Category Archives: EMU Fund Raising

What? Where? When?

Posted on September 14, 2011 by | 3 Comments

Actually, I’m asking about “Why Eastern?  Why Now?”  which is a fundraising campaign/promo by the EMU Foundation.  It is a pretty well produced little teaser film to get people to contribute to the nearly completed EMU Invest Inspire campaign.  Though I have to say that when I first saw this in my email before I was adequately caffeinated this morning, my initial reading was more like “What, Eastern?  What Now?!?”

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Posted in EMU Fund Raising

“State Legislature yanks capital projects funding from EMU, WCC at last minute”

Posted on December 11, 2010 by | 8 Comments

An alert EMUTalk.org reader sent me this the other day, from annarbor.com, “State Legislature yanks capital projects funding from EMU, WCC at last minute.” I didn’t get a chance to post it earlier because I’ve been rather busy with my “day job” (it is the end of the semester, heading into finals), but it’s just as well since posting this a day late allows me to add three brief thoughts:

  • I was at a meeting about Pray-Harrold renovation the other day (which, as an aside, I will note appears to be going surprisingly well, though I feel like we can only talk about furniture for so long in one sitting), and according to the powers that be, this latest round of funding has no impact on our current projects on campus.  That doesn’t do anything good for Strong Hall (what would have been the next project), but it could have been worse.  In fact, word at this meeting was that Western Michigan had funding yanked for a project that is underway.
  • I’d recommend reading through the comments on this annarbor.com piece because they are surprisingly supportive of the likes of EMU, and for all the right reasons:  students who graduate from EMU (and WMU and CMU and WCC and other places like that) tend to stay in Michigan, while the institutions that get the lion’s share of funding– U of M, and to a lesser extent MSU and WSU– send their students out of state.  Think about that, state legislators!
  • As one of the comments points out, this is what EMU gets for holding up its end of the bargain:  that is, we roll out this grand 0/0/0% campaign, and a) there is no decent evidence that it was the cause of increased enrollment, and b) the state’s answer for EMU keeping stuff affordable is for them to cut funding.  Gee, thanks. So is it really any wonder why it is the cost of higher education across the board keeps rising?

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Posted in Administrator Life, EMU Fund Raising, In the media..., State Government

Maybe everyone will be a VP!

Posted on November 10, 2010 by | 6 Comments

The latest Vice President announcement is Tom Stevick. Here’s a quote from the press release:

Tom Stevick has been named vice president for advancement and executive director of the foundation at Eastern Michigan University. The appointment is effective Dec. 20, 2010.

Stevick previously worked at Eastern Michigan from 2002-2006 as interim vice president for advancement and executive director of development for the foundation.  He joins Eastern from Ohio Northern University, where he has served as vice president for university advancement since 2006. At Ohio Northern, he directed a 30-person staff in fundraising, alumni relations and marketing for the 3,600 student, private university and served as a member of the president’s cabinet and executive decision-making team.

This press release also makes a point of noting that there was a nationwide search for this position that began in June.  I don’t know if there was a public forum for this search or not (there very well may have been), but besides noting the “above board-ness” of the process, it seems like Stevick is probably actually qualified.  Unlike… well, you know….

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Posted in Administrator Life, Board of Regents, EMU Fund Raising

“Alumnus and former regent Timothy Dyer pledges planned gift of 1.5 million to EMU”

Posted on October 19, 2010 by | 6 Comments

I tried to post about this earlier today, but ran into a technical snafu, so here’s another try at it: “Alumnus and former regent Timothy Dyer pledges planned gift of $1.5 million to Eastern Michigan University.” Here are the opening paragraphs from the EMU press release:

Eastern Michigan University alumnus and former Regent Timothy Dyer is pledging a $1.5 million planned gift to the University for the establishment of the Dr. Timothy J. Dyer Distinguished Interdisciplinary Chair in Forensics/Debate and Human Rights. The Chair would lead in the creation of the Center for the Study and Research of Equality and Human Rights in the College of Arts and Sciences. The activities of the Center would be coordinated in the Department of Communication, Media & Theatre Arts in collaboration with Eastern’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Resource Center and other academic units. The funds will be bequeathed to the University from his estate upon his death.

