September 3, 1998
 
 

Comments from Kathryn Mohrman about the gift
Colorado College: Facts
The Sciences at Colorado College
Colorado College’s Russell T. Tutt Science Center*
El Pomar Foundation/Colorado College Connections Over the Years
The Campaign for Colorado College: A Course of Distinction
 

*It was announced in September that the facilty would be named after Julie and Spencer Penrose, founders of El Pomar Foundation.  However, the foundation and college decided in December to instead name it after Russell T. Tutt, chair of the CC Board of Trustees 1966-84.

Comments from Kathryn Mohrman, President of Colorado College, about El Pomar Foundation's announcement of support for a new science building on campus:

"As we approach the 21st century, the understanding of science is increasingly important in American society.  Therefore we are very grateful for the decision by El Pomar Foundation to contribute $5 million to support a new facility for geology, psychology, and environmental sciences at Colorado College.

"Almost one-third of our students major in one of the science disciplines, and all of our students take a minimum of three courses of natural science.  The new building which El Pomar is supporting will provide state-of-the-art laboratories and classrooms for three of the college’s most popular disciplines.  These new academic spaces will enhance the intensity of learning and the extraordinary student-faculty collaboration for which Colorado College is well known.

"It is appropriate that the largest single gift to date to the college’s fund-raising campaign comes from El Pomar, which has been the most generous cumulative donor in our history.

"With this generous gift, the Campaign for Colorado College has now reached more than $47 million in gifts and pledges, well over halfway toward our announced goal of $83 million.  We could not be more pleased and grateful to have this significant endorsement from El Pomar Foundation for the quality of teaching and learning that is the essence of Colorado College."
 

Founded in 1874 by the Congregational Church under the leadership of the Rev. Thomas Haskell, establishment of Colorado College is also credited to Colorado Springs founder Gen. Williams Palmer, who set aside land in the original establishment of the new city in 1872 for a college.  The college celebrates its quasquicentennial (125th anniversary) during 1998-99.  No longer church affiliated, Colorado College is an independent liberal arts and sciences institution.  Coed from its founding, the college currently enrolls more than 1,900 students.

Colorado College is consistently ranked among the nation’s best liberal arts colleges, including the most recent U.S. News guide which placed it at #24.  The only college of its kind in the Rocky Mountain West, Colorado College is distinct nationally for its Block Plan.  Established in 1970, the Block Plan allows students to take and faculty to teach only one course at time – encouraging intense study of a subject and allowing freedom and flexibility unheard of in a traditional semester system.  An 11:1 student-faculty ratio results in small classes, no more than 25 and averaging 15.  Upper-level courses are usually even smaller, adding to the seminar-like learning atmosphere.

The Sciences at Colorado College

• Students at Colorado College study the natural sciences through the departments of anthropology, biology, chemistry, geology, mathematics, physics, psychology, and sports science, and in interdisciplinary programs for environmental science and neuroscience .

• In the late 1980s, the college renovated Olin Hall and completed construction of the Barnes Science Center.  The projects greatly expanded and improved the space allotted to biology, physics, and chemistry.

• UCLA researcher Alexander Astin, in a recent study, examined research and undergraduate learning at America’s colleges and universities – he identified that only 11, including Colorado College, which rate highly on both.

• Biology is the single most popular major among the college’s students, and about 30 percent of graduates have a major in the natural sciences.

• Classes utilize the flexibility of the Block Plan to engage in frequent field studies in Colorado, the Southwest, and around the world.

• About two-thirds of CC graduates go on to some sort of graduate studies; Colorado College ranks 13th among private colleges for graduating students who go on to receive doctoral degrees in earth sciences.

• Graduates who continue on to graduate school report that studying the sciences at Colorado College better prepares them for graduate and medical studies.

• Palmer Hall, constructed in 1903 as a CC’s first dedicated science facility, lacks adequate infrastructure for the modern study and teaching of the natural sciences.  Only geology and psychology still reside in Palmer, along with many social science departments.

Colorado College’s Russell T. Tutt Science Center

• Planning for the facility began in the early 1990s as the college created a new campus master plan.

• The new building will complete the suite of science facilities that have been both modernized and adapted for use under the Block Plan in the last 28 years.  The facility will bring geology, psychology, and the interdisciplinary environmental science and neuroscience programs into the existing fold of excellent science spaces on campus.

• The new facility will total 50,000 gross square feet, 30,500 net square feet.

