After announcing the UW-Eau Claire Foundation gathered $54 million during its seven-year Fulfilling the Promise of Excellence campaign, the university is turning its attention to new projects the Foundation will help fund, Chancellor Brian Levin-Stankevich said. The Foundation hopes to raise money for UW-Eau Claire to convert to an all Steinway piano campus as well as develop Faculty Opportunity Funds for every department, he said.
All-Steinway campus
Senior piano performance major David Hurd said he has been playing piano since kindergarten and nothing quite compares to the quality of a Steinway piano.
The pianos on campus now could afford to be replaced, he said.
“The pianos we have now aren’t the best quality,” Hurd said, adding that the current stock of pianos is getting too old. “Steinways are pretty much top of the line.”
Levin-Stankevich said along with providing the best possible pianos for students, becoming an All-Steinway campus will help the music program maintain its level of prestige.
“We are the premier undergraduate program in the state and we want to continue to be,” he said.
The immediate fundraising goals for the campaign are $500,000 by Dec. 31, 2008, and $1.5 million by Sept. 1, 2010, according to the campaign’s Web site.
Faculty Opportunity Funds
Geography professor Harry Jol knows a thing or two about faculty research projects. Jol said he is currently involved in several research projects around the globe, including Israel, Poland and Antarctica. Any help the university can give to its professors to continue to do research is essential, he said.
“To be able to have time to work on projects … is important,” Jol said.
Levin-Stankevich said the funds will allow professors to travel to conferences, go out to research areas and improve teaching methods. The means for fundraising for each department will follow the model developed in the department of communication sciences and disorders, which he said was effective in identifying donors.
UW-Eau Claire senior Hyeyoung Han said she benefited greatly from participating in a faculty-student research project last summer. The project, which studied a newspaper published in North Korea, taught her how to gather information and properly analyze it, she said.
“I was taking summer classes (while doing the research),” Han said. “It helped me learn how to manage my time.”
Jol said students can learn much about their field of study by participating in faculty-student research, adding to the project’s importance at the university.
“All the projects I have worked on include students,” he said. “UW-Eau Claire students benefit directly from coming along (on research projects).”
Levin-Stankevich said some departments are already getting aid from the Faculty Opportunity Funds. The first stages of the Steinway project should also be seen as soon as the funds are raised, he said.
“These are projects where we will get to see the benefit right away.”