WHEN I BECAME PRESIDENT IN 1996, we had not been in a fund-raising campaign since 1990. Once we began to build enrollment and institute stronger financial accountability, we could start to talk about the support we needed. The Board was very, very helpful. When a number of people came forward with major new gifts, the campaign we are now in began to snowball.

The building of the Raynor Library, which came to fruition during the current campaign, is a great success story at Marquette. Though we started talking about our library needs in the early 1990s, over time, thanks to our Board of Trustees especially, we drastically revised our thinking about how we’d approach the project. They would ask: “Do we need to build another building? A big expensive building to hold all our books? Isn’t the real need of the library more on the electronic research side? Isn’t that the future direction of research and study?” And now to see those Raynor Library doors open after more than a decade of careful planning — that’s extraordinary.

We had a lead donor kick off the library project with a remarkable gift of $10 million to honor all that Father John Raynor had done for the university over 25 years as president. That was a great moment. And now I think about all the people who have helped bring the Raynor Library together — those who gave the money and those who did the planning, along with the splendid work of the library staff and the students in those years who pitched in with a sense of their needs, even though they weren’t personally going to benefit from it. When you go into the building, you just say, “Wow!”

In this campaign, having met many of our goals for several key facilities,we still have important funds to raise, and I will put those needs before people unabashedly. We have no less ambition for excellence and achievement than our competitors, yet we operate with almost one-fifth the endowment resources of Boston College and one-tenth that of Notre Dame. So I am out to change those ratios and to charge forward on our priorities. Imagine Marquette five times more able to help financially needy students or assist young faculty who so very much want to initiate their first research project. I am also asking people wherever I go, to boost the support they give our day-to-day operations through the Marquette Fund. Making that annual commitment is the easiest and most consistent way to say that education the way we shape and deliver it here at Marquette really matters.

One of the great distinctions that marks this country of ours is a culture of philanthropy. It goes far back in our history, because those who settled this land had to dip into their own pockets to build churches and schools. But the fact is that no one has to give anything. A gift is a gift. And I remember being told this by Ed Brennan, who said, “Be grateful for every gift you get, even when people disappoint your expectations. Never communicate that you are disappointed, because they don’t have to give you anything.”

I find our alums really do want to participate in encouraging the work of a faculty member or helping a young person have the opportunity they enjoyed. They feel a great gratitude for what they experienced here and for what Marquette has meant in their lives. That more than anything else has served as a powerful impulse for our graduates to give and to try to stretch in their generosity.

Marquette both needs and deserves the gifts that people make to us. We manage our affairs well, and we are forthright about who we are and what we stand for. People want to give to an enterprise that is going places, and we are. Marquette is serious about igniting the curious mind, turning out purposeful graduates, accomplishing superb research, and demonstrating that we are worthy of trust, commitment, and, yes, investment.

Next: Hope & Resolve