driven by a passion for - bucknell · pdf filedriven by a passion for excellence, ... learn,...

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Driven by a passion for excellence, we have set a campaign goal of $500 million. Our campaign will build the endowment, fund scholarships, provide support for faculty, create vitally needed facilities—and advance six transformative initiatives that will distinguish the Bucknell educational experience. With you, we can and will make them happen. It’s who we are. It’s what we do.

Bucknellians discover, learn, create, build and lead. Generation after generation, individual by individual, we have demonstrated our confidence in the power of action to shape the future. On the brink of new possibilities for Bucknell in the 21st century, we invite you to join us in a leadership role. Together, we can achieve some of the most significant endeavors envisioned at any liberal arts university in the nation.

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We Do PortraitsParT I

Five stories exemplifying the impact of 50,000 Bucknellians around the world.

Dear BUCKNeLLiaNsOUr WE DO aTTITUDE

We can build on the history of success that characterizes Bucknell.

GiviNG iN aCtioN TransFOrmaTIvE OPPOrTUnITIEs

Our future strength and leadership as one of america’s finest liberal arts universities depend on these areas of giving.

visioN iN aCtioN UnIvErsITy InITIaTIvEs

We have identified six academic and residential learning initiatives that will define Bucknell’s distinctive value to students and alumni for decades to come.

We Do PortraitsParT II

Five more stories exemplifying the We Do attitude of Bucknellians.

LooKiNG ForWarD

a thanks to everyone who will make this campaign a success and to the members of our volunteer campaign team for their leadership.

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Dr. David scadden ’75, P’11 once told The New York Times, “People who take care of cancer patients and also have the research dimension are people who are unsatisfied with how things are but optimistic about how they might be.” He was talking about a colleague, but he might as well have been talking about himself.

scadden began his medical career intent on being a practicing physician, until his mother was diagnosed with cancer. He was deeply troubled by the limited tools available to help her. He wanted to change “the inevitable death sentence” cancer used to be. and he has. Today he is one of the foremost stem-cell researchers in the world, and his work influences therapies for treating cancer and aIDs patients.

scadden, who holds a joint appointment at Harvard University and massachusetts General Hospital, is also known for mentoring young doctors and researchers, including many Bucknell graduates and students such as Patricia scripko ’05 and Jacquie Bachand ’13.

When asked what he looks for when he invites young researchers into his lab, scadden says, “Grit and energy—people with passions who want to embody those passions. They don’t have to know exactly what they want to do, but they know they are going to commit themselves to it when they figure it out.” The medical researcher who began his college career as an English major says the seeming trajectory in the lives of others is deceiving. “We can’t see the tremendous complexity of another person’s path, but a great education positions students to test and find and remake the path.” Envisioning a different future and having the talent, drive and determination to get there is what Bucknell is about. From revolutionizing industries to running global corporations and nonprofits, from creating powerful works of fiction, film and television to students launching dozens of research and service projects that are changing lives for the better—Bucknellians work wonders.

work wonders.

W E D O P O rT r a I T s— Pa rT I

We

PatriCia sCriPKo ’05 | JaCqUie BaChaND ’13 | DaviD sCaDDeN ’75, P’11

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Creativity, with its thorny, thrilling, luminous twists and turns, is a journey at once accessible and daunting. Wise guides and a vibrant community can be gigantic boosts along our way. as artist and associate Professor of art Tulu Bayar says,

“art-making does not happen as an isolated private act. It does not exist in an isolated place.”

Bucknell, she has found, teems with creativity, ever more so in recent years due to the Presidential arts Initiative that has made “arts. Everywhere.” a campus creed. Bayar and associate Professor of English and novelist robert rosenberg are two of the Bucknell mentors committed to walking the creative path with their students.

rosenberg says young artists especially need to see people living in the world as artists so they can picture where they might go with their own work. He says that the interdisciplinary overlap among the arts at Bucknell is a constant source of inspiration. “This campus is an intense colloquium with a breathtaking array of really high-quality dance, music, exhibitions, film, readings. With the Weis Center for the Performing arts, Campus Theatre and downtown Barnes & noble at Bucknell University bookstore, the offerings rival many big cities. That’s good training for students too because as an artist you learn to pick and choose where to focus.”

For decades, luminaries in the arts, entertainment and media have found their start at Bucknell. as ali Keller ’12, a recent theatre graduate, says, “I’ve been able to stretch my creative boundaries because of the support I received from my professors. Whatever you want, they’ll help you make it happen.” Keep an eye out for Keller and other young Bucknell talents like Jose saavedra valdivia ’13 and megan reid ’14, because with a series of new initiatives Bucknell is determined to become even more of a magnet for aspiring young artists the world over.

“my students are not just trying,” says rosenberg, who aspires for everyone in his writing classes to write a publishable short story by semester’s end. “They don’t just imagine they’re going to do it someday,” he says. “They do it. I’m incredibly proud of them. They walk the walk. They create works of art.”

IMAGINE.


We

ProFessor tULU Bayar | Jose saaveDra vaLDivia ’13 | ProFessor roBert roseNBerG | MeGaN reiD ’14

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If worrying about your children’s well-being has ever kept you up at night, imagine worrying about 70 million of them. That is the responsibility Carolyn miles ’83, P’14 took on when she became president and CEO of the international organization save the Children, which serves children in need in 120 countries, including the U.s. The first woman to lead the organization, miles has helped double the number of children it reaches with food, education and other programs and also helped boost its budget from $140 million to more than $650 million.

so how does one prepare for such a staggering role? miles says Bucknell paved the way. “you’re not just sitting in a class absorbing information. you’re engaging. People listen to you. you learn that your ideas matter. What that did for me was give me the confidence to take risks, try new things and put myself out there.”

Indeed, she soon put herself in a whole new environment—working for american Express in asia. There she came face to face with the dramatic poverty in which so many children around the world live. “I realized that poor children had virtually no opportunities compared to my kids. It really hit home for me and I wanted to change that,” she says.

While one often hears the phrase “be the change,” how many actually answer the call? With a rare combination of knowledge, ability and courage, Bucknellians often seem to do so. On campus and in the world, students, alumni and faculty not only want to change things for the better, they do.

miles sees that drive in fellow Bucknellians such as Kymm Carlson ’94, who came to save the Children at the same time miles did. “When we hire Bucknell interns, we see it too,” miles says. “They have intellect, poise and passion, but something more. They have an ability to read situations, which is so important. In fact, it’s a key to leadership. Especially in the kind of work we do, sometimes the best thing you can do is convince somebody else to lead. It’s something seasoned leaders learn how to do.”

Just how does one become seasoned? miles advises new leaders to do exactly what Bucknell taught her: “Take the scarier path. The one that’s not comfortable. The one where you will learn the most.”

LEAD.


We

KyMM CarLsoN ’94 | CaroLyN MiLes ’83, P’14

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assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering Eric Kennedy wants to make people safer. so far, so good. His crash-test dummy designs have influenced combat gear in afghanistan and car design in the U.s. Working alongside him, his engineering students have turned their attention to common childhood injuries and educating the public on preventing them. Other students of his have been part of research at Bucknell to develop prototype medical devices that reduce the invasiveness of surgery, measure bone quality and limit infections.

For Kennedy, the results are manifold. “I love the idea that our students are having an impact and pushing on frontiers of knowledge while in the process of earning their undergraduate degrees,” he says. He also loves that today’s Bucknell students have even more room to move those frontiers than ever before.

