Campaign Waterloo raises $100 million in private donations

WATERLOO - The University of Waterloo has passed a major milestone in its efforts to meet the needs of the next generation of students and researchers, joining a small list of Canadian universities that have raised $100-million in one year.

The university will finish its fiscal year on April 30 with $100-million in private-sector donations, an amount previously reached only by the universities of British Columbia, Calgary and Toronto. The funds will support a range of strategic initiatives outlined in UW's strategic plan for the coming decade.

"This is a testament to the leadership shown by donors like Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis, Jim Balsillie and Bill Gates," says Linda Kieswetter, associate vice-president, principal gifts and campaigns. "When we launched Campaign Waterloo, our dream was to one day reach $50-million in a single year. But we've surpassed that well ahead of schedule and can now move forward earlier with initiatives that can benefit our students, community, province and country."

Campaign Waterloo launched six years ago with a goal of $260-million over five years. The target was raised to $350-million and the current campaign total now stands at $453-million.

Those funds are supporting a number of strategic projects that will help UW achieve the goals outlined in its sixth decade plan, Pursuing Global Excellence: Seizing Opportunities for Canada. The plan's broad goals include expanding research, growing graduate studies, strengthening the undergraduate experience and expanding Waterloo's presence around the world -- all while drawing the best and brightest students, faculty and researchers.

Funds raised by Campaign Waterloo are allowing UW to:

* Create new centres of research excellence, such as the Institute for Quantum Computing and the Balsillie School of International Affairs.

* Expand and internationalize existing programs, such as the Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing, which brings math and computing outreach programs to 500,000 children from Kitchener to Kenya.

* Expand facilities of the schools of architecture, accounting and finance, and optometry, as well as the Centre for Environmental and Information Technology.

* Build a health sciences campus in downtown Kitchener and provide seed funding for a Stratford Institute and a campus in Stratford, Ont.

* Increase funds available for student awards by 167 per cent.

* Contribute $90 million for faculty research chairs, like the John F. Diefenbaker Chair in German Literary Studies and the J. W. McConnell Chair in Social Innovation.

"All the credit is due to our visionary partners and campaign leaders, our board of governors, the campaign team and staff, both on and off campus," Kieswetter says. "This especially includes our board of governors chair Bob Harding, who also chairs our campaign, chancellor Mike Lazaridis, president David Johnston, our alumni and our on-campus campaign leaders."