“Putting students first is what we do.
 It’s who we are.”

Click on image for enlargement Related links: Manchester mentors “built me up, made me realize I could do it” Students First! The Campaign for Manchester The Fulcrum. The Students First! cabinet Students First! videos More pictures from this article:

Jason Elliott ’11 with economics mentors John Deal and Sree Majumder. Elliott is working on a degree in environmental economics at Duke University.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels helped the College break ground on its School of Pharmacy in Fort Wayne on Aug. 4.

Christopher Garber ’77, associate vice president for financial affairs and director of operations, looking up, keeps an eye on construction of the Academic Center.

Students were front and center to say THANK YOU to donors at the Students First! campaign kick-off on Oct. 21. From left, Makenna Hamilton ’14, Ha Vu ’12 and Sam Ott ’13.

THERE’S JUST NO OTHER WAY TO BEGIN this story about The Campaign for Manchester:

100. Million. Dollars.

Manchester College is stepping smartly along a fund-raising path lined with new learning facilities, scholarships, and new student and faculty support systems. Increases to the endowment and annual fund will sustain the journey.

$100 million is a breathtaking goal for the Students First! campaign, but President Jo Young ’69 Switzer and the Board of Trustees are confident the College has generous support and the right team. Manchester will broaden students’ horizons with transformative opportunities and structures.

In the three-year “silent” phase of the campaign, leadership donors built momentum with inspiring giving. Some committed $500,000, $1 million and more to the goal, demonstrating exciting ways to put Students First! – from bequests to gifts of property, insurance and cash.

A $35 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to establish the School of Pharmacy was a game-changer, not only in the highly competitive challenge for donor funds, but in the equally competitive challenge for the best pharmacy faculty and students.

The title of the campaign came easy.

“Students first. That’s the way learning happens here,” said President Switzer. “It’s our way of teaching. It’s second nature for us to listen and respond to our students, to help them develop into persons of ability and conviction. To prepare them to make a positive impact on the world.

“Putting students first is what we do. It is who we are.”

President Switzer told major donors at an October thank you event: “This doggedly persistent school that accepted potatoes for students’ tuition payments in the 1930s has raised $73 million! We will raise $27 million more because challenges are not new to us.”

The remaining $27 million will come from the more typical Manchester donor of more modest means. This is the most challenging portion of the campaign, but Manchester never has acted small.

• Manchester graduates continue to give at a rate twice the national average.
  
  
• Manchester celebrates 28 Fulbright winners (in 15 years) and is setting an MC record for Fulbright applications this year.
  
  
• Manchester College choirs perform at Carnegie Hall and in the Vatican.
  
  
• Manchester College CPA case study teams out-perform teams from the largest schools in the state.
  
  
• A visit to the Manchester College website reveals hundreds of
  other examples of great ability and conviction.

The eight-year campaign has nine focal funds, each with a goal ranging from $36 million for the School of Pharmacy to $1 million for a new Chime Tower.

Manchester’s alumni and friends have a tradition of sharing the load and “paying it forward.” They give in memory of their College experiences, teachers and mentors and in support of the College mission to graduate persons who accept their responsibility to help improve the human condition. A nine-year fund drive concluded in 2005 with $70 million, $20 million over goal.

This phase of Students First! will stir new donors to engage in the College, said Michael Eastman, vice president for college advancement. “For a third of our donors, this will be their first time giving to Manchester.”

Many will spread their giving over several years. Many will become new members of the Otho Winger Society of donors who remember the College in their estate plans. Many will beef up their annual giving to The Manchester Fund and to endowed scholarships.

Some will remember a professor or relative by naming a faculty office ($15,000) or a small classroom ($75,000), spreading the gift over five years. Some will chime in on a new bell tower that will rise in the middle of campus, as visible as it is now audible.

The College Advancement team, and the Students First! website are poised and ready to “make it so,” with suggestions, possibilities, planned giving consultation and a grinning thank you. Donors in growing numbers are finding the website a swift and easy way to put students first, said Janeen Kooi, director of The Manchester Fund, the most popular recipient of e-gifting.

Leadership alumni donors Dave ’73 and Sandy Cleveland ’74 Haist’02
co-chair the Students First! campaign. A Campaign Cabinet of 16 others, including President Switzer and Eastman, joins them.