“We can give Bucknell engineers an experience that is more than technical knowledge,” says Kennedy, “especially because we are a liberal arts university. We enable them to go into careers in consulting, finance, law and medicine, among many others, because technology is so relevant today.”

Engineering solutions is what Bucknellians do. students are designing iPhone apps and going on to work at companies such as Google. They are turning trash to biofuel in Bucknell labs, and as alumni they are founding companies that harvest the sun and raise sustainable seafood. Faculty and student ingenuity has brought clean water to impoverished communities in the developing world and unmanned search-and-rescue vehicles to urban centers.

Kennedy anticipates that his students will delve into and solve even more complex problems in the future. “I know what we can do now, with the resources we have. We have never been constrained by our creativity, just certain physical and financial limits. Imagine what we could do if those restrictions were gone.”

solve.


We

tayLor ZahN ’14 | ProFessor eriC KeNNeDy | Chris DiDoMeNiCo ’13

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Charles Lee ’06 is a bit of a legend around Bucknell, but he didn’t feel destined for greatness when he first arrived on campus. The co-captain and starter on the Bucknell basketball team that famously upset the Kansas Jayhawks in the 2005 nCaa tournament recalls being taken aside by his coaches during his first semester. “I was having a rough academic patch. Even though I was eligible to play, they had me sit out for a while. They cared and wanted me to focus on academics first. They wanted me to accomplish everything I could.” after that, Lee worked harder than ever, ultimately making the Patriot League honor roll and winning the championship.

Bison fans and players love winning, but victory is even sweeter where remarkable athletic success in such a competitive league holds true to a student-athlete model. Bucknell has won the Patriot League President’s Cup, symbolizing overall victory across all league sports, 17 of the 22 times it has been awarded, a reflection of the excellence of Bucknell’s student-athletes, coaches and staff. These

cups, pictured at left, are the result of success across our 27 Division I sports. This spirit of competition is just as vibrant on club teams and in abundant recreation activities from rock-climbing to yoga.

During the photo shoot for this portrait, Lee, who is now an assistant men’s basketball coach; as well as Hall-of-Famer Karin Wegener Knisely ’79, P’14, who is now the director of biology core course labs; Olympic-contender swimmer mike nicholson ’14, who majors in economics and sociology; and soccer player Kayla yee ’13, a civil engineering major, started talking about yee’s team’s prospects for the upcoming year. Lee says, “Kayla told us they had struggled the year before, but she was really optimistic about their chances this year. That resonated with me. Bison are always optimistic. But we don’t stop there. Our optimism is based on the work we put in. That’s a lesson I learned when I was here too that continues today. Work hard early on and it’s always going to pay off down the road.” Lee’s words just might explain a winning attitude.

WIN.


We

CharLes Lee ’06 | KayLa yee ’13 | KariN WeGeNer KNiseLy ’79, P’14 | MiKe NiChoLsoN ’14

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ProFessor WeNDeLiN WriGht & PresiDeNt JohN BravMaN

Wendy and I have encountered this view of learning and life time and again among Bucknell students, faculty, alumni and parents. so we were not surprised when exploratory conversations with these groups, as we prepared to launch this campaign, brought this idea forward consistently as a defining attribute of our University. It is an attitude that says we get things done, that we have big ambitions that are not idle dreams but instead become missions we achieve. It is an attitude that made clear what our campaign theme should be.

This attitude brought our University out of the wilds of Pennsylvania more than 165 years ago. With this attitude, Bucknell enrolled international, women and african-american students before most other private universities. Out of this attitude grew the dramatic expansion of our enrollment and our campus to serve returning soldiers after World War II. This attitude turns our nCaa Division I programs into models of academic and competitive success, and has fostered an array of new academic programs to meet changing student needs and societal opportunities—from business and professional programs created early in the 20th century to the biomedical, environmental humanities and comparative humanities programs that have emerged recently.

all you have to do is talk to our faculty, students and alumni and you know that this Bucknell spirit of inventiveness and action, this desire to help young people make great things happen, is alive and well today. This We Do attitude is surely part of the reason that leadership, creativity, innovation and success define our alumni culture.

In this vibrant time for Bucknell, we are asking the leaders of our community around the globe to set a new standard of action on behalf of the University, on behalf of the institution we love. This Bucknell passion for impact has led us to set a course to raise at least half-a-billion dollars through this campaign—and begin a whole new Bucknell attitude about investing in the University.

Bucknell changes lives. It changes the future. Our goal, as the goal of every generation has been, is to make Bucknell the best version of itself.

In this rapidly changing world, our University stands at an inflection point. We know the value of the residential learning model that is central to our mission. We know the power of learning that takes place in mentoring between faculty and students. We know that a university that does not offer new programs, does not catalyze its collective energies, does not set its sights high, is destined for irrelevance. But a university that marshals itself to new challenges does change lives, and leads.

We also have an advantage. We know that today’s students, employers and graduate schools are looking for what Bucknell has always been: a complete liberal arts university that fully prepares students for the real world. now we must step forward and solidify our enduring value as an educator and as a leader in higher education. We can build on the history of success that characterizes Bucknell. With support from alumni, parents and friends, we can transform Bucknell’s impact, and its future.

We have carefully examined the University’s broad spectrum of excellence and designed a path to prepare our students for success and fulfillment in an era of unprecedented global change. as I will discuss next, in five overarching areas the strength of University resources will in many ways determine the strength of Bucknell for decades to come. a university must also invest in the areas of excellence that set it apart. Later in this document, I will share six specific University Initiatives that will make the most of the great people, programs and places of Bucknell.

Bucknell has always prided itself on ensuring that today’s students are tomorrow’s well-educated thinkers, citizens, change-makers and leaders. Together, we can do so again, and create a magnificent future for Bucknell, for our students.

Dear Bucknellians,

What does it mean to be a university that is defined by taking action, by a We Do attitude?

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Giving in Action

our

Transformative

Opportunities

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G I v I n G I n aCT I O n

Mission in actionEndowment

Our success depends above all on our people—the students, faculty and staff who bring Bucknell’s mission to life. They are the University. and during my 30 years in higher education, I have become convinced that the greatest guarantee of the success of the people of a university, and therefore of a university itself, is its endowment. an endowment makes it possible to connect opportunity and action, vision and reality—to turn the talents of today into our University’s future.

How does an endowment become so important? The endowment enables us to recruit and retain top students and infuse departments and programs with the wisdom and leadership of the best in their professions. The endowment makes it possible to maintain and renovate facilities so that our classrooms, laboratories, fields and living areas meet Bucknell’s high standards. Our endowment, the core resource of our confidence and flexibility, must match the reach of our ambitions.

With a sure and growing endowment, we can offer new programs and learning opportunities that meet the educational needs of our students in a changing world. We can protect and improve our extraordinary campus— a distinguishing asset of the residential learning experience we offer. We can succeed in recruiting and retaining the finest talent of today and tomorrow—and strengthening the value of Bucknell degrees—with an endowment made not for yesterday but for tomorrow.

