9-14-98

Contacts:
Mark Engelbrecht, Design, (515) 294-7427
Stacy Cullison, Design, (515) 294-6984
Steve Sullivan, News Service, (515) 294-3720

ISU BREAKS GROUND ON COLLEGE OF DESIGN BUILDING PROJECT

AMES, Iowa -- Iowa State University's College of Design will break ground on a $3 million capital project at a ceremony on Saturday, Sept. 19, at 10 a.m.

ISU officials, including President Martin Jischke, Design Dean Mark Engelbrecht, and ISU Foundation President Thomas Mitchell, will make brief comments and then break ground at the building site east of the design center. A reception will follow the ceremony.

Features of the capital project, called Threshold 2000, include a 250-seat auditorium; improvements to the college's atrium; creation of in-studio computing areas; and construction of additional studio and shop space. The auditorium will be named in recognition of the late Karol J. and Lila Furman Kocimski, who left their estate to the College of Design. Karol Kocimski was an ISU professor of architecture for two decades.

Financial support for the project is a combination of public and private resources. In addition to $1 million of institutional funding, some $2 million has been contributed in private gifts as part of the ISU Foundation's Campaign Destiny: To Become the Best. The largest private fund-raising drive in ISU history has exceeded $270 million of its $300 million goal as of Aug. 31.

Several leadership gifts were contributed toward the College of Design capital project. A $250,000 gift from the Gardner and Florence Call Cowles Foundation, Des Moines, will establish an "electronic" conference center and distance learning facility. An $85,000 gift from ISU graduate Charles Durham, Omaha, will support a design visualization research lab. John Rogers, an architecture graduate from Omaha, made a $50,000 direct gift to the project and a $600,000 deferred gift to create a computational endowment fund for the college.

Iowa State's College of Design was founded in 1978 and is Iowa's only comprehensive design program.

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