Capital Campaign Celebration

May 10, 2011

William G. Durden '71, Elke Durden, Jennifer Ward Reynolds ’77, George Reynolds, and Amy Nauiokas ’94 toast the success of the capital campaign.

Minutes after celebrating the success of the largest fundraising effort in its history Saturday, May 7, Dickinson College announced that it will extend the First in America capital campaign for six more years in a bold endeavor to raise an additional $150 million.

“Our founder, Dr. Benjamin Rush said, ‘I am a stranger to what the world calls rest,’ and similarly we did not stop once during this campaign, and we should not stop now,” said Dickinson President William G. Durden ’71 during the campaign celebration. “This institution is on the move, and people know it.” Held in the college’s Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, the program featured everything from scholarship recipients’ heart-felt testimonials to a flash-mob dance and a confetti drop.

First in America’s second phase will share the first phase’s focus on scholarships and faculty development, which resulted in more than 70 new endowed scholarships and 16 new endowed faculty chairs. Phase two also will seek to enhance the student experience through improvements to housing and student-life facilities that support the connections between academic and social life outlined in the college’s Strategic Plan III.

To guide the Dickinson community toward the second phase’s completion, the college named two new campaign co-chairs, Amy Nauiokas ’94, former CEO of Barclays Stockbrokers and currently a managing partner with Smuggler Films, and her husband, Harry Harrison, managing director and head of rates trading at Barclays Capital. George and Jennifer Ward Reynolds ’77, campaign co-chairs for the first phase of First in America, received a proclamation from the college recognizing their efforts to “generate momentum” and create “transformative change.”

The “transformative change” of First in America’s first phase resulted from more than $151 million in gifts from alumni, parents and friends since August 17, 2004. After surpassing the $100 million mark in 2007, the campaign reached its $150 million goal ahead of schedule despite facing the country’s deepest economic recession since the Great Depression. In addition to the endowed scholarships and faculty chairs, campaign gifts built a more than 90,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art science complex, launched the college’s Center for Sustainability Education, added more than $25 million to the Annual Fund and renovated the athletic facilities at Biddle Field.

Beyond this impact, both Reynolds and Durden noted, the campaign has energized the Dickinson community, enabling the college to immediately follow its most ambitious capital campaign with an equally ambitious effort that will double First in America’s overall goal, making it a $300 million campaign.

“Most important, First in America has forever changed the way students, alumni, parents and friends support Dickinson,” said Reynolds, who is also the chair of Dickinson’s board of trustees. “It’s clear that there is a new level of excitement and ownership among Dickinsonians. In addition to providing new facilities and resources, the campaign has fostered a new sense of pride and enthusiasm about what is now possible for Dickinson when we all come together to support our college.”