Today, as we launch the public phase of this campaign, the Bucknell endowment stands at just under $600 million and provides roughly $30 million annually, in a $244 million budget. a natural question is, “Isn’t that enough?” Without a doubt, Bucknell is extremely fortunate to have this endowment, and would not be the school it has become without it. But the importance of endowment is only intensifying.

as all of higher education adjusts to the fact that we must hold the line on significant tuition increases, endowment will become an even greater differentiator between institutions that thrive or falter. at Bucknell, we already are overly reliant on net tuition and fees (i.e., not including our distribution of $47 million in financial aid), which constitute about 73 percent of our operating budget. The rest comes from endowment income (15 percent), gift revenue (6 percent), research grants (2 percent) and other sources (4 percent).

moreover, our endowment-per-student and endowment- per-professor are far behind that of almost all of our peers. What our faculty, staff, students and alumni have done with these resources is remarkable. Increasing our per-capita endowment is the core challenge and opportunity of this campaign. Imagining what our people could do with resources appropriate to our scale and reach excites me perhaps more than any other aspect of Bucknell’s future.

Which is why this campaign is such a turning point. We seek to secure $275 million in gifts to our endowment, with the largest portion designated to support areas I mention next in this document: scholarships and financial aid and endowed positions—and including at least $25 million to endow programs across the curriculum. The University Initiatives described in this document all offer endowment opportunities, as does virtually every program existing or envisioned at Bucknell. Through endowed gifts, donors have a lasting influence on the programs that mean the most to them, and become instrumental partners in Bucknell’s future.

Bucknell provides a highly sought-after educational experience. Our graduates shape communities, institutions and companies. We believe Bucknell must always stand out in these ways and provide exemplary opportunities for life-changing experiences to students and alumni. Which means that we believe in the promise that a rising endowment can make real.

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Promise in actionscholarships

I am a first-generation college student. my family could only afford my attending a leading private college because I received financial aid. The experience changed my life, and opened up career opportunities I never would have imagined possible otherwise. That is the power of scholarships—to open doors for individuals and, in so doing, open doors to lives of limitless possibility. at Bucknell, the most significant scholarship gifts are to our endowment, because the impact they create, one life at a time, will endure as long as the institution stands.

Each time a donor supports an endowed scholarship to Bucknell, a simple truth is stated: We believe in the individual, we believe in the student, we believe in the future. I know firsthand the impact of this faultless conviction.

But scholarships declare their impact in another way too. Bright Bucknellians from all backgrounds make our University better. I taught at the college level for decades, and from the classroom to campus life saw the dynamism of learning and interaction that emerges when great students with different life stories and perspectives are together. Here at Bucknell, as president I have come to believe in the importance of such a campus community more strongly than ever. Practically every day, across all aspects of our academic and campus life, I meet students from many backgrounds, from every socioeconomic stratum, and see the meaning of these truths. These students develop an appreciation for a fact vital in the real world: talent, hard work and character matter.

Here and now, as practically from our first days, Bucknell lives up to its mission of higher education for all excellent students. Our goal in this campaign therefore is to secure at least $150 million in endowment gifts for scholarships and financial aid.

By creating endowed scholarships, donors pass on a permanent and potent legacy—the chance for others to live up to their promise and influence the community around them, because talent, the worth of the individual and the generosity of visionary contributors have said: Begin.

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talent in action Endowed Chairs, Professorships, Directorships and Coaching Positions

sir Isaac newton held one of the first endowed chairs at Cambridge University. Centuries later, stephen Hawking held the same chair. I mention this striking example to suggest the capacity of endowed support for faculty to guarantee a university’s excellence across time.

With every endowed chair, every endowed professorship, a university’s ability to deliver on its mission for students grows. Backed by endowments, faculty have discretionary funds to initiate student projects, explore new themes of scholarship and creativity, engage in collaborative teaching and research, support visiting lecturers and artists and develop innovative research grants and curricula. Endowed positions are a down payment on an effective and vibrant academic program that attracts students, enhances the University’s profile and makes a Bucknell degree even more meaningful.

Endowed positions are also a potent statement that here excellence matters, and signal to the marketplace from which talent emerges that we believe in rewarding impact. Endowed positions doubly benefit Bucknell’s financial strength and agility, because they fund key roles in perpetuity and free annual salary dollars to support additional hiring. Endowed positions ensure that we can maintain the low student-to-faculty ratio that is central to our residential liberal arts mission.

Through this campaign, we aim to secure at least $100 million for endowments that support chairs, professorships, directorships and coaches. Endowed positions are essential to our six University Initiatives because they will strengthen related departments and multidisciplinary collaboration and expertise.

Endowed directorships can also have a huge impact on stand-alone centers—organized efforts that, whether via a bricks-and-mortar location or not, bring together faculty and students from diverse disciplines to achieve shared academic goals. These include such existing centers as the Center for Civic Engagement; Center for the study of race, Ethnicity and Gender; Environmental Center; samek art Gallery; stadler Center for Poetry; Teaching and Learning Center; Weis Center for the Performing arts; and Writing Center. Endowed directorships will also have a decisive impact on the future of the new centers envisioned in the Creative Campus, residential Learning and sustainability Initiatives. For the first time in a Bucknell campaign, we seek to endow Bison coaching positions and secure our capacity to recruit and retain the finest coaches and mentors for our outstanding student-athletes. Our 27 Division I sports, which annually involve more than 20 percent of our student population, provide leadership and teamwork experiences that shape our student-athletes’ lives. With endowed coaching positions, we can assert anew the value we place in programs for student-athletes in which competitiveness and all-around excellence are one and the same.

But these opportunities for endowed positions are only part of the story. In every discipline, donors can endow positions that will provide a transformative impact on talent and leadership at Bucknell. In making such endowments, donors can ensure in perpetuity the continuation of a mission that matters to them.

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Place in actionOur Iconic Campus


“The first time I stepped on this campus, I knew that I was home.” I have lost count of the number of students and alumni who have shared this beautiful sentiment with me. I know it for myself. From the academic Quad and its landmark clock tower above the library to the elegant spire of rooke Chapel, from the majesty and calm of the Grove to our state-of-the-art laboratories and artistic spaces, from the resource that is our adjoining river to the athletics and recreational spaces that are a tribute to Bucknellians’ love of play and competition, our campus is a vibrant treasure.

We who have stepped into Bucknell’s history today know that one of our greatest responsibilities is to steward this special community home. We must preserve and protect it, and ensure that it continues to evolve mindfully for each generation’s needs, each era’s technological, architectural, cultural and social possibilities, in ways befitting Bucknell’s classic college aesthetic.

For this campaign, we have reviewed the master plan that nearly a century ago set Bucknell’s modern campus in motion. We have re-examined the top priorities of the new master plan that recently emerged from careful analysis to guide campus evolution over the next 75 years. These considerations have led us to identify a targeted set of improvements that will make the greatest difference to our residential living and learning experience. Gifts totaling at least $125 million will allow us to achieve the campaign priorities for Bucknell’s physical places and spaces that are spelled out next. continued »

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technologies to connect our classes in real-time to experts, business leaders and scholars worldwide.

