Support for the College
As part of the Opportunity Through Excellence Campaign for Southern, an unprecedented $100 million effort through the SIU Foundation, the College seeks to raise $9 million for the following purposes:

Student Scholarships
$l million

Scholarships are a competitive necessity to attract and retain the best and brightest students and to maximize diversity. The College plans to create an endowment to fund recruitment scholarships, minority scholarships, single-parent scholarships, first-generation scholarships, and international graduate student scholarships.

Student Support/Hands-on Learning
$500,000

Hands-on, real-world training opportunities are essential to media industry success. For the College of Mass Communication & Media Arts to compete with other top communications colleges, an endowment to support WSIU Public Broadcasting, as well as other hands-on opportunities—Hollywood Studies, Chicago Studies, Nashville Studies, New York Studies, the Daily Egyptian, the Big Muddy Film Festival, River Region News, alt.news and WIDB Radio—is essential.

Support for Faculty: Endowed Chair
$l million

An endowed chair will profoundly impact the national prestige of the College of Mass Communication & Media Arts. It will be a significant attraction for the nation’s best professors and talented students pursuing funded graduate research opportunities. An endowed chair also attracts attention from peer institutions and funding agencies.

Support for Faculty: Endowed Professorships
$500,000

The College seeks to establish two endowed professorships to attract prominent educators and retain talented faculty who might consider other opportunities. The professorships will enhance funds for salaries and benefits as well as afford opportunities for professional travel and scholarly research.

Support for Faculty: Distinguished Visiting Scholar/Artist/Media
Professional Program
$500,000

A Distinguished Visiting Scholar/Artist/Media Professional Program would invite leading scholars, artists, and industry professionals to campus to interact with students and faculty. Their visits can range from a few days to an entire semester. Students and faculty will benefit enormously from exposure to prominent innovators and practitioners.

Global Media Research Center
$l million

In fall 2004, the College established a Global Media Research Center where students, scholars, and media artists are challenged to study media industries from a global perspective and to understand their impact on humanity. The Center and its programming activities are attracting exceptional students who will be uniquely prepared to take on leadership roles in the information age.

The Center has short-term funding from the university, but it must establish a permanent endowment to support its ongoing activities, including Global Fusion (an annual conference held in collaboration with the University of Texas-Austin, Ohio University, and Purdue University), a visiting scholar/artist/media professional program, and an international film series. The Center is also working to create international linkages with leading universities in Asia.

WSIU Facilities and Technologies Fund
$4.5 million

WSIU Public Broadcasting offers significant opportunities for students to be involved in a professional media setting that reaches 300,000 households. WSIU’s technologies and studio facilities support the institutional mission of the College. An exemplary student production done in this collaborative enterprise is the award-winning television program alt.news, which has won l3 Emmy awards in six years.

WSIU is mandated under federal law to convert to digital production. Additional funding is required to complete this project and to train students to broadcast in the digital world.