The College’s remarkable triptych of excellence—teaching, research, and community service—must be sustained and enhancedthrough Opportunity Through Excellence Campaign for Southern, an unprecedented $100 million effort through the SIU Foundation. The College seeks to raise $l3 million for the following purposes:

Student Diversity and Financial Assistance
$3 Million

The College is committed to student diversity and to providing need- and merit-based financial assistance. Beyond the rising costs of higher education everywhere, students enrolled in several CASA programs face additional expenses that can total more than $35,000. These expenses include specialized textbooks, instruments and tools, and fees to help offset extraordinary equipment purchase and maintenance, as well as costs associated with aviation, automotive, and healthcare programs.

Scholarships will help students participate in enriching off-campus activities such as summer adventures to Europe to study the roots and inspiration of architecture and to Mexico to provide dental services to the residents of small rural villages.

Faculty Diversity and Excellence
$3 Million

Excellence requires diverse, experienced, expert, and productive faculty. Major research universities such as Southern Illinois University Carbondale are in fierce competition for outstanding faculty and therefore must develop competitive advantages. The College seeks funding to establish endowed faculty chairs, which will help provide salaries and benefits equal to those of other major research universities. Gifts at all levels help fund faculty research and other scholarly work as well as travel to national and international conferences and seminars.

Gifts also will help sustain and enhance faculty-led research and activities in such areas as dental care for children with autism and other developmental disabilities, airport safety, smoking cessation, degree-earning opportunities for place-bound students, and adaptive computer technology and accessible website design.

Program Excellence
$3 Million

The College seeks gifts to ensure that CASA program materials and instruction keep pace with rapidly emerging techniques and technologies, particularly in the dynamic fields of healthcare, automotive technology, aviation, and information management.

Donor gifts are also needed to help sustain and enhance vital programs (for example, the on-campus Community Dental Center, which provides dental services at no charge to under-served populations) and the College’s off-campus academic programs, which provide degree-earning opportunities to service personnel and others at l3 sites throughout the United States.

Transportation Education Center
$4 Million

The College’s $40 million, 27l,000 sq. ft. Transportation Education Center (TEC) has received architectural and engineering planning funding from the state of Illinois, but will require donor support to fulfill its mission to serve students in the College’s internationally acclaimed Automotive Technology, Aviation Flight, Aviation Management, and Aviation Technologies programs.

Beyond its academic function, the TEC will greatly enhance the potential for transportation-related research and training partnerships between Southern and the private sector. It also could positively impact economic development in the southern Illinois region.

The TEC has been enthusiastically endorsed by dozens of transportation-related firms nationwide, including American Airlines, American Honda, The Boeing Company, DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Toyota Motor Sales USA, and United Airlines.