HIGH POINT, N.C. – The recent announcement of $40 million in gifts to High Point University feeds into the school’s 10-year plan to raise and spend $2.1 billion and to define itself as an up-and-coming Southeastern private university.
Three High Point families and university president Nido Qubein, an entrepreneur and motivational speaker, are each giving the school $10 million, the university announced Thursday. Most of the money will go toward a new $70 million health sciences school, and the proposed pharmacy school is expected to open in 2013.
The projects are part of a dramatic expansion of the 86-year-old school, which this week won zoning approval to demolish 72-year-old Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church to make way for a new campus housing project, the High Point Enterprise reported Friday.
The university has raised $170 million since Qubein became president in 2005. During that time, the university has grown from 1,450 students to an expected 3,800 next fall, while a building boom has expanded the campus from 92 acres to 140 acres. Another 1,200 students are enrolled in its graduate school and evening degree programs.
“We’ve done it all without an official (fundraising) campaign,” Qubein told the Winston-Salem Journal. “It’s been me talking to some families about the vision of High Point University.”
The families of Earl E. Congdon, Fred E. Wilson Jr. and Mark A. Norcross were the other ones to give to the university, according to the liberal arts school’s website. High Point is located off Interstate 85 just south of Greensboro.
Campus officials expect enrollment to continue growing, to 5,000 undergraduates by 2017.
