Special edition fall 2009
Dear friends, The answer to your questions is yes. Yes, we think this is a good time for Southwestern College to undertake a significant fund-raising campaign. Even though the country is experiencing a significant economic downturn, we know the college’s alumni and friends are loyal and generous. We know you will do what you can now and you’ll do more when you are able. Yes, we think this is an excellent time to replace Sonner Stadium and upgrade our facilities for the performing arts. The college has outstanding programs in athletics and the performing arts. It makes no sense to hobble those programs, as we are doing at present, with second-rate facilities, especially when they are so critical for the recruitment of students. Moreover, contractors are bidding very competitively right now, offering the college an opportunity to save money on these projects. Yes, we think this is the best possible time to be seeking gifts for the college’s endowment, especially for endowed scholarships. Paying for college is a big challenge for many of the families we serve. Southwestern needs to meet these families halfway if they are to achieve their education goals. Endowed scholarships are crucial for the college’s future and for the future of our students. Yes, things are tough right now. But, Southwestern College leads and serves best when we act with vision, faith, and boldness. This is a good time for the college to take its next big steps forward. With your help, we’ll continue to grow and prosper. Please join me in supporting the Great Performances Campaign.
Best regards, Dick Merriman, President
Vol. 49 | special edition | fall 2009 Southwestern College President Dick Merriman The Southwesterner Sara Severance Weinert, editor; Susan Burdick, graphic designer; Susan Lowe ’95, director of alumni programs. Published quarterly by Southwestern College, 100 College St., Winfield, KS 67156-2499. Periodicals postage paid at Winfield, KS, and additional mailing office. USPS #0612-560. Postmaster: Send address changes to The Southwesterner, 100 College St., Winfield, KS 67156-2499
he college will celebrate its 125th anniversary from the fall of 2010 through the fall of 2011. On this important occasion, Southwestern is turning to our alumni and friends for help in supporting the great performances that have helped the college grow in size, stature, and relevance.
A Campaign to Celebrate 125 Years of Leadership and Service
The proposed focal points for the campaign are: • Creation of first-rate performing arts facilities • Building a new stadium • Upgrading student residences • Endowment for scholarships and to support college programs • Restricted gifts to support college programs/annual scholarships • Unrestricted gifts to the Builder Fund This special issue of The Southwesterner focuses on the Great Performances Campaign officially announced at Homecoming 2009. The following pages highlight key campaign priorities, including construction of new stadium (page 4), renovation of the college’s main auditorium (page 6), and increasing the size of the college’s endowment for scholarships and college programs (page 8). The national co-chairs of the campaign are profiled beginning on page 10.
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CAMPAIGN HIGHLIGHTS
he college’s football and track facility in Sonner Stadium has reached the end of its useful life. The college is partnering with the Winfield public schools to build a new stadium.
Stadium initiative Southwestern College’s new stadium complex will provide an outstanding new venue for Builder athletics and Winfield High School athletics. The facility will provide up-to-date surfaces for competition, outstanding facilities for game administration and coaching, and a great fan experience. The complex will assist the college in attracting outstanding student athletes, will provide a first-class venue for athletics and other events, and will enable Southwestern, Winfield High School, and the Winfield community to attract and host exciting competitions and special events.
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Groundbrea
kin
Improved Fan Experience
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o
• Multiple ADA seating areas • New no-stairs access to the stadium • Wider rows, more legroom • Improved sightlines in lower seating areas • Easy access to concession area • Easy access to ADA-compliant restrooms • Plaza venues for pre- and post-game gatherings
Breaking News: New Facility to Be NameD Richard L. Jantz Stadium! Sa tu
er r da y, N ov e m b
Improved Performer & Coaching Experience • New synthetic turf for football and soccer provides superior surface for competition; playing conditions do not deteriorate in rainy weather conditions • New coaches boxes • New eight-lane oval running track and new runway approaches for vault and jumping events
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7
CAMPAIGN HIGHLIGHTS
performing arts initiative he renovated auditorium in Christy Administration Building will provide a contemporary and attractive environment for music, theatre, and lectures. Its design will overcome acoustical challenges that have long limited the utility of the space for the spoken word. The auditorium will provide an ADA-compliant environment for patrons and performers. It will provide an up-to-date and safe teaching environment for students in the performing arts. The auditorium will provide an exciting new showcase for performances by the college’s students, by college-community ensembles such as the South Kansas Symphony, and by visiting performers.
