Where Your Help is Needed

To reach the goals we have set for our campaign we turn again to the community our institution benefits the most. With the sufficient number and amount of gifts, we hope to raise the following and move the University away from reliance on state appropriations and toward more predictable means of student and faculty support.

Our single greatest imperative is to increase scholarship endowments. Endowments are the bedrock on which all great institutions are built. The greatest part of the University’s endowment need is scholarships. Additionally, annual (non-endowed) scholarships are a high priority.

To attract and support the best and brightest undergraduate and graduate students and to enhance their campus experience, the University must substantially increase the amount of scholarships it awards. While the cost of attending Texas A&M-Corpus Christi is reasonable by national standards, many bright and motivated students simply do not have the financial resources to pay. We simply cannot allow these prospective students to not develop to their fullest potential. That would be a tragedy for both them and our community. Therefore this campaign seeks to increase need-based financial assistance for these able, motivated students.

Some students who are interested in attending Texas A&M-Corpus Christi have outstanding academic credentials and, therefore, are offered competitive financial packages from other universities that we cannot presently match. Enrolling these extremely able students will help to lift the overall level of academic discourse and achievement on our campus. We know that graduating students have a very high likelihood of living in the area where they attended school, and so we want to retain more of these capable students to become active and productive members of our community. The campaign seeks to establish merit-based scholarship funds to allow the University to compete for the best and brightest. By increasing our scholarship endowment, the University will be positioned to provide much needed additional assistance to those top students and will be able to do so in perpetuity.

The University’s second greatest need is to hire and retain brilliant faculty who can truly make a difference in the lives of the next generation. By dedicating funds exclusively to faculty recruitment, retention and support through chairs and professorships, the University will be better able to compete with prestigious universities to attract leading teacher-scholars to mentor and nurture our students. In addition, the University’s size enables us to provide the personalized, positive attributes of a smaller school setting while providing critical institutional and financial support to fund innovative research. Additional funding will be used to expand and strengthen our programs, especially in the areas of greatest anticipated economic growth, such as ocean science, engineering, and the health sciences.

During this campaign, we will not specifically seek additional funds for what are typically called “bricks and mortar” projects. However, we do hope that some of the funds we raise can be used to support our long-range plans to expand our campus on the land that was gifted to the University by the City of Corpus Christi in 2008.