Engineering the Future: Giving to CIT

Engineers, by the very nature of their work, are philanthropists. We build, create, investigate, and solve the issues that face society. Applying passion, intelligence, and effort, engineers build the future. When we succeed—be it an irrigation system in Africa, a car that drives itself into a crisis zone to rescue the wounded, or an artificial heart for toddlers—the world is a better place.

Innovation, entrepreneurship, commitment, and dedication continue to drive our country's economic and social gains. No longer a standalone nation, American businesses now produce and compete on a global scale. The issues we face are multi-faceted, the scope of work more complex.

To stay competitive, we must leverage education. Students and faculty at CIT represent the best and brightest minds, committed to the future of engineering and the opportunity for investigation, discovery, challenge, and leadership.

Giving to the College of Engineering offers you the opportunity to make an impact on the innovative, interdisciplinary education and research taking place here. Strategic funding priorities that help the college achieve its goals include funding fellowships, faculty, and facilities projects for CIT.

Fellowships

Like most research universities, Carnegie Mellon simply couldn't exist without its Ph.D. students. Doctoral students attending the university spend, on average, five or more years here and become integral parts of the community. They teach, they work in labs, and they are each charged with developing new ideas for expanding what is known in a particular field. After graduation, many of these students will join the faculty of leading universities, while others will pursue successful careers in industry or business. And just as graduate students come here to work with the best researchers, faculty come to Carnegie Mellon because of the strength of our graduate students.

Fellowships enable the best students to gain a world-class education, help us secure research grants, and can contribute to increasing diversity on campus. Fellowships enable us to attract and retain highly talented and motivated students. In fact, graduate fellowships do more than any other kind of gift to advance our research activities. Supporting graduate students means supporting the daily intellectual endeavors that are fundamental to CIT's status as a top 10 engineering school.

Faculty

Faculty support is critical to maintain world class quality education and research. In each of our departments, professorships can be established to support a particular faculty member or a field of research. Contributions are used to help faculty members pursue a specific field of study, provide funding for graduate student involvement, purchase equipment, or travel to share their research.

Endowment of a distinguished professorship exemplifies a belief in the values of higher education. It allows us to recruit and retain the best faculty in the world so that we continue to have top quality teachers and researchers.

Facilities

The buildings, libraries, labs, and equipment in CIT determine the learning environment we can offer our students and the research our students and faculty are able to perform. State-of-the-art facilities help us to support the best and brightest students and faculty, as well as attract corporate partners and funding sources.

Funding existing and new facilities makes a long-term impact on the college. Contributing to physical space supports the interdisciplinary going on throughout the college, and it enables our faculty and students to continue to perform cutting-edge research.