University of Michigan

The President’s New Donor Challenge: Enriching The Student Global Experience

While new media and technologies have brought the world closer than ever to campus, students need a deeper understanding of international traditions, values and attitudes to succeed personally and professionally.

Through President Mary Sue Coleman’s Challenge for The Student Global Experience, donors can:

• Help prepare students to thrive in the dynamic, global environment

• Maximizing their gifts for foreign study and learning.

“I want more of our students to see more of the world,” said Coleman, who recently made a gift with her husband, Kenneth Coleman, to kick off the Challenge. “Whether you view the world as getting flatter or smaller, the fact is we are more interconnected than ever.

“We must find ways to make the international experience more flexible, creative and affordable. Our future and the future of our nation depend on it.”

The Challenge helps fulfill Coleman’s call to double U-M student participation in study abroad programs. More than 1,800 Michigan undergraduates and roughly 670 graduate students already study abroad each year.

• Launched on January 1, 2009

• The Challenge offers a $1 match for every $2 in endowment gifts.

• With $5 million in matching funds, it aims to leverage donors’ generosity and generate $15 million for overseas study opportunities.

Here’s how it works:

• Endowment gifts ranging from $25,000 to $500,000 will be matched

• The first pledge payment must be made by Dec. 31, 2009 with the final payment received by Dec. 31 2013

• The match opportunity expires when the $5 million in available matching funds has been exhausted or by Dec. 31, 2009, whichever comes first

• The Challenge benefits U-M-Ann Arbor undergraduate and graduate students who want to attend a UM-Ann Arbor or affiliated foreign study program.
  

Student Stories

"The experience helped me understand how the core concepts of business are applicable across geographies and industry sectors and how they can be a force for positive social change."
—Abby Hillyard , (MBA ’09), who worked in Cambodia as part of the Stephen M. Ross School of Business’ Multidisciplinary Action Project course

 

"I can't think of one experience in my life that has impacted and changed me for the better as much as studying abroad. It is worth every sacrifice you have to make to get there, even leaving Michigan for a semester."
—Emily Ziering, right, Kinesiology student on her foreign study experience at the University of Barcelona

 

"(Uganda) was an amazing experience and it simply would not have happened without the funding I received. It's been eye-opening to see how the vast majority of the world lives, simple interventions can help so many people."
—Chris LaFond (BS '04, MPH '06), who spent four months in Uganda analyzing HIV treatments as a second-year Masters student at the School of Public Health.