The President's Donor Challenge for Graduate Student Support

Dear Alumni,

I would like to ask for your help in a unique opportunity to aid the graduate students of the Department of Chemical Engineering. We are establishing a ChE Fellowship Fund. The interest from the fund will be used to provide much needed support for the department’s graduate students. We need graduate student support funds more than ever, particularly as government dollars are getting harder to obtain. Your gifts will help us continue to improve the quality of the Department and the graduate students who we can attract.

Together we have a short window of time to get the fund off to a good start. Every dollar you pledge this year will be matched 50 cents on the dollar by the President Mary Sue Coleman’s initiative for graduate education. We hope to endow the ChE Fellowship Fund with over a million dollars. The Department has already raised over $350,000 for the fund.

To take advantage of this opportunity you must act quickly and certainly before December 31 when President Coleman’s matching offer expires. The first installment must be paid before December 31 but the entire pledge can be paid over five years.

The Coleman funding is limited to $40 million of matching money, of which already slightly over half has been spoken for. So, a pledge even sooner than December 31 will guarantee the availability of the President's match.

Be as generous as you can. If you are ready to make a donation, please select the Give Online button on the right side of this page. When you get to the form, you can disregard the section that asks for an ID or a S-Code (or uncheck the box). This information is only for internal purposes and will be provided to us automatically with each donation.

You can read more about this opportunity at the President's Donor Challenge page. However, we ask that you return to this page when you are ready to make your donation so you can give your gift directly to the ChE Fellowship Fund.

Please give this invitation to contribute to the Department and its graduate students your serious consideration now. Please contact me if you have any questions.