Christy MatheWsoN-MeMoriaL staDiUM

across more than 100 years of competition, varsity football has become part of the University’s culture. The stadium, meanwhile, has also become home to our

highly successful men’s lacrosse and men’s and women’s outdoor track and field programs. The competitive expectations facing our student-athletes—both in the classroom and in athletic competition—are only growing. yet the stadium itself is sorely in need of renovation, including the seating, media booth, scoreboard, video screen and locker rooms. Only with donor support can we make the necessary improvements to this stadium and match its value to Bucknell and our participation in the Patriot League.

oUr PLaCe oN the sUsqUehaNNa river

Finally, I want to mention a promising campus development idea: an Integrated riverfront Environmental Center. While we have many questions yet about

whether developing such a center is feasible, I find the idea exciting because it would allow us to truly connect our University to the river, and all its meaning for learning, recreation and Bucknell’s distinctive campus offerings.

already, faculty and students in numerous disciplines are capitalizing on our river proximity to create and explore a


trove of educational and research possibilities. From their successful efforts to have the river formally designated a part of america’s historic water heritage, to scholarship that has helped struggling riverfront communities, to the recreational pleasures of kayaking and fishing, our campus community knows the river practically as part of our campus itself. But we have barely begun to make the most of this potential.

We own approximately 900 feet of property along the susquehanna river. most of this space is currently occupied by maintenance facilities. What if we could build a teaching and recreation facility along the river with appropriate sensitivity to environmental and community impact? What if faculty in any and all classes could stand on the shore of our campus property and use the river as a setting for teaching and discovery? What if we could convert the railroad spur that runs the length of this property to a trail for the entire community’s use? What if, on any given day, students could easily walk from campus to Bucknell’s riverfront property to relax, read and socialize?

The world over, universities are striving to make their campuses living and learning laboratories that set their campus experiences apart, and many wish they could use water as much as they use the land as part of campus learning. at Bucknell, we already have a

river waiting alongside us to become all this and more. We simply have to figure out how. But if there is one thing I know about Bucknellians, it is that if the idea is exciting enough, they will find a way to do it right.


FoUr NeW resiDeNCe haLLs

This addition will be central to the distinct residential learning mission of Bucknell, and make the most of the new quad being formed by academic West and academic

East. This complex, which the residential Living Initiative describes further (PaGE 55), will provide suite-style living arrangements for some 320 juniors and seniors.

LiBrary exPaNsioN

standing at the top of our historic academic Quad, the Bertrand Library is a signature Bucknell building that epitomizes the learning that is the heart of our University. To ensure the

library becomes an equally meaningful feature of the new quad, we will open the library to it through a gorgeous new south-facing atrium and add new resources for teaching and scholarship.

sChooL oF MaNaGeMeNt BUiLDiNG

Our vision for our school of management includes a new facility that not only will bring together our growing management faculty, but also will support

management student projects with appropriately equipped meeting spaces. In addition, this building will incorporate global-learning classrooms that deploy the finest

aCaDeMiC West

Thanks to the generosity of several Bucknell families, in 2013 we will open the first academic building our University has built since 2004, academic West. rising on the southwest side of

Bertrand Library, this building will anchor a new academic quad that will transform our campus and begin addressing tremendous pent-up demand for classroom and research space. a naming gift for academic West—which will provide a home to classrooms, laboratories and meeting spaces, and the offices of our faculty in the social sciences—will provide a lasting legacy of faith in the University’s future and assure the impact of this first building on the quad of tomorrow.

aCaDeMiC east

academic East will be the second academic building on the new quad. To be built opposite academic West, it will provide a campus home for our special partnership with Geisinger Health system, which is so important to our Human Health Initiative (PaGE 44). In academic East, we see the opportunity to create an ideal facility for healthcare research and learning from a breadth of disciplines, including several areas of engineering and related life sciences.

the MULtiDisCiPLiNary arts aND Creativity CoMPLex

This building, which Bucknell has long needed, will provide a new home for the arts that will increase their impact on and availability to our entire community and to the creative culture we aspire to make a daily part of campus life. The Creative Campus Initiative describes this building (PaGE 39) in more detail.

Place in actionOur Iconic Campuscontinued

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Purpose in actionThe annual Fund

as president, I am intimately aware that without annual giving, Bucknell would be able to do far less of value than we do now. The annual University budget of $244 million includes about $11 million in annual Fund gifts. annual giving is a meaningful route for donors of all levels to strengthen the curriculum, student experience and future of the University. In fact, more than 80 percent of our annual Fund gifts come in amounts less than $500.

annual giving impacts virtually every program at Bucknell. annual gifts provide miter saws to build theatre sets, chemicals for the photography lab, video cameras for sports-performance analysis, bus transportation for students to attend career fairs and computers for use in the library—there is hardly a program offered at Bucknell that doesn’t benefit from the supplies, materials and possibilities that annual Fund gifts provide.

The annual Fund also has a transformative effect on donors: more often than not, the alumni, parents and friends who make large single gifts to Bucknell became donors first by supporting the annual Fund—and continue to make annual gifts. The confidence and generosity of annual Fund donors have convinced us that we can achieve the ambitious goal of raising annual giving across the Bucknell community to $14 million per year, or at least $100 million total, during the private and now public phases of this campaign. Through the annual Fund, everyone in the Bucknell community can play a transformative part in the life of the University, the students it educates and the lives it changes.


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Vis ion in Action

UNIVERSITY

INITIATIVES

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In the six initiatives described across the following pages, my faculty colleagues, the Board of Trustees and I identify strategic academic and residential learning priorities. Together, these initiatives will transform the world of learning and growth our students experience and prepare them for the lives Bucknell alumni have always sought—lives filled with action, achievement and fulfillment.

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– I –

The Creative Campus

Initiative

At the intersection of the arts , innovation

and technology: creativity

ProFessor CarMeN GiLLesPie | heather heNNiGaN ’15

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Opportunities in Bucknell’s Creative Campus Initiative include the following:

eNDoW the Creativity, arts aND iNNovatioN FUND

This interdisciplinary fund builds upon the truth that creativity, like the real-world problems it solves, does not work in predictable ways. This fund will enable Bucknell faculty and students to collaborate in original endeavors with faculty, with students from other disciplines and with outside experts. It will fund new programs in individual disciplines, creative residency programs that foster collaboration, campuswide arts and creative projects, visiting residencies by scholars, the fresh integration of technologies into creative projects across the curriculum and interactive programming and summer workshops that make interdisciplinary partnerships a primary focus. The fund will become the cornerstone resource of a creative campus where undergraduates can fully experience the transformative power of creative engagement—and begin mastering creative capacities that can define their lives and careers.

BUiLD a MULtiDisCiPLiNary arts aND Creativity CoMPLex

This building will provide a locus for arts disciplines and provide creative resources for students and faculty across the curriculum. anchored by art and art history, this facility will advance student and faculty work in diverse artistic fields with such components as studio and collaborative spaces, a digital media lab and new display space that more thoroughly integrates our arts collection into education and the visitor experience of Bucknell. The building’s structure and design will encourage and model creativity and make this visionary space a hub for campus creative enterprise—

an interactive landmark for the entire Bucknell community, for visitors to our campus and for the susquehanna river valley region.

estaBLish the BUCKNeLL CeNter For arts aND Creativity

The Bucknell Center for arts and Creativity, which ultimately might be housed in the arts and creativity complex, will serve the same powerful role in our creative campus that our Teaching and Learning Center serves in improving pedagogy and faculty-student mentoring across all disciplines. It will coordinate and foster the expanding array of programs that the interdisciplinary Creativity, arts and Innovation Endowment will make possible. With an endowed directorship, this center will do so under a leader who guides, manages and organizes new and emerging disciplinary and collaborative programs around the common purpose of creative instruction and practice. Through such initiatives, the center will challenge students to encounter the arts, explore their own creative potential and apply that creativity to their own goals.

v I s I O n I n aCT I O n

We must prepare them to solve the global challenges of our era and beyond with new ideas. We must foster creative thinking that turns inspiration into innovation and imagination into action. Bucknell must capitalize on its special capacity to offer students an educational experience of invention, ingenuity and resourcefulness that separates them as leaders in the age ahead.

