Capital Campaign

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The College Foundation is raising $5.5 million to fund College priorities in student support, innovation, and facilities.

An investment in our College is an investment in our students and the economic well being of our community. It’s time to open more doors, and you are the key.

Celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2009, North Central State College is a community catalyst, forging ahead with innovation to help improve the region’s economy. Our more than 4,000 students have access to a dedicated, creative faculty and support staff on a community campus with learning sites throughout north central Ohio. Students want education and new skills for the future work place, and enrollment is growing at a steady pace.

To keep pace with that growth and the changing needs of local employers, the College’s 20-year-old, resource-developing Foundation is initiating Opening Doors.

Opening Doors is a $5.5 million capital campaign for donor investment in student support, innovation, and facilities projects. Specifically, the campaign will support a new Necessities Fund for students in need, an Entrepreneur Education and Scholarship Program with community ties and student business start-ups, an Innovation Fund for creative faculty and staff programs, radiology equipment for health science courses, classroom technology upgrades, and facilities projects at the College’s Fallerius Technical Education Center and the Kehoe Center for Advanced Learning.

Invest in us for the future of our students, our College, and our north central Ohio communities. Opening Doors. You are the key.

Photograph of Rick Taylor

Rick Taylor

Photograph of Matt Smith

Matt Smith

Community Leaders Chair Opening Doors Campaign

Local industrialists Rick Taylor and Matt Smith are leading the College Foundation’s Opening Doors Capital Campaign 2009.

President of Jay Industries of Mansfield, Ohio, Rick is in his ninth year on the North Central State College Foundation Board of Trustees. Rick also serves on the Board of Directors for both the Park National Bank in Newark, Ohio, and the Gorman-Rupp Company of Mansfield, and he is a member of the Advisory Board of Richland Bank in Mansfield.

Rick is a member of the Richland County Foundation Board of Trustees and is President of the Board of Directors of the Mansfield Area Y. An industrial technology graduate of the School of Applied Science at Miami University of Ohio, Rick and his wife, Carol, reside in Mansfield and have three children and three grandchildren.

Completing his fifth year as a North Central State College Trustee, Matt served as chairman of the College’s Board in 2007-2008 and is the Board’s alternate voting representative to the Ohio Association of Community Colleges.

A Board Director for PECO II Inc., Performance Telephone, Pacquin Energy & Fuel, and Schillings Graphics, Matt is President of Firenze Valley Farm Inc. and involved with the Galion Chamber of Commerce, Galion Kiwanis and the Boy Scouts of America Heart of Ohio Council. Matt earned his Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University in Indiana and an MBA from Ashland University in Ohio. Matt and his wife, Linda, live in Mansfield and have three children.

The mission of the North Central State College Foundation is to assist the College in providing lifelong learning opportunities by securing financial and community support.

Your investments in the College Foundation are helping our College achieve its goals in establishing scholarships, supporting expansion of facilities, obtaining gifts of equipment and supplies for classroom use, and funding innovative programming for the development of north central Ohio’s future workforce.

For information on investing in our College, please contact Chriss Harris, executive director of the College Foundation, via email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
or call 419-755-4753.

All gifts to the North Central State College Foundation, a non-profit organization, are tax-deductible under Section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code.

Fallerius Addition

A central campus setting for North Central State College will be created as part of the implementation of the facility master plan for the Mansfield Campus. The elimination of the roadway between Kee Hall and the Fallerius Technical Education Center will turn the current, simple side door of Fallerius Center into the main entrance to the building. The Fallerius addition, to be funded as a result of the Opening Doors Campaign, will consist of 7,000-square-feet of space in two stories, new elevator service, and a student gathering and study area with state-of-the-art research and computing equipment.

Classroom Upgrades

The College is in its fourth year of systematically integrating instructional technology and furniture into classrooms across the campus. However, the process is not keeping up with the accelerating demand for such educational tools as Internet/dataports, document cameras, LCD projectors and enhanced software applications. Our new project funded via the Opening Doors Campaign will expand the number of "Smart Classrooms" from nine to 25, replacing outdated equipment and furniture and continuing the expansion, enabling distance learning and material development.

Radiology Equipment Upgrade

New digital imaging equipment for training in health sciences is needed for our faculty and students, as medical emphasis in the job market continues to escalate in north central Ohio. The College will update its radiology training facility to include digital imaging equipment and software that offer high speed, image (X-ray) processing and responds to the training needs of regional hospital and medical offices.

Necessities Fund

It has been estimated that North Central State College is losing as many as 300 students per year due to necessity funding issues, including students' inability to pay for books, lab fees, test fees, and transportation. The Opening Doors Campaign will make possible a new Necessities Fund to retain students in need and keep them on course to graduate. Qualified students, those who receive limited or no government subsidy for their education and generally have at least one job and care for a family, will apply to the fund for help. This campaign priority is influenced by Ohio initiatives that support the retention and graduation of college students.

Kehoe Renovation

Workforce development programs, located in the College’s Kehoe Center for Advanced Learning in Shelby, Ohio, provide a unique opportunity to blend educational theory and instruction with real-world application. A new program development project will be able to take advantage of 10,000 square feet of renovated Kehoe space that will offer a state-of-the-art facility for both a training environment for students and conference facilities for business and community use. Funds raised during the Opening Doors Campaign will support the Kehoe building renovation.

Entrepreneurship Education

The Opening Doors Campaign will provide seed funding for the establishment of the entrepreneurship education program, including scholarships. This will position North Central State College as an entrepreneurial center where traditional students use the community as a classroom for the development of career-enhancing business partnerships, on-the-job learning opportunities, and collaboration with students and faculty from other colleges and universities.

Innovation Fund

North Central State College’s faculty and staff members generate ideas and create workforce training. This produces skilled workers and drives regional efforts to match their skills to available, local, high-paying jobs. The College Foundation has designed an Innovation Fund, to be supported by the Opening Doors Campaign, to provide financial support for the creative projects and professional development of College employees and enhance education quality to benefit students and the community.

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