Second Century Campaign
Message from Nicholas Lemann,
Henry R. Luce Professor and Dean
I am pleased to announce that the Journalism School has launched the largest fundraising campaign in its history. This Second Century Campaign will continue for about six years, and end as the school celebrates its centennial in 2012. The campaign's goal reflects this anniversary milestone: $100 million. The campaign has a non-monetary goal too: to strengthen our ties to our community of alumni all over the world. We are fortunate to be a part of the university’s comprehensive $4 billion fundraising effort, The Columbia Campaign.
Here's what we hope to accomplish:
• We want to have as talented and as diverse—in every way, including economically and internationally—a student body as possible.
• We want to educate these students fully and richly, and send them out into the profession with as little debt as possible.
• We want to hire the best possible faculty and give them the freedom to be creative as educators while they continue to lead the profession through their outstanding work as journalists.
• We want to create the richest, deepest, most innovative curriculum we can, one that draws as much as possible on the intellectual resources of the whole university.
• We want to prepare our students as fully as we can to help lead the technological revolution that is sweeping through journalism.
All of these things require significant resources—for financial aid, for faculty salaries, for curriculum development, and for new technology. The success of the campaign is essential to maintaining and strengthening the school’s position as the world’s foremost institution of journalistic education, strongest possible bulwark for ethical journalism and as an important force for good in the profession itself.
So far, we have raised $50 million. Our success demonstrates how important the school is to alumni and friends who care deeply about journalism, and it has already produced wonderful results. We have two new endowed professorships, filled by journalists of enormous talent and reputation; our total pool of financial aid has more than doubled; we have started our first new professional degree program in seventy years; we have opened a new investigative reporting center; we are just weeks away from launching an executive leadership program; and we are beginning to develop a Web-based case-method curriculum. We have also established an alumni relations task force, which is charged with finding ways for our alumni to become more involved with the school.
There is much more to come, if our campaign continues to go as well as it has so far. I hope we will be able to attract the support of everyone who loves this school and this profession.
Second Century Campaign
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