“Hate is an evil and destructive emotion,” said Dyer. “It ignores reason and intellectual inquiry and should be eradicated whenever it raises its ugly head. The only way to do this is through educated enlightenment. We have seen over our own short history that education is the most effective way to eliminate prejudice, ignorance, discrimination and hate.”

Thanks, Dr. Dyer!

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Posted in Board of Regents, EMU Events, EMU Fund Raising

In teacher certification program news…

Posted on January 9, 2010 by | Leave a comment

Two things I meant to post here earlier, but that pesky day-job kept getting in the way:

First, from several different sources (including an alert EMUTalk.org reader and EMU media wonk) comes news that EMU and several other Michigan universities are participating in a program funded by the Kellogg foundation to encourage and attract math and science teachers.  Here’s the Michigan Public Radio story; I heard a similar story on WEMU that included a snippet of an interview with Susan Martin, but I couldn’t find the link.

Second, there’s this story from NPR’s All Things Considered from about a week ago, “Michigan Teaching School Tries Something New.” The “teaching school” in question is the University of Michigan, and basically, the premise is that they are revisiting and revamping the requirements for their teaching certification program by talking with recent graduates and current students.  I don’t know if this means they will end up with a program that looks more like EMU’s or not, but it does make a lot of sense to me to rethink programs like this based on feedback from students.

As someone who teaches students who are wanting to be English teachers or graduate students who already are in classrooms, I think these programs make some sense:  we do need more science and math teachers and probably fewer Literature and Language Arts teachers, to be honest.  Although to be really REALLY honest, I don’t think going into secondary or elementary education is necessarily the greatest career move nowadays.  I know that’s probably blasphemy to say this at a “teachers college” like EMU, but there you have it.

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Posted in Academics, EMU Fund Raising, In the media..., University of Michigan

Come check out the Celebration of Student Writing on Thursday!

Posted on December 2, 2009 by | Leave a comment

A somewhat self-serving plug: tomorrow is the bi-annual (or is it semi-annual? well, twice a year) Celebration of Student Writing in the EMU Student Center, between 4 and 5:30 pm. It’s a sort of writing “fair/festival” for students in English 121, which is the required first year writing class, and it really is a lot of fun.

In the world of first year writing, it’s kind of a “deal:” lots of other universities have imitated what we started here. For example, as this article suggests, California University of Pennsylvania has their own first year celebration based on the EMU model a week from tomorrow.

And as a special bonus: come on by my section of 121 tomorrow and mention EMUTalk!

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Posted in Board of Regents, Buildings and Grounds, EMU Events, EMU Fund Raising, EMU President Search

“Eastern Michigan University has long-range plan for arts village on campus”

Posted on October 28, 2009 by | 3 Comments

I actually saw this article in Crain’s Detroit Business a while ago, “Eastern Michigan University has long-range plan for arts village on campus.” To be honest, I’m cynical because of some politics I’m not going to get into here, and also because of the “beautiful dream” quality of the project. As the article points out, this is an estimated $80 million project and EMU has not begun the process for raising funds yet. So, given what’s happening with Mark-Jefferson and what will (probably) happen with Pray-Harrold, I am betting that a) this is at a minimum 10 years off, and b) will end up being a much smaller project.

Still, most fund raising begins with a dream and a fuzzy artists’ sketch, and as Alum pointed out in a recent comment (I don’t know how accurate this is or what it’s based on because I couldn’t find the article Alum referenced), EMU raised $30 million in the “silent part” of its capital campaign. So hey, who knows? This might come to something yet.

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Posted in Buildings and Grounds, EMU Fund Raising, In the media...

Dear mystery donor– we have a woman president and a lot of need at EMU

Posted on April 29, 2009 by | Leave a comment

An alert EMUTalk.org reader sent me a couple of links about a “mystery donor” contributing to millions of dollars to U.S. colleges and universities: “Mystery philanthropist donates $75m to US universities” from the guardian.co.uk site, and “Colleges don’t dig for clues in mysterious donations” from freep.com. There’s also an article from last week’s New York Times, “Anonymous Donor Gives Millions to Colleges.”

Basically, someone or some group is anonymously donating millions of dollars to universities and colleges in the U.S., including Michigan State and Kalamazoo College. The donor(s) want to remain completely anonymous and they ask that at least some of the money goes to scholarships for female and minority students. And so far, all the schools that have received this money have had women as presidents.

