President Caboni

Dear colleagues,

On Thursday, we will take time to recognize the generosity of many WKU friends and alumni at our Annual Scholarship Celebration. This yearly gathering provides an opportunity for our scholarship donors to meet the students who benefitted from their gifts and to personally see the transformative effect that their generosity has on the lives of our Hilltoppers.

We know that for many of our students, financial burden presents the greatest obstacle standing between a high school diploma and a WKU degree. However, the scholarship support provided by our donors helps remove that obstacle and makes the WKU Experience attainable. These private gifts play a critical role in expanding access to WKU and providing generations of Hilltoppers with opportunities that would otherwise fall outside of their reach.

During the past two years, we significantly revamped our institutional scholarship program with an eye toward making WKU more accessible to more individuals. Innovative offerings such as the Hilltopper Guarantee, the Border State Scholarship and the WKU Family Scholarship have eased the financial concerns of many of our students. These scholarships, coupled with private support from donors, continue to provide access and opportunity to students in our region and beyond. This year alone, more than 9,500 WKU students benefitted from scholarship support totaling more than $55 million, with $6.2 million of this support made possible by private donors.

Our Opportunity Fund represents perhaps our most significant philanthropic achievement. We launched the Opportunity Fund in 2017 to aid students who need financial support the most and established an ambitious goal of $50 million. In less than four years, we surpassed that initial goal and set our sights on a new, $100 million target. Thanks to generous private support, we are well on our way to meeting that goal, already eclipsing $61 million. The Opportunity Fund allows us to be nimble in tailoring financial packages to fit individual student circumstances and to do so quickly as needs arise. In December, we distributed more than $121,000 from the Opportunity Fund to students in support of tornado relief efforts.

Our faculty and staff members represent many of our private donors. The endowment of our College Heights Foundation, established nearly a century ago, has grown to over $100 million today, largely due to sustained giving on the part of our WKU employees. For those who participate in our annual faculty and staff campaign, thank you for your gifts. Your selflessness changes lives and creates unparalleled opportunities for our students.

Those opportunities take many forms, and this week we celebrate a truly remarkable milestone in our institution’s history. In 2018, WKU entered into a unique partnership with the University of Kentucky College of Medicine and Med Center Health to establish the UK College of Medicine-Bowling Green Campus. These students have access to a full range of student services and activities at WKU while fulfilling the curriculum of UK’s medical school. I had the privilege of speaking with the inaugural class of students four years ago at their White Coat Ceremony in Van Meter Hall, and on Friday evening, we celebrate their graduation. Forward-thinking partnerships such as this remain vital to providing students with more opportunities and equally vital to elevating the communities in which we live. Thank you for the collective efforts of our faculty and staff who made this partnership possible, and congratulations to the seven inaugural graduates who are WKU alumni!

As an institution, we must continually assess and reimagine possibilities for our students and forge creative partnerships as we serve our region and beyond. Thank you for the role that you play in advancing opportunities for our students.

Go Tops!

Best,

Timothy C. Caboni