Baruch College Launches $150 Million Campaign
Funding Priorities Include Student and Faculty Excellence, College's Flagship Business Programs, Library and Technology Enhancements
New York, NY, April 29, 2009 - Kathleen Waldron, President of Baruch College has announced the launch of Baruch Means Business: Reaching New Heights of Excellence. The $150 million multi-year campaign was disclosed last night to a group of Baruch College alumni and supporters at the Bernard Baruch Dinner, the College’s annual fundraising gala.
The Baruch Means Business campaign will be led by an executive committee of Baruch College alumni, co-chaired by Lawrence J. Simon ’65 and Lawrence Zicklin ’57, LHD (Hon.)’99. At last night’s dinner, Mr. Simon announced that the College was already more than halfway toward meeting its $150 million goal, having raised more than $95 million during the “quiet phase” of the campaign, which began in July 2006.
The campaign, which will increase funding for student scholarships, faculty development, and academic programs, aims to raise private philanthropic support for Baruch College to more than $30 million a year, while doubling the assets of the College’s fundraising arm, The Baruch College Fund, from $100 million to $200 million.
“This campaign will support student excellence and opportunity, strengthen our flagship Zicklin School of Business and enhance the value of a Baruch College degree,” President Waldron said. “Baruch College has the vision, the programs and the heritage to transform the lives of its students and to contribute significantly to the future of New York City as a top international talent pool.” Waldron added.
Announcement of the campaign comes at a time of economic stress for both the nation’s public and private colleges. State support for senior colleges within The City University of New continues to decline. “We need, more than ever, to create an effective funding model that supplements public financing with the flexibility and reach of private philanthropy,” Mark Gibbel, Baruch College’s Vice President for College Advancement, noted.
Baruch College pioneered the effort to seek private philanthropic support for New York’s public colleges. In 1993, under the leadership of Matthew Goldstein, then President of Baruch College and now CUNY Chancellor, the College received a landmark $5 million gift from real estate executive William Newman ’47. At the time this was the largest donation received by any division of The City University of New York since Bernard Baruch’s 1953 naming gift. Within the next few years other prominent Baruch alumni, including Lawrence Zicklin, Lawrence Field ’52, George Weissman ’39, Bernard Schwartz ’48, and Bert W. Wasserman ’54 and Sandra Wasserman ’55 became Baruch College patrons and supporters, providing the College with new resources and leadership and significantly enhancing its academic stature and reputation.
The Baruch Means Business campaign has as its paramount goal student excellence and opportunity. To this end, the College plans to augment scholarship support for its students, most of whom come from families with income below $44,000 a year. The College’s strategic plan also calls for improving the overall quality of student life by enhancing special programs, such as the Starr Career Development Center and the College’s honors programs.
The campaign also seeks to make Baruch College more competitive in the academic marketplace in order to facilitate the recruitment of outstanding faculty and strengthen key academic programs in Accountancy, Real Estate, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Public Affairs, Non-Profit Management, Communications, Financial Engineering, Journalism and Psychology.
Contact:
Christina Latouf
646.660.6114
Zane Berzins
646.660.6113
For additional details about the Baruch College Campaign visit:
www.baruch.cuny.edu/campaign
