On Tuesday, December 1, Giving Tuesday, an internationally celebrated day of giving, the Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering (BCOE) exceeded its $55 million campaign goal for Living the Promise, UC Riverside’s first comprehensive fundraising campaign. BCOE’s Living the Promise goal was the second highest at UCR after the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences.

A successful Giving Tuesday as well as a $450,000 grant from the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research for the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering helped BCOE reach this goal.

“Surpassing our $55 million goal during BCOE’s 30th anniversary is an incredible accomplishment that will strengthen our engineering program for years to come,” said Jed Schwendiman, associate dean for development at BCOE. “We thank our supporters for their generosity particularly in this challenging year, which will ensure our student engineers will secure bright futures upon graduation.” 

Living the Promise campaign gifts help students academically and professionally, support faculty’s research and creative activities, build new infrastructure around campus, and fund endowed chairs and university programs. Since 2011, BCOE has doubled its number of endowed chairs to a total of 14 and created 18 additional endowed funds for a center, lectureship, lab equipment and additional support programs.

Recent new BCOE funds include the Jane and Jerome Schultz Lectureship in Engineering, Engineering Student Veterans Scholarship supporting active, reserve or former servicemembers; the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) Fund supporting Black student engineers; and the Mitch Boretz Engineering Excellence Fund supporting BCOE staff’s professional development. 

Donor support of funds like these continues to grow at an exciting pace. Since 2019, the total number of unique BCOE donors in 2020 more than tripled to 350 donors as of November 13, 2020. That number is expected to increase with the final tally of Giving Tuesday contributions.

One month remains of the Living the Promise campaign, which ends on Dec, 31, 2020. Help increase contributions to BCOE by donating here.