By Bill Clayton

In May 2004, Progress & Promise: 150th Anniversary Campaign kicked off with a well-defined theme - the acknowledgement of the undisputed progress Michigan Engineering has made and fostered during the last 150 years, and its bright promise for continued excellence in education, research and service.

Levin

Jerry W. Levin (BSE EE '66, BSE M '67), chairman of JW Levin Partners LLC, is co-chair of the Campaign. He said that part of fulfilling that promise "involves the funding of professorships, fellowships, scholarships, facilities and key research thrusts and programs - all of which ultimately enhances students' lives and their learning experience. As of the end of September 2006, leadership donors to Progress & Promise: 150th Anniversary Campaign have made gifts in the amount of $212 million. This figure represents 71 percent of the College's goal of $300 million by the end of 2008."

Attracting and Retaining the Best Faculty

O'Connor

It's an objective of the Campaign to create 25 new endowed professorships - bringing the total at the College to 50 - which will make a significant difference, positioning the Michigan Engineering to remain a vital academic community for decades to come.

Kevin O'Connor (BSE EE '83), managing partner of O'Connor Ventures, is also co-chair of the Campaign. He said that the engine which moves Michigan Engineering is "people - talented, highly skilled educators, engineers and scientists. The competition for these people has always been fierce, and one of the proven ways of attracting and retaining them is an endowed professorship. It's one of the highest honors the College can give a member of its faculty."

The Richard B. Couch Professorship in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering (NAME) is a good example of an endowed professorship that can make a difference at the College of Engineering. John Couch (BSE NAME '63, MSE '64), president and CEO of C.M. Capital Corporation, said that professorships "provide valuable resources and are a demonstration of the commitment that outstanding teachers and distinguished scholars want to see. So, professorships are a valuable tool for the College in the recruitment and retention of these talented individuals." John Couch presented a $2-million gift to fund the professorship in memory of his father, a former chair of the department.

Maintaining a Strong Student Body

Progress & Promise: 150th Anniversary Campaign has the additional objective of maintaining a strong student body, because the young people Michigan Engineering sends out into the world exert a profound influence on the quality of life for people everywhere. However, many students require assistance in order to attend Michigan Engineering.

Vivian Carpenter (BSE IOE '73, MBA '75, PhD '85) has a long history of supporting the College of Engineering. In creating the Dr. Vivian L. Carpenter Endowment Fund, she demonstrated her desire to help Michigan Engineering students and, to date, has pledged $525,000 to Progress & Promise 150th Anniversary Campaign for their support.

Carpenter, president of Atwater Entertainment Associates in Detroit, was one of the founders of the organization that is now the Society of Multicultural Engineering students. Later, she became the first African American woman to serve as deputy state treasurer for the State of Michigan. She's been a solid advocate of the Detroit Area Pre-College Engineering Program, which supports outreach activities that help to increase the number of the state's underrepresented minority students who are motivated and prepared academically to pursue careers in engineering, science, manufacturing and mathematics-related fields. Carpenter also served the College with a two-year term as a visiting faculty member.

In yet another show of commitment to the quality of the student experience at Michigan Engineering, the estate of Joseph Geisinger (BSE ME '36) made a $6.7 million scholarship gift to the Progress & Promise: 150th Anniversary Campaign, the largest scholarship gift ever made to the College and third largest in the University's history.

Upgrading Michigan Engineering Facilities

Gifts to the Progress & Promise: 150th Anniversary Campaign have also been instrumental in making strategic additions to Michigan Engineering's physical plant and, in the process, helping the College to keep pace with advances in technology and the need for facilities that accommodate the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of engineering. To that end, the College of Engineering is investing heavily in three overlapping research areas: cellular and molecular biotechnology, information technology, and nanotechnology and integrated microsystems. These endeavors are critical to meeting society's grand challenges and satisfying future needs, including affordable healthcare, the repair of the nation's aging infrastructure, heightened homeland security, providing safe drinking water and the creation of a pollution-free environment.