Improved Patron Experience • • • •
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New, comfortable seating ADA-compliant seating area Attractive lighting and décor Improved acoustics • Adequate restrooms
Improved Performer Experience • Sound booth and control both to support music, theatre, and lectures • Improved acoustics for music and the spoken word • Refurbished organ and new organ console • ADA lift to access stage • Renovated green room
Improved Educational Experience • Catwalks will be added for safe access for instruction and preparation for performances. • New sound booth and control booth will allow teaching in an up-todate facility. • Refurbishment and updating of the college’s Reuter organ will be completed, allowing the college to continue its tradition of excellence in preparing organists for careers in performance and worship. • The college plans to create a technical theater center. The center will provide space for costume and set storage, costume and set design and fabrication, and classroom instruction.
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eNDOWMENT igher education in the United States is experiencing an affordability crisis. Family incomes that are holding steady at best, reduced federal spending for financial aid, and increases in college tuition are combining to put the squeeze on many families. That squeeze is amplified, in the case of Southwestern, because the college serves so many middle income students. Middle class families often
for faculty research, and for maintenance of college facilities. Almost any ongoing expense of the college – and there are lots of them! – is a suitable candidate for support with an endowed fund.
Leave a Legacy.
Current gifts are needed for many facets of the Great Performances Campaign, and they are certainly welcomed for the college’s endowment. But there is another important way to support the endowment: through deferred and estate gifts. You can leave a legacy, and support generations of young people, by providing for an endowment gift from your estate or through other kinds of planned gifts. The college’s advancement staff can show you how you can reduce the taxes you pay, receive a life income, and make a generous gift to the endowment.
Additional Highlights
Builder Fund Gifts
CAMPAIGN HIGHLIGHTS don’t qualify for federal financial aid. They are, rightly, very leery of taking on lots of college-related debt. In such a situation, the region’s inexpensive community colleges and state universities look like safer choices. For the college to effectively carry out our educational mission, it is important to provide our students significant scholarship support. That’s where the college’s endowment becomes very important. Endowed scholarships provide the income that allows the college to partner with students and their families in meeting educational costs. For over a century, the college has gone “the extra mile” to support our students and give them an extraordinary educational experience. Gifts for the endowment – either to create new scholarships or to increase the value of extant scholarship funds – are critical for the success of the college. In much the same way, endowed funds can provide additional funding for college programs, 8 fall 2009 | special edition
Gifts to the Builder Fund come to the college without restriction and are used by Southwestern to support college programs. Everyone may participate in the success of the Great Performances Campaign by supporting the Builder Fund.
Restricted Gifts for Program Support Restricted gifts for program support provide annual, spendable dollars to support the college’s academic programs, Moundbuilder athletics, and important activities such as Leadership Southwestern, the performing arts, and the Green Team. You may restrict your gift for an academic program, your favorite Builder team, or an activity such as A Cappella Choir.
Residence Life Renovations Gifts are being sought to support renovation of the Shriwise and Honor Apartments on the north end of the campus. These “workhorse” facilities are showing their age and need significant interior renovations and new appliances and furnishings.
Southwestern College Today and Tomorrow outhwestern College is the fastest growing college in Kansas. Over the past 10 years our enrollment has doubled, increasing from about 974 in the fall of 1999 to 2,000 in the spring of 2009. This growth is evidence of the dynamism and relevance of the college. Southwestern has become adept at serving many kinds of students, offering certificates, undergraduate, and graduate degrees on the main campus in Winfield, at branch campuses, and online. The college’s main campus in Winfield excels at providing young people a total-immersion, residential learning experience that is intense, personal, and challenging. In recent years the college has built significant new facilities for instruction in the natural sciences, business, nursing, social science, and communications. Attractive new housing options for residential living have been added. The new Jim Farney Center in the White Physical Education has greatly enhanced fitness and strength training facilities for our students and employees. In the fall of 2008 the renovation of the college’s library was completed and it was rededicated in honor of Harold and Mary Ellen Deets. All main campus students and faculty use college-issued laptop computers in a wireless network that covers the entire campus. The college’s service to adult learners has extended the reach and impact of Southwestern. The college now operates two Professional Studies centers in Wichita, works on base at McConnell Air Force Base and Fort Riley in Kansas, and operates a small branch in the Oklahoma City area. The college’s effective use of online technology has attracted growing numbers of adult learners, especially members of the active duty military and reservists, to the college. Southwestern currently serves about 1,400 adult learners in undergraduate and graduate
