NEWS WWW.GUILFORDIAN.COM Advancing Excellence raises $60 mil lor College BY LEK SlU Stapp Wmtir The Advancing Excellence capital campaign hit its $60 million goal seven months early. "Thank you to the many donors whose gifts, large and small, have helped us reach this milestone," said President and Professor of Political Science Kent Chabotar. "Your generous support benefits students not only today, but for decades to come." Kate Hood, assistant to the vice president for advancement, explained the capital campaign's importance. "The capital, or comprehensive fundraising campaign, is a vehicle for focusing attention upon the needs and aspirations of an educational community," said Hood in an email interview. "A campaign is thus an important event in the life of any institution striving for greater financial stability and excellence." The campaign's success can be attributed to the hard work of many. "The campaign had strong engagement by the board of trustees as donors, as well as a strong campaign steering committee made up of key individuals — trustees, alumni and donors — all of whom helped engage other donors to make gifts and commitments to the campaign," said Vice President for Advancement Mike Poston via email interview. The original goal was $100 million, according to a philanthropic market study completed by Campbell & Co. from Chicago. However, the College's first strategic long-range plan called for $75 million. "The study recommended a goal not higher than $75 million and preparation toward engaging our alumni and key donors, with the intent of strengthening the involvement of those alumni in the philanthropic processes," said Poston. "The campaign was divided into a $60 million primary goal, followed by a $15 million bridging campaign focused on building the endowment for students, faculty and programs." The bridging campaign is underway and runs through June 30, 2014, when Chabotar will step down as president. Advancing Excellence included many on-campus visits with alumni and donors and often involved faculty and student participation. "We set about not only to do face-to-face engagement on campus with key donors, but also with donors, alumni and friends of the College in their homes and their businesses, in order to best captivate their interest in supporting and investing in students' lives," said Poston. The path to success, however, is not always easy. "The struggles are to continuously build the pipeline of donor prospects and engage donors in the meeting of students and faculty to give context to the possibilities financial support could provide," said Poston. "The challenges come in finding the right people with the passion to engage in supporting our strategic priorities." The bridging campaign aims to expand endowments for scholarships, faculty support, innovation and upgraded facilities. "(In general), the bulk of the campaign supports students' scholarships and will continue to do so," said Poston. "The second largest portion of it has gone toward endowing programs and current use of money for program support of the College such as the Center for Principled Problem Solving, the Friends Center's programs, library programs and enhancing the facilities on campus." Other changes include renovations of Archdale Hall, Founders Hall and the Armfield Athletic Complex, along with plans to renovate Mary Hobbs Hall. And the campaign's plans do not stop there. "We have a commitment to an endowed chair within the Psychology Department, several commitments for faculty development through gifts to Political Science ... to Biology through a ... gift matching program that will provide endowment to Biology for ... faculty development, scholarships and program endowment," said Poston. Dana Professor of Biology and member of the Advancing Excellence campaign Lynn Moseley praised the campaign's success. "Guilford has needs in all those areas, and by completing the first phase of the capital campaign successfully and early, we have made good progress in addressing those needs," said Moseley via email. SENATE UPDATE this week’s developments Board of Trustees members Esther Hall and Lionel Johnson came to Senate to discuss the upcoming Board of Trustees Town Hall on February 20 from 4:30-5:30 p.m. in Joseph M. Bryan Jr. Auditorium. Esther and Lionel also fielded questions of all sorts from the student body and gathered student suggestions for the board’s Student Affairs committee agenda. next week’s plans “You can have results or excuses. Not both.” -Someone GOOD LUCK WITH THE LAST WEEK OF THE SEMESTER Y’ALL! contact us We need to hear your voice. Have an Idea? Concern? Great recipe? It is important to us. Email: senate@guilford.edu or visit gui1fordsenate.wordpress.com Compiled by Samir Hazboun. Community Senate president Leadership statement first draft finished BY BRYAN DOOLEY Staff Writer The presidential search committee has been working hard with the board of trustees on constructing the leadership statement for the next Guilford College president. They have now finished the long anticipated first draft. To mark the completion of this step. The Guilfoidian sat down with two members of the search committee: Carole Bruce, chair of the search committee and trustee, and Kathy Coe, trustee emeiita and member of the search committee. They shared their thoughts on the tricky task of creating the statement. CB: On the leadership statement, we have had a very collaborative process with our search consultant creating a very first draft of the statement, followed by Ty Buckner's (associate vice president for communications and marketing) team helping us conform the early draft to Guilford publishing standards and adding facts and figures to the draft. We then shared the draft with the full search committee, the board of trustees and the entire Guilford community for their reactions and suggestions and are continuing to refine the leadership statement. Remember also that we began with input from faculty, trustees, students and alumni and have based the qualifications for Guilford's next president on that input... I hope we are capturing the sense of Guilford College and Guilford's opportunities and challenges that will inspire excellent candidates for Guilford's next president. We do need to complete the statement and share it with people who may be presidential candidates or may know good candidates so that we may continue to build an excellent pool of candidates for the search committee to review early next year. KG: I was honored to help with this while (Bruce) was out of town. In a presidential search ... it is often the task of the search consultant to develop a leadership statement, which is then approved by the board of trustees. Our search consultant... spoke with a number of faculty, staff and students. I believe they gave her important insights into the Guilford community, its values, its commitment to excellence and its sense of participation and shared governance among other things ... It was important to have feedback on the statement draft from the community. We had a very short time period in which to work, since it is important to release this statement before the holidays in order to reach as many potential candidates as possible and to give them time to consider applying. In the last two weeks the preliminary draft was made available to faculty, staff, students, the search committee and the board of trustees for their comments... which has been full of important insights, reminders and viewpoints. I am profoundly grateful to (Buckner) and Dan Nonte (associate director of communication and marketing - editorial) in the Office of aimportant feedback; to (Buckner) and Rob Whitnell (professor of chemistry) for making the draft available through the campus intranet; to Barbara Lawrence (assistant professor of justice and policy studies and search coiranittee member); Kami Rowan (associate professor of music and ^arch committee member); David Dobson (professor of geology and search committee member) for bringing comments from the faculty meeting; and to all those who submitted their individual comments. They are being heard. I hope that the resulting document is a reflection of Guilford's community, priorities and needs. The next step involves the search firm taking the statement to seek out the best possible candidates. The search committee will then review the applications and eventually conduct off-campus interviews. The committee emphasizes that commumty participation is encouraged, especially in the spring, during the candidates' campus visits. To read the full leadership statement, visit I (Search for ‘Leadership Statement’)