UNI receives its largest donation in history

   The University of Northern Iowa received its largest gift ever on Thursday when Des Moines businessman Richard O. Jacobson pledged to donate $11 million to create the Richard O. Jacobson Center for Comprehensive Literacy, pending Iowa Board of Regents approval. The gift is the largest ever given by the Richard O. Jacobson Foundation.

    The focus of the Richard O. Jacobson Center for Comprehensive Literacy is to provide state-of-the-art literacy education to the 20 percent of Iowa students who struggle with learning how to read. The program is expected to impact 10,800 students in the state of Iowa within five to seven years.

    "Learning to read is the most important aspect of education and the foundation for all subsequent learning," Jacobson said. "UNI has long been known for excellence in preparing teachers and especially teachers in reading. I am pleased to partner with UNI to impact the children of Iowa."

    According to Dwight Watson, dean of the UNI College of Education, the program will address the achievement gap between white students and students of color as well as the learning gap between students of higher and lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

    "Because these are two kind of pervasive concerns in Pre-K to 12 education, we need to come up with some sort of solution," Watson said. "And we feel this literacy program – the way it's going to be laid out, the way it's going to be targeting those particular students – it will answer that sort of pervasive concern about gap issues."

    The first $1 million of the gift will be used to provide access to technology that is critical to the program as well as special training for the university's literacy instructors in this specific teaching method, which has proven to be successful in different parts of the country, UNI President Benjamin Allen said.

    A $10 million endowment will support the expansion of the program as UNI education students will become trained in its methods, and literacy coaches trained at UNI will travel to Iowa schools to train school teachers.

    According to Allen, the gift reaffirms the university's leadership role in the field of education and will help the university recruit better faculty in addition to providing better opportunities for placement for College of Education graduates.

    The program will also have long-term effects on the economic development of the state of Iowa.

    "There is to me a very strong association between a level of education and economic development of the state, and I think Mr. Jacobson, as a business person, also knows that, he understands that," Allen said. "And so with more of our graduates coming out of Pre-K through 12 – maybe even Pre-K through 16 – better able to read, better able to understand, better able to speak, better able to listen, that will make our economic development better."

    Jacobson's gift is part of the university's Imagine the Impact campaign, the goal of which is to raise $150 million for UNI by 2013.

    "Many of the other campaigns that we've had here at the university have been about buildings and about building things," UNI Foundation President Bill Calhoun said. "This is all about people; this is investments in our students, investments in our academic programs, investments in our faculty members to ensure that we're providing an outstanding education here at the University of Northern Iowa."

According to Calhoun, the campaign has been in its "silent" phase for several years, and will start its national phase this October during homecoming weekend. The campaign has raised roughly $100 million dollars to date.

    Watson feels that the gift aligns well with the goals of the Imagine the Impact campaign.

    "Imagine 10,800 students who are becoming proficient at reading so they can be successful in the classroom," Watson said. "Imagine the fact that they're reading and therefore they can have access to other content areas because they are able to read the information. Imagine the long-term economic impact of these readers when it comes to the type of work that they could do and the jobs that they would get by being literate learners. This is a wonderful gift that has very expansive impact opportunities for the state of Iowa."