Texas Tech launches $1.2 billion campaign to fund growth, student success
Mateo Rosiles, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
5 min read
A fundraising and vision-setting campaign for everyone at Texas Tech, geared toward the university's next 100 years. That's what Texas Tech University leaders and advocates publicly launched Friday evening during homecoming week.
ON & ON, The Campaign for Texas Tech University, comes on the heels of Tech's recent Centennial Celebrations and is full of ambitious goals to achieve in the coming years and stories to tell. The university is embarking on the four-year public fundraising phase of its comprehensive campaign to raise $1.2 billion. And it's already over halfway there.
Texas Tech president Lawrence Schovanec speaks during the Red Raider Club kickoff luncheon, Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023, at the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center.
In an exclusive interview with the Avalanche-Journal, Texas Tech President Lawrence Schovanec and Vice President for Advancement Byron Kennedy both stressed that this campaign is not only drawing in on big donors, but anyone who has been impacted or has a connection with the university.
"Every gift matters. Every gift has a home. We're going to use every gift to its highest potential," said Kennedy.
Priorities, impact of the Campaign for Texas Tech
The campaign has been in a silent phase for the past four years, having already raised $700 million from 75,000 donors. But it was also during this time the university fine-tuned its vision for the next century through numerous meetings with the executive leadership, faculty, staff and students, which culminated in four areas of impact:
Transform Lives.
Fuel Academic Excellence.
Elevate Campus and Community.
Build Champions.
"We know that investments in these four pillars are the things that are going to set us up for the coming years and decades," Kennedy said. "Taking care of students has always been our mission and one of our great value propositions."
While the titles might be phrased broadly, and the campaign has been in a silent phase for the past four years, the impacts have already been felt and seen by the campus community and the public.
Texas Tech University, as seen on Tuesday, July 18, 2023.
Schovanec said the four priorities fall in line with the university's overarching mission and purpose.
"Students will be at the forefront of our efforts," Schovanec said. "The No. 1 priority in this, Transform Lives, is about scholarships."
The Texas Tech endowment funds already total around $1.1 billion, and around $375 million is dedicated to scholarships. Schovanec said the university uses around $14 million of the endowment annually to fund scholarships but wants to increase that to $30 million annually.
"Understand that is still a relatively small amount of the scholarship support we provide, but it sets the tone for this campaign," Schovanec said. "It's about supporting what has distinguished Texas Tech, in that we've always been a student-centric university."
When looking at schools within the Big 12 and the SEC conferences, Texas Tech has been in the top 4 for awarding student scholarships in the past 10 years and in the top 10 for the past 20 years.
The university must also attract world-class faculty, staff, and researchers to support the initiative. While Texas Tech started receiving its allotment of funding from the newly created Texas University Fund this year, Schovanec said the university cannot solely rely on it to fund research.
For context, the TUF is a nearly $4 billion research fund created by the Texas State Legislature for emerging research universities in Texas and is not associated with the Permanent University Fund (PUF) that Texas A&M and the University of Texas receive.
The newly established TUF fund can only be used to provide faculty support, pay faculty salaries, purchase equipment or library materials, and support graduate and undergraduate research, among other student-focused items.
With a set allocation on where TUF dollars can be spent, special initiatives, like the Excellence in Banking program, are partly funded through private donors.
"The Excellence in Banking program is an example of somebody who said, 'We can produce students more able to contribute to the banking industry by having a special program here,'" Schovanec said. "We raised about $12 million for that."
Texas Tech hosts a ribbon cutting ceremony for their new Academic Sciences Building, Friday, Aug. 9, 2023.
But as the university attracts more staff and students for various reasons, Texas Tech must also consider the logistics of where people are going to work, study, and even park.
It is through the Elevate Campus and Community initiative that the public and campus community has seen the most tangible impact.
"We will change the way people navigate this campus to make it very pedestrian-friendly," Schovanec said. "We do have several large projects on the horizon, and we're going to move forward with those."
Potential projects that are in the works are:
Replicating the new Academic Sciences Building.
Addition to the the Davis College.
A Design Village.
Adding more pedestrian promenades and parking garages.
Creating a new satellite student recreation facility.
"There's a lot of work and we'd like to see a lot of this done in the next four to five years," Schovanec said.
The final initiative is Build Champions, which directly relates to Texas Tech Athletics.
Running back Tahj Brooks #28 of the Texas Tech Red Raiders reacts after scoring on a three-yard rushing touchdown against the Arizona Wildcats during the first half of the NCAAF game at Arizona Stadium on October 05, 2024 in Tucson, Arizona.
"Our focus there is not on facilities, rather supporting those students and helping us deal with the challenges they now face in terms of revenue sharing and the new whole landscape of college athletics," Schovanec said.
Encompassing every aspect of the university that will have an impact on every Red Raider that also will maximize every gift given — no matter how small — the ON & ON campaign draws inspiration from not only its global impact but also where the university is located — West Texas.
"It speaks to where we are. This whole region has such a vastness and the university has filled that geographical characteristic, on and on from here where we've reached the world," Schovanec said.
How to donate to Texas Tech?
With this campaign, individuals can donate to various aspects of the campus, such as particular programs, initiatives, scholarships, and departments.
