faculty in the arts, humanities, and social sciences lead the nation in understanding the root causes of inequality, conflict, and gaps in economic and educational opportunity. But there’s work to do.

We are especially well-positioned to do this work. Diversity of thought and perspective is the very bedrock of the liberal arts. Here we ask the big questions: How do we bridge our differences? How do we communicate across cultures? How do we create a place of opportunity for everyone?

Our goals around workforce development, research and innovation, and community engagement can only be realized if we embrace the diverse backgrounds, talents, and perspectives of all members of our academic and broader communities.

We are at our best when we explore answers with a broad and diverse intellectual toolbox and a humility that recognizes that insights may be found across the political spectrum, across our disciplinary areas, and across our many communities.

We have a unique claim to this work: CLA was among the first to offer degrees in gender,

With your help, we can ensure CLA is a place of opportunity for everyone. Because we know our varied backgrounds and identities, ideas and perspectives, struggles and sensibilities make us stronger and more effective in meeting the grand challenges of our time.

Driven to Close the Opportunity Gap “Imagine if the only history you were taught was somebody else’s history,” says Professor Keith Mayes. “When we started offering high school students classes in black history and culture, we learned they became more engaged in all of their classes. And once that light comes on, it stays on.”

It’s an opportunity teacher and PhD candidate Courtney Bell wishes she would have had when she was a student.

“I know firsthand the impact of a lacking curriculum, in reference to myself and my history,” she says. “What it manifested was a self-hatred that I didn’t understand, a lack of pride, and an inferiority complex that lasted until I got to college.”

Today, Bell and Mayes are partnering with colleagues in the Minneapolis Public Schools and at the University of Minnesota to create programs and courses infused with the experiences of students of color. The aim is to reduce dropout rates and suspensions and increase attendance.

“When a student drops out of school, we all lose,” Mayes says. “Who knows what that student could have achieved with a good education? We all lose out on that student’s potential to change the world.” Professor Mayes’s discoveries are helping to close the opportunity gap and inspiring a new generation of students to excel in and out of the classroom.

SOCIETY’S BIGGEST CHALLENGES. TACKLED DAILY.

USING CLA DISCOVERIES TO BUILD BRIGHTER FUTURES FOR US ALL Research and creative activities in the liberal arts address some of the most compelling issues we face, like climate change, land use, voter behavior, revolutions in communications and technology, income inequality, what we eat and why, and much more.

Today, the College is home to programs in the arts, humanities, and social sciences considered among the very best in the country.

We are determined to sustain the strength of our highly-ranked departments and move even more of them into this elite group.

In CLA, we ask the tough questions: Why do we behave as we do? How do individuals and communities thrive? Why do democracies flourish or flounder?

What makes life worth living?

We’re also determined to ensure that the world is a more just and equitable place where individuals and communities can thrive.

Philanthropy makes it possible for CLA to use our diverse areas of expertise to encourage civic involvement, creative exploration, and active participation in service to others at home and abroad.

Each day CLA researchers discover solutions for creating healthier and more vibrant communities. Their work is getting attention: six professors have recently won Guggenheim Fellowships and more than a dozen faculty and alumni have won the Nobel Prize.

Choreographing Cutting Edge Cancer Research Dance and microbiology come together in Bodystorming, a technique developed by University of Minnesota biomedical engineer David Odde and Carl Flink, CLA’s Nadine Jette Sween Professor of Dance.

Their team uses dance to test scientific models of a cell’s inner life. In minutes, Odde can sketch a model’s rules and Flink’s dancers can play them out. To test the same model by programing a computer would take hours or even weeks.

The project was intended to see if dance could make the molecular world of cells more understandable to a general audience. But something unexpected happened: Odde and Flink realized that dancing also could make the cells more understandable to scientists.

“The researcher can actually discuss what the movers inside the experiment observed,” says Flink. “And dancers can offer observations that the researcher may have never thought of.”

WE’RE NOT JUST STUDYING THE WORLD, WE’RE CHANGING IT.

BUILDING BRIDGES BETWEEN CAMPUS AND COMMUNITY Every day we live our mission as a land-grant university to serve the state and our citizens.

But engaged scholarship isn’t just about service, it’s also about an open exchange of knowledge, ideas, and experiences that enriches our understanding of the challenges we face and the solutions we’re seeking.

