UMR capital campaign seeks to strengthen campus is key areas

If there is one common quality among UMR alumni and friends, it's loyalty.

Take, for instance, Helen Lasko. The wife of the late Edward P. Lasko, MetE’50, established two scholarships totaling $100,000 and an estate gift that will add nearly $2 million more with money she made playing the stock market. But the gift that means the most to her is the $50 check she sends to the football program every March 17 in honor of Edward’s birthday. He played football for the Miners and UMR was important to him. Now it is important to Helen.

• Goal for program support: $32 million
• Amount raised: $32.2 million

When Walter, MetE’23, MS MetE’24, and Miriam Remmers said they wanted to bring big names to campus, they weren’t kidding. In 1979, Gerald Ford became the first speaker in the Remmers Special Artist/Lecturer Series. The list of those who followed includes Margaret Thatcher, Charles Kuralt, Colin Powell, Lance Armstrong and Wynton Marsalis.

• Goal for facilities: $37 million
• Amount raised: $15.6 million

Since the “quiet” phase of the Advancing Excellence Campaign began in 2003, UMR has received one of the largest gifts in its history: $5 million for the renovation and expansion of the mechanical and aerospace engineering complex, Toomey Hall, from John, ME’49, MS ME’51, and Mary Toomey and their family, replacing a building built on the UMR campus before the Wright brothers flew.

• Goal for scholarships: $35 million
• Amount raised: $23.1 million

Stephen W. Rector, PetE’72, MS PetE’73, got the chance for a college education thanks to scholarships in petroleum engineering. Now, Rector and his wife, Susan, are giving that same chance to future generations of Miners through their $1 million scholarship endowment.

UMR needs to attract quality students, to encourage diversity and to recruit students interested in studying biotechnology and other emerging fields. The scholarships established through the Advancing Excellence Campaign will create opportunities for future generations of Miners.

On Thursday, April 19, UMR Chancellor John F. Carney III announced the launch of the largest capital campaign in the institution’s history. Titled “Advancing Excellence: The Campaign for the University of Missouri-Rolla,” the goal is to raise $200 million by June 2010 to achieve the university’s vision of becoming a top five technological research university. To date, the effort has raised more than $115 million for UMR students, programs, faculty and facilities.

Throughout our history, the University of Missouri-Rolla has developed a reputation for graduating leaders who have made their mark in the world. As discoverers, entrepreneurs, explorers and educators, UMR alumni have built the nation’s infrastructure, designed products and systems that have improved our quality of life, explored the inner world of atomic physics and the far reaches of space, and, in the words of one early graduate (R.L. Grabill, class of 1878) worked to “unravel the mysteries and solve the problems which nature lays before us.”

By the time he graduated high school, industrial engineering senior David Hill already had his foot in the door of the business world. As a sophomore at Oakville Senior High in St. Louis, he and some friends started a web design company that was successful from the start, thanks to Hill’s ability to capitalize on specific customer needs.

From an early age, Stephen W. Rector, PetE’72, MS PetE’73, knew the value of education, though he was uncertain what path he would take.

UMR psychology student Brandon Landry knows a lot about success. As a varsity football and basketball player, Landry broke every school record at Salesian High School in Fairfield, Calif., and was known as one of the top athletes in Northern California.

America’s war on drugs examined in 19th century
Today’s war on drugs is not the first battle America has fought against addiction. In her new book, The Opium Debate and Chinese Exclusion Laws, UMR historian Diana Ahmad examines the opium-smoking epidemic of the mid-19th century and finds that Chinese immigrants weren’t the problem, as is commonly believed.

As the Order of the Golden Shillelagh celebrates its 30th anniversary, it’s tempting to relive the past and reminisce about how individuals “picked up the shillelagh” to provide financial support for the university. After all, that group of concerned individuals, like a grain of sand to an oyster, supplied the foundation for what became a lustrous organization.

On June 18, two UMR faculty members filled new positions created as part of UMR's restructuring.

UMR Chancellor John F. Carney III received the 2007 Kenneth A. Stonex National Roadside Safety Award from the Transportation Research Board, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, at the Transportation Research Board’s 86th Annual Meeting in Washington D.C.

The Boeing Co. has donated $150,000 to UMR’s Project Lead the Way (PLTW).

The gift, which applies as a match toward a $387,000 grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, will help develop and expand the program. PLTW helps introduce engineering to Missouri middle and high schools by focusing on activities and team-based projects that give students the chance to work with their hands and see how math fits into those activities.

UMR graduate student Steven Jung is spending Independence Day with a group of Nobel Prize winners. Jung was selected to participate in the 2007 Meeting of Nobel Laureates and Students in Lindau, Germany.

A team of UMR students designed and built an off-road and off-land vehicle for the Society of Automotive Engineers’ Baja East competition, held in Ocala, Fla., in April.

A team of female students used their skills in 19th century mining techniques to win a world championship in “mucking” at the Intercollegiate Mining Competition March 24 in Tucson, Ariz.

This spring, UMR proved conclusively that it has the best human-powered vehicle team in the nation. The UMR team won the West Coast challenge April 13-15 at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California and then won the East Coast challenge (again) May 11-13 in Ocala, Fla.

On April 17, UMR student researchers showed Missouri legislators how glass is being used to strengthen bone tissue, how breakthroughs in chemistry might result in a new method of removing lead from the bloodstream, how nutrients in streams can be monitored more efficiently and why flood plains need to be checked for high levels of salt.