On Bucknell’s beautiful campus, artists regularly collaborate with engineers, humanists and scientists. Our in-depth curriculum is matched by our rich artistic offerings, where the disciplines of creative writing, studio art, art history, theatre, dance, music, and film and media studies are joined by a landmark performing arts center, two theatre performance spaces, a downtown revitalized art deco movie theatre, two art galleries, a poetry center, a university press and a state-of-the-art library. Here, dancers collaborate with future business executives to create original performance pieces, musicians are scientists-in-training and engineers-to-be explore art through inventive courses.

Our goal is more ambitious than the co-education of artists and others. With the right resources in the right places, we can capitalize on our diverse strengths and empower the creative capacity and confidence of all our students. We can make Bucknell a model creative campus, where every day, in every experience, students discover new dimensions of their originality, leadership and vision. Each Bucknell student will have at his or her disposal the defining elements of success in this time of exceptional change.

We must prepare Bucknellians to lead the great organizations, movements and companies of the future.

the Creative Campus initiative

T H E C a m Pa I G n F O r B U C K n E L L U n I v E r s I T y

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– II –

The Global Learning

Initiative

Bringing the world to Bucknell

and Bucknell to the world

MartiN WeBster ’14 | ProFessor ZhiqUN ZhU

42 43

Opportunities in Bucknell’s Global Learning Initiative include the following:

MaKe GLoBaL eDUCatioN PossiBLe For aLL oUr stUDeNts

In this global age, it is time that we provide students with learning opportunities on all continents, and offer the scholarships necessary to open these programs to all qualified students, regardless of their ability to pay. Currently, by the time our students graduate, about half of them have taken part in some off-campus experience in one of more than 130 Bucknell-approved international programs.

more than that, we can distinguish a Bucknell education by giving most of our engineering and management students global experience. Typically, curricular requirements prevent these students at most universities from having good study-abroad options. In recent years, we have made great strides in offering a curriculum that overcomes this challenge. With new investments, we can open up for our engineering and management students global experiences that are already available to their classmates in other disciplines and support faculty projects that give these students global experiences both on and off campus.

This combination of scholarships and programmatic offerings to all students will make clear that at Bucknell undergraduate learning is global learning.


Create BUCKNeLL ProGraMs iN WashiNGtoN, D.C., aND NeW yorK City

Bucknell is ideally suited to develop semester programs in two of the most globally connected cities in the world: Washington, D.C., and new york City. Both cities are only three hours away from campus and have significant alumni communities. With endowment and other funding, we can design in each city a premier academic and internship experience that prepares students for careers and leadership. While attending relevant and rigorous courses in these cities, students would gain firsthand experience in foreign policy, world affairs, international development, arts, culture, media and global economics. In addition, they would develop a network of connections within their fields of interest and broaden their understanding of potential career choices.

eNDoW stUDeNt ProJeCts oF iNterNatioNaL reaCh

From the Bucknell Brigade to our dance program’s voyage to China to an engineering project bringing fresh water for the first time to a community in nicaragua, our students and faculty engage meaningfully with the wider world. These projects happen because of dedicated faculty members and enthusiastic students. With donor support, such projects will become widespread. Our experience with global projects has prepared us well, for example, to give all engineering majors access to senior design projects around the world, to foster arts students’ collaborations with artists on other continents and to create new service projects where the impact, and the learning, can make the most difference.

In the Bucknell education of the 21st century, students will embrace cultural differences as the norm and master, by doing, the arts of communicating and collaborating effectively across cultural and linguistic boundaries.

Bucknell is increasingly a global university. We enroll students from more than 60 countries. We send students and faculty to diverse regions worldwide for study and service learning. We bridge the borders between Bucknell and the global society through telepresence technology and distinguished visiting scholars. We are connecting what our students learn on campus to new, substantive study experiences for them around the globe.

But our vision is to transform Bucknell into a place where undergraduate and global education are indistinguishable. With the success of the Global Learning Initiative, Bucknell will be a truly global institution—a portal through which our students engage the world; and a magnet for students, scholars and research and program partners from every destination.

at a university that in many ways sets the standard for a broad undergraduate education, our students must have more than knowledge of global cultures, organizations and businesses—they must have experience with them.

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44 45

– III –

The Human Health

Initiative

An unprecedented partnership, a new model for

connecting the l iberal arts to healthcare education

ProFessor DaN CavaNaGh | LaUra eveN ’14

46 47

Opportunities in Bucknell’s Human Health Initiative include the following:

eNDoW a hUMaN heaLth LearNiNG aND researCh FUNDThis endowment would fuel our undergraduates’ engagement in the most critical questions facing the medical and health industries. They would gain experience in areas that promise to transform these industries in the decades ahead, including changes that improve patient care and reduce the cost of care. such experiences will make our graduates knowledge leaders specially prepared to make an impact from the start of their careers, and long beyond. This endowed support will provide funding for student-faculty projects, innovation seed grants and technology-transfer programs, and could also provide support for any and all of the items specified below.

FUND stUDeNt iNveNtors since 2006, collaborations with Geisinger have made it possible for our biomedical engineering students to develop medical devices for use in such areas as general surgery, orthopedics, Dna research and urology. The teams have designed, fabricated and tested prototypes; and Bucknell and GHs have pursued patents on several resulting projects. With the necessary support, we will expand such collaborations through multidisciplinary student design projects, faculty-physician research, intensive interdisciplinary summer internships and modern prototyping facilities. aDvaNCe NeUrosCieNCe researChBoth Bucknell and GHs are strong in neuroscience, psychology and education. as partners we already have initiated a new autism education and research center three miles from campus that promises to make major contributions to understanding autism and helping affected patients and families. With new funding, we will capitalize

on collaborative prospects in studying neurodevelopmental processes of brain development, abnormal development associated with autism, and cancers affecting the brain and nervous system. These studies will be more fully developed as we add new electrophysiological equipment and high-power computing at Bucknell.

iMProve heaLthCare throUGh Data aND hiGh-sPeeD CoMPUtiNGGeisinger is a data-rich healthcare system, with advanced health-information resources on patient care and financial, clinical and genomics data. analyzing these complex data to extract meaningful information presents enormous computational, mathematical and statistical challenges. With the necessary endowment and annual funding, Bucknell can add new, high-speed computing and imaging facilities and take advantage of this tremendous learning opportunity. These facilities, which are rare at liberal arts institutions, will enable our faculty and students to research, design and implement the powerful analytical approaches required for translating immense data sets into valuable healthcare practices.

LearN FroM CoMMUNity aND reGioNaL heaLthCare as healthcare has evolved, the economic, social and cultural dimensions of individual and community habits have become increasingly important to understand. With donor support, students and faculty will be able to capitalize on the Bucknell-GHs partnership and deploy an exceptional combination of economic, sociological and epidemiological data to research critical health and community issues, such as the socioeconomic factors of diabetes and obesity.


