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RELEASED: Jan. 6, 2005
DANVILLE, KY—Last year will certainly be remembered for outstanding Centre accomplishments, but none was more important than Centre’s reclaiming the No. 1 slot in alumni giving percentage.
Centre’s return to alumni giving supremacy was ranked top campus story in a recent poll of Centre students, faculty and staff, who were asked to select the three biggest Centre and national stories of 2004.
The College received 5,686 alumni gifts during this year’s annual-giving campaign to give it the nation’s highest annual-giving percentage at 63.4 percent.
Sandra Day O’Connor’s speech at commencement, in which she paid tribute to Centre alums and former Supreme Court Justices John Marshall Harlan (Class of 1850) and Fred M. Vinson (Class of 1909), came in a close second. Centre’s announcement launching a record $120 million fund-raising campaign came in third.
Other stories receiving significant numbers of votes were: the men’s cross-country team advancing to the NCAA division III championships for the first time in school history; junior Tony Stefater winning a Goldwater Scholarship; Jackie Smith ’04 winning a Fulbright Scholarship; Stephen Powell (Stodghill Professor of Art) being selected for the Acorn Award; Vince DiMartino (Matton Professor of Music) being named the Kentucky CASE professor of the year; and sophomore cross-country runner Eileen Schilling winning All-America status for the second consecutive year.
The top national story was the U.S. Presidential elections, followed by the Indian Ocean tsunami, and the war in Iraq. Not far behind were former U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s death, the Boston Red Sox winning the World Series, and the Florida hurricanes.
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Founded in 1819, Centre College is ranked among the U.S. News top 50 national liberal arts colleges. Centre alumni, known for their nation-leading loyalty in annual financial support, include two U.S. vice presidents and two Supreme Court justices. For more, visit http://www.centre.edu/web/elevatorspeech/
For news archives go to http://www.centre.edu/web/news/newsarchive.html.
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