Alumni Association
The No. 20 spot in this year’s U.S. News & World Report national public university rankings. No. 43 in the 2014 Academic Ranking of World Universities. A $248 million endowment.
That’s this university by the numbers — a respectable showing from one of the top public universities in the nation. Delve a bit deeper, however, and a sobering, though not wholly unexpected, picture emerges.
This university’s highly touted move to the Big Ten on July 1 spelled economic rebirth for a beleaguered athletic department. But it also marked a transition into a conference in which this university often trails behind the rest in both coffers and the classroom.
This university’s endowment ranks a dismal 13th among Big Ten schools, ahead of only Rutgers University, which also joined the conference this year. Barring Rutgers, this is the only Big Ten institution that hasn’t broken the billion-dollar mark.
Five Big Ten schools — University of Michigan, University of Illinois, University of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania State University and Ohio State University — bested this university’s U.S. News rankings, and Purdue University matched them.
The latter fact could stem from a deficit in self-investment: In The Washington Post’s 2013 list of the top 30 endowments per student among Maryland, Washington and Virginia schools, this university failed to make the cut, with just $6,651 available per student. Smaller private institutions predictably dominated that list, but the fact that this state’s flagship university didn’t earn a spot certainly raised eyebrows.
The university’s endowment is also growing at a slower pace than that of its Big Ten peers — just Indiana University, University of Nebraska and Michigan reported less of an uptick in endowment market value from 2012 to 2013. Those schools, however, have broken the billion-dollar mark — Michigan, in particular, leads the Big Ten with a whopping $8.38 billion endowment.
Working against the university is the size of its alumni base: Big Ten schools boast some of the nation’s largest collections of graduates, whom schools target heavily for fundraising. This university, the fourth-smallest public school in the conference, has far fewer alumni than the likes of Big Ten giants Ohio State and Penn State — the latter boasts the largest alumni association in the nation.
However, this university’s announcement last week that it had tapped Amy Eichhorst, the University of Illinois Alumni Association’s Advocacy and Outreach Division vice president, to lead its alumni association bodes well for the future of its bank account.
Since the end of fiscal year 2008, Eichhorst’s first year as director of the alumni association’s Illinois Connection, the school’s endowment has received more than $1.5 billion in “new business,” which includes donations and grants. In fiscal 2013, alumni accounted for $103 million, or 23.7 percent, of new business.
Hopefully, Eichhorst will replicate that kind of success at this university, starting with doubling the Alumni Association’s membership in the next five years. Outreach and connections with alumni go a long way toward ensuring graduates give back to the university, and big, bold plans like Eichhorst’s can help meet that end.
Greater alumni involvement means more donations, more money for innovation and more opportunities for this university to invest in its students. That’s the kind of progress that’s needed to catapult this university to the top of the Big Ten’s academic and financial rankings.