Our undergraduates conduct research, devise novel technologies to transform medicine and present at national conferences alongside faculty, enjoying a depth of experience usually reserved for graduate students at large universities.

now our offerings to undergraduates are becoming even more exceptional. Established roughly 60 years after Bucknell and headquartered in nearby Danville, Geisinger Health system (GHs) is a national leader in healthcare delivery and research. Together our institutions make major contributions to the local region’s intellectual, cultural and community development. a new and groundbreaking partnership with GHs gives Bucknell the potential to become a global draw for students and scholars interested in health sciences, which technology and societal demand are making some of the most exciting and compelling fields of the 21st century.

This partnership offers our undergraduates opportunities available at few universities: to become involved in bedside-to-bench-to-bedside learning and research in numerous healthcare-oriented disciplines, including healthcare technologies, bioinformatics, biostatistics and neuroscience. more than that, because of our culture of collaboration among science, engineering, social science and management fields, our students and researchers will be able to explore some of the most pressing challenges in healthcare from multiple perspectives, and likewise at a depth rarely offered to undergraduates.

Bucknell puts undergraduates on the front lines of medical research and patient-care innovations.

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48 49

– Iv –

The Management

Education Initiative

Changing students ’ futures

with a dynamic School of Management

DaviD PaUL raPP-KirshNer ’15 | ProFessor taMMy BUNN hiLLer

50 51

Opportunities in Bucknell’s management Education Initiative include the following:

eNDoW siGNatUre MaNaGeMeNt ProGraMs

Three hallmark experiential programs have set management education at Bucknell apart: management 101, the Institute for Leadership in Technology and management (ILTm) and the student managed Investment Fund (smIF). They have enormous impact on majors and non-majors alike. Endowments for these programs will ensure management education at Bucknell continues to set the standard in experiential education for undergraduates and draws employers to our graduates as never before.

MGMt 101, established in 1980, is an experiential introduction to organization and management in which groups of students—working closely with faculty—learn by forming and running real companies. many hundreds of business and community leaders have begun their careers through mGmT 101.

iLtM, established in 1993, brings together the best and most highly motivated rising juniors in engineering, management and the liberal arts to engage in an intensive six-week, on-campus summer program with faculty and highly regarded practitioners. Its unique strength is preparing students for leadership in sophisticated technology industries.

SMiF, established in 2000, allows students to manage approximately $850,000 of the University’s endowment. The program’s success has garnered our students and faculty national attention. Each year, far more students apply to smIF than one section can accommodate. an endowment will secure the course’s future and allow

us to offer a second section of the course, create a named center and increase smIF’s visibility and the school’s attractiveness to finance students.

iNitiate NeW exPerieNtiaL CoUrses

Heralded by outside observers as a model for all who aspire to contextualize management education in the liberal arts, our new management curriculum offers students deep understanding and competence in accounting and financial management, global management, markets, innovation and design, and managing for sustainability. an endowment and other support will give this bold and impact-oriented curriculum the power to fund course development, experiential programs such as the global manager program and new facilities such as a design realization studio.

Meet DeMaND aND exPaND oUr reaCh

Fifty to 60 percent of Bucknell’s senior class enters the business profession each year. Twenty percent of non-major graduates take at least one management course; some take four or five. Clearly many of our traditional liberal arts majors also want a management education. The school has made great strides to accommodate this demand. But we must do more. With endowment and other funding, we can make it possible for more non-majors than ever before to take management courses—and capitalize upon this rare combination in a liberal arts setting. This funding would support the hiring of talented new faculty, additional multidisciplinary minors, and advanced programs that partner with other initiatives seeking to enhance the leadership skills of all Bucknell graduates.


Bucknellians have founded new ventures, turned around ailing companies, created nationally known brands and risen to key leadership roles in organizations around the world. Today the school of management, formally established in 2008, stands poised to enhance further Bucknell’s stature as an educator of tomorrow’s business leaders. at the heart of this vision is the integration of management and liberal arts education.

What is innovative about Bucknell’s approach to management education? Our management curriculum features four interdisciplinary majors. Each is designed both to prepare students professionally and to encourage them to explore their interests across disciplinary boundaries. Working on real-world projects, our students confront firsthand management and entrepreneurial challenges and apply the insights gained from their broad education. Their four years might include serving as CEO of a startup company, consulting on an actual company’s product design, traveling to Guatemala to help provide eye care to underserved communities and taking a two-week fact-finding mission to the industrial zones of China.

The school of management is now at a pivotal stage. The steps we take at this juncture will make far-reaching innovations in management education at Bucknell a reality.

For more than 100 years, Bucknell has prepared graduates for careers in business and management.

the Management education initiative


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– V –

The Residential

Learning Initiative

Advancing a great tradition through Bucknell ’s

flagship res idential learning model

aNa aGUiLera siLva ’14 | ProFessor KiM DaUBMaN

54 55

Opportunities in Bucknell’s residential Learning Initiative include the following: eNDoW resiDeNtiaL LearNiNG

If we can make the residential Colleges a foundation of Bucknell’s first-year experience, we will enhance student culture as no other endeavor can. an endowment can meet three goals that are critical to building on our winning model and expanding our residential Colleges program. First, it will increase the number of students involved in the program and impact even more of our first-year students, including through the additional support for this growing program from student affairs staff and junior and senior peer mentors. second, it will fund additional faculty-in-residence for the colleges themselves so that more students can have these experiences, including via complementary co-curricular experiences that increase interaction among faculty and students in the residential Colleges. Third, it will fund the addition of visiting experts who will enable us to more effectively integrate in- and out-of-class residential learning experiences.

BUiLD a NeW resiDeNtiaL qUaD

Four new residence halls, housing approximately 80 students each, will allow all but 250 of our students to live on campus and make possible a more complete residential community. Each residence will have suite-style apartments situated around a common room, providing a valuable living option for juniors and seniors as they prepare to transition into life beyond graduation. These halls will be clustered together near the new academic quad formed by academic West and academic East, which are being built south of Bertrand Library. This new quad will create another residential neighborhood on campus with its own café and places for socializing, programming and guest speakers.

Create a CeNter For LeaDershiP DeveLoPMeNt

The time has come for a central set of resources to help our students navigate, build on and make the most of the many leadership experiences available across our academic and residential learning programs. With the necessary funding, the Center for Leadership Development will organize and provide a standout set of integrated leadership experiences in partnership with academic leadership courses and programs such as ILTm (PaGE 51), our new athletics leadership academy and the Career Development Center. With funding for a director, staffing support, faculty mentoring, leadership programming and on- and off-campus leadership experiences, this center can leverage residential learning programs and cultivate as never before the special talent for leadership that characterizes the Bucknell student culture.


surrounded by the classical college beauty that shapes Bucknell, our students come together to live, work and learn, and become better people. Bucknellians are achievers, yet exceptionally driven to achieve together. Their collective energy, interests and ambition make this community an inspiring place, where bonds of respect and friendship form that last a lifetime.

such deep, personal and engaged learning, such camaraderie, happens because of Bucknell’s commitment to the ideals of residential education and an evolving co-curriculum suited to the needs of new generations of students. For the last 25 years, Bucknell’s residential Colleges first-year program has been a standout residential learning model because of our intentional integration of a student’s academic and social development.

In this program, small groups of students—250 first-year students in all—from diverse backgrounds and intended majors choose a first-year Foundation seminar on a subject of interest to them. Each seminar group lives together in themed residential Colleges, working closely with faculty and students from other seminars. Common intellectual interests become the basis for shared conversations and cultural experiences that deeply connect these first-year students. Participants become immersed in academic engagement, student leadership, faculty-student interaction and responsible campus citizenship.

