SALISBURY — Catawba College got its week off on the right foot, announcing a $200 million anonymous gift to its endowment on Monday. 

The contribution is the third transformative gift in three years to the Salisbury-based liberal arts college, which has helped get the ball rolling. 

“After the first gift, we started a planning process, and last October, our board approved a strategic plan,” Catawba College President Dr. David P. Nelson said. “We looked 10 years ahead to 2033 and asked where we want and who we want to be by then, and made a five-year plan to move us toward it. So, this gift comes at a time when we had some very clearly established priorities.”

Some of those goals are happening quickly at Catawba. Look no further than the college’s commitment to meet carbon neutrality, which it achieved in 2023, seven years ahead of its 2030 goal. Through those efforts, Catawba has integrated sustainability, conservation and environmental stewardship across operations and campus life, and contributions such as the latest gift are transforming those goals into reality. 

The latest gift, combined with a $200 million gift in 2021 and $42 million in 2022, pushes the college’s endowment to more than $580 million. The per student endowment now approaches $500,000, which is among the highest in the Southeast and on par with prestigious institutions such as Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, but those lofty comparisons aren’t changing Nelson and other academic leaders’ vision for what is possible at Catawba. 

“Our board agrees, and our faculty and staff all embrace this, saying that we’re not going to try to be like anyone else,” Nelson said. “We’re going to be who Catawba is at her very best, and we think we can be even better.”

Two-thirds of the annual distributions of this gift will provide unrestricted funding for the college, and one-third is directed to programs that support environmental education and sustainability, a longstanding strategic initiative of the institution. Part of the vision for the former component is expanding opportunities adjacent to and outside of the classroom. 

“We want every student to be engaged in service and undergraduate research, in opportunities to travel and study away or study abroad and to do internships,” Nelson said. “We’re investing in those opportunities for our students so that they have a rich classroom experience, but they have these other opportunities alongside and outside the classroom that I think we all know really make a difference in not just the knowledge that students attain, but the way they’re formed, as people, and we put a big emphasis on that.”

More than 1,230 students from 40 U.S. states and 26 countries study at Catawba, and Nelson indicated that this year’s incoming class was larger than they expected.  

“I do think some of the investments from the previous gift have helped that,” Nelson said. “We’ve done renovations to several buildings, mainly academic buildings. We have increased scholarship offerings and student support offerings. I think one of them is we’re investing in high-impact practices.”

Enhanced opportunities afforded by this latest gift, along with other recent contributions, are provided through funding for scholarships that support high-achieving and high-need students, grants for study abroad and study away programs, internships and undergraduate research. Those prospects make Catawba a more desirable place to study, which leads to greater enrollment. On the flip side of that, enrollment increases mean that infrastructure will have to keep up. Catawba announced two projects intended to meet that demand:

• The Smokestack, a reclamation of the college’s old coal power plant renovated according to Living Building Challenge standards, will provide an additional 10,000 square feet of space for students.
• A new 150-bed residence hall is scheduled for completion in August 2026, and two additional residence halls are being renovated. All three projects prioritize sustainable building practices. 

“The Smokestack project and the new residence hall project are a part of reclaiming that center of campus,” Nelson said. “It’s been used for maintenance and parking and all that sort of stuff. But we’re going to open that back up and redo these buildings, redo the Smokestack, build a new building, and essentially re-beautify that whole space. So this is, over the next two years, going to transform that core of campus that leads from the academic and housing part of the campus down to athletics.”

While the latest gift is a boon to the college, Nelson wants it to similarly have a ripple effect in the community that Catawba calls home. 

“We feel a real commitment to whom much is given, much is required,” Nelson said. “So we want to be really wise stewards of this, for our campus, but also for the city and the county. We take very seriously how we can be a campus that really helps our neighbors in the city. We want to be good neighbors, and we want to work for the common good. So it’s about doing the very best for the college itself, but also really helping this community that we all love to thrive.”