Two years into its five-year, $20 million “A Time to Build” campaign, Concordia College Alabama in Selma, Ala., already has raised nearly $13 million in cash and pledges.
The campaign — which runs through 2016 — is the school’s largest and is intended to fund academic expansion, capital projects, student scholarships and endowment growth.
“Our number-one goal is to offer promising students from Alabama and around the world the ability to pursue the dream of a Christian college education,” said the Rev. Dr. Tilahun Mendedo, the school’s president. “Thanks to generous friends and alumni, ‘A Time to Build’ is on track to be transformational — allowing us to develop leaders intellectually and spiritually who make a difference in the world for generations to come.”
Campaign funds are being used to:
- add new academic programs, new faculty and staff, and new technology, labs and classrooms “to support academic excellence,” according to the college. A Criminal Justice program has been added to course offerings as a result of the campaign and a cooperative arrangement with Concordia University Wisconsin, Mequon. More programs are planned.
- develop athletic facilities, complete a connecting road between the west and east campuses, and update and renovate buildings “for better student service.” Most of those plans already are in progress, according to a Concordia, Selma, spokesperson, who said that the Kreft Campus Center has been completely renovated, a new soccer/football field is finished, and the connecting road is “nearly complete.”
In addition, both women’s dormitories — flooded in 2012 — have been completely renovated and updated, an under-used utility building has been converted into a student lounge called “The Hornet’s Nest,” student residential cottages have been remodeled, and the gym floor and indoor swimming pool in the Jenkins Center have been refurbished.
- increase scholarships and build the endowment to “make the dream of a Concordia degree a reality for both current and future students.”
To learn more about Concordia College Alabama (CCA) — the only historically black Lutheran college in the country — visit its website. CCA is part of the LCMS Concordia University System of 10 schools nationwide.
