The Ohio Foundations of Independent Colleges Futures September 2009

AT&T Announces $50,000 Gift to OFIC
To Further Bridges, A College
Access Program For
Underserved Populations

L to R State Representative Sandra Williams; Principal East Tech High School Byron Hopkins; Mohammed Abdul, Sophomore, Bridges Program; Gordon Brollier, President OFIC; Brandon Scarborough, BRIDGES Project Manager; Councilwoman Phyllis Cleveland; Valerie Harrell, Office of Ohio Treasurer; Tom Pelto, President AT&T Ohio, and Dave Armstrong V.P for Enrollment Notre Dame College

On November 30, AT&T announced a $50,000 contribution to The Ohio Foundation of Independent Colleges (OFIC). The contribution will provide continuing support for OFIC's Bridges Program in the northeast Ohio area. While more than 200 Bridges freshmen students from East Technical High School looked on, Tom Pelto, President of AT&T, presented the $50,000 check to Gordon Brollier, President of OFIC. In addition, Mohammed Abdul, a sophomore in Bridges, shared his testimony of how the program has helped him to focus on maintaining his 3.8 GPA on his way to college.

Brollier stated, "This grant is a continuation of AT&T's long involvement with OFIC. For more than five decades AT&T has partnered with OFIC, supporting our mission and the students enrolled in our member colleges and universities. AT&T recognizes that encouraging Ohio's students to attend college, to persist and achieve an undergraduate degree is beneficial not only for the individual students but also for AT&T as a company and for the communities they serve."

The Bridges Program creates a pathway for urban and economically disadvantaged students to gain access to higher education by providing information for both students and their families regarding the importance of a college education, the financial and educational preparation required, and the higher education processes involved. The State Treasurer's Office of Ohio provides valuable assistance in helping deliver the message to the Bridges students.

from Mark Thresher, Executive Vice President
and Chief Financial Officer, Nationwide, and
OFIC Statewide Campaign Chair

The 2010-2011 OFIC Annual Campaign is officially kicked-off with all of the eight major areas of the state completing their training and distribution of materials. I look forward to sharing our first progress report in the next newsletter. My thanks to all of our chairpersons for leading the teams in the major and regional campaigns.

OFIC Diversity Forum
Tommie Lewis, President and CEO of Make It Plain Consulting, LLC, was the keynote speaker at the 2010 OFIC Fall Diversity Forum hosted by Ashland University. The 63 attendees included diversity and multicultural officers from 15 OFIC member colleges as well as human resource and diversity personnel from the corporate sector.

Vice Presidents of Business Forum
The sixth OFIC Vice Presidents of Business Forum, focused on physical plant issues, was held on November 19 on the campus of Hiram College. Twenty six vice presidents of business/finance and physical plant staff representing 15 OFIC member institutions took advantage of the opportunity to network and hear presentations by Sightlines, LLC, a physical plant/facilities assessment firm, and GEM, Inc., an energy audit company, as well as the Hylant Insurance Group.

Vice Presidents of Development
Met at Capital University on December 2, with 16 colleges representated

OFIC/AICUO Communicators Summit
This is the fifth annual gathering of the PR, Media, and Communication specialists of our joint memberships. It will be held at Ohio Dominican University on January 6, 2011. The topic will be Pitching the Media - local, state and national with guest speaker Katie Masterson of the Chronicle of Higher Education

CareerFest 2011
Will be held at the Aladdin's Center on February 4, 2011. We are looking forward to more than 100 employers and 1200 students from our colleges.

Cedarville Deaf
Awareness Day

Signs of Worship, a sign language choir that is part of Alpha Sigma Lambda, the American Sign Language Organization, performs for the chapel congregation on Deaf Awareness Day.

Pastor David Mason of Liberty Baptist Church of the Deaf in Columbus preaches to more than 3,000 students and staff in the Cedarville University chapel on Deaf Awareness Day. Other activities organized to raise awareness of the deaf community and deaf culture included a silent lunch, the showing of a sign language film and the sale of American Sign Language t-shirts to support the education of a 7-year-old deaf girl in Jamaica.

Donating a day of service for Hiram's national annual Alumni Volunteer Day, the Columbus alumni group joined in the Heroes for Humanity Run 9.11 to raise funds for Heroes for Humanity, a non-profit organization that strives to improve the quality of life for servicemen and women, veterans and America's youth by providing goods and services to the military and scholarships to economically disadvantaged students. Heroes for Humanity was founded by Jason Thomas, who is known for his leading of the rescue of the last two survivors from the World Trade Center wreckage.

Runners from the Hiram College alumni group with Jason Thomas, center.

John Malacos, Ph.D., 2010 Wilkin Chair within the University of Findlay's College of Liberal Arts, delivers a lecture on gratitude. Malacos is devoting this academic year to the deep exploration of a single topic, The Power of Positive: Celebrating Human Goodness.

The Ohio Foundation of Independent Colleges is a non-profit
organization that solicits and distributes contributions to its 34
member colleges and universities in Ohio. This newsletter,
Futures, communicates the commitment of the Foundation, its
donors and volunteers to providing access to independent higher
education to Ohio's students. Cheryl L. Kight, V.P.,
Marketing, kight@ofic.org, Editor: Lynne Briggs, briggs@ofic.org.

December 2010