IGNITE Impact

The most ambitious fundraising effort in UIC’s history concluded with a record level of giving to promote student success, empower faculty, drive discovery and connect to communities.

On June 30, 2022, the University of Illinois Chicago ended IGNITE: The Campaign for UIC. The seven-year effort to raise $750 million universitywide was a resounding success, closing at $803.4 million, more than $125 million more than in the campaign that preceded IGNITE. Of that UIC total, $37,529,703 is attributable to the generous donors who supported the College of Nursing, helping us end the campaign having raised two and half times more than the college raised during the university’s most recent campaign preceding IGNITE. Throughout, UIC Nursing focused its fundraising efforts on three mission-critical aspects of our college: enhancing key brick-and-mortar spaces, building scholarship assistance for students, and supporting faculty and research.

Enhancing Space

More than $8 million given to the College of Nursing during IGNITE was aimed directly at enhancing physical spaces dedicated to learning and researching. Alumna Christine Schwartz, BSN ’70, gave $5 million, the largest gift in college history, to create the M. Christine Schwartz Experiential Learning & Simulation Laboratory. The Schwartz Lab—which includes the Francis Family Birthing Suite, named by a $1 million gift from Nita and Phil Francis—has been transformative for the college. Not only does it provide multiple, true-to-life simulated environments where faculty can immerse students in high-stakes scenarios with low-stakes consequences, but it was also instrumental in enabling the college to conduct necessary, in-person education during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Supporting Students

Students are the lifeblood of any college, and it is a principal aspiration of UIC Nursing leaders, faculty and staff to support all students’ success, from Day One through graduation. That support takes many forms, and during IGNITE, donors contributed nearly $9 million to the effort. About 65% of that has been directed to scholarships that help students with financial need and academic merit afford to stay enrolled and on track. Because of those gifts, the college has been able to quadruple the number of students receiving scholarship assistance each year. (The goal was to triple the number.) Additional gifts are funding instructional tools and supplementary programming, including, for example, the Center for Academic Excellence and Cultural Engagement.

Supporting Faculty

UIC is one of the world’s most productive hubs of nursing research. Currently ranked No. 7 for NIH funding to U.S. nursing schools, UIC Nursing has long been a reliable investment for individuals, foundations and corporations wanting to help drive discovery. Similarly, with BSN, MS and DNP programs ranked in the top 15 nationally by U.S. News & World Report, UIC boasts some of nursing education’s most effective classroom and clinical instructors. Recruiting and retaining top-tier nurse scientists and educators is highly competitive, which is why the college was proud to receive $17.6 million during IGNITE to support faculty. These investments yielded nine new endowed chairs, professorships, faculty scholars, faculty awards and research funds; that was four times the number of philanthropically supported faculty positions in the college at the beginning of IGNITE.

Flexible Funding

During IGNITE, unrestricted gifts totaling nearly $3 million provided nimble support, directly and indirectly, to students and faculty alike. These gifts, each typically under $1,000, come from hundreds of donors and collectively provide a powerful source of funding that the dean can direct where it’s needed, when it’s needed. This type of funding has become especially important as state support for public higher education has declined roughly 25% over the past 10 years.

For more about gifts to the college during IGNITE and the many people who benefited from them, visit our Faces of Philanthropy gallery at go.uic.edu/GiveToNursing.

Victoria Venable Fletcher and grandson

Submitted photo

In her DNA

Victoria Venable Fletcher, MS ’78, CNM, FACNM, remembers being the only African American student in her Master of Science in nurse-midwifery program at the UIC College of Nursing in the mid-1970s.

As a pioneering student in the young program, she recalls facing bias from faculty and staff, but also benefited from the encouragement of champions who wanted her to succeed.

“That’s why I know it’s important to have someone that demonstrates an interest and shows that they care—that they’re invested in your success,” she says.

Her experiences and “a desire to change the narrative” prompted Fletcher to make a gift to the UIC College of Nursing to create a scholarship for underrepresented students in the nurse-midwifery and nurse-midwifery/ women’s health nurse practitioner programs.

“I want to be there to offer a hand and help uplift these students,” Fletcher says.

Fletcher was inspired to go into a health-related field by her uncle, Howard Phillip Venable, MD, a renowned ophthalmologist and civil rights advocate who championed equitable care and mentored dozens of Black physicians at Homer G. Phillips Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Fletcher’s wide-ranging career reflects this commitment, bringing her from California to South Carolina to Washington state, including working for more than 20 years with Planned Parenthood.

“You don’t have to be wealthy to do this,” she says. “I would encourage other alumni and interested people to give what they can, at whatever level they can, to help deserving students achieve their goals. It is important and will make a difference in moving the needle, increasing diversity in nursing and midwifery, and in turn in decreasing health disparities in communities of color.”

READ MORE about Fletcher’s life, work and gift at go.uic.edu/FletcherImpact

Paying it forward

Patricia Lewis, PhD ’93, who served as director of the UIC College of Nursing’s Rockford campus for 13 years, and her husband, Stephen, recently endowed the first named scholarship for Rockford students.

The creation of the Patricia Ryan Lewis Scholarship Fund means that each of UIC Nursing’s five campuses beyond Chicago now has a dedicated scholarship for its students. Lewis is a former president of the UIC College of Nursing Alumni Board and is still a board member.

“Over the 30-plus years that I worked with students, there were so many barriers for them to overcome,” says Lewis. “It isn’t always about tuition and books. It’s also, can you afford to live and eat? People are pretty close to the edge a lot of times."

Lewis notes that her career in nursing education didn’t make her extravagantly wealthy, but after retiring, she and her husband realized they could afford to fund the scholarship if they broke up the payments over several years.

Lewis says her own path through higher education inspired her to make the gift, including an ethos of “paying it forward.” Growing up as one of three children in a single-earner household in Milwaukee, Lewis’ parents couldn’t afford to pay for her bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. When an administrator helped her put together a financial aid package to carry her through school, she remembers the advice that came with it.

“When I thanked her, she said, ‘Don’t stop there. When you’re done with school, you need to help someone else get through school—and don’t forget that,’” Lewis recalls. “I never did.”