Saint Vincent College leaders announce $100 million fundraising campaign
Saint Vincent College is aiming to expand its faculty and facilities with a $100 million fundraising campaign — with two-thirds of the goal in hand, officials announced Friday.
For a year and a half, Saint Vincent officials and affiliates had been quietly fundraising, securing $67 million in donations before the public phase of the “Forward, Always Forward” campaign was announced at Heinz Field's Hyundai Club.
If it reaches its goal by 2020, the campaign will direct $40 million toward building facilities, including new dining and community space, technology updates and an expansion of the Latimer Family Library to include art galleries and a technology information hub.
“My son graduated in 2008, and he told me the library was a place you'd go to get lost,” said J. Christopher Donahue, chairman of the college's board of directors.
Groundbreaking for the $17 million library expansion is planned for next spring. It will add technology and art galleries to help broaden students' exposure to the humanities, to fit the college's mission of integrating technology, the liberal arts and a spiritual, ethical context.
Nearby on campus, a new “student life and humanities hub” will include improved dining facilities and space for commuter students. It is estimated to cost about $16 million.
“We know if you don't keep them well-fed, you're not running a college, you're running a terrorist training camp,” Donahue said.
Improvements will also include new campus ministry offices, but the greater sense of community the facility fosters will do even more for the campus ministry, he said.
The campaign already had accounted for the $5.7 million James F. Will Engineering and Biomedical Sciences Hall, which was dedicated Nov. 16 , Archabbot Douglas Nowicki said.
An additional $40 million of the campaign will go to the college's endowments, which will fund scholarships and new professors in the fields of Catholic social teaching — how Catholic philosophy and ethical teachings can be applied to business — and Jewish thought, Nowicki said.
The last $20 million will fund ongoing programs and financial aid at the college, including the Fred Rogers Center for Early Childhood Education.
The college's choir began Friday's event by singing “It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” the theme to “Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.”
With most of the campaign already pledged or in the bank, Donahue said the college will make a wider appeal to alumni and the general public.
“Our next phase is to go broader and deeper, and to have the joy of telling our story — with $67 million already in the bank,” he said.
Matthew Santoni is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724-836-6660, msantoni@tribweb.com or via Twitter @msantoni.