• The Tutt Center will connect with the northwest corner of Barnes Science Center, allowing for continued interaction among science departments.  Barnes also connects with Olin Hall, making a science complex which, when the Tutt Center is complete, will total approximately 170,500 square feet.

• Seminar rooms and small research spaces will augment laboratories and “smart” classrooms that are technologically equipped to handle the demands of modern science.

• Geology labs and classrooms will accommodate the study of petrology, plate tectonics, land forms, oceanography, vulcanology, glaciology, and cross-disciplinary areas such as geochemistry and economic geology.  Other facilities will service the department’s extensive field study program.  In the past decade, enrollment in geology courses has increased by 36 percent.

• Psychology, occupying approximately half of the new building, will serve the department’s entire program including neuroscience, perception, learning, behavioral studies, and clinical and social psychology.  Proposed laboratories include computer research design, neuroscience, and operant/learning.

• Environmental science, a new but important and popular interdisciplinary major program, currently occupies lab and classroom space in Olin Hall.  Environmental science facilities in the new building will include faculty offices, modest space for research, and seminar rooms.  In just two years, the new program has attached more than 38 majors.

• An important goal of the building program is to create a facility that is environmentally sensitive and which adheres to the principles of good environmental architecture.  The aim is to also create a learning laboratory of environmental sensitivity that can be incorporated into the curriculum.

• The building committee selected the Santa Monica, Calif., firm of Moore, Ruble and Yudell as the lead architect.

• Total cost is of the facility is estimated to be $10 million.

• Groundbreaking for the project is tentatively planned for spring of 1999, depending on additional fund-raising developments.  Occupancy would then be expected by 2001.

El Pomar Foundation/Colorado College Connections Over the Years

• Prior to the gift for the new science center, El Pomar Foundation had given Colorado College a total of $21,774,000 since 1938.

• The relationship between the two institutions began when the foundation began contributing to the college's general fund in 1938, and included early support of the men’s ice hockey program (which continues to date and has enabled the team to become one of the outstanding Division I programs in the nation).  Other early grants included support of the college's music program and of faculty salaries.

• In 1961, El Pomar Foundation made a gift for construction of a new library, the Charles Leaming Tutt Library, which opened in 1962.  El Pomar also made a major contribution for an addition to the library in the late '70s.

• El Pomar Sports Center, the college's current main athletic facilities, opened in 1970 after having received major donations from the foundation.

• El Pomar created a fund for minority students at CC, established with four grants of $250,000 in 1973.  Now with a market value of $10 million, it serves as the college’s anchor for minority student financial aid.

• During the last college capital campaign in the 1980s, El Pomar Foundation made grants of more than $7 million in support of a restructured student center named for former President Lloyd E. Worner.

• El Pomar founder Spencer Penrose, after the success of his many mining ventures, supported the college in the early part of the century, and in the early '20s made a $20,000 gift for Colorado College's endowment.

• Charles Leaming Tutt, a close associate of Spencer Penrose and later president of El Pomar, served on the CC Board of Trustees (his home on the corner of Cascade and Uintah was donated to the college and now serves as the Tutt Alumni House).  His son, Russell -- in whose honor the facilty will be named -- chaired the Colorado College board from 1966-84; Russell Tutt's son R. Thayer Tutt Jr. is currently president of El Pomar.  William J. Hybl, chairman of El Pomar and president of the United States Olympic Committee, is a distinguished 1964 Colorado College graduate to whom the college awarded an honorary degree in 1998.  Both Hybl and Thayer Tutt are former members of the Colorado College Board of Trustees.   The current CC trustee chair, William R. Ward, is also a   member of El Pomar Foundation’s Board of Trustees.

 The Campaign for Colorado College: A Course of Distinction

• Campaign goal: $83 million

• Timeline: Announced in April 1998.  Goal to be reached by June 30, 2001

• Major priorities: Increased financial aid, two new teaching facilities, and other support of educational enterprises.  Along with the science complex, the other major building project is a new center for the arts, an $18 million project.

• Progress to date:  With this new El Pomar gift, the campaign totals stand at more than $47 million. The campaign began with a lead gift of $4 million from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation in 1994, followed by a second gift of $4 million last December.  The Packard and El Pomar foundations rank as the two organizations whose gifts to the college have been truly transformative.

For more information, call Todd A. Wilson, director of college relations at the Colorado College, 719-389-6602 (or email, twilson@ColoradoCollege.edu); or Don Wilson, vice president for alumni, development & college relations, 719-389-6740 (email, dwilson@ColoradoCollege.edu)