A couple of impromptu
donations of $100,000 apiece helped UPEI kick off the
second leg of its $50-million Building a Legacy
fundraising campaign Monday.
The campaign, begun two
years ago with a stated goal of $25 million, officially
wrapped up Monday as university president Wade
MacLauchlan announced that campaign chair Fred Hyndman
had surpassed the goal by gathering $26.9 million in
donations.
MacLauchlan
congratulated Hyndman on his success, then announced
that Summerside businessman Mike Schurman would be
taking the Building a Legacy campaign toward its next
goal — $50 million.
Within that goal is a
sub-campaign, led by property developer Tim Banks, to
raise $6 million in donations for planned expansion of
the School of Business into a Centre for Enterprise and
Entrepreneurship.
The centre will be
built from the former residence at Marian Hall. “The other reason
we’re here today is that we’ve got more work to do,” he
said.
Banks, whose APM group
is responsible for some of Charlottetown’s major
property developments, said he was pleased to be asked
to take on the business centre.
He said he and
Schurman wouldn’t let themselves fall short of Hyndman’s
fundraising success.
“Mike and I are pretty
competitive,” he said. “Whatever Fred has done we’ll
have to outdo.”
“How I’d like to start
the campaign is our company is going to step up and
we’re going to donate $100,000.”
The trick was soon
matched by UPEI Chancellor Bill Andrew, an energy
entrepreneur, who stepped to the microphone and chipped
in $100,000 of his own.
“The podium is open if
anyone else wants to step up,” MacLauchlan quipped.
The announcements were
not the first financial support for the business centre.
ACOA Minister Joe
McGuire announced that his department would contribute
$1.69 million toward the centre. He said he sees UPEI
and Holland College providing leadership that will help
Prince Edward Island transform into a knowledge-based
economy.
“There are a
university and a community college playing to each
other’s strengths in addressing a provincewide human
capital challenge,” he said.
“The university and
its leader have recognized that to maintain the status
quo is to fall behind.”
Education Minister
Mildred Dover said government is impressed by UPEI’s
dynamism and by the public support made evident with the
school’s fundraising success. The province has already
committed $4 million to the renovations through its
long-term capital support for the university.
“We have raised the
bar significantly at the University of Prince Edward
Island,” she said.
Roberta MacDonald,
dean of the School of Business, said the new centre’s
first emphasis will be on bioscience and on building the
link between business and science.
She said there is an
appetite for entrepreneurship on Prince Edward Island.
“Science and
business were not always close partners in the past but
we are moving in that direction,” she said.