So, I am wondering if EMU is hoping for and/or has received a call?

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Posted in EMU Fund Raising, EMU President, In the media...

Dear woman who rudely cut me off in the student center parking lot because “I have to go to work:”

Posted on April 8, 2009 by | 11 Comments

I hope you got my note.

I was the guy pulling into a spot in the EMU Student Center parking lot this afternoon, fair and square, when you cut me off by going the wrong way and took it. My jaw appropriately dropped onto the steering wheel, I pulled up next to you, rolled down the window, and asked “are you serious?!” To which you got out of your car and announced “I have to go to work.”

Hey, we all have our bad days. Lord knows I have mine, and maybe you were having one of yours. I followed you in to see where you were working, but I’ll leave out what door I saw you go into. But I believe you were going to work. I understand. I too was going to work and I too was on a tight schedule, which is why I was parking in the guest lot. I was at the Student Center to meet some of my students and to go to the annual first year writing program’s “celebration of student writing.” But I don’t know, maybe it was more important for you to take the spot I was pulling into for some reason.

I thought what you did was super rude, but I don’t really care that much that you were rude to me. Like I said, I work here too, so being rude to me is not really that big of a deal– well, other than the fact that it’s not a good thing for co-workers to be rude to each other.

No, what I really care about is who you could have been rude to. See, this was in the guest parking lot at the EMU Student Center. I’m pretty sure that most (at least many) of the people who park in the Student Center guest parking lot are guests at EMU, and being rude to guests is never cool.

I mean, what if you had pulled this stunt with someone visiting EMU who was thinking about coming here in the Fall? What if it was a parent? What if it was an alum coming back to visit the new Student Center? What if it was one of the hundreds of people who had come to the ballroom for today’s “celebration of student writing?” Heck, what if it was someone who was interested in donating money to EMU? That wouldn’t be, good would it?

Anyway. No harm this time, but could you do me a favor and think a little more about this sort of thing next time? We’ve got enough image problems at EMU without trying to cut off potential guests to the school just in the name of a parking spot. Thanks for thinking and thanks for reading,

–Steve (aka, sitedad)

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Posted in Administrator Life, Buildings and Grounds, EMU Branding, EMU Events, EMU Fund Raising, EMU Images, Parking, Staff Life, Student Life

“What Colleges Should Learn From Newspapers’ Decline” (PS: Support WEMU!)

Posted on March 31, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Mark Higbee sent me a couple links to an article in the current Chronicle of Higher Education, “What Colleges Should Learn From Newspapers’ Decline” by Kevin Carey. It’s an interesting article. On the one hand, I think that Carey is right that if institutions don’t evolve/change and/or if academics just assume that universities will live on as they are forever and ever, then the future is not bright. On the other hand, I think universities are actually evolving/changing faster than Carey implies– at least I think places like EMU are changing.

There are a couple of other differences too. First, Carey suggests in the opening of his article that the danger higher ed faces is that it is in the same business as newspapers: communicating information. I don’t think this is accurate because “communicating information” and “educating students” are not the same thing. If they were the same thing, colleges and universities would have begun a slow and steady decline in the 15th century with the beginning of printing, mass media, widespread literacy, etc.

Second, EMU and most universities are “not-for-profit” entities. In fact, universities/colleges that are “for profit” are generally seen as “not really universities” at best (e.g., the University of Phoenix, Kaplan University) or swindlers and crooks (e.g., diploma mills, various “bartending colleges,” etc.). Sure, we need to “make money” to keep the doors open, but we don’t need to satisfy investors/stockholders, and our goal is not to make money. Newspapers, on the other hand, especially newspapers owned by huge corporations (which includes the Ann Arbor News and just about every other paper you can think of) need to benefit the bottom-line. Breaking even is not good enough.

Which makes me wonder: if newspapers had switched to a “not for profit” model, would they be in decline? If the Ann Arbor News had done all the things it needed to do to be like public radio/public TV, if they had twice a year fund-raisers and sought money from various endowments and grants and such, would they be going out of business?

Speaking of which: It’s fund raising time right now at WEMU. It’s a fantastic station that I think is even more important as a source for local news. Send in your pledges, people!

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Posted in EMU Fund Raising, In the media...