U. of C. launches $2 billion capital campaign
By Tribune staff reports
Published April 12, 2002, 3:43 PM CDT
University of Chicago officials today announced a 5-year, $2 billion capital campaign to raise money for scholarships and endowments and to construct buildings ranging from a children's hospital to a graduate school of business complex.
Trustees of the South Side school called the campaign the largest ever for a Chicago institution and one of the largest by any university anywhere. It eclipses an ongoing, $1.4 billion fundraising campaign started by Northwestern University in 1998.
In the 2‡ years leading up to today's announcement, the University of Chicago has quietly lined up $700 million in advance pledges, officials said.
The campaign will fund such endeavors as undergraduate and graduate student aid, faculty positions, endowments for more than 35 full professorships, expanded humanities and social sciences programs, support of professional programs in business, law, public policy and social service, and research in the natural sciences, medicine and computers.
Specific projects to be funded include a Comer Children's Hospital, an Interdivisional Research Building for the biological and physical sciences and a new, consolidated, Graduate School of Business complex. The funding plan also calls for new facilities for music, theater and the visual and performing arts, a Gerald Ratner Athletics Center and a Max Palevsky Residential Commons.
"Though the university has increased its endowment threefold over the past eight years, its peer institutions have endowments two to five times the current size of Chicago's," the university said in a news release.
"With larger endowments, these peer institutions can offer more financial aid to attract top students and can more easily provide faculty with necessary resources, including competitive laboratories, libraries, salaries and research support."
Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune
