Acadia’s $75 million fundraising campaign, titled the ‘Campaign for Acadia’ has launched.
Acadia University has been working on the campaign for several years in the ‘quiet phase’, soliciting donations and pledges from around the world. $40 million has already been accumulated in private donations, with an additional $10 million in pledges. Today marks the beginning of the public phase of the campaign.
The Campaign looks to raise $75 million to support four streams: Transform, Inspire, Discover, and Build.
The Transform stream looks to raise $30 million to strengthen student experiences by increasing access to scholarships and bursaries, expanding co-op programs and other experiential learning opportunities, promoting student mental health and well-being, leading the process of indigeneity on campus, and creating a competitive edge with support for Athletic Excellence Awards.
The Inspire stream looks to raise $12.5 million to promote exceptional teaching and engagement by creating new endowed professorships and chairs, expanding opportunities across disciplines for scholars-, executives-, and artists-in-residence, creating supports to attract post-doctoral scholars, and facilitating life-long learning.
The Discover stream looks to raise $12.5 million to support innovative teaching and research by expanding financial support for graduate research programs, enhancing summer research awards. creating a digital scholarship centre, establishing an agriculture and beverage research institute, and bolstering the K.C. Irving Environmental Trust to support research.
The Build stream looks to raise $20 million to solidify Acadia’s physical and financial infrastructure by adapting buildings to improve accessibility, protecting library archives and modernizing study spaces, renewing key campus buildings, expanding the Athletics Complex facilities, reimagining the Students’ Union Building, and boosting the value of Acadia’s endowment.
“The major beneficiaries of the Campaign are going to be the students” President Ricketts said. “Many of the students here now may feel like this something far off in the future, but even here now in the Huestis Innovation Pavilion, it creates an amazing opportunity to have an early home run and support things like co-op opportunities, scholarships, and infrastructure renewal around the campus.”
The Campaign is led by Nancy McCain (’82) of McCain frozen foods fame, who is married to the current Minister of Finance Bill Morneau. The Campaign Cabinet steering the direction of the Campaign, is composed of numerous prominent individuals including former Conservative Attorney General Peter Mackay (’87), Canadian Tire CEO Stephen Wetmore (’75), former Chancellor Libby Burnham (’60), and Nova Scotia Power CEO Karen Hutt (’89).
“The Campaign for Acadia will be critical to Acadia’s mission to provide a personalized and rigorous liberal education,” said McCain. “I’m proud to be joined by a team of dedicated alumni who are part of our Campaign Cabinet. I know that by working together we’ll reach our ambitious goal of $75 million.”
The Campaign will formally begin with numerous events across the world, including launch events in Calgary, London, Halifax, Ottawa, and Hong Kong.
Colin Mitchell is a fourth year (Honours) Politics student and Editor in Chief of The Athenaeum