For CLA, engagement isn’t a buzzword, it’s a belief system.

We know two-way partnerships with our communities help prepare educated, engaged citizens; strengthen democratic values and

civic responsibility; and address critical societal issues. That’s why we’ve embedded community engagement in our curriculum and launched new faculty awards to promote and reward cooperative research projects.

We’re proud to be one of the first public research institutions in the country to win the Carnegie Foundation’s prestigious Community Engagement Classification.

With your help, we can open even more doors to potential partnerships and bring researchers and residents together to explore issues, expose conflicts, and identify solutions.

Thinking Through the Dirt Fort Snelling is one of Minnesota’s most well-known sites, but its history is complex. It has been, among other things, a sacred space for the Dakota people, a military fort, and a prison. It is the lesser-known of these stories that American Indian studies and anthropology professor Katherine Hayes and her students are determined to tell.

“We want to use the physicality of the space to think about what the experience might have been like for the people inside, and to make the buildings speak that history,” says Hayes. Her efforts are part of a larger movement led by the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) to both reimagine and revitalize Fort Snelling through new and better programming.

“Our collaboration with Dr. Hayes and her students has mutual benefits,“ says Patricia Emerson, the archeology director of MNHS. “Students have opportunities to work with archaeological information, including extensive artifact collections. And their research gives us a better understanding of the full history of the location we now know as Fort Snelling. Their work provides the basis for a broader and deeper interpretation of the site.”

THE CAMPAIGN FOR LIBERAL ARTS GOAL: $150 MILLION

IN THE 150 YEARS SINCE OUR FOUNDING IN 1868, CLA HAS INSPIRED THE THINKERS, POLICYMAKERS, CHANGE AGENTS, AND INNOVATORS WHO HAVE SHAPED INDUSTRIES AND COMMUNITIES ACROSS THE GLOBE. Your gifts to the Shattering Expectations campaign will prepare a new generation to address the world’s toughest problems with empathy and imagination, and to lead with curiosity and compassion. You’ll fuel discoveries that advance global perspectives and grounded solutions. Your investments will ensure a bright future for CLA and our communities for the next 150 years.

$50 million to

$35 million to

ATTRACT TOP STUDENTS & DEVELOP THEIR POTENTIAL

ENGAGE EVERY VOICE IN THE DRIVE TO DISCOVER

Why Stop At Point B?

Land Of 10,000 Perspectives.

Your gifts will ensure each of our students can chart a path to success after graduation.

You can help ensure CLA is a place of opportunity for everyone, and that multiple and diverse perspectives are brought to bear on the critical challenges facing our world.

• Your scholarship and fellowship gifts will help us recruit the brightest minds to Minnesota.

• You’ll provide critical access to experiential learning opportunities like internships, undergraduate research, and learning abroad.

• You’ll fuel graduate student research and help train a new generation of scholars.

• You’ll support career counselors, advisors, and mentors to help students translate their academic interests into professional opportunities.

• Your gifts for need-based scholarships and fellowships will provide greater access to a world-class CLA education.

You’ll help recruit and retain outstanding students who come from low- or middle-income households—often students of color, transfer students, or students who are the first in their families to attend college.

• You’ll invest in the development and implementation of new programs that help underrepresented and under-resourced students reach their full potential.

• You’ll support faculty who are driven to build a more vibrant and inclusive community.

You’ll make CLA a destination for the world’s brightest minds and keep a college education within reach for the talented, the visionary, the driven. $65 million to

SPARK INNOVATION & COLLABORATION WITH OUR COMMUNITIES Society’s Biggest Challenges. Tackled Daily.

Big ideas need support at the start.

• Your gifts will provide seed grants to launch new projects, enabling faculty to explore promising ideas, compete for large external grants, and generate findings that improve lives.

• Through new investments in world-class departments and interdisciplinary programs, you’ll provide critical resources for faculty to collaborate on complex challenges and seek innovative solutions.

• Your gifts for endowed chairs and professorships will ensure CLA recruits and retains the world’s most promising, field-shaping faculty.

We’re Not Just Studying The World, We’re Changing It. You can help CLA build bridges between campus and community.

• Your gifts for workshops, conferences, seminars, and other community-facing events will extend the work and expertise of CLA faculty into our community.

