CONTACT: Beth L. Lorow
Assistant Director of Public Relations
Office: (717) 691-6027
E-mail: blorow@messiah.edu

	Boyer Hall Click on image to download print-quality version
	Larsen Student Union Click on image to download print-quality version

GRANTHAM, Pa. (Jan. 25, 2006) — Messiah College successfully completed its comprehensive campaign, “To Serve & To Lead: The Campaign for Student Enrichment,” raising $50.5 million to provide students with scholarship aid and enhanced educational resources and facilities, including a new academic building and a new student union, President Kim S. Phipps publicly announced today. The campaign exceeded its $50 million goal, making it the largest campaign in the college’s history. The campaign, which ran over a five-year period, began in January 2001 and officially ended on Dec. 31, 2005. Prior to “To Serve & To Lead,” Messiah’s largest fundraising campaign was its $15 million “Shaping the Future” campaign in the early 1990s.

“The impact of this campaign has been transformational in the lives of Messiah College students,” said President Phipps. “From providing critical scholarship aid and much needed learning and leisure spaces for students—to creating resources for innovative academic programs and faculty development—this campaign has significantly enhanced Messiah’s ability to carry out its educational mission and equip students for lives of service, leadership and reconciliation.”

“Although the initial goal for this campaign was $40 million, the board of trustees challenged itself and the entire Messiah College community to revise the goal to $50 million,” said Eunice F. Steinbrecher, chair of the Messiah College Board of Trustees and chair of the campaign. “We knew that this campaign goal was ambitious—the largest in Messiah’s history. But we believed that it was possible because of the commitment of Messiah’s trustees, alumni, employees, friends, donors and volunteers. The board and all of Messiah’s benefactors responded to this campaign at unprecedented levels. Their generous support has strengthened the Messiah experience for students in ways that would not have been otherwise possible,” Steinbrecher said.

The campaign’s initial vision grew from the leadership of Messiah College’s former president, the late Rodney J. Sawatsky. According to Steinbrecher, “Many of the projects included in ‘To Serve & To Lead’ were rooted in Dr. Sawatsky’s commitment that a Christian college education provided by institutions such as Messiah College should be second to none. Through the resources provided by this campaign—and through the gifted leadership of Messiah’s current president, Dr. Kim Phipps—that vision will continue to grow and mature.”

Highlights of the key college priorities and projects funded by “To Serve & To Lead” include:

A new academic building, Boyer Hall
A key outcome of the campaign was the construction of a new academic building, Boyer Hall, which houses the college's School of the Humanities and the School of Education and Social Sciences, which together represent more than 40 percent of the college's faculty and students and 50 percent of the college's total curriculum. The building, which was completed in August of 2003, was named in recognition of the late Ernest L. Boyer, Sr., one of Messiah's most distinguished alumni, a former U.S. Commissioner of Education, and former President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Boyer Hall is the largest academic building on campus, measuring 95,000 square feet. This new facility provides crucial space for classrooms, seminar rooms, faculty offices, computer labs—including a modern languages lab, department resource rooms, study and lounge spaces and Parmer Cinema, a state-of-the-art, 140-seat film screening venue and lecture hall. The building also provides a permanent home for The Boyer Center, which promotes Dr. Boyer's educational vision through special programs and initiatives that enhance school and community renewal, international and higher education and civic collaboration. Boyer Hall was built by Wohlsen Construction, based in Lancaster, Pa.

The Larsen Student Union
With more than 90 percent of its students living on campus, Messiah College was committed to making one the campaign’s key projects a quality student-centered space, the Larsen Student Union, designed specifically for students’ leisure and social needs. Completed in March of 2004, this 35,000-square-foot facility now provides students with casual dining and lounge space, and creates a hub for activities and leadership development by providing much-needed offices and work space for student organizations such as the Student Government Association and campus media such as the student newspaper, yearbook and radio station. The student union was constructed by R.S. Mowery & Sons, based in Carlisle, Pa.

Expansion of Climenhaga Fine Arts Center
For several years, the programs that comprise Messiah’s School of the Arts—music, theatre and the visual arts—have been growing in size and growing short on space. Since these academic programs were established in 1981, the college itself has nearly doubled the size of its student body, and the School of the Arts has nearly tripled in the number of students majoring in one of its disciplines, and more than doubled in the number of faculty who serve students in these programs. The School of the Arts, which annually serves 40 percent of the student body for general education and cocurricular purposes, anticipates continued growth in the number of students who will be majoring in one of the arts disciplines (from 237 students in 2004 to a projection of 350 students in 2009).

