King’s is celebrating the culmination of its Welcoming: The Future King’s campaign, one of the most successful campaigns in the university’s history. The campaign exceeded its initial goal of raising $15 million with a focus on excellence and making King’s more welcoming to students from all backgrounds, including those from communities that have been underrepresented at King’s.
While funding for some projects will continue, the campaign is wrapping up as President Lahey concludes a decade of leadership at King’s. The total amount raised is $16.2 million.
This success of the campaign was first announced to a room of alumni, students, staff, faculty and supporters at this year’s Alumni Day Brunch, where President Lahey said, “We have proven that King’s can make progress on inclusion and reconciliation. We have also proven that King’s has distinctive contributions to make that are valued by those who are newly considering King’s as an option for them.”
The campaign, publicly launched in 2024, has three defined areas of focus: empowering student success and access, expanding and diversifying the educational experience and enhancing excellence and the cultural life of King’s.
Campaign highlights include extraordinary contributions totalling $7.8 million from King’s Chancellor Debra Dean Little and her husband, Robert Little. They created and renewed the Deane Little Academic Athletic Scholarships for Varsity Athletes, and made the lead gift that enabled the completion of restorations to the Chapel, Middle and Radical Bay residences. Little and Deane Little also funded the creation of the Deane Little Community Support Centre and the Student Academic Support Program. Thanks to their continued generosity, King’s completed a conceptual design and is now working on the more detailed schematic design for the Southeast Corner Project, a new building planned to house the King’s School of Journalism, Writing & Publishing, a new residence, and a new athletics and wellness centre.
AMS Healthcare and the J & W Murphy Foundation have each donated $1.75 million to establish the Roper-Hannah Chair in the History of Healthcare and Health Equity that will be at the forefront of advancing medical humanities at King’s and Dalhousie.
The Wesley M. Nicol Foundation has donated a quarter million dollars to create the Internships in Public and Applied Humanities and a legacy gift from an alum has contributed $100,000 to expand experiential learning and our summer program for high school students called Humanities for Young People.
The Harrison McCain Foundation has donated $100,000 for Emerging Scholar Awards to help early-stage faculty build their careers. Additional gifts totalling $100,000 have added to funding for special lectures.
Over $3.3 million has been added to scholarships, bursaries and awards, including for the Gordon Earle Scholarship for African Nova Scotian students and the Joyce Family Foundation Bursary, the largest renewable bursary at King’s, which is received by two incoming low-income undergraduate students each year.
An anonymous gift funded the development of a new MFA in Scripted Storytelling. This program, and a Podcasting Centre of Excellence established through a gift from Rodney Ziegler, are new initiatives for the School of Journalism, Writing & Publishing, developed in partnership with the private sector to support careers in Nova Scotia and beyond in growing sectors of the creative economy.
King’s has also received donations for continuing our work on Indigenization, including the creation of Reporting in Mi’kma’ki, an immersive course that brings journalism students to Mi’kmaw communities to learn how to report on Indigenous stories responsibly. Another gift of $100,000 will support myriad Indigenization initiatives, including support for King’s Indigenous Student Centre.
President Lahey extended his gratitude on behalf of the university to donors and staff who have made the campaign such a success, thanking all “who have made these investments in the vision of a future of King’s that will create space and support for students who may not have always felt they belonged here.”