Cellular and Molecular Biotechnology

Ann and Robert H. Lurie Biomedical Engineering Building

The Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) has proved to be productive in discovering and treating diseases and conditions that, at one time, were incurable. Particularly notable strides in cellular and molecular biotechnology have made biomedical engineering a highly visible discipline that requires specialized resources and facilities.

In 2002, Ann Lurie (LLD Hon. '03), president of Lurie Investments, made a $25-million gift to Michigan Engineering - the largest in the College's history - which included leadership funding for the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Biomedical Engineering Building, the newest component of the Department of Biomedical Engineering's "quad."

The Gerstacker Foundation also made a major enabling gift of $5 million toward the construction of the Carl A. Gerstacker Building, a new 31,000-square-foot addition to the College of Engineering that honors Carl A. Gerstacker, a 1938 Michigan Engineering alumnus and the former chairman of Dow Chemical Co. The Gerstacker Building - an addition to the Institute of Science and Technology's High Bay Building - provides research and administrative/office space for the Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) as well as research facilities for the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and contiguous lab space with the Center for Ultrafast Optics.

In its short history, BME already has an impressive list of breakthroughs:

• Implantable microsystems that analyze biological functions and treat physical disorders with chemical and electrical stimuli
• Wearable devices that can monitor pollution, evaluate global change and study childhood asthma in urban areas
• Synthetic "scaffolds" that enable the body to rebuild damaged tissue and bone more quickly
• Diagnostic, functional and molecular imaging systems
• Advanced bioprocess techniques for the pharmaceutical industry
• Devices that use ultrafast optical pulses and high-intensive ultrasound to perform noninvasive surgery and localize drug activation

Information Technology

Computer Science and Engineering Building

Increasingly, information technology is revolutionizing the way people look at and live in the world. Computers and computer science lie at the heart of this revolution, which is making a profound impact on healthcare, finance, telecommunications, power systems, commerce and entertainment - the breadth and depth of information technology's potential seems limitless because it touches every other engineering and scientific discipline.

Multiple gifts to Progress & Promise: 150th Anniversary Campaign made it possible to erect the new Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) Building. Of those many expressions of support, individual gifts of $5 million or more came from each of the following: Peter (BSE EE '56) and Evelyn Fuss, Jerry W. and Carol L. Levin, and Kevin and Nancy O'Connor. The CSE building is adding a new dimension to Michigan Engineering's computer science pursuits, which were already world-renowned for current and recent projects such as:

• Computer infrastructures to create secure information systems
• "Smart cards" that enhance the security of computing systems
• Techniques to detect and identify attacks on computer networks
• Fault-checking capabilities designed to increase chip performance in computer processors and shorten the concept-to-market cycle
• Memory systems that retain their speed and tolerate system crashes

Nanotechnology and Integrated Microsystems

Michigan Nanofabrication Facilty

Three decades of pioneering work on integrated circuits at the College of Engineering have matured into the field of microsystems, an area of research that has made it possible to create immensely powerful, computer-driven machines as small as a grain of rice and which are destined to play a key role in transportation, manufacturing, environmental monitoring, defense systems, consumer products and health care. CoE researchers in the National Science Foundation's Engineering Research Center for Wireless Integrated Microsystems (WIMS) are working on devices such as:

• Cochlear implants for the hearing impaired
• Gas sensors for environmental monitoring
• Implantable, hermetically sealed capsules that can send electrical signals for muscle flexing, heart pace-making, bladder control, and possibly even visual stimulation
• Entire DNA analysis systems that are built into a silicon chip the size of a dime, cost roughly a dollar each, can be used for health care, crime detection and wildlife conservation
• Wireless systems that are 1,100 times smaller than conventional handheld devices, making it possible to embed cellular phones in wristwatches or lapel-pins
• Levitating silicon wafers-known as "flying chips," which will find extensive use in environmental monitoring and government surveillance

Michigan Engineers are also actively engaged in the field of nanotechnology, which refers to a wide range of activities that involve building nanoscale structures. (A nanometer is about 1/50,000 the diameter of a human hair.) Collaborating researchers are building organic and inorganic nanostructures atom-by-atom and molecule-by-molecule, to create:

