Giving Opportunities

Letter from Senior Associate Dean Judge Carr

Young Alumni Rally to the Challenge

In my article in the 2011 issue of the DukEngineer you were informed of two special development programs initiated by Engineering alumni. John Chambers E’71, CEO of Cisco Systems, Inc. provided a fabulous matching gift that successfully helped to create twenty new undergraduate scholarships for the School.

In the other program, Fred Fehsenfeld E’73 provided a challenge gift for two of our young alumni classes to help increase participation in support of the School through the Annual Fund. At the writing of my 2011 article that program was still in progress.

Today we happily inform you that Fred’s challenge gift was 100% successful! The engineering class of 2001, celebrating their 10th Reunion, and the engineering class of 2006, celebrating their 5th Reunion both achieved over 50% participation in the Annual Fund! This marked the first time that either class achieved 50% participation! Of note is only seven engineering classes out of fifty achieved 50% participation or better in the Annual Fund for the 2010-2011 fiscal year! This is a remarkable achievement.

One of Fred’s goals from this program was for someone else to take up the gauntlet of providing “the challenge” to the young alumni classes to achieve 50% participation. We are exceedingly fortunate that two alumni have done so for this fiscal year. They are Ted Kennedy E’52 and Michael Rhodes E’87. The challenge has gone out to the following engineering classes--1997 (celebrating their 15th Reunion), 2002 (celebrating their 10th Reunion), and 2007 (celebrating their 5th Reunion). We are deeply grateful to both of these alumni for stepping up and continuing this wonderful program initiated by Fred Fehsenfeld. We look forward to sharing the results with you in the next DukEngineer.

We want to take this moment to thank all of our alumni, parents, and friends of the Pratt School of Engineering for supporting the School so generously over the years. Your gifts to the Engineering Annual Fund carried the School to a new record total in excess of $2.9M! Our participation rate overall remained at 40%. In my next article I hope to offer you some comparisons of this data with other Engineering Schools. We compare quite favorably thanks to your generosity and support. Thank you for making our school one of the top engineering schools in the country!

Robert W. "Judge" Carr, Jr. E'71

Senior Associate Dean
Development and Alumni Affairs
Edmund T. Pratt, Jr. School of Engineering