New Dimensions Campaign Drives Record Year of Philanthropic Support
November 3, 2022
The University of Texas at Dallas recently concluded a record year of fundraising thanks to significant support from alumni, friends and corporate partners. In 2022, nearly 18,000 donations were made for causes across campus, the largest number of gifts ever received by the University in a single year. This monumental generosity helped raise nearly $76.2 million, making 2022 one of the most successful fundraising years in UT Dallas’ history.
Over 8,400 individual donors chose to lend their support for students, faculty, research, clinical programs and community outreach initiatives last year. Each gift helped advance the $750 million goal of New Dimensions: The Campaign for UT Dallas, the University’s ongoing comprehensive campaign launched in 2021. To date, the campaign has raised nearly $317 million.
“As UT Dallas grows and we expand our ambitions, we need to expand our support from the community,” UT Dallas President Richard C. Benson said during the 2022 Celebration of Support. “I’m excited about everything that’s to come in our future. I’m even more excited to know that UT Dallas has the support of our philanthropic partners to make it all happen.”
At the center of the New Dimensions campaign is an effort to increase accessibility and student support while facilitating life-changing research and enhancing the arts on campus. In 2022, transformative gifts were made to each of these priority areas.
The O’Donnell Foundation made a $32 million commitment to name the Edith and Peter O’Donnell Jr. Athenaeum, a visionary arts complex currently under construction south of the Naveen Jindal School of Management. The O’Donnell Foundation’s gift allowed UT Dallas to break ground on the O’Donnell Athenaeum’s first phase: a 68,000-square-foot museum complex that will house the Crow Museum of Asian Art, the Carolyn Brown Photography Archive, additional galleries, conservation spaces and seminar rooms, along with the Brettell Reading Room, a contemplative study space funded by $500,000 in contributions from friends of the late Dr. Rick Brettell.
Alongside the launch of the new School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology this fall, support for the O’Donnell Athenaeum marks a transitional moment in University history that celebrates the creative and cultural impact of the arts across disciplines. When completed, the O’Donnell Athenaeum will also boast a state-of-the-art performance hall for student and visiting artists, creating a new arts district for North Texas on the UT Dallas campus.
As a tier-one research university, UT Dallas’ central mission is to transform lives through research and education. Several significant gifts were received in 2022 that will aid the University’s faculty and clinicians to improve lives around the globe through groundbreaking research and technological development.
Texas Instruments, UT Dallas’ most longstanding corporate partner, made a $15 million gift to name the Texas Instruments Biomedical Engineering and Sciences Building. This new interdisciplinary facility under construction on the UT Southwestern Medical Center campus will bring together UT Dallas scientists and engineers with medical professionals and patients at UT Southwestern. The resulting collaborations will advance the creation of new biomedical technologies and treatment techniques to improve patient outcomes and help make the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex a new hub for biotech development.
The Center for BrainHealth received the largest corporate gift in the center’s 22-year history from Sammons Enterprises Inc. The gift named the Sammons BrainHealth Imaging Center and will advance the center’s work to identify neural indicators of brain health. On the strength of Sammons’ gift and support from other lead donors, the Center for BrainHealth publicly launched its Limitless Campaign having raised over 60% of its $50 million goal. The campaign will advance research, international collaborations and training for students, teachers, veterans, first-responders and an aging population.
Several individual donors and corporate partners collectively donated over $1 million for student scholarships and fellowships designed to increase accessibility and enhance diversity, equity and inclusion programs around UT Dallas. Gifts from Goldman Sachs and Mbroh Engineering are providing scholarship aid to students in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science and the Diversity Scholars Program. Members of the Department of Bioengineering’s Industry Advisory Council established a $100,000 scholarship for students in the department, and a planned gift from Tina Quinn BS’12 and Charlie Quinn MBA’08 will create the Christina and Charles Quinn Scholarship for first-generation students earning degrees in STEM or management fields.
In total, new gifts increased UT Dallas’ overall endowment to more than $714.8 million, closing in on the University’s goal of $800 million by 2025. Continued donor support will be essential to expand UT Dallas’ impact for students, patients and the North Texas community in the years to come.
“This University changes lives,” said Kyle Edgington PhD’13, vice president for development and alumni relations. “Everything that happens here relies on the support of our donors. Their generosity makes it possible for the best and brightest students to study at UT Dallas, creates new knowledge and new technologies, and allows our University to help solve some of our society’s most pressing problems.”