Cottey to build brighter future with $35 million fundraising campaign

This year, a group of 13 Nevada High School girls are involved in the Presidential Leadership Program through Cottey's Center for Women's Leadership. Front row, left to right, Katlyn Short, Ashley McKinley, Kelci Cliffman and Chalene Fecht. Second row, Teryn Greer, Emma Chrisenbery. and Kathryn Cavener. Third row, Denise Hedges, director, Helen and George Washburn Center for Women's Leadership; Chelsea Govoro and Dacota Simpson. Fourth row, Kimberlee Bryson, Colleen Didden, Vena Odinga, Julianne Kiene. Fifth row, Tom Geeding, counselor, Nevada High School; Dr. Judy Rogers, president, Cottey College; and Patty Murray, counselor, Nevada High School. --Steve Reed/Cottey College

Cottey College is celebrating its 125th year -- a strong foundation by many accounts -- and has big hopes and dreams for the future.

The college wants to boost enrollment by building a stronger base for scholarships, building more academic programs, building an arts building that would centralize arts classrooms and practice sites for students art, music and dance; and by communicating more to local students the information they need to consider Cottey as an educational opportunity for them.

These are some of the reasons Cottey President Dr. Judy Rogers announced the college's first-ever comprehensive fundraising campaign, a five-year effort to raise $35 million. The campaign is dubbed, "A Defining Moment," which Rogers points out calls attention to the "defining moments" that enable Cottey College to exist and to provide a high quality liberal arts education.

There's the defining moment when founder Virginia Alice Cottey stepped forward with $3,000 and "a lot of boldness," according to Rogers, to back up her notion that young women deserved educational opportunity. There's the defining moment when the PEO Sisterhood accepted the college. There are the defining moments in the classroom, when a concept or idea suddenly makes sense to a student or impacts them in a new way. And there are the defining moments yet to come, for which the college hopes to help pave the way through its campaign.

The campaign has five specific goals: $10 million for scholarship endowment, $3 million to endow two faculty chairs, $9 million for a fine arts building, $3 million for a library endowment and $10 million in unrestricted funding.

"Scholarships are absolutely our biggest need, and our students' biggest need," Rogers said. Enrollment this year was 309, steady but down a bit from last year's enrollment, and many rely on scholarships to be able to attend.

Local contributions already help with regional scholarships for students from Vernon and surrounding counties; and a high school leadership program taught by Rogers is totally funded by local contributions; but a stronger base for scholarships is still needed.

Because the school hopes to expand its academic offerings, additional faculty must be endowed for this; the $3 million endows two chairs. Rogers said that the college is investigating new offerings, but none have been decided upon at this time; and those programs under consideration include baccalaureate offerings; all of them have an international component, an effort to build on Cottey's strengths in international focus and leadership development.

This year, Cottey's population of students from outside the United States is about 40. "We're so fortunate in this. We are very diverse, people from so many different countries, but are still very small; so you have the opportunity to interact a lot with people from many different backgrounds," which enhances the educational experience, Rogers said.

Although Cottey is happy with the Haidee and Allen Wild Center for the Performing Arts, it's a performance and exhibit venue; not a classroom or practice venue. Students of the arts attend classes in several different buildings, one of which isn't accessible to persons with physical disabilities.

The library endowment Cottey seeks is for obvious reasons. In order to support a solid education, students must have access to solid, up-to-date information from a variety of resources through the library; there's a cost associated with continuing to develop and provide those resources.

Carla Farmer, Cottey's director of major gifts, is helping to manage the effort, and noted that donations of any size or for any purpose are welcome. Donors can designate which of the five categories they wish to support with their money. The unrestricted funding aspect of the fundraising campaign refers to funds that donors say can go wherever it's needed the most; or, Farmer said, that donors who want to donate funds earmarked for specific programs -- for example, the volleyball program -- also may do so.

Many local folks will remember Farmer from her years with the Mercy Health Center Foundation in Fort Scott.

To find out more about how to make a donation and details of the campaign, call Farmer at (417) 448-1418, send an e-mail to cfarmer@cottey.edu.

The college also is reaching out to the PEO Sisterhood, alumni and other supporting organizations and partners throughout the world to make the fund raising effort a success.

Board member Greg Hoffman also took the opportunity during the breakfast to call attention to honors to be bestowed on Rogers from the a school in Paris, France, this coming spring.

Other upcoming, local events at Cottey include Family Weekend, set for this weekend; and an Oct. 23 performance by pianist George Winston, for which tickets go on sale at the Cottey ticket office, Friday.