Through the residential Learning Initiative, we aspire to develop equally engaging programs for each year of a student’s Bucknell career, so that we fully support students as they mature and help them maximize their personal growth at each developmental stage of their lives as undergraduates.

Bucknell has played a vital role in shaping the great american higher education tradition that defines residential learning and faculty mentoring as essential to the campus experience.

the residential Learning initiative


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– Vi –

The Sustainability

Initiative

Innovations in teaching, research and practice

for a rapidly changing world

ProFessor Peter WiLshUseN | GiNNa FreehLiNG ’15

58 59

Opportunities in Bucknell’s sustainability Initiative include the following:

BUiLD the sUstaiNaBiLity DesiGN stUDio

This studio would capitalize on our location and broad curriculum by enabling faculty, students, staff and visiting experts to work together on cutting-edge sustainability projects on campus, in surrounding communities and urban areas and at study-abroad sites. This studio would emulate a well-established learning model in architecture, and turn our campus and environs into a laboratory where students and faculty explore together the most challenging questions in sustainability and evaluate creative solutions as they unfold. Experiential learning projects could include integrative design of zero-impact buildings, bioregional planning for sustainable communities and envisioning carbon-neutral cities. The questions sustainability raises are virtually limitless and thus the potential for a studio that integrates our efforts and impacts innovative learning, design creations and research is extensive.

Create aN iNstitUte For LeaDershiP iN sUstaiNaBiLity (iLs)

The intersecting fields that inform sustainability studies, coupled with our comprehensive curriculum, present a powerful opportunity for Bucknell to implement a new version of one of our most successful programs— ILTm (PaGE 51). This intensive six-week program engages top students in multiple aspects of management and leadership. an endowed ILs would create a one-of-a-kind program bringing faculty, students and visiting experts together to explore the complexities of sustainability studies in a dynamic, applied format, tying them directly to career development opportunities with links to Bucknell alumni.

Create a CeNter For iNteGrateD sUstaiNaBiLity stUDies

sustainability intersects with most aspects of Bucknell’s mission and requires innovative, networked approaches to solving problems. a named Center for Integrated sustainability studies would formally link faculty, students and staff across one of our most rapidly developing domains of teaching and research. The center would build upon connections among existing entities such as the Environmental Center, the Office of Civic Engagement and the Teaching and Learning Center, and create a locus for advancing faculty and student learning on the crosscutting theme of sustainability.


From Fortune 500 companies to major cities, from multilateral development agencies to community organizations, institutions are embracing sustainability as a core principle of 21st-century thinking. The questions it invokes go to the heart of Bucknell’s mission and call for expertise in fields in which we excel or have special resources. These questions include the following:

» What sustains human life and human communities over time?

» What practices and values shape the survival and success of civilizations?

» How should humans relate to the natural world? » How do wealth, poverty, global health, energy,

climate change, governance and the world economy shape a society’s future?

These questions cut across disciplines and call upon distinctive Bucknell strengths. We have related expertise in fields ranging from classics to religion and philosophy; political science to psychology and sociology; engineering to management and the full spectrum of natural sciences. We have been a leader in environmental studies for more than 30 years, and have nurtured a range of related interdisciplinary centers, including the Bucknell Institute for Public Policy, the Environmental Center and the Office of Civic Engagement. We enjoy a location in the Central susquehanna river valley that is rich in environmental and community questions with learning opportunities connected to sustainability.

Few other undergraduate institutions possess such a range of assets connected to sustainability. With strategic investments, we can further integrate our teaching, research and programmatic assets to create a living-learning laboratory in this setting and impact one of the most exciting fields in modern culture. We can give our students an education, and an experience of leadership-in-practice, distinctive in america.

rarely has a field of growing societal interest presented a better opportunity for Bucknell’s national and international leadership than the emerging field of sustainability does today.

the sustainability initiative


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When psychology major Judy Plattman ’57 returned from the Delta Upsilon pledge dance she attended withmechanical engineering major Byron Denenberg ’56, her roommate told her that she had stars in her eyes.

“she also predicted that we would marry and even wrote it down to prove that she had known it from the start,” says Judy. Of course her roommate’s powers of perception were correct. (Today we know that her roommate had good odds in her favor: about 15 percent of Bucknellians marry each other.) Judy and Byron were engaged and married in 1957. They have been counting their lucky stars ever since— 55 years to be exact. Throughout their years together, the Denenbergs have also had a love affair with Bucknell. Judy says, “It’s because we want to give back to Bucknell for all that it has given us.” she names among those gifts an excellent education for the two of them, as well as lifelong friendships. However, Byron adds, “The best gift we received was each other.”

They are proud to have seven extended family members who have attended Bucknell, including a great-nephew who is a student today. “We are grateful for unforgettable life experiences and lessons during our college years at Bucknell," says Judy. That appreciation led them to become keenly interested in providing scholarships to Bucknell, especially to students from a diversity of backgrounds. many Bucknell families want to share the Orange and Blue experience with others, which explains the many families with multiple Bucknell degrees stretching across generations. Bucknellians also understandably enjoy the University’s far-reaching name, and the warm recognition when they encounter one another by surprise around the world. While we could not lasso 55 stars for them when the Denenbergs returned to campus for their portrait, we did give them 55 balloons. When they saw them, Judy said what so many Bucknellians say when they return to campus:

“Coming back is a real gift. We love Bucknell.”

LOVE.

W E D O P O rT r a I T s— Pa rT I I

We

ByroN DeNeNBerG ’56 | JUDy PLattMaN DeNeNBerG ’57

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With his newly minted Bucknell engineering degree, Brian Troast ’06 arrived at his first job to face a 70-foot-deep gaping hole. He was staring at Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center once stood. Troast has been working on Tower One, nicknamed Freedom Tower, ever since. He started as a builder, gradually taking on project management and now architectural finishing. When he heads to work in the morning he thinks about the void there when he first started and the horrific events that caused it. motivating him throughout have been the people who lost their lives on 9/11 and the meaning of placing an iconic building back into the new york skyline to honor them.

It took three years for Troast and the rest of the Freedom Tower team to build to street level and another three years to add the new tower’s remaining 104 stories. When completed, Tower One will be the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere and the third-tallest building in the world. He says the experience has been a little like beginning at Bucknell. “as a freshman you start from nothing with a clean slate before you. Four years later you’ve built something amazing.”

Engineering, construction and Bucknell run in the Troast family. Brian, his brother Tyler Troast ’08 and his uncle Doug Troast ’85, along with fellow Bucknellian David Horowitz ’83, P’16, have all worked from foundation to completion stages on one or more of the towers that make up the new World Trade Center complex. Brian says they’ve used their Bucknell education every step of the way. “One of the biggest things Bucknell teaches you is to think on your feet, to keep learning and how to learn. you can’t ever be satisfied thinking you know enough.”

That’s also what excites the Troasts and Horowitz about where Bucknell itself is headed. since it began in 1846, the University has been building something new every day—creating opportunity, bringing new knowledge into the world and strengthening a campus that keeps setting a higher standard for education. That’s what makes Brian Troast most proud to be an alumnus. “Bucknell is never satisfied either,” he says. “It’s always pushing to new levels.”

BUILD.