“I truly believe this campaign is a transformative step forward for
Manchester College,” said President Switzer. “We have weathered the recession by making some significant cuts in spending, but we have actually increased our financial support for students. We continue to put students first, even when it requires sacrifice by faculty and staff.”

Some of the projects are well under way. One is complete – the addition to the Physical Education and Recreation Center with new learning and athletic training areas and locker rooms. While students and student-athletes already are making good use of the PERC addition, almost $1 million still is needed for that project.

In June, faculty and staff will begin moving into their new offices in the School of Pharmacy in Fort Wayne, and into the Academic Center and admissions Welcome Center transformation of Holl- Kintner Hall.

In 1889, the White House got electricity, the first juke box spun its first record in California and Manchester College raised the first wing of the Administration Building.

We’re still using it.

This semester, 125 classes are scheduled in the Ad Building. Faculty and students can’t wait for the Academic Center’s climate controlled, accessible classrooms that are designed, furnished and equipped for modern learning.

Connor “Scout” Nickell ’14 feels the pain of the ailing building. This fall, the former defensive lineman for Spartan football had knee surgery. He’s a management and marketing major, drawn to Manchester by the reputation of its business program, and for the chance to play football.

He returned to campus on crutches, donned his business suit and headed to his Retailing class on the third floor of the Ad Building to make a presentation. By the time he had laboriously hefted himself up each of the 65 steps, he had sweated through his suit.

“It takes a while to get to class; it’s pretty labor-intensive,” said Nickell, who is loving the retailing class taught by Joe Messer. “Actually, I like all my business classes. I like business,” he said.

In the tradition of Manchester, many, many volunteers, advisors and cheerleaders are helping to set the table for Students First!

• A Campaign Cabinet of members past and present of the Board of Trustees, members of the President’s Leadership Council and other very good friends of the College. (See article below.)

• A College Advancement team led by Eastman, dedicated
  to life-time connections with alumni, friends and
  foundations.
  
  
• A president with a calendar brimming with donor visits,
  meetings with state and national officials, and outreaches
  to the community and northeast Indiana.
  
  
• Community leaders, legislators, the governor of Indiana,
  health care and economic development officials, and
  foundation leaders who are cheering for the School of
  Pharmacy.
  
  
• And students, faculty, staff members and alumni who help
  tell the story. No models or advertising fakes here. It’s
  reality college.

“I wouldn’t have even gone to Manchester if it weren’t for alumni giving. I simply could not afford the costs of going to school,” said Nate Hodges ’11, for a campaign video. (Watch Nate’s and other testimonials online.)

Joi Harmon ’12 wants to share with underprivileged children in Indianapolis what she’s learning at Manchester: There are no limits to your potential, even if you are poor and the first in your family to attend college.

Scholarships led Joi to grand new experiences, and she is grateful: “Being a success story is an uplifting and empowering feeling.”

Manchester mentors “built me up, made me realize I could do it”

SIDE BY SIDE – THEY WORK TOGETHER, learn together, research together, serve together, even explore the world together. Ask almost any student or graduate what they value most about their Manchester College years and they are likely to say the mentor-friendships.

Whether you talk to alumni from the class of ’49 or the class of ’09, the stories of encouragement and inspiration are the same. They recall teachers and staff members at Manchester who helped them realize their potential, pointed them in the right direction, believed in them before they believed in themselves, or simply changed everything.

During his sophomore year, Dave Haist ’73 enrolled in classes taught by economics Professor Richard B. Harshbarger ’56 and accounting Professor Arthur L. Gilbert ’53. “They took a sincerely personal interest in me – a very unprepared but motivated underclassman,” recalls Haist. Today, he is chief operating office for Do it Best Corp., with 400 locations in 50 countries.

Harshbarger, now professor emeritus, remembers Haist as a quiet, well-prepared student in his Macro Economics and Money and Banking classes. Even back then, the professor saw great potential in young Haist. “You could see it in his relationship with his fellow students when he spoke. They were listening to him. He was respected by his colleagues. There was leadership potential there.”

Consider this: If not for the mentoring by Bippus teacher J. Daniel Groff ’31 and his wife, Mary Reese ’33 Groff, poor farm boy John F. Young ’42 would never have considered college – or Manchester College, where he met Miriam Kindy ’45x, his future wife – and future mother of President Jo Young ’69 Switzer. Groff, now 100 and a generous donor, still says Manchester is a pretty great place to prepare for making a difference.

