Philanthropy at Texas (January-February 2011)

at texas January/February 2011

Reaching New Heights A progress report on the Campaign for Texas

We must always strive to be the very best at what we do.

The University of Texas at Austin is making our world a better place through its teaching, research, public ownload offers several options for using the official university ark and the What service, Starts Hereand tagline.

The elementsWe canare be positioned to become leadership. n several formats, allowing you to choose one that best fits the best public research university in America. our design needs.

mark Download

ordmark and tagline should not be changed or manipulated way.

To earn that ranking we must

continue to attract superb faculty.

Wealways mustappear educate reproduced in color the wordmark should in students to be future niversity of Texas at Austin's signature color, burnt orange (PMS 159). leaders.

We must also do cutting-edge research; it not er color is acceptable, with the exception of all black for use on faxes, s and in newspapers, and all white for reverses on dark backgrounds. only strengthens our impact on society — at the core of UT’s mission — but also has tremendous economic benefit to our great state.

Official wordmark stacked (preferred) President’s

When you give to President’s Associates, either annually or through a permanent endowment, your gifts support our best faculty and students and allow me to respond to opportunities that will further enhance our university. Together, we can transform lives and make UT No. 1.

William Powers, Jr. President

Official giving.utexas.edu/our-donors/presidents-associates wordmark horizontal Associates 866-488-3927

Contents P h i l a n t h r o p y

a t

Te x a s

J a n u a r y / F e b r u a r y

2 0 1 1

COVER photo: dave mead; contents photo: callie richmond

Credit where credit’s due: Thanks Day was an opportunity for students to show their gratitude to all who contribute to a UT education.

reaching new heights A progress report on the Campaign for Texas horns of plenty What private giving is making possible higher learning Graduate student Emily Grubert explores the interconnections of land, air, water, and people

Reprinted from

January/February 2011

A

Philanthropy at Texas

the campaign for texas A Progress Report

The Campaign for Texas is about helping UT become the best public university in the nation. Being the best means tackling the big issues, from generating economic growth to preventing disease and protecting the environment to blazing new paths for art and media. Accomplishing such an ambitious goal requires specific steps. Each of the University’s colleges, schools, and units has established its own initiatives to reach the $3 billion campaign target, and all involve four key priorities: students, faculty, facilities, and programs and research.

Students

Faculty

To produce the best graduates it makes sense to start with the best recruits. Currently UT loses many students to other universities that make more generous scholarship offers. Additional full-ride, merit-based scholarships such as the 40 Acres Scholarships will give the University the competitive edge it needs to recruit top undergraduates. To enhance the student educational experience, UT is revamping its undergraduate core curriculum with smaller class sizes, learning communities, and new initiatives for freshmen such as First-Year Signature Courses. Just as the undergraduate experience has been enhanced, there is also a renewed emphasis on graduate students. Part student, part teacher, and part researcher, grad students are the backbone of a great university. Competitive graduate fellowships are key in attracting the most talented individuals. Their excellence, in turn, plays a major role as top faculty from various universities consider job offers from UT.

You can’t have a great university without great faculty, and UT boasts stellar teachers, many of whom are among the top scholars in their fields. There are Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, as well as MacArthur “genius grant” recipients. But more faculty are needed across the board to achieve the University’s long-sought goal of a student-faculty ratio of 16-to-1 or better to deliver the highest-quality educational experience. Competition for the best faculty is fierce, and UT often ends up in a bidding war with other universities.

Donor-funded endowments for professorships and chairs greatly enhance the wherewithal to recruit and retain the best faculty — faculty who conduct transformative work in realms ranging from science and engineering to arts and humanities.