• Nanopowders that are capable of entering a single cell and delivering a drug - without damaging the cell's structure
• Nanoparticles that can assemble themselves into wires, sheets, shells and other unusual structures.
• Nanoparticles that remove toxic metals from groundwater
• Nano-films that will help in the development of more efficient solar cells and fuel cells
• Nanocomposities to combat chemical and biological terrorism
• Devices capable of rearranging and manipulating single cells, potentially useful in the treatment of atherosclerosis and other disorders
• New types of catalysts for catalytic converters in autos, trucks and stationary power plants

Gifts of more than $23 million - including a portion of Ann Lurie's $25 million gift - have made it possible to expand programs and build the Michigan Nanofabrication Facility (MNF), which doubled the size of the "clean room." The College also is upgrading equipment and addressing issues of safety and systems related to facilities and programs in integrated microsystems and nanotechnology.

Don Graham (BSE IE '55, MSE ME '56), founder of Graham Engineering Co., which has grown into the Graham Group, is a lead donor to MNF - one of the many areas in which his gifts have advanced the cause of Michigan Engineering.

Message from the Co-Chairs

Jerry Levin and Kevin O'Connor accepted their roles as co-chairs because, in part, they realize that the advantages they enjoyed as students were made possible by the generosity of previous alumni and friends. They're giving something back, helping to provide learning opportunities that will serve Michigan Engineering students well in their professional careers, just as the educations that Levin and O'Connor received have helped them succeed.

Prior to assuming his position as chairman of JW Levin Partners LLC, Levin served as chairman and chief executive officer of American Household, Inc.; Sunbeam Corp.; The Coleman Company, Inc.; Revlon, Inc.; and The Burger King Corporation. In 1998, he and his wife endowed the College's Jerry W. and Carol L. Levin Professorship of Engineering.

Levin said that Progress & Promise: 150th Anniversary Campaign "enables us to support one of the world's great centers for engineering education and research. It also gives alumni and friends a unique opportunity to honor those who went before them by continuing the tradition of giving something back to the College."

In 1999, O'Connor and his wife established the Kevin and Nancy O'Connor Professorship. He said that those who participate "will have the satisfaction of knowing that, in helping to develop tomorrow's finest engineers, they'll have a hand in significant discoveries that will undoubtedly make the world a better place."

Where We Are

The Levin Challenge

The Levin Challenge is a program that has a goal of raising $1 million in new and increased gifts and pledges. Levin said he created the Challenge with the hope that it would motivate alumni to give to the Michigan Engineering Fund (MEF).

"The idea of creating this challenge was very appealing to me. I was personally able to leverage the analytical skills I developed at the University of Michigan into a successful career marketing products and services to consumers. Marketing the analytics of 1=3 should be an effective and motivational message to our alumni."

The College launched the Levin Challenge on July 1, 2006. It will be in effect through December 31, 2008. Those two-and-a-half fiscal years correspond to the time that remains in the Progress & Promise: 150th Anniversary Campaign.

What the Levin Challenge Will Match

The Levin Challenge will match all new gifts and the additional portion of increased gifts to the Michigan Engineering Fund on a 2:1 match basis, regardless of gift size. So, for every new or additional dollar, the Levin Challenge will add $2 to the Michigan Engineering Fund, up to $2 million over the challenge period. All new and increased gifts and documented pledges allocated to the Michigan Engineering Fund and paid before the end of the campaign (December 31, 2008) from individuals (alumni and nonalumni), corporations, foundations and associations are eligible for the match. Previous donors to the MEF who did not make a gift during the last fiscal year will be considered new donors. Determining the amount of a gift increase will be based on the amount of the previous fiscal year's gift.

Matching gifts from corporations, bequests, memorial gifts or gifts made in honor of someone will not be matched.

Ways to Make a Gift

• Credit card
• Check
• Cash/wire transfer
• Security transfer
• Michigan Gift Link - an efficient electronic payment alternative to checks and credit cards
• Michigan Online Giving: http://www.engin.umich.edu/relations/giving
• Matching gifts from your employer