Support Each Student’s Success
Walk the EMU campus on any given day and you’ll find students in the Holman Success Center meeting with a success coach or checking in with a peer tutor at the Eagle Study Tables. You’ll see others getting help with their latest writing assignments at the University Writing Center. You’ll see Honors College students talking with their Honors advisors about coursework, internship plans, and career goals. You’ll witness classes being taught by faculty members who’ve trained through the EMU Faculty Development Center, which gives them the tools to engage students in active learning.
Student success is EMU’s first priority. With your help, we will give students the support they need — financial, academic, and social — to thrive here. EMU will also provide extra challenges in the classroom or the community that help students develop their talents and create a vision for life after graduation. This campaign fund will:
- Create more scholarships for academic excellence.
- Provide scholarships that help high-potential, high-need students.
- Strengthen academic support and retention programs.
Advance EMU’s Programs of Distinction
Professor Ted Ligibel has led the way in making sure that Michigan’s and the nation’s historic sites and structures are preserved for years to come, so they will be there to bring more people under the spell of their stories. As the longtime director of EMU’s Historic Preservation Program in the Department of Geography and Geology, he has helped generations of students become the preservationists who keep history alive. EMU has one of the largest graduate programs in this field nationally. Dr. Ligibel recently won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Michigan Historic Preservation Network.
Every college here has stellar programs that distinguish Eastern Michigan University from other institutions. Investment in these standout programs will strengthen EMU for decades to come. This campaign fund will:
- Provide merit- and need-based scholarships for talented students who enroll in these programs.
- Provide support for faculty research that creates new opportunities for students and advances knowledge and practice in the field.
Provide experiential learning opportunities such as internships, community partnerships, and projects outside the classroom.
Help Students Excel Beyond the Classroom
In a lab on the fourth floor of EMU’s new Science Complex, roughly a dozen EMU students are investigating how healthy cells turn cancerous. As biology professor Anne Casper’s “labbies,” they are deeply involved in research that uses yeast cells as a model to understand the mutations and chromosome rearrangements that give rise to cancer. Whether these students pursue careers in research, medicine, teaching, or healthcare, such hands-on experience in a state-of-the-art lab can be life changing. So is presenting this work at conferences or co-authoring papers with Dr. Casper.
Just like Anne Casper, faculty members across EMU look for ways to get students out of the classroom to apply what they’ve learned. Knowledge becomes more meaningful when it is applied. These experiences open doors for students that they might never have imagined. This campaign fund will:
- Support faculty members and staff who have great ideas for new experiential learning projects.
- Create experiential learning scholarships for high-need students who otherwise couldn’t afford to participate.
- Expand study abroad opportunities and scholarships.