Bryn Mawr College Kicks Off $250 Million Campaign

"Defy Expectation."

That's exactly what Bryn Mawr College is hoping to do through a new fundraising campaign that is seeking $250 million. Titled “Defy Expectation,” the campaign focuses on support for the College and Bryn Mawr’s Graduate School of Social Work, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and post-baccalaureate premedical program, the school's website says.

"Bryn Mawr is committed to promoting academic excellence, expanding opportunities for women, and preparing students for lives of purposeful action," Bryn Mawr President Kim Cassidy said in a statement. "This campaign will support us in continuing that mission, which benefits our students and the world they will one day lead."

Funds generated will help support students, faculty, and the campus at the 131-year-old college.

"This campaign is an opportunity for the entire Bryn Mawr community to show our support for and to give back to the institution that was integral in our development as strong, smart, and successful alumnae/i," Campaign Chair Denise Lee Hurley ’82 said in a statement. "We look forward to surpassing our $250 million goal and paying it forward to the next generation."

So far, the college has raised roughly $135 million from 13,000 donors during the campaign's "quiet phase, which has allowed the college to:

• launch the Leadership, Innovation and Liberal Arts Center (LILAC) through two parents’ generous challenge grants. The innovative center helps students connect their studies with work and engagement in the world;
• endow 44 new scholarships (including a generous matching grant from a young alumna and her husband that inspired a number of endowments by younger alumnae/i).
• grow international programming for students, more than 70 percent of whom study or do research abroad;
• and initiate a renovation of the College’s science center, where women earn STEM degrees at a rate of almost three times the national average.

The college plans on holding campaign events in New York City, Boston, Washington D.C., London, Chicago, San Franciso, and Los Angeles for the next year.

Visit the college's website for more information on the Defy Expectation campaign.

Image via Mark Goebel