Giving

Make an Impact!

Generous donations from our alumni and friends of the program have helped the Physics Department achieve the prestige that is associated with it today. We are striving to become the nation’s premier physics department. In order to achieve this goal, it is important that we establish a secure base of funding that allows us to excel in the areas of physics that we practice and that provides an incisive and enriching education for our students.

The aid from our donors has gone towards recruiting the best faculty and students to our department, developing new and academically rigorous programs, and funding groundbreaking research conducted by our faculty and students.

Our department would like to thank those of you who have donated, who are considering donating, and all others who have continued to support the Physics program throughout the years. Please help us continue to build our department by viewing our funding priorities or our areas of need below:

Named Endowed Professorships
Endowed professorships have long been recognized as both a hallmark of academic quality and a means by which a university honors its most esteemed scholars and teachers. Professorships are reserved for scholars of international stature with highly distinguished records of teaching, research, and publication. They constitute a time-honored way to recruit or retain scholars with exceptional records of achievement. The Physics Department needs approximately $2 million to continue honoring these professors.

Undergraduate Scholarships
Scholarships are essential if Physics is going to recruit the best students to Michigan and continue to enhance the quality of its program. Funding for tuition support for both in-state and non-resident students is especially critical to ensuring excellence and a diverse student community. Although an endowment ensures a scholarship in perpetuity, an expendable gift to cover tuition or living costs on an annual basis is also of great value. An endowed gift of $100,000 will provide $5,000 annually toward tuition for a student.

Saturday Morning Physics - Spring Season
Each Saturday, this popular program draws over three hundred children and adults from southeastern Michigan to learn about the mysteries and wonders of physics. UM professors from several departments present topics ranging from black holes to astrophysics, from MRI technology to human genetics. Multimedia demonstrations, hands-on experiments, and audience participation make the mornings a lively give-and-take between professor and audience. The 6-8 week spring season builds on the success of the program run each fall. An endowment of $500,000 would allow the spring season to continue in perpetuity. It costs the Department $25,000 annually to produce the spring season, which includes professional videotaping of the sessions for distribution on public television and YouTube.

Graduate and Post-doctoral Fellowships
Proceeds from this endowment would provide a full stipend and tuition for a Physics graduate student or a stipend and research start-up assistance to support a post-doctoral fellow. Because so many graduate students are recruited according to the Department's broad research strengths, this endowment will enable the Department to recruit talented young scientists to pursue research work in specific, targeted areas of physics. An endowment of $750,000 to $1 million will provide the student with flexibility and strengthen the Department's ability to recruit and retain top-notch scientists.

Department Strategic Fund
Expendable, undesignated gifts are extraordinarily important to the Department's continued success and growth. Contributions of up to $100,000 to the Strategic Fund make it possible to meet unexpected needs and challenges, such as:

• Seed funding for new faculty research
• Curriculum development
• Purchase or repair of major instruments for the research and teaching labs ($50,000 per year)
• Summer research opportunities for undergraduates
• Conferences highlighting the Department's scholarship ($25,000 per conference)
• Student activities and clubs

Please consider making a contribution to the Department of Physics today. You can make your gift online, by phone, or through postal mail. 

Online: Please visit our online giving page. 
By phone: Please call 888.518.7888
By mail: Please send your check to:

University of Michigan
Carol Rabuck
2477D Randall Lab
450 Church Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1040

Please see our Employer Matching Gifts webpage and Planned Giving webpage for more donation options.

If you would like to learn more about how you can help the physics department or discuss making a planned gift, please contact:

Mari Vaydik
Director of Major Gifts and Advancement Liaison
mvaydik@umich.edu

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