programs in nursing, business, criminal justice, leadership, ministry, and teacher education. key priority for the college’s future is to build upon and strengthen our programs in the performing arts and athletics. If anything distinguishes the Southwestern student from other students, it is the drive to participate. Through the years, the opportunity for participation in music and theatre and the opportunity to compete in The Great Performances athletics, have been hallmarks of the Southwestern experience. Campaign began on To build on our traditions in July 1, 2008. Early pledges the performing arts and athletics and gifts total almost will require significant investment. Strong programs, with excellent $7 million. The four-year leadership, are in place. Now we campaign will conclude need to upgrade key facilities on June 30, 2012. The and provide additional financial resources to fully realize the college will celebrate its potential of these programs. 125th anniversary during It’s important, as we improve the campaign, from fall facilities, to focus also on gifts for the college’s endowment. The 2010 to fall 2011. predictable income provided by a healthy and growing endowment allows the college to provide quality programs that serve talented and committed students. It also provides scholarship support that permits students and their parents to afford an extraordinary private college education. A third focus for Southwestern is continuing investment in the residential living environment on campus. The college’s students thrive in the intimate, intense, residential experience at Southwestern and expect residences that are up-to-date, attractive, and safe. The apartment buildings on the north end of campus – Honor and Shriwise – are due for significant improvements in infrastructure and appearance. Finally, the college needs ongoing support for its programs and for its overall operating budget. Annual gifts to the college provide a margin for excellence that makes an evident difference in the lives of our students.
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National Campaign Co-Chairs Rich Jantz
B
y his own description, when Rich Jantz came to Southwestern College he “wasn’t very dadgummed big.” Maybe 5’8”, 150 pounds dripping wet. Certainly he wasn’t big enough to play football on the college level. That had been his life at Cimarron High School: He was one of the top guns on the team that saw its 29-game winning streak end the final game of his senior year.
“In life, you have to work your tail off because you have passion for what you do, and you’ll get a lot in return if you do that.” – rich jantz
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He remembers the weather that day – exceptionally hot for November – and being interviewed on TV later. But what he best remembers is that team, the one that didn’t quit even though most of them were sick. They played hard, with total effort. So even though he didn’t end up as a football player when he came to Southwestern in the mid-’60s, he knew he wasn’t done with being part of a team. Rich joined the tennis team. Then he and a bunch of friends got together and formed a fraternity: Beta Rho Mu. The Betas were more than good buddies. They became lifelong friends. Even today, four decades after they graduated, this group of friends keeps in touch. They golf together, they laugh together, they watch their families grow together. What Rich lacked in size in college he made up for in sheer ferocious loyalty. “It’s all about the people,” Jantz says. This passionate approach carried over to his business, where Jantz developed one of the foremost crop insurance businesses in Kansas. Now he intends to take his passion for people and for causes in a new direction as national co-chair of Southwestern College’s Great Performances Campaign. Already he has had an instrumental role in the fundraising for a new stadium complex. He believes in what this stadium represents – opportunity for students. “With team sports, you have that camaraderie, you build relationships, and you learn a lot of things about life, especially if you have a good coach and surround yourself with good people,” he says. The new stadium is a building project, but quite clearly, for Rich Jantz, this project is about people.
Jim Farney
J
im Farney won his first athletic championship in 1949. That’s when the Clearwater High School Indians fought their way to a state basketball championship. Farney won his most recent athletic championship just a few weeks ago, when he and a partner were doubles winners in a tennis tournament. Between those two events, Jim racked up a series of professional successes that culminated in his retirement as senior vice president of Travelers Insurance. It’s fairly easy to draw a straight line between his athletic success and his personal success. “Athletics have been a huge part of my life, first because it gave me an opportunity to go to Southwestern,” he says. “When Coach Bill Monypeny took an interest in getting me down there to play ball, it changed my life.” Jim always had been one of the smallest kids on any team he was on, but he overcame this disadvantage in size using his intelligence, determination, and hard work. Those attributes served him well when he finished college. But whether it was on an athletic team, or in the Navy (where he was five years in active duty and 27+ years in the reserves) or rising through the ranks in business, the most important quality he took from athletics was the ability work as part of a team. The relationships developed through athletics last forever, he says, because teammates are in the trenches together. He still is in regular contact with SC teammates including Neal Frank,
a nationally-known meteorologist. Frank was Jim’s tennis partner their senior year, when they won the CIC conference championship, then the Kansas state championship, and finished fourth in the nation. Southwestern wasn’t just a place for Farney to play tennis, though. He began dating Bette Popp at the end of his freshman year – she played first clarinet in the band, and he was last chair. At that point he was a middling student (too many late-night card games) but after they married between his sophomore and junior years, his grades improved dramatically. “Southwestern stressed family, stressed a religious connection, and it stressed teamwork and togetherness,” he recalls.
