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Grove City College mounting major fund-raising campaign
Thursday, October 26, 2000 By Bill Schackner, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Grove City College is mounting its biggest campus construction push in half a century and plans to pay for the work with a $60 million fund-raising campaign that its leaders will announce tonight in Pittsburgh.
Forty million dollars from the campaign will go toward four major building projects, including a new student center and a plan to replace and expand Grove City's main academic building.
Another $20 million in donations will enable the school to create new scholarships that campus leaders say are necessary for Grove City to remain competitive.
The drive is the first major fund-raising effort since the 1940s for a campus that has decided to forgo federal aid rather than submit to the regulation that comes with it.
Tonight, Grove City President John Moore will tell 400 supporters in the Duquesne Club, Downtown, that half the goal has been raised, including three $2 million gifts to support the new Internet-equipped academic building and a fourth $2 million donation toward scholarships.
Moore said the college decided to launch its fund drive, dubbed "Change and Commitment," after examining how it could better meet student needs.
"We realize that we have to change some of the things we're doing in order to compete well and provide the kind of education that we want to provide, for example in the area of technology," he said. "But at the same time, we want to emphasize continuing commitment to the basic principles of the school."
The 2,300-student Christian college will also use tonight's dinner to launch a yearlong celebration of Grove City's 125th anniversary.
Turning to private donors for scholarship aid is a common college fund-raising practice. But Grove City says its need to do so is especially acute, since the campus dropped out of the federal government's student loan program in 1996.
That year, it established its own loan program using PNC Bank rather than submit to what college officials described as burdensome U.S. Department of Education regulations.
Those regulations compel schools to agree to provide audited financial statements to the federal government and submit to other kinds of oversight.
Moore said the school was still happy with that decision, and with four applicants for each freshman slot, was not hurting for students.
Still, he said the school needed to find ways to make up for the federal loan money that other schools could offer their students.
"We don't have the federal resources to rely on so we need to rely on private resources," said Tom Pappalardo, the school's vice president for institutional advancement.
The college, which does not offer faculty tenure, has long relied on conservative spending practices to keep its costs lower than many other private institutions. It costs $12,500 a year for tuition, room and board, including a laptop computer and a printer.
The largest of the building projects slated under the campaign is a $20 million plan to demolish Calderwood Hall, the school's main academic hub. It will be replaced with a larger, three-story classroom complex with seminar rooms, Internet-equipped classrooms and a 230-seat lecture space. Grove City hopes to break ground on the project in the spring.
The school plans to spend $7.5 million for a new student activities center that will house a food-court style eatery, the campus bookstore, student offices and a commuter lounge
"We think it will be a very popular meeting place," Moore said.
The school also plans to spend $8 million to restore and enlarge its oldest building, Carnegie Hall, which was built in 1900.
Another $4.5 million will be used to expand the Pew Fine Arts Building.
Moore said the $20 million being sought for student financial aid would be added to the school's $75 million endowment. Earnings from that would be used to create $1 million a year in new scholarships.
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