Today, Cassie Franks ’10 is a staff auditor for Greenwalt CPAs in Indianapolis. Focused study got her there. So did her Manchester teacher-mentors, she says with great gratitude. “They increased my confidence. Built me up. Made me realize I could do it.”

Haist and his wife, Sandy Cleveland ’74 Haist ’02 (they met at MC in the ’70s) co-chair the Students First! campaign cabinet. They want to make sure
graduates always will have Manchester mentor stories to tell.

$100 MILLION! A GOAL of such historic impact for Manchester College requires significant depth of leadership. Manchester has a 123-year tradition of inciting transformation, a reputation for getting the job done. The fulcrum for Students First! The Campaign for Manchester is a fund-raising team comprised of persons of great ability and conviction – persons of vision, energy and dedication.

Manchester campus sweethearts David ’73 and Sandra Cleveland ’74 Haist ’02 co-chair the Campaign Cabinet. These 18 volunteers are sharing
their valuable time and advice with Michael Eastman and the College Advancement team in the strategic direction of Students First!

Dave Haist, former chair of the Board of Trustees, is chief operating officer for Do It Best Corp, headquartered in Fort Wayne. Sandy Haist is a member of the President’s Leadership Council and a former Manchester adjunct instructor in computer science.

Members of the Students First! Campaign Cabinet (Click on image for enlargement)

D. RANDALL (RANDY) BROWN ’87, member of Board of Trustees, partner in Barnes & Thornburg LLP in Fort Wayne, shares his commitment to MC with wife, Sheila Auld ’87 Brown.

E. MICHAEL EASTMAN, vice president for College Advancement, shares his commitment to MC with his wife, Victoria.

SARA S. EDGERTON ’70, member of the Board of Trustees; CEO of Community Cancer Care in Indianapolis.

SAMUEL G. GUNNERSON ’64, former chair of Board of Trustees, retired from Gunnerson Associates Inc., Goodyear, Ariz., shares his commitment to MC with his wife, Norma Gunnerson ’63.

CAROLYN MOLDENHAUER ’61 HARDMAN, former vice chair of Board of Trustees, member of President’s Leadership Council, shares her commitment to MC with her husband, Dr. Donald Hardman ’59.

J. MICHAEL JARVIS ’68, former member of Board of Trustees, member of President’s Leadership Council, president of Jarvis Enterprises based in Franklin, Ind., shares his commitment to MC with his wife, Sandy.

MARSHA PALMER ’68 LINK, chair of the Board of Trustees, principal owner of Link Consulting based in Irvine, Calif., shares her commitment to MC with her husband, Bill.

CHRISTIAN M. MASLOWSKI ’99, executive director of Greater Greenwood (Ind.) Chamber of Commerce, shares his commitment to MC with his wife, Michelle.

DR. J.D. MASTERSON ’58, urologist for Veterans Administration Palo Alto (Calif.) Health Care System, shares his commitment with his wife, Renee.

PAULA M. MENDENHALL ’86, member of the Board of Trustees, human resources manager for Exxon Mobil Corp., shares her commitment to MC with her husband, Grady Mendenhall ’86.

RICHARD D. ROBINS ’64, member of the Board of Trustees, retired vice president of Lubrizol Corp., shares his commitment to MC with his wife, Kate.

LARRY ROWLAND, member of Board of Trustees and President’s Leadership Council, partner in NxtStar Ventures LLC consulting firm based in Fort Wayne, shares his commitment to MC with his wife, Wendy.

JO YOUNG ’69 SWITZER, president of Manchester College, shares her commitment to MC with her husband, Dave.

DR. PHILLIP C. WRIGHT ’78, former member of the Board of Trustees, medical director for Physicians Health Plan (PHP) of Northern Indiana Inc. in Fort Wayne, shares his commitment to MC with his wife, Marcia.

JOHN ZEGLIS, member of the Board of Trustees, retired president of AT&T, chairman and CEO of AT&T Wireless, shares his commitment to MC with his wife, Carol.

DR. ELVIN G. ZOOK ’59, member of the Board of Trustees, chair of plastic surgery for Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield, shares his commitment to MC with his wife, Sharon Neher ’61 Zook.