As the end of calendar year 2016 approaches, here’s another cause for celebration: generous support from thousands of friends and alumni is allowing our students to thrive and to accomplish great things.
Publicly launched in 2015, the university’s comprehensive Faster Farther campaign has now raised a multi-year total of more than $470 million, helping to fuel new and significant accomplishments. Across the board, private philanthropy is making great things like these possible at Mason:
- providing scholarships to hundreds of deserving students (like dance major Mikayla McKee), including those whose families might otherwise struggle to afford a college education;
- recruiting outstanding faculty (like Prof. Elham Sahraei, who recently joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering as the first Beck Foundation Faculty Fellow);
- building new facilities like the Peterson Family Health Sciences Hall, which will serve as the area’s foremost center for health education when it opens in 2017;
- driving the region’s economy and improving its quality of life by producing more than 8,000 skilled graduates each year, including current and future entrepreneurs like coffee maven Niels Buskov.
“Great happens” here, thanks to your generous support
Meanwhile, donors at all levels are helping write future success stories. In 2016 alone, they include Claire Kincannon, a journalist and author, whose endowment gift funds a graduate student internship for the University Libraries; Sumeet Shrivastava, a technology executive and president of the School of Business alumni chapter, whose pledge has helped establish the new GovCon center; Cathy and Dick Becker, Navy veterans and retired businesspeople, whose gift will fund graduate student teaching and research in environmental science and policy at the College of Science; and Mary Postma, a retired realtor, whose planned gift with her husband Hans will create a legacy at the Hylton Performing Arts Center in support of her passions, the arts and children.
So as 2016 draws to a close, we look forward to ringing in an even greater 2017—with a team effort from every member of Mason Nation—including the nearly 1,250 individuals who made annual gifts totaling $1,000 or more in 2016.
December 13, 2016 / RR