When the Many Dreams, One Mission Campaign for DePaul University officially closed on June 30, gifts had topped $333 million, making it the largest fundraising effort in the history of the university.
“This Campaign has built a stronger DePaul,” says the Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, C.M., president of DePaul University. “Donors understand DePaul’s commitment to providing an excellent education to our students. Thanks to them, DePaul will continue to be able to attract and educate talented students from a wide array of backgrounds.”
Overall, Campaign giving to the business college surpassed $113.8 million. “Alumni and friends of the college who responded to this Campaign helped us to strengthen our faculty and our programs, our learning environments and tools, and our ability to help students fund their education,” says Ray Whittington, dean of the Driehaus College of Business.
Alumnus Richard H. Driehaus (BA ’65, MBA ’70, DHL ’02), the investment pioneer and philanthropist whose name now graces the college, made a historic $30 million gift to support an endowment fund to attract and retain top business faculty. The shortage of PhD educators needed to provide a high-quality education puts a premium on the salaries they can command and contributes to the challenge of keeping tuition costs in line. Recognizing this need, Driehaus endowed the fund to help DePaul remain nationally competitive and encourage other generous alumni to contribute so that incoming students can have the excellent classroom experiences they remember so fondly.
Campaign gifts also enabled the expansion of the business school’s Finance Lab, a virtual trading room that symbolizes the school’s innovation and academic excellence in blending leading-edge theory with real-world practice. The lab supports graduate and undergraduate courses in portfolio management, risk management, investment, financial engineering and quantitative methods by providing Bloomberg Terminals with live financial market information as well as other data sources and analytical tools.Additional donor support will enable the college to keep up with technological innovations and expand its business facilities and career services.
More than $106 million in new scholarship funding was raised during the campaign. Ryan Daliege (BUS ’11) expresses his gratitude for the generosity of Campaign donors:
“DePaul provided me with an excellent education in finance, but it never could have happened without my scholarship,” says Daliege, who is back at DePaul in the MBA program while working as a financial advisor for Ayco Company, a Goldman Sachs company.
DePaul thanks its many Campaign donors and invites other grateful alumni to continue the momentum of this historic fundraising Campaign.
