Our Campaign for Lewis & Clark

Through this campaign, we will invest in the people who make Lewis & Clark a community like no other—those who make a difference wherever they go and the people who guide, support, and challenge them along the way.

That means dramatically expanding scholarships to attract and support students of all backgrounds, funding wraparound wellness initiatives, career preparation, and accessible study abroad and research opportunities that help all students realize their best selves, and endowing professorships for dedicated teachers, researchers, and mentors.

Scholarships

One of our top priorities in this campaign is to significantly expand scholarships at Lewis & Clark. Our ability to offer need-based support will address college affordability challenges and help sustain the bright and dynamic student body that defines Lewis & Clark College. It will support our graduate school students who go on to support lives, communities, and the cause of social justice. And it will bring more talented students to a law school community that can bring out their best and help them realize their dream of becoming a lawyer.

Endowed Faculty

Endowed professorships ensure our ability to recruit and retain professors who excel in their fields and who go above and beyond to serve students. With this campaign, we seek to establish at least three new endowed chairs at the College of Arts & Sciences, especially in areas—such as entrepreneurship—that are critical to our future. We also hope to establish our first-ever endowed faculty position at the graduate school to better attract and support those whose teaching and research find new ways to deepen the intersection between community service and social justice. And we intend to endow faculty positions in environmental law, criminal law, and more—enabling us to attract and retain the best legal thinkers and teachers in the nation.

Posse Foundation

This proven, nationally recognized model for student success provides a small “Posse” of diverse and talented students with what they need to thrive in college. As a new partner institution for the Posse Foundation—a program that is central to our diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts—Lewis & Clark is proud to welcome outstanding Posse Scholars to our campus, where they can grow into the young, diverse leaders our world needs tomorrow. And through this campaign, we will create a strong foundation for this important program, funding full-tuition scholarships for every Posse Scholar while investing in staff and programmatic support to ensure the success of our partnership.

Student Support

Through this campaign, we will build a more robust and accessible support system for every Lewis & Clark student, investing in wellness initiatives that sustain students physically, mentally, and emotionally; overseas and research scholarships that make our signature study abroad experiences and critical hands-on research with faculty mentors accessible to all; and enhanced career preparation to help each student bring their liberal arts mindset and skillset into the world beyond our campus.

Through this campaign, we will invest in the places where Lewis & Clark comes together as a community and where every student can find their purpose and direction in life.

By combining high-impact investments with smart, sustainable decisions that prioritize adaptive reuse, we can make each Lewis & Clark campus more vibrant and welcoming, helping to attract and retain students, foster community, and challenge every student to explore their skills, talents, and passions.

Our priorities include reimagining and renovating both Templeton Campus Center and Corbett House, creating modern student living facilities and completing a much-needed renovation to Huston Sports Complex.

Community Spaces

By creating modern student living facilities, we will extend our campus “main street” with residential spaces that help attract and support students and contribute to a more engaging, holistic on-campus community.

Athletics Facilities

Planned renovations to Huston Sports Complex include enhanced fitness facilities, new team clubhouses and locker rooms, and a fully renovated baseball and softball facility, renamed in Jerry Gatto’s honor, with new turf fields, dugouts, and seating.

Corbett House

A historically significant building that was gifted to Lewis & Clark in 2000, Corbett House sits at the center of the graduate school campus—and we intend to make it a vibrant, welcoming home for all. Planned renovations will ensure accessibility, provide space for our graduate school to continue growing in both students and programs, and create a green “campus commons” for the graduate school.

Student Center Renovation

With your support, we will transform Student Center from a maze-like facility to the heart of a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly campus. Planned renovations include an overhaul of the Trail Room, significantly improved accessibility, the relocation of student organization facilities to a “main street” space on a newly active and visible first floor, and the creation of a new “Pio Pub.” In honor of a generous gift from our Board Chair Stephanie Fowler’s husband, Irving Levin, upon completion of the renovation, Templeton will be renamed the Stephanie Fowler Student Center. 

Two views of the architect’s rendering of the Fowler Student Center remodel:

Through this campaign, we will invest in programs that dare students to venture deeper into learning and further into the world.

From advancing interdisciplinary initiatives in entrepreneurship, health studies, and data science at the undergraduate level to creating a new Community Counseling Center and a new graduate program for diverse elementary educators to strengthening nationally leading law programs and more, we will bring our academic strengths together to catapult a Lewis & Clark education into the next century—and make a world of difference as we explore what’s next.

New Interdisciplinary Initiatives

The most pressing societal needs we face require people with a liberal arts skillset and mindset—but preparing our students to address those needs means preparing them to work across disciplines and in real-world settings. That’s why we will invest through this campaign in strengthening and advancing three major interdisciplinary initiatives that meet our world where it’s going: Entrepreneurship, Health Studies, and Data Science.

Community Counseling Center

Lewis & Clark’s Community Counseling Center simultaneously provides low-cost services for our Portland neighbors, offers critical experiential education to students, and enables us to pilot innovative, effective counseling solutions that advance the entire field. Through this campaign, we will support the center’s work with a particular focus on two innovative and needed programs: our nationally known TransActive Gender Project and our art therapy program.

Part-Time MAT in Elementary Education

Structured as a part-time, part-virtual program to remove barriers that keep too many talented individuals from underrepresented backgrounds from entering the field, Lewis & Clark’s new MAT in Elementary Education—a priority in this campaign—is an innovative program to help support and grow the diverse pipeline of teachers our communities need.

Center for Business Law and Innovation

The Center for Business Law and Innovation serves both students and our local community: students get hands-on legal experience as they provide services and make connections with businesses, nonprofit ventures, and individuals. This campaign will support the work of the center and advance all of its offerings, such as the Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic and the Small Business Legal Clinic.