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Dear ##First Name##,
Because you are a valued supporter of Temple University, and I have pledged to devote more resources to sharing the Temple story with our most important friends, it’s my honor to report the advances and positive changes occurring this fall at Temple.
Temple has momentum today not seen in decades. It is powered by supporters like you, so it’s important that you know what’s happening. Thank you for all you do to help this great institution continue to rise.
I write on a particularly consequential anniversary.
Fifty years ago this fall, Temple University was transformed from a private to a state-related university.
The change, effective with the 1965-66 school year, designated Temple an “instrumentality of the Commonwealth” and boosted annual Commonwealth funding by $11 million – about $83 million in today’s dollars. In response, Temple cut annual tuition for Pennsylvania residents by more than 50 percent: from $920 to $450.
That was a big year for me as well, for other reasons. In October 1965, I was a fourth grader more interested in baseball than schoolwork. In those days, all weekday World Series games were played during school hours. I spent the morning of October 6 plotting how to track that afternoon’s World Series game.
It was the Twins against the Dodgers. As I walked home for lunch, I hatched a brilliant plan: I would wedge a transistor radio inside my pants and snake an earphone wire up my shirt. Unfortunately, while that afternoon’s lessons droned on, I got lost in the play-by-play. When I failed to suppress my joy at Don Mincher’s second-inning home run for Minnesota, my demise was swift and certain.
I spent an hour after school writing “I will not bring a radio to school” 100 times, in cursive. Any sentence in which my cursive was deemed “inelegant” did not count towards the 100.
Back to 2015: I still love baseball, but happily no longer have to choose between cheering and education. All World Series games are at night. Cursive – elegant or not – is no longer taught in many schools. But Temple’s mission is unchanged: excellence, accessibility, and maximum affordability.
The links are striking between what President Millard Gladfelter achieved in 1965 and what we accomplish today.
Fifty years ago, substantial Commonwealth funding not only made Temple more affordable, but also more accessible by funding a 15 percent enrollment increase. The funding also helped Temple bolster its academic excellence by recruiting more faculty, building a new library, and dramatically increasing university research.
President Gladfelter transformed Temple into one of the leading urban research universities of the 20th century. We remain one today as our means and methods evolve for a changing world.
In 2015-16, our annual Commonwealth appropriation has dwindled by about $90 million in 2015 dollars from the peak contributions in the late 1960s. At the same time, our enrollment has more than tripled.
In order for Temple to continue standing for excellence, and accessibility, and affordability—all at once—we’ve taken matters into our own hands.
We have embarked on a period of change unlike any since the 1960s.
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