The Carpe Diem Campaign Explained

No one is more enthusiastic about the Carpe Diem Campaign for McDaniel than Lee Rice ’48. The campaign chairman has been associated with the College for almost half of its 140-year history, and has served as trustee, board chair and, he quips, “prince consort” since marrying President Joan Develin Coley in 2006.

Rice, a rocket scientist turned business consultant, recently predicted meteoric success for the mission to raise $65 million by December 2009. “It’s a worthy goal, but we’ll exceed it,” he says.

The campaign, which was publicly announced during 2007 Homecoming weekend, is more than two-thirds of the way to its goal with $45 million in gifts and pledges raised to date. During the campaign’s “silent phase,” trustees contributed $16 million. Each of 11 leadership donors pledged $1 million or more. And 68 percent of faculty and staff made gifts and pledges totaling $770,000.  With this kind of momentum, Rice says, “We’ll rocket past $65 million over the next two years.”

So why now?

“We must seize the day. This day. Today,” says President Joan Develin Coley, explaining why the campaign is dubbed Carpe Diem, the Latin phrase for the sentiment. “That is our nature as a dynamic college and it is a necessity in the third millennium. We must continue to do what we do, only better.”

Announced as the College celebrates 140 years of changing the lives of its students, the campaign’s themes — Living, Learning and Teaching — reflect the three main areas targeted for funding. Gifts to the campaign will provide endowment funds to support students and faculty, capital funds to revitalize the residential living-learning community and annual funds to support current operations. Every gift to the annual fund counts as a gift to the campaign.

As the world grows smaller, there is an increasing sense of urgency to fund a more robust version of McDaniel. Today’s students live in a global community where, with a simple hand-held computer, they can check soccer scores in Amsterdam, reserve tickets to the Vienna symphony, browse pottery from the Ming dynasty, chat with a villager in Ghana, donate to help victims of a tsunami in Indonesia and offer shelter to a family left homeless by a monster hurricane in New Orleans. Events that happen in a remote village in China have an impact on life in Crisfield, Md.

“The body of human knowledge grows larger, more complex and more interconnected,” Coley says. “Our students must live and learn in a richly diverse community that reflects a world that has become a global village. Their education must be distinctive and relevant to the new-world community. It must be true to our guiding principles, true to our treasured Liberal Arts. And it must also, and always, be vibrant — a step ahead of its peers. We must stretch beyond satisfactory, beyond even good.”

Students — how they learn, what they learn, when and where they learn — are the essence of the College’s mission and the focus of the campaign.

Through its new curriculum, The McDaniel Plan, the faculty has created learning opportunities unique to each year of undergraduate study. Enhanced first-year programs lead the way to development of interdisciplinary seminars for sophomores. As juniors, students will concentrate on writing in their chosen discipline, and seniors will work closely with professors as they delve into a capstone research project. Funds for endowed chairs and professorships, visiting scholars and guest lecturers are all needed to contribute and empower the intellectual journey which results in a graduate who knows how to think, analyze, understand, question and resolve conflicts both large and small.

Much enhancement of the living-learning environment has already been achieved in the past few years. Academic Hall, completed in June 2005, has brought graduate education into the hub of campus activity. The Merritt Fitness Center and Klitzberg Pavilion give students more to do and places to go to meet each other and hang out. More students are able to enjoy apartment living in the North Village, and they are treated to everything from concerts to lectures in the renovated Decker Center Forum.

“The McDaniel of tomorrow,” describes Coley, “will continue to be a robust learning community where the liberal arts and sciences thrive alongside rigorous majors.” But there will be more opportunities for learning outside the classroom in internship and study abroad programs, further improvements to residential and recreational facilities, an emphasis on faculty training in instructional technology and curriculum development through the Center for Faculty Excellence, visiting scholars and endowed professorships, increased diversity, and, of course scholarships.

At a Sept. 29 event celebrating substantial contributions by members of the Founders Society, Trustee Otto Guenther ’63 and wife, Jan, envisioned a day when, “No student who deserves and will benefit from a McDaniel education is turned away for lack of funds.”

Concludes Coley: “With the Carpe Diem Campaign for McDaniel, we move forward doing what we do, only better — changing with the times, gaining momentum
in a fiercely competitive market, seizing opportunity each and every day.”