It has become increasingly difficult for students and faculty in these disciplines to share performance, rehearsal, classroom and faculty office space, and to schedule productions and rehearsals around each other's needs. To help meet this need, Messiah’s board of trustees included preliminary fundraising for the Climenhaga Fine Arts Center as a project in the “To Serve & To Lead” campaign, and the expansion of this facility remains a priority for the college and will be the focus of future fundraising.

Although planning and costs for the expansion have not been finalized, preliminary enhancements include: construction of a black-box theatre; expanded dressing rooms and theatre scene shop; a new recital hall; a new choral rehearsal room; a re-designed photo lab; a new art gallery and expanded space for instruction in the visual arts; as well as faculty office space.

The Student Impact Fund and endowed student scholarships
Messiah College’s Student Impact Fund includes a pool of unrestricted resources contributed each year to support current and pressing needs of the college such as: student scholarships; athletic programs; technology and library needs. Every year college donors, including alumni, parents of students and other friends of the college contribute to help close the gap between tuition dollars and these critical expenditures. During “To Serve & To Lead,” the College raised more than $15 million for student scholarships and student aid endowment.

Enhanced faculty and academic initiatives
A significant source of funding for this initiative was a $2 million grant awarded to Messiah College by the Lilly Endowment, Inc. to implement “Christian Vocation: Service, Leadership and Reconciliation,” a five-year project to integrate a rich understanding of Christian vocation throughout the college’s educational programs and among its various constituencies. Recently, the Lilly Endowment awarded the college an additional $500,000 grant to help develop an infrastructure that will create ongoing sources of funding to sustain the continued work of the “Christian Vocation” initiative.

Another new source of funding created through the campaign is the Leroy and Eunice Steinbrecher Student Research Scholarships in the Sciences. This endowed fund allows faculty mentors and students to spend extensive time in summer research projects. Other academic enhancements that received campaign funding and which were launched during the course of the campaign were: the Oakes Museum, 10,000 square-feet, located on the first two floors of the college's Jordan Science Center, that is home to a collection of Smithsonian-quality African and North American mammals, bird eggs, fish, seashells, minerals, insects and fossils; The Harrisburg Institute, an urban residential learning community for students, in Harrisburg, Pa., promoting research and connections with agencies that provide extended service opportunities, internships and practicums, and engage students in training that addresses core community issues; and the Center for Public Humanities which brings academic, civic and cultural communities together to advance culture and learning by stimulating debate and exchange, both on and off campus, on contemporary issues of significance.

Brethren in Christ Heritage Fund
The campaign also created and launched an endowed fund designed to strengthen awareness, knowledge and understanding related to the heritage of the Brethren in Christ Church, Messiah College’s founding denomination. The Brethren in Christ Heritage Fund supports the work of the Brethren in Christ Historical Library and Archives, which is the only repository of its kind for the denomination, and the Sider Institute for Anabaptist, Pietist and Wesleyan Studies, which uses speakers, research, events, and programs to promote understanding of the Brethren in Christ Church and its relationship with Messiah College.

“Fields of Growth” athletic fields renovation
“ Fields of Growth,” a subcomponent of “To Serve & To Lead,” is a multi-stage project to enhance facilities at Starry Athletic Field, the college’s primary outdoor athletic facilities. Renovations will include new drainage and irrigation systems, topsoil and sod for the main soccer field, along with increased bleacher seating, and the addition of lights to the field hockey/lacrosse field. The college is currently securing permits from the township and work is scheduled to begin in late February/early March and is expected to be completed by the opening of the college’s 2006 fall athletics season.

About Messiah College
Messiah College, a private Christian college of the liberal and applied arts and sciences, enrolls more than 2,900 undergraduate students in 50 majors. Established in 1909, the primary campus is located in Grantham, Pa., near the state capital of Harrisburg. A satellite campus affiliated with Temple University is located in Philadelphia.

# # #

ARTICLE DATE: WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25, 2006
ARTICLE NUMBER: MC-009-06