The Alcalde January/February 2011

raised

2009–10 + $299 Million 2008–09 + $289 Million

–08 Million

State support

Tuition and fees

AUF (income from PUF)

Gifts and endowments

AUF (nonrecurring)

Other funding sources*

*Includes income from intellectual property, grants, contracts, and self-supporting enterprises such as dormitories and intercollegiate athletics

Four Key Priorities From Sept. 1, 2006, to Dec. 1, 2010, alumni and friends — more than a third of whom were first-time givers — contributed $1.27 billion toward the Campaign for Texas’ $3 billion goal. Here is where they directed those 577,630 gifts.

5%

Faculty

12%

1,662 gifts worth $60 million

Students

20,626 gifts worth $153 million

Facilities

20%

1,481 gifts worth $256 million

Programs & Research

553,861 gifts worth $798 million

Total

photos (clockwise from top): randal ford, esther havens, wyatt mcspadden, dave mead

577,630 gifts worth $1.27 billion

63%

Facilities

Programs & Research

Faculty and graduate students need exceptional facilities to deliver the level of education and research that changes the world. Top facilities help recruit top faculty and students. Luckily, UT’s alumni and friends are stepping up to help build facilities that do not merely keep up with the times but help to define them. The fight against childhood disease is being transformed in the Dell Pediatric Research Institute. The College of Communication has broken ground on the Belo Center for New Media. The College of Liberal Arts’ new building will provide much-needed classrooms, student areas, and laboratories when it opens in 2013. Across the East Mall, the Bill & Melinda Gates Computer Science Complex will advance research and teaching and enable one of the nation’s largest and most diverse computer science departments to reach the highest level. More than just bricks and mortar, these buildings will transform the campus for the next generation.

Part of a university’s duty is to society. UT not only teaches; it conducts research that can change the world. The University is also a cultural storehouse, maintaining collections and providing the expertise to interpret them. With donor investments, UT in the past few years has explored dark energy, a mysterious force that makes up most of the universe; developed strategies to improve Texas’ coastal fish populations and translate ocean discoveries into new medicines; responded to the nation’s shortage of math and science teachers with the revolutionary UTeach program; and renewed its commitment to ecological restoration through the work of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Now an emerging mechanism of scientific inquiry — simulation-based engineering and science — provides a new path to knowledge that joins hypothesis and observation as a third pillar to the scientific method. For the first time, ideas to address challenges from energy production and urban infrastructure to cancer and heart disease can be roadtested in a virtual world. And UT’s Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES) is leading the way.

The Campaign for Texas comes down to a simple idea: making Texas — and the world — a better place.

For a complete update on the campaign thus far visit giving.utexas.edu/campaignreport2010 .

A

Philanthropy at Texas

Horns of Plenty What private giving is making possible

60 for 60.

More than just a set of numbers, it’s become a rallying cry on the Forty Acres lately. The School of Social Work marks its 60th anniversary this academic year, and it has asked alumni and friends to consider a gift of $60 or more to help celebrate the milestone. All funds raised are going to scholarships, allowing the nation’s sixth-ranked social work program to prepare more students for careers as human service professionals. Dr. Barbara White, who is completing her final year as the school’s dean, calls 60 for 60 “an affordable and meaningful way to support ongoing excellence in social work education at UT — one dollar for each year the school has impacted lives for the better.” Before they graduate and set out to positively change lives around the world, about one in every 10 students seeking a UT social work degree sees his or her own world changed for the better through a scholarship or fellowship.

PhD student Amanda Barczyk, left, is a recipient of the Michael R. Daley Endowed Presidential Scholarship for Doctoral Students. The scholarship, which honors a prominent social work educator, “enables me to continue on the path of developing the skills and experience I need to reach my goals,” Barczyk says. Learn more about 60 for 60 at utexas.edu/ssw/news/60-for-60 .

