Campaign Initiatives

The Campaign for Williams propels our tradition forward. The Board of Trustees’ 2007 Strategic Plan identified urgent and inspiring objectives to keep ahead of the ever-changing needs in education. In February 2008, the Board publicly launched Embracing Excellence: The Campaign for Williams to focus community support on tangible goals that achieve these objectives. While recognizing the need for increased operational support, this Campaign goes beyond today’s needs and looks to the future. It ensures that the campus infrastructure—including a new Student Center and Fitness Center—supports Williams’ excellent teaching and community life. The Campaign helps ensure Williams’ long-term financial health by strengthening the endowment to secure and augment financial aid, faculty compensation, and academic programs.

Capital Projects

• Student Center

• Fitness Center

Endowment

• Faculty Development

• Financial Aid

Annual Support

Student Center

The Williams community is formed by common interests, passions, and values rather than by geography. A Student Center functions as a virtual town square for students who journey to New London daily from a region nearly 70 miles in diameter.

Built in 1955 when the student body was half its current size, the current Williams cafeteria strains to support our students and all their activities. With a student body now over 300, a larger, multipurpose Student Center will reflect the value that Williams places on community. An expanded cafeteria, which will be converted into a spacious and beautiful Student Center, becomes an oasis for students relaxing from the frenetic, fast-food pace of the world outside. In the 180-seat Student Center, with a mixture of table sizes and shapes, students can linger, relax, bond, belong, and take part in the learning process with faculty. The Student Center will further foster students living in close community with adults who model the School’s mission and core values. The Student Center also provides a forum for celebrating student accomplishments and building school spirit, whether through an art display or sports team trophy. The multipurpose room for testing, meetings, coffee houses, and small instruction areas will include an updated kitchen and serving areas to facilitate improved food service for students and faculty as well as receptions and other school community celebrations.

Fitness Center

An exciting highlight of the leadership phase of Embracing Excellence’s capital component has been the creation of the Dayharsh Fitness Center. “It was something we could do,” explains Gary Dayharsh of his family’s gift. The Center enables Williams’ comprehensive fitness program to focus on improving endurance, flexibility and strength through regular exercise and activity.

Faculty Development

Embracing Excellence requires long-term thinking. Building Williams’ endowment provides a permanent, predictable, and growing source of revenue for the future. The healthy benchmarks set by peer schools require significant growth for Williams’ critical endowment funds for faculty development and financial aid. The endowment will play a major role in this campaign and will continue to be a major force for future fundraising.

Williams teachers are at the center of a Williams experience. Alumni, students, current and former parents all proclaim the talented and dedicated faculty as one of the School’s distinguishing traits. As the national shortage of qualified teachers grows and salaries at surrounding schools increase, Williams is challenged to continue to hire and retain its talented professionals. Williams’ Strategic Plan calls for increasing faculty salaries to levels similar to those at competing public and independent schools and for providing professional development in a variety of settings. Embracing Excellence helps build the endowment so that the School can continue to find and nurture teachers with exceptional talent and commitment to Williams students and families.

Financial Aid

Williams remains dedicated to admitting talented students from diverse backgrounds. Endowed funds for financial aid facilitate a socially and economically diverse community, which in turn prepares young people for participation in a changing world. Today, approximately 25% of Williams students receive aid and in 2007–08, the call for Williams financial aid was over $1,000,000. Increasing the endowment ensures that the Williams experience remains accessible to those students with academic strength, diverse talents, varied backgrounds, and personal character.

Annual Support

Annual giving to The Fund for Williams is essential to the School’s continued success in achieving the mission day-to-day. Like many independent schools, Williams faces increased pressure on the operating budget and can no longer simply increase tuition to meet these additional expenses. Embracing Excellence means going beyond the basics to provide the best opportunities and tools for students, whether high-tech projectors for classrooms, enhanced sound systems for arts performances, or scoreboards at the athletic fields. The School relies on annual gifts through The Fund for Williams to build on this tradition of superb educational experiences. The entire Williams community—current and former parents, grandparents and other relatives, alumni, faculty, administrators and staff—is encouraged to contribute at some level to help close the gap between tuition and expenses of the School.

During the Campaign, all gifts to The Fund for Williams, regardless of size, will be included in the Campaign total. Outgoing Head of School Charlotte L. Rea and incoming Head Mark Fader concur: “By including this component of giving in Embracing Excellence, Williams reinforces the need for ongoing, annual support of the School long after this campaign is over.”