The Sigma Xi Emeritus Knowledge Center
To all our Emeritus Members
Renaming the Sigma Xi Center, The Sigma Xi Emeritus Knowledge Center
DONATE NOW
How can the work of your lifetime be used as well as remembered? I'd like to propose that Sigma Xi build an enduring program around generational knowledge that:
- involves Emeritus Members in the intergenerational sharing of knowledge and,
- establishes a world-wide site where that intergenerational knowledge finds its most articulate voice.
Your Sigma Xi headquarters in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina is a monument to the nobility of scientific research. From a practical standpoint, though, it carries the burden of a mortgage. That's an expense that consumes our energy.
What if our Emeritus Members paid off the mortgage over the next 12 months, and made the building their own legacy? It could be named The Sigma Xi Emeritus Knowledge Center. In perpetuity. We have a wall of honor of Nobel laureate members. We would have a wall of Emeriti honorees, naming each one of you.
And without a mortgage we could concentrate on intergenerational initiatives. Such as:
- an annual emeritus scholar in residence
- an annual emeriti reunion at the Emeritus Knowledge Center
- to create a council of emeriti advisors, to discuss such concepts as how do we capture in perpetuity and make accessible your life's work for today's young scientists and engineers and future generations of scientists and engineers
- and more...
Many of our members have seen buildings go up at their institutions that are named in perpetuity for individual philanthropic donors. However, you, the researchers generating the knowledge in those buildings, are more often not represented. In The Sigma Xi Emeritus Knowledge Center, you will be.
You number 15,000 members. Our mortgage is $8.5 million. And it costs us $200,000 a year to cover the building's maintenance costs - a $4 million endowment would cover that. Thus we need $12.5 million in total. That's $850 each - less than $71 a month - of course more for some who can and less for those who can't - and this is just a one-year commitment we're asking.
What a great ceremony we could have, and what a spotlight for our emeritus researchers who so often feel on the periphery rather than at the center. You belong in the center. In the Emeritus Knowledge Center.
Will you join me in making this vision a reality? I hope so. I really do. I want something great to memorialize your life's contributions.
DONATE NOW Please click here for a secure online giving form.
Sigma Xi is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit. All donations made in the U.S. and Canada are tax-deductible.
EIN available upon request
Back to top | Privacy Policy | Copyright ©2008. All Rights Reserved.
