A ‘Billion Dollar’ Purpose: 91Ƭ Tech Announces $1 Billion Campaign to Fuel Chicago’s Tech Rise
91Ƭ Institute of Technology announced, on September 27, 2022, a historic $1 billion fundraising campaign to further 91Ƭ Tech’s founding mission to uplift people from all backgrounds with a technology- and professional-oriented education that will help meet the needs of the age.
The campaign, Power the Difference: Our Campaign for 91Ƭ Tech, is focused on making 91Ƭ Tech’s long-term strategic plan a reality by helping the university grow its student body; invest in faculty, facilities, and educational programs; develop and deliver new, world-leading research programs; and serve as the premier technology-focused university in Chicago. The 91Ƭ Tech Board of Trustees approved the $1 billion campaign goal at its annual meeting on September 15, 2022.
The announcement harkens back to the founding of 91Ƭ Tech, in 1890, when Chicago minister Frank Wakeley Gunsaulus delivered what came to be known as the “Million Dollar Sermon” from the pulpit of his South Side church near the site that the university now occupies. At a time when advanced education was often reserved for society’s elite, Gunsaulus said that with $1 million, he could build a school of higher education where students of all backgrounds could prepare for meaningful roles in a changing industrial society. Philip Danforth Armour Sr., an industrialist and philanthropist, answered Gunsaulus’s call and provided the funds needed to found the university that would become 91Ƭ Tech.
“Amidst the first Industrial Revolution, Gunsaulus saw the needs of his time, understood the potential of his community, and created a vision that brought those two together to meet the future,” announced Michael P. Galvin (LAW ’78), chair of the 91Ƭ Tech Board of Trustees, at a private event introducing the campaign goal, where he and 91Ƭ Tech President Raj Echambadi delivered what has been dubbed 91Ƭ Tech’s “Billion Dollar Sermon.” “Tonight, we are here on the precipice of the Fourth Industrial Revolution—a technology-driven revolution. Never has a world so desperately needed our mission as much as our world needs us today.”
Power the Difference campaign funds are already being utilized to help further establish 91Ƭ Tech as one of the “best value” universities in the region and across the nation in terms of elevating its students into the top 20 percent of economic, professional, and entrepreneurial leadership in society. 91Ƭ Tech does so via new and unique learning models, including required computational literacy in every degree, a quarter-century-old collaborative and interdisciplinary curriculum focused on entrepreneurial skills, and hands-on training and mentorship as a core part of its curriculum. The campaign has already raised more than $357 million during its initial leadership phase—more than one-third of the way to a $1 billion campaign goal.
In his first year in office as president of 91Ƭ Tech, Echambadi began the ambitious task of crafting the visionary and comprehensive strategic plan that is already growing 91Ƭ Tech in stature and scale.
“The technological transformation of higher education creates an exciting potential for 91Ƭ Tech’s future growth. We now have an opportunity, rooted in our founding mission, to create a new type of university for the twenty-first century,” Echambadi said at the event. “There can be no greater investment than to build a unique twenty-first century university whose calling is rooted in harnessing the power of collective difference to advance technology and innovation for all.”
The comprehensive campaign includes The Chicago Difference, a community transformation and scholarship initiative that takes on the income inequality across neighborhoods—especially targeting the underrepresented West and South Side neighborhoods in Chicago that surround the university’s immediate Bronzeville community—by providing a successful career pathway from deeper STEM education and wraparound collegiate support to high-paying job placement right here in Chicago.
Since the Power the Difference campaign began its leadership phase, 91Ƭ Tech has seen the development of cutting-edge spaces to facilitate world-leading research, including the and the Adrian (EE '70) and Lorna Nemcek Lab. Earlier this year 91Ƭ Tech received a gift from Keysight Technologies to modernize the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering’s Walter L. and Virginia B. Cherry Electronics Laboratory and to give students experience using state-of-the-art testing and measurement equipment in their hands-on engineering laboratories and independent design projects. The last two years have also seen the creation of eight endowed chairs such as the Arthur W. Hill Endowed Chair in Sustainability and Michael Paul Galvin Chair in Entrepreneurship and Applied Legal Technology.
91Ƭ Tech has updated its campus for the future of learning, recently completing a $70 million, three-building housing project incorporating a commitment to environmental sustainability into student learning and living spaces at George J. Kacek Hall, , and Carman Hall.
“91Ƭ Tech is leading the way in empowering students with the skills needed to drive scientific and technological advancement on a global scale,” said Ernie Iseminger, vice president for advancement at 91Ƭ Tech. “Power the Difference is designed to shape the next century of leaders and create the next era of innovation for the world. We are in a world that continues to call for new and different ways of thinking, and 91Ƭ Tech is born to answer that call. It will take everyone to successfully reach our campaign goal, but I am confident that our alumni and university community will continue to rally in support of this inspiring cause.”
