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UNC Asheville wrapped up its first comprehensive campaign on Tuesday, Feb. 12, raising $11.1 million and exceeding its $8 million goal by 39 percent. The final figure was announced that evening at a "thank you" celebration for the community at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium. The celebration included an hour-long concert by Grammy-award winning performer David Holt.

The four-year campaign, "UNC Asheville: Moving to First in Our Class," raised more than $3 million for scholarships, as well as funding for enhanced technology, service learning, and faculty and creative initiatives.

"With the success of this campaign, UNC Asheville leads among public liberal arts colleges, and that is where we belong -- in the lead, setting the pace," said Chancellor James Mullen.

Donations came from many sources. UNCA received $2.4 million from corporations and foundations, $2.3 million from community and national friends, and $1.5 million from UNCA Foundation Board and UNCA Board of Trustees. Statewide alumni campaigns in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Texas, along with donations from other alumni, faculty and staff and parents, yielded another $1.2 million. In addition, the UNCA Planned Giving Office has secured $3.7 million in planned bequests.

The campaign donations will translate into many benefits for UNCA's students.

The $3 million for direct and endowed scholarships includes 36 new endowed scholarship funds established to support students majoring in disciplines ranging from management and mass communication to theater and music.

Among the gifts for campus technology enhancement was $100,000 grant from the Bank of America which will provide "smart classrooms" for Owen Hall, home to the Art and Management departments. The "smart classrooms" will be equipped with computers with high-speed Internet connection and superior sound systems, multimedia projection equipment and VCRs, enabling professors and students to maximize the effectiveness of the teaching-learning process. Another grant of $80,000 from Eaton Corporation Foundation supports the UNCA-NCSU engineering-mechatronics program with an endowed scholarship fund and state-of-the-art design laboratory for students in engineering, physics, chemistry and other sciences.

Gifts to faculty initiatives include funds to establish the Glaxo Wellcome Endowed Professorship in Undergraduate Science Research, which will increase collaborative research activities and cross-disciplinary work. "The greatest impact from this endowment will be on student learning, because it will offer students an opportunity to conduct research under the mentorship of an outstanding scientist already engaged in significant projects, an opportunity usually reserved for the graduate level," said Bert Holmes, who holds UNCA's Philip Carson Distinguished Professorship in the Sciences.

A $500,000 gift from the Adelaide Worth Daniels Foundation early in the campaign was used to establish a center for service learning that coordinates volunteer activities of students and faculty with teaching and learning in academic classes. "Students work with established nonprofit organizations such as Manna Food Bank, the public schools and United Way agencies, and they find original ways to make a difference in the community and their own education," said Margaret Downes, UNCA literature professor and director of the Key Center for Service-Learning.

The campaign, a joint effort of UNCA's Foundation Board and the Board of Trustees, was co-chaired by Robert Peterson, UNCA Class of 1957, a UNCA Foundation director and retired Sky City Stores CEO, and Pamela Mills Turner, area civic leader and former chair of UNCA's Board of Trustees. "It was wonderful to see the wholehearted support of both boards for this endeavor," said Turner, who now sits on the Foundation Board.

"We couldn't have done it without the many volunteers, including friends, alumni and community leaders who were solidly behind this effort and the outstanding work by the UNCA staff," said Peterson.

UNCA's Campaign Executive Committee included Dorel A. Abbott, Luther E. Barnhardt Jr., Frank Giordano, Maralee Gollberg, Alice Green, Fred Groce Jr., Bruce Larson, Walter McConnell, Michael J. McCue, Duane McKibbin, Sue H. McClinton, Charles McKnight, Norma Messer, Linda Nelms, Sally Pearlman, Eugene L. Presley, Jesse G. Ray Jr., Michael S. Tanner, Harriette Winner and Julienne Winner.

NORTH CAROLINA CENTER FOR CREATIVE RETIREMENT PREPARES FOR NEW HOME

 For the last 14 years the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement shared temporary space in various locations at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.  In the summer of 1998, volunteers from the Center began a fund raising campaign to raise $3.5 million to establish a home of their own.  This campaign announced success late last year with more than $3.9 in cash and pledges. 

On December 9, 2001, officials from the University of North Carolina at Asheville and the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement broke ground on the new home.  Chancellor Jim Mullen and Center Director Ron Manheimer announced that their 20,000 square foot home will be called the “Reuter Center” after Jeannette and Irving Jacob Reuter, who began the Janirve Foundation in Asheville.  A major gift for the new building was contributed by that foundation early in the campaign. 

Campaign co-chairs Dorothy Murphree and Beth Lazer led a comprehensive process to design the buildings, prepare for new and improved programming, arrange financing, and also to find sources to complete the campaign.  Fund raising co-chairs Alice and Art Green were in charge of the successful effort. 

Now spread all over the city, the programs involving more than one thousand retirees will be concentrated in one place.  Located near the new entrance to the university, a short walk from the campus, the Reuter Center will house a program with a national reputation for excellence and creativity.  The new building will house a computer lab, technology-enhanced classrooms, a multi-purpose room, a computer lab, and several common areas including a café’ as well as offices and meeting spaces.  It will be a true student center for older learners who not only take classes themselves but interact with college students and even younger children as UNCA develops its concept of an “intergenerational campus”.