More than 250 members of the Founders Society attended a dinner held in their honor Sept. 16 on campus. Guests traveled from 12 states and the District of Columbia and represented alumni from every decade from the 1940s to 2003 to enjoy the formal event held in a spacious clear-topped tent that afforded Founders a spectacular view of academic buildings along the campus ridge.

Thirteen students from the Student Alumni Council presented talks about new academic projects and gave golf-cart tours along the just-opened loop road that connects North Village student apartments to the athletic fields and the Leroy Merritt Fitness Center, currently under construction on the front entrance of Gill Center.

“Our campus has changed,” said President Joan Develin Coley in her brief remarks at the dinner. “Today’s student chooses a college not only on the quality of its academics, but also on the amenities of lifestyle. As we renovate and build new residence halls, as we create places for students to gather to study, to learn, to ‘work out,’ to eat and to play, we move ever closer to the living learning community of our vision.”

In the fiscal year 2006, gifts to the Annual Fund and to the broader capital objectives from members of the Founders Society totaled just under $10 million.

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