{"id":19465,"date":"2014-12-11T16:48:28","date_gmt":"2014-12-11T22:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/?p=19465"},"modified":"2014-12-13T20:26:09","modified_gmt":"2014-12-14T02:26:09","slug":"early-gifts-offer-boost-to-business-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/2014\/12\/11\/early-gifts-offer-boost-to-business-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Early Gifts Offer Boost to Business Students"},"content":{"rendered":"

While gifts and pledges to the Imagine Tomorrow campaign are providing benefits across the campus, Bemidji State University’s Department of Business Administration has seen a particularly dramatic impact.<\/p>\n

Contributions have so far helped create five new endowments for business majors and two more that support accounting majors<\/a>. This year alone more than $20,000 in scholarships were awarded to nine students through these new funds, and next year the level of support provided by these new endowments will grow to more than $50,000.<\/p>\n

\"BSUMv30n02_ShawnStrongPQ-657\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“We never know if a $1,000 scholarship is going to be the difference between keeping a student in school or having them leave,” said Dr. Shawn Strong, dean of the College of Business, Technology and Communications. “From that standpoint these scholarships are invaluable. They make a huge impact, one student at a time.”<\/p>\n

The boost also will make the department more competitive when recruiting future students, said Dr. Rod Henry, professor and chair of the Department of Business Administration.<\/p>\n

“It definitely gives us more stories to tell when we have prospective students coming to campus,” Henry said.<\/p>\n

This support comes at an opportune time for the departments of business and accounting as they prepare to move next fall from their current locations in Decker Hall into a new home in a renovated Memorial Hall.<\/p>\n

The renovation, part of a construction project totaling nearly $14 million financed by state bonds, began in earnest this September and is creating a completely new setting for business and accounting classes, group projects and departmental offices.<\/span><\/p>\n

Irvin E. Engebretson ’61, retired senior director of finance for CRAY Research, has stepped forward to help ensure the new Memorial Hall lives up to its promise of providing state-of-the-art facilities.<\/p>\n

Engebretson, who lives in Chippewa Falls, Wis., has made a planned gift through the BSU Legacy Society that will provide $250,000 for computers and other technology needed for business and accounting students.<\/p>\n

While scholarships and new technology to support those students are obvious, tangible benefits from Imagine Tomorrow, the campaign’s most-important contribution may well be the relationships it is helping forge with its numerous alumni, Henry said.<\/p>\n

“Imagine Tomorrow is drawing us closer to our alumni and the organizations they work for,” he said. “It’s drawn us tighter to that community that we were already a part of.”<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While gifts and pledges to the Imagine Tomorrow campaign are providing benefits across the campus, Bemidji State University\u2019s Department of Business Administration has seen a particularly dramatic impact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":19392,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[958],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19465"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19655,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19465\/revisions\/19655"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}