The 2002 Tennessee Board of Regents Report Card indicates ETSU is raising more money from private giving than any other public university in the state and is second only to the University of Tennessee in generated research funds.
“The faculty and staff have been extremely creative and resourceful in pursuing outside support for their teaching, research and service,” President Paul Stanton said in a press release.
ETSU leads the TBR system for the eighth straight year in the private fund-raising category and with that the university’s five-year private-giving average jumped from $17.6 million to $19 million.
Statewide the increase in private giving to universities increased 10 percent while money secured for research was up 16 percent.
The report card indicates ETSU raised $33 million dollars to fund research and sponsored programs; a considerable spike from the $31.3 million that registered on the 2001 report.
The amount of money coming into universities to fund research is in large part secured through competitive grants..
It is one of the areas the TBR has focused on improving in the past several years.
“We are aggressively encouraging faculty to write grants,” said Dr. Burt C. Bach, provost and vice president for Academic Affairs.
“The reason (the research total) is on the report card is because it indicates the quality of an institution.”
Although the increases are good news for the university, a $7.5 million budget cut at ETSU is still inevitable.
The additional money coming into the university through private donations doesn’t go toward mending cuts in the budget.
“There are very few donors who will give money for the operating budget,” Bach said.
In the case of research funding, money is set aside for a specific research program on campus when it’s granted to the university.
Bach explains that most of the donations made to ETSU are dedicated funds, which means they are given to the university for a specific purposes.
In addition, some donations are made in dollars while others coming into the university are so called “in-kind gifts” where companies like Alias donate soft-ware. The value of an in-kind gift is assessed and then added to the total amount of money the TBR Report Card says ETSU raised.
“That’s not green money,” Bach said.

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