• By investing in innovative new grant programs, you’ll fuel engagement with arts, nonprofit, and business partners to ensure those who benefit most from new discoveries are involved from the start in shaping them.

• You’ll support faculty and students who teach and take part in community engagement courses.

YOU WILL MAKE IT HAPPEN As we prepare for an exciting new era in the University’s history, imagine the College of Liberal Arts many decades from now. What do you see?

In 2018, the College of Liberal Arts will celebrate its 150th anniversary.

What wewonderful see is a strong and vitalweCLA best and students and for an this milestone, are that alsoattracts lookingthe ahead preparing faculty—a sought-after, destination college—one whose faculty are nationally the College’s history. What will learning and research look like in 2168?and internationally recognized as leaders in their disciplines, whose look like? Most importantly, what would you like to see? students are not only top-ranked but passionate, curious, engaged, and prepared to lead.

What we see is a strong and vital CLA that attracts the best students and We college—one see a CLA thatwhose is producing research that’s helping to solve facultygroundbreaking is nationally and internationally recognized the disciplines, biggest challenges us today—from in health and education whosefacing students are not onlydisparities top-ranked but passionate, curious to economic, business, and civic concerns. CLA students develop the knowledge, critical thinking, and problem solving abilities that are ever adaptable to whatever We see a CLA that is producing groundbreaking research in areas we can’t professions and skillsets our rapidly changing future demands. has helped solve the biggest challenges facing us today—from hunger to

While we recognize exciting new era in What will our campus faculty—a destination as leaders in their and engaged. even imagine, that poverty to inequality.

That is our vision. And you can help us get there.

But let me be clear, this is not our utopian dream. This is our plan.

Your gifts have made, and will make, an impact that is both local and global. You will help our communities thrive here in We will while train ensuring imaginative minds whowho will can create thegreater industry-shaping ideas tomorrow.toWe will produce compassionate graduates who Minnesota, we have leaders bring understanding and of opportunity an ever-globalized world. will shape healthy neighborhoods and dialogues. We will ensure an active and informed citizenry that will strengthen and build democthesuccess, world. to making our ambitious goals a reality, and we couldn’t ask for better philanthropic partners.

Youracies are thearound key to our

Thank you for joining us in making CLA a destination for the next generation of scholars. Together, we’ll shatter In order to this, we will invest as never our faculty.

We will find new ways to fund their research, to mentor junior faculty, to expectations of do what a liberal arts college can be.before We areineager to get started. build on their successes.

Warmly, We will diversify at every level—from backgrounds to methods of inquiry—to ensure every voice is engaged in the drive to discover.

And we will (BA develop tools to prepare all(BA students Deborah Hopp ’75) new and Christopher Dahl ’65) for rewarding lives after graduation.

CLA Campaign Co-Chairs Together, I know that this future is possible for us, for our students, for our communities, for our world.

CLA’s Campaign Cabinet Brian (BA ’71) and Kathie Blankenburg Armeane (MA ’74, PhD ’78) and Mary Choksi (BA ’72, MA ’76) Brian Engdahl (BA ’75, PhD ’80) Beverly (AA ’52, BS ’72, MA ’76) and Richard Fink (BA ’52) Deborah Hopp (BA ’75) and Christopher Dahl (BA ’65) Janis Larson Jose Peris (MA ’80, PhD ’82) Robert Sands (BA ’62, JD ’65) Kenneth (BA ’66) and Janet Talle Asher Waldfogel (BA ’79) and Helyn MacLean Kurt Winkelmann (MA ’82, PhD ’87)

The University of Minnesota has embarked on a campaign to set a new course for students, the state, and the world. Through Driven: The University of Minnesota Campaign, we will join forces with our philanthropic partners and friends to strengthen Minnesota’s only land-grant research university and fuel our quest to solve the world’s great challenges.

As part of the University of Minnesota’s Driven campaign, the College of Liberal Arts is advancing our vision to become a destination college. Together, we’re shattering expectations of what a liberal arts college can be.

CLA .UMN.EDU/GIVE

The University’s mission, carried out on multiple campuses and throughout the state, is threefold: research and discovery, teaching and learning, and outreach and public service.

The University of Minnesota is an equal opportunity educator and employer.

This material is available in alternative formats upon request. Direct requests to CLA’s Office of Institutional Advancement at clanews@umn.edu. © 2017 Regents of the University of Minnesota. All rights reserved.