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Clark School Fund Raising Soars Past Half-way Mark

Donors' Transforming Visions Being Realized
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he A.
James Clark School of Engineering is enjoying unparalleled excitement
having achieved a major milestone. Since the launch of Great
Expectations,
more than $100 million has been committed towards the school's campaign
goal of $185 million. Already eclipsing the previous campaign, this achievement
ensures that the school's resources will match the enormous talent and
capabilities of its students and faculty, and enable new, innovative programs
and facilities. "Imagine the Clark School as you would like to see it
and give to realize that vision," Dean Nariman Farvardin says to Clark
School supporters.
Alumni and friends agree that to a great extent, the unprecedented momentum of the Clark School is attributed to Dean
Farvardin's leadership over the past seven years. With the recent announcement that Farvardin will succeed William
Destler as Maryland's senior vice president for academic affairs and provost in July 2007, the Clark School is celebrating both the dean's new appointment and its campaign achievements.
The success of the campaign is bearing fruit in several ways. A $30 million gift
by A.
James Clark '50 allows the school to offer a broad range of scholarships
and other student support to recruit the most outstanding students. Named for
alumnus Jeong H. Kim Ph.D. '91, the cross-disciplinary, technologically advanced Kim
Engineering Building draws scholars nationally and internationally.
Bioengineering is the leading edge of engineering today. Thanks to the munificence of biosciences pioneer Robert
E. Fischell M.S. '53 Physics, whose $30 million gift along with $1 million from his sons created the Fischell
Department of Bioengineering and the Robert E. Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices. Maryland has become a major hub of research in this field. One example is the recent development by bioengineering researchers of a "virus sponge" that could potentially treat the avian flu epidemic that has ravaged parts of Asia.
Rapidly becoming the largest department in the Clark School, bioengineering is attracting many more women students to engineering. Former associate dean and now member of the Board
of Trustees of the University of Maryland College Park Foundation, Marilyn Berman Pollans M.A.'73 Education, Ph.D. '79 Education supports and continues to be a major advocate of the Women
in Engineering program.
Inspired by the possibilities of nanotechnology, the Robert
W. Deutsch Foundation, led by Robert Deutsch and his daughter, Maryland trustee Jane Brown, is funding advanced research in a nanoscale "biochip." This research promises to give doctors a new way to discover drugs to treat bacterial infections—without stimulating resistance-building mutations.
As Farvardin prepares to leave the Clark School making room for another visionary leader, there is a sense that the foundation has been laid for the school to achieve its greatest expectations in partnership with alumni and friends. Innovation continues to be the centerpiece of the schoolfrom nanotechnology to bioscience, knowing that the ultimate goal is to become one of the nation's Top 5 public engineering schools.
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