Trustees to vote on new position, linking programs

After an eight-year, $1.4 billion campaign ended in October, the MSU Board of Trustees is considering linking two of the university’s largest outreach programs to help increase fundraising.

At its meeting Friday, the board will vote to add a vice president for advancement that would oversee University Development and the MSU Alumni Association.

“It seems to be a trend across the country,” Trustee Colleen McNamara said. “Having a link between alumni and development, the people who give generously to the university; linking those two makes a lot of sense.”

Reporting to that new position would be the newly-created associate vice president for advancement services, for which the responsibilities have not yet been named, and the heads of University Development and the Alumni Association.

“It’s a great way to integrate and coordinate the university’s major outreach efforts, fundraising and friendraising,” Trustee Faylene Owen said. “We need to coordinate because the two do overlap so much.”

The executive director of the Alumni Association is proposed to be renamed the associate vice president for alumni relations and executive director of the Alumni Association.

“We just finished a very successful capital campaign,” Trustee Melanie Foster said. “One way to make up the difference in state funding is to increase development.”

The restructuring of the offices is expected to boost alumni relations, ultimately leading to more development opportunities.

“It’s a new way of doing things, and I think it’s a better way,” Owen said.

Also on the board’s meeting agenda is a plan to add a facility for rare isotope beams to MSU’s National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory. The facility will allow MSU researchers to study exotic isotopes only found in some extreme environments in space, said Geoff Koch, communications manager for the Cyclotron.

The existing accelerators would be replaced with a linear driver accelerator, which is about 100 times more powerful.

“We need to keep the Cyclotron facility globally competitive in order to receive and maintain the brightest physicists in the world,” Foster said.

The new addition would make the Cyclotron the world’s most powerful rare isotope science facility.

“As technology changes, we have to continue to adapt,” Foster said.

Published on Wednesday, May 14, 2008