“With the good leadership we have, Southwestern College will continue to be an important part of small college education. It’s such a meaningful experience.” – Jim Farney
That’s why he agreed readily when he was asked to serve at national cochair of the Great Performances capital campaign. The campaign goals fall right in line with his own interests – besides his dedication to athletics, he’s an ardent supporter of the fine arts (Bette was a soloist with the A Cappella Choir) and he heartily approves of the campaign’s facilities goals of a new stadium and a renovated auditorium. And in the long run, he’s one of the college’s most exuberant cheerleaders. “You know, I’d do anything for Southwestern College,” he says.
“Music is a place to retreat to. It’s a necessary thing, not just a frill in life.” – madeline Norland
Ken & Madeline Norland
K
en and Madeline Norland don’t always agree on everything. When asked their favorite performance of the dozens they’ve seen in Richardson Auditorium, they answer almost simultaneously. “The last one,” Madeline says. “The next one,” Ken replies. But whatever the performance, the Norlands will be in attendance. For them, it’s a quality of life issue. Whether living in Chase County, or in Fort Worth, or Winfield, their life together has been marked by advice given to a young Madeline: Never miss a live performance, a teacher told her. That’s only one aspect of a lifestyle that has incorporated art into every facet. Madeline, who earned art degrees from Southwestern and Bethany College as well as a graduate degree from the University of North Texas, has taught art professionally and on a volunteer basis. She plays violin in the South Kansas Symphony, and for the past five years has been gaining proficiency on the mandolin as one of the local “Mando Mamas.” Ken’s artistry reveals itself at the Bluestem Bed and Breakfast, their home east of Winfield. They started sketching plans for this country retreat during their 19 years in Fort Worth, always hearing the prairie calling them home.
“We would ask ourselves, ‘What would our dream house look like?’ and we knew it would have a courtyard, and three porches, and good social f low for entertaining,” Madeline recalls. This is the house that now sits on the family farm, its low silhouette nestling into the curves of the hill. The early rounds of guests (“The first ones were here on 7-07-07!”) are now on their third annual return trips. Ken oversaw such details as installation of low-silled windows (the perfect height for Jack, their aging terrier, to peer down the driveway), and muscling boulders into place for a nearby prayer labyrinth. He shows visitors the new amphitheatre, where the Norlands dream of hosting guest musicians. It’s this dream of making Winfield a regional leader in live performances that has prompted the Norlands’ involvement with Great Performances. As co-chairs of the campaign, they envision a project that will involve the entire community. “One of my views is that the more the community is involved, the more it will have full ownership of the project,” Madeline stresses. She loves the idea of grade school children contributing pennies and nickels toward the renovation of the auditorium, learning to love music and theatre in that space. “We’ll be reaching out in to the community to show them how exciting a performing arts space can be,” she says.
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Key Priorities
Great Performances Campaign in Brief Facilities
Stadium Project
$ 3,800,000
Performing Arts Facilities Projects Auditorium $ Organ Refurbishment $ Technical Theater Center $
2,100,000 300,000 400,000
Ways to Make a Gift to the Great Performances Campaign Consider these methods of contributing: • Cash contributions
• Gift of life insurance
• Appreciated securities (stock) • Bonds and mutual funds
• Purchase of a new life insurance policy with Southwestern College named as owner and beneficiary
• Personal property
• Real estate with life tenancy • IRAs
• Real estate
Residence Life Renovations
$ 1,000,000
• CDs, savings accounts, brokerage accounts, checking accounts with P.O.D. (payable on death) provisions
Facilities Total (above)
$
7,600,000
• Gift annuity
Endowment for All Purposes
$
11,000,000
Total
$ 2,800,000
(Includes Deferred Gifts)
Restricted Gifts for Program Support
• A bequest to the college through your will
• Deferred gift annuity • Charitable remainder trusts
$
3,200,000
Builder Fund Support for the College’s Budget
$
Total Campaign Goal
$ 25,000,000
3,200,000
• Gift of life insurance proceeds For more information, contact the Office of Institutional Advancement at Southwestern College, 620-229-6279, or e-mail mike.farrell@sckans.edu. To find campaign information on the Web, go to:
www.sckans.edu/auditorium • www.sckans.edu/stadium www.sckans.edu/makeagift