“Studying abroad had a transformational impact

on my life,” says Austin Ligon, BA ’73, MA ’79, Life Member, who spent time in Peru as a Plan II major. “It opened my eyes to the fact that my perspective on the world was just one tiny little portion of the ways in which the world could be viewed.” Ligon and his wife, Samornmitr “Pan” Lamsam, have committed $200,000 over the next four years to help more students expand their studies beyond America’s shores. The couple created the Ligon-Lamsam International Study Abroad Fund a few years ago with a $1 million gift. That fund has sent more than 500 Plan II students abroad. The goal of the new gift is to encourage many other contributions from Plan II alumni and friends. “It was amazing for me how many times I heard from Plan II students, thanking me for the opportunity to study abroad,” Ligon says. “It’s been very rewarding and I want to share that feeling with other alumni.” Plan II director Michael Stoff says those who join in the effort will have a direct impact on the lives and academic careers of students. “We’d like to see every Plan II student with a passport,” he says. Visit utexas.edu/cola/progs/plan2 to learn more.

Philanthropy’s Impact on Graduate Students

to educate a Longhorn, as students learned Nov. 10 at Thanks Day 2010. The message: UT doesn’t run on tuition and fees alone, which account for just 24 percent of the overall budget.

¡Olé! Study-abroad participants from the University celebrate reaching a summit during an excursion to the mountainous region near Salta, a city in northwestern Argentina.

photos (clockwise from top): callie richmond, marsha miller, amanda nelson, christina murrey

It takes an entire community

classes in a lot of related areas, including policy, law, and nuclear engineering.” With the support of her donor-funded fellowship, Grubert was able to finish her master’s degree in one year. But because her interests encompass so many disciplines, she decided to remain at UT to earn a second master’s degree, this one in environmental and water resources engineering.

“Climate change represents a major threat to people,” Grubert says, “not because the human race can’t survive it, but because our traditional assumptions that things in the future will be similar to Behind the headlines about climate change the way they were in the past might not be is a complex subject that is the focus of valid. This makes planning for infrastrucresearch around the world. Emily Grubert, ture difficult.” For example, what if we MA ’10, a recent Harrington Graduate build long-term projects for water supply Fellow, has a particular climate-change based on where and when we expect rain concern: water, and the effects that con- to fall — and then precipitation patterns ventional energy production have on it. change? “Water is expected to be one of Growing up the daughter of a petroleum the environmental systems that is most engineer and a civil engineer, Grubert affected by climate change, and our ability initially had no plans to follow in their to plan for things like power production footsteps. Now that she has, though, she and agriculture depends on our ability to appreciates the heritage. understand what our water resources are.”

During her undergraduate research at Stanford Grubert kept encountering the “ Now, more than ever, there work of UT’s Michael Webber, an assistant is an opportunity to look professor in the Department of Mechanical at environmental issues as Engineering, associate director of the Center for International Energy & Environinterconnected systems.” mental Policy, and fellow in the Strauss Center for International Security & Law. Grubert continues to examine various His research and expertise aligned with land use options and their potential effect the type of work she hoped to do as a on water. She is also studying water use in graduate student. Realizing that UT would conventional energy resources, identifying be an ideal place to pursue her graduate the differences, for example, in natural gas studies, she found the perfect match for and coal. Looking forward, she plans to her interests in the Jackson School of pursue a PhD, gain industry experience, Geosciences’ innovative Earth and Energy and then attain an academic position at Resources program, where she has a university like UT where she can do worked with Webber and other scientists. further top-level research. “Now, more “My central interest is around what than ever, there is an opportunity to look happens to energy because of our con- at environmental issues as interconnected cerns about climate — and then what systems,” she says. “Decisions made in happens to land, air, water, and people one area, such as water use, affect not because of energy,” Grubert says. “The only the water itself, but air, land, and program gave me the latitude to take ultimately people.” – Kathleen Mabley “Philanthropy at Texas” is compiled and edited by Jamey Smith in the University Development Office. Your feedback and suggestions are welcome at jjsmith@austin.utexas.edu. For more philanthropic news and information, including ways you can give to UT, visit giving.utexas.edu .

The Alcalde January/February 2011