The Foundation is especially encouraging year-end gifts to support the President’s Fund for Excellence (which allows for strategic investments in programs with the greatest need, and greatest promise), the University Venture Development Fund (which directly supports research and economic development in our state), and scholarships (which are so important to recruiting and retaining the very best students, regardless of their financial circumstances).

To date more than one in five alumni have made a gift to The Campaign for OSU, passing on the gift of a great Oregon State University education to today’s students and students to come.

The campaign just received its biggest on-line donation yet, $50,000 for the Robert Yeats Foundation, in honor of Yeats, an OSU Professor Emeritus of Geology who has spent more than 35 years researching and teaching earthquake geology and active tectonics.

To check out the latest on-line donations made to the Campaign, see http://campaignforosu.org/ and check out “Last three on-line gifts.”

The $250,000 commitment will establish the Shero & Miyako Yano OSUAA Scholarship Endowment Fund and provide scholarships for high achieving students from the Treasure Valley area of eastern Oregon and southwestern Idaho. The fund is named in honor of Atkins’ parents. She earned her accounting degree from OSU in 1979 and is now owner of Alta Consulting, LLC, in Eagle, Idaho.

Also part of the gift is an additional $25,000 for the Mary Ellen Phillips Scholarship Endowment Fund, which supports undergraduate accounting students enrolled in the OSU College of Business. Phillips was Atkins’ accounting professor.

Atkins grew up in the Treasure Valley, where her dad still grows onions and other row crops with her brother, Craig, also an OSU graduate.

“My parents placed a high priority on college for myself and my siblings. They funded my education which allowed me to focus on my studies and start my professional career without any debt,” Atkins said. “We feel very fortunate to be able to provide the same opportunity to others.”

OSU President Ed Ray noted the need for scholarship funds has never been more urgent. “We couldn’t be more delighted that a scholarship gift put us over the $500 million mark – especially from one of our younger alumni,” he said. “By helping students from her home area, Penny is modeling how one generation of OSU alumni and friends can help those to come.”

A member of the OSU Alumni Association board since 2003, Penny Atkins has long been a strong advocate for improving students’ access to an OSU education. As the association’s treasurer and second vice president, she has tirelessly worked to support and guide the OSUAA scholarship program.

“This is a wonderful gift, but for those us who’ve had the pleasure of working with Penny, it’s hardly a surprise she would do something like this,” said Jeff Todd, executive director of the OSU Alumni Association. “Penny is an ideal alumni volunteer. She is relentlessly positive about everything Oregon State, but she is also a wise and pragmatic voice when it comes to keeping us on a firm financial footing so we can continue to succeed.”

Last year the alumni association distributed scholarships valued at more than $200,000 to 125 OSU students.

The Atkins’ gift helps to advance the “$100 Million for Students” Scholarship Initiative, which is part of The Campaign for OSU. To date some 350 new scholarship funds have been created and more than $78 million has been raised for scholarships and fellowships.

~ Molly Brown

The campaign, which was publicly launched in 2007, is the university’s first-ever comprehensive fundraising campaign and, to date, has received support from one of every five OSU graduates.  Additionally, some 30 percent of donors supporting the campaign are parents, volunteers and other friends who did not graduate from the university.

“We are surrounded by a community of friends, thousands strong, who believe in our mission, support our work and share our vision of greater excellence,” said OSU President Ed Ray.

Campaign gifts include 90 commitments of $1 million or more, representing 60 percent of all million-dollar gifts the university has ever received, and over 600 commitments at the $100,000 level. Despite the economic downturn, OSU is experiencing its second best fundraising year on record and has raised almost $70 million in the current fiscal year to benefit students and faculty through scholarships, endowed positions and new facilities for research and learning.

Recent campaign achievements include:

• The opening of Kearney Hall, an historic building renovated with over $10 million in private support;
• A gift of $1.25 million from alumni Scott and Sandy Campbell to establish the Banfield Professorship in Companion Animal Industries in OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences;
• A $1 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the OSU Press to establish a collaborative publishing program dedicated to Indigenous studies;
• 28 new endowed faculty positions, an increase of 40 percent since the start of the campaign;
• More than $78 million toward a $100 million goal for scholarships and fellowships.

The Campaign for OSU totals as of August 2008

While summer can be a quiet time on campus, there was no slowing down for the Campaign for OSU. On June 30, the OSU Foundation marked a record-breaking fundraising year with commitments from alumni and friends totaling more than $126 million in FY08 alone. Contributions continued in the last two months of summer, and as of August 31, the campaign topped $441.7 million in new commitments toward the $625 million goal. Recent contributions include a gift of $2.6 million from the late Franklin McEdward, a 1957 engineering alumnus who left the majority of his estate to OSU. The gift will primarily benefit the Valley Library, funding a new professorship, an undergraduate learning initiative, and a new reading room. A portion of McEdward’s gift will also benefit the College of Engineering.

This fall President Ed Ray is helping the OSU Foundation focus attention on a special initiative to reach the $100 million campaign goal for scholarships and fellowships. This effort will raise support for both merit and need-based student aid including Presidential Scholarships, which attract Oregon’s best and brightest students, and the new Bridge to Success Program, which is providing tuition-free education to in-state students with the greatest financial need.

For more information about campaign progress or the scholarship initiative, visit campaignforosu.org.

~ by Sara Zaske

Campaign raises $6.3M in July.

After breaking fundraising records last fiscal year, The Campaign for OSU continues to make significant progress. In the first month of the new fiscal year which began July 1, donors contributed more than $6.3 million, bringing the campaign total to $439.8 million.

Some highlights of July gifts include:

• A $1.4 million pledge from Jim and Judith Atwood Youde, a 1962 alumni couple who are both members of the OSU Foundation Board of Trustees. The majority of the gift will support scholarships, with other portions designated for the OSU Alumni Association, faculty in applied economics, healthy aging research, the Linus Pauling Institute, and the library.
• A $1 million pledge from Harold and Lois Schudel to establish a scholarship in the College of Agricultural Sciences. The founder of the Corvallis-based Holiday Tree Farms, Harold Schudel earned his doctorate in crop science from OSU in 1953.
• A $300,000 gift from Google to OSU’s Open Source Laboratory. With this latest gift, the internet search company has contributed a total of $750,000 to the lab, which is an academic leader in open source development.

For more information about the campaign, visit campaignforosu.org.

Campaign breaks fundraising record.

July 1 officially marked the end of the best fundraising year Oregon State University has ever seen. Donors to The Campaign for OSU committed more than $126 million in fiscal year 2008, nearly $50 million more than the previous record of $78.3 million set in 2006.