We

tyLer troast ’08 | DaviD horoWitZ ’83, P’16 | DoUGLas troast ’85 | BriaN troast ’06

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Think sustainability and environmental studies are all about the sciences? Talk to associate Professor of English alf siewers and he’ll open your eyes to literature’s impact on everything from community development along the susquehanna river to the establishment of the national Park system. siewers is an expert in the growing field of environmental humanities, which examines the way social behaviors and cultural ethics shape our environment.

Bucknell not only has notable expertise in this rich area of interdisciplinary study, but also has a susquehanna valley setting where a relative terra incognita gives faculty and students the chance to blaze new research trails. “In many ways the susquehanna valley has been a kind of lost valley,” says siewers. “It hasn’t had its stories articulated on a national level as much as some other regions in the country.” siewers and colleagues such as Professor of German and Humanities Katherine Faull aim to fix that. Faull’s research translating moravian diaries received a national Endowment for the Humanities grant and has revealed an unlikely alliance in the valley between moravian settlers and Iroquois nations.

siewers and Faull are among several Bucknell faculty members who have successfully worked to extend a national Historic Trail from the Chesapeake Bay along the susquehanna river up to the headwaters in Cooperstown, n.y. They are also co-editing a book series, Stories of the Susquehanna Valley, that will be published by the Bucknell University Press and includes a digital component with GIs (geographic information system)-style mapping. says Faull,

“We’re opening a whole new area of problem-solving and community-based research to students.”

This kind of exploration of ideas is at the core of the University’s approach to its entire curriculum. That is the beauty of Bucknell’s liberal arts, engineering and management breadth. Faculty can collaborate within departments, among departments and among colleges to apply such classic fields as philosophy to new fields such as sustainability. They can transform management education through experiential learning. They can create new models of undergraduate education in healthcare. They can deepen any major with rigorous global academic work and firsthand experience. They can make waves that contribute to the entire academy.

MAKE WAVES.


We

ProFessor aLF sieWers | saMaNtha LaUer ’13 | ProFessor KatheriNe FaULL | DreW PiCKetts ’14

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ask entrepreneur Jordy Leiser ’06 why Bucknell seems to have a critical mass of incredibly successful business pioneers—such as Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone ’57, P’83, LendingTree founder Doug Lebda ’92, diapers.com founder marc Lore ’93 and Kiva co-founder Jessica Jackley ’00—and Leiser will tell you it’s all about the people who are attracted to Bucknell. “The University draws independent thinkers who want to do big things. They want to run something rather than be a cog in the wheel.” He says the tight friendships formed among Bucknellians are also a key part of alumni entrepreneurial success. “Trust is so important when you’re starting out. Of course you turn to close friends.”

Leiser partnered with John Ernsberger ’06 to found sTELLaservice. Based in new york City, the company measures and rates the customer service of online retailers and works with Zappos, QvC and other companies to highlight their commitment to great service. sTELLaservice has grown fast and now has 20 employees, including senior analyst nicole Falcaro ’09.

When Ernsberger and Leiser were living on Third street in Lewisburg, trying to get their startup going, they found it wasn’t just the Bucknellians with whom they went to school that they could call for support. Lebda became an early investor and helped recruit other investors, including fellow Bucknellians.

In the spirit of Bucknellians working together and helping one another, Ernsberger and Leiser hope to pay forward the help they received. They have worked with Bucknell to create a business plan for the Bucknell Innovation Center, which includes initiatives such as the Hatchery residential College and an Entrepreneur-in-residence program.

“With technology central to innovation, the University’s combination of engineering and liberal arts is fertile ground to formally put a whole entrepreneurial ecosystem in place,” says Leiser.

He points back to the University’s legacy of successful alumni as well. “The entrepreneurial success at Bucknell has kind of exploded. There are enough of us out here who have been through it to help mentor and advise new generations of upstart Bucknellians that really do want to reinvent the wheel.”

create.


We

JorDy Leiser ’06 | NiCoLe FaLCaro ’09 | JohN erNsBerGer ’06

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Each year, the Bucknell Investment Conference brings together a powerhouse of Bucknell expertise in the finance industry. It is a field in which Bucknell is well known for producing alumni of high achievement and industry knowledge, individuals who are leaders in banking, investment, real estate and more. “among these Bucknellians, there is a fantastic willingness to share their investment insights with the University,” says Bucknell’s chief investment officer, Chris Brown ’81, P’12.

Brown manages the Bucknell endowment along with John Luthi ’04, the University’s trustee Investment Committee and a team of professional money managers. The endowment is a pool of nearly 1,000 individual funds invested for what Brown calls “intergenerational equity”— a baseline assurance of the excellence of the Bucknell experience for today’s and tomorrow’s students. That means striking the right balance between investing for long-term growth and protecting the fund during turbulent market periods. But with so much in-house expertise, why go beyond campus to Bucknell’s wider investment community?

Brown says, “In the broader Bucknell family of 50,000 people there is abundant investment acumen. We wanted to reach out beyond our small circle. The results have been wonderful, including introductions to potential new money managers.” you might say it’s the difference between mere due diligence and Bucknell’s above-and-beyond stewardship of our most important financial assets.

That diligence also inspires Bucknell to reach into the current student population to develop future expertise. These students are prepared and talented, like Katrina Butt ’13, an executive intern and participant in the University’s signature two-semester experiential course, the student managed Investment Fund (smIF). smIF students manage approximately $850,000 of Bucknell’s endowment and gain the intellectual and practical experiences of running a small investment company with Bucknell as the client. Graduates, who often have gone on to careers in financial services, frequently credit smIF as the most powerful learning experience they had at Bucknell. Indeed, Brown recently jumped at the chance to hire another smIF graduate, aleem naqvi ’12, as the University’s newest investment analyst. “We want the best,” says Brown. “aleem is a great addition to our team.”

invest.


We

Chris BroWN ’81, P’12 | KatriNa BUtt ’13 | JohN LUthi ’04 | aLeeM Naqvi ’12

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W e t h a n k t h e b u c k n e L L i a n S a r o u n d t h e W o r L d

W h o W i L L M a k e t h i S ca M pa i G n a S u c c e S S ,

a n d t h e S e d e d i cat e d i n d i v i d ua L S F o r t h e i r

vo Lu n t e e r L e a d e r S h i p i n t h i S M o M e n to u S

c o L L e ct i v e e F F o rt:

h o n o r a ry ca M pa i G n c o - c h a i r S

Kenneth L. ’57 and Elaine Langone P’83robert C. and natalie rookePresident Emeritus Gary a. sojka and

sandy sojka

ca M pa i G n c h a i r

stephen P. Holmes ’79, P’06, P’08

ca M pa i G n c o - c h a i r S

John E. ’78 and sally E. (stoner) Bachman ’78, P’12

Peter W. ’83 and Jane (Taylor) Elfers ’83Kenneth W. Freeman ’72Eugene a. Gorab ’85, P’12, P’16J. randall macDonald P’02William B. morrow Jr. ’70

These investment opportunities are the pathway to the future of a great university, to a stronger and more influential Bucknell. We have no doubt that our community, by its leadership and giving, will make this future possible. We know the love Bucknellians feel for this special place, and the impact Bucknell has on student lives. We know the character and talent of our people. We know Bucknellians believe in action with a purpose. For these reasons, when the question comes, Who believes in the future of Bucknell?, we can only answer: We Do.

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www.bucknell .edu/wedo

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