The Mitchell Technical Institute Foundation announced a major gift on Thursday at a special event for employees, Foundation trustees and guests. Earl Nordby, Huron, and his daughters, Diane DesLauriers and family of Mitchell and Linda Scher and family of Minnesota, are donating $1 million to the MTI Foundation’s capital campaign. The gift is the largest single cash donation ever given to a technical institute in South Dakota.
Nordby and several family members attended a short ceremony on Thursday in the atrium of the newly-named Nordby Trades Center on the MTI campus. Nordby was lauded by MTI president Greg Von Wald for his generosity. “Your donation will allow us do some things that would probably never have happened without this gift.”
The gift has been earmarked for three essential purposes:
· $250,000 for prominent MTI campus signage that will be visible from the interstate
· $250,000 for the creation of the Nordby Scholarship for Academic Excellence. Four students from any program each year will be substantially funded by these scholarship dollars.
· $500,000 for the creation of an endowment, the proceeds of which will be
directed to faculty support and remuneration.
Also speaking at the event were South Dakota Secretary of Education Melody Schopp, Mitchell Area Development Corporation Executive Director Bryan Hisel, MTI Foundation president Jason Stoebner, and MTI Student Body president Skyler Kehn.
It was also announced at the event that the MTI capital campaign, Educating People, Empowering Communities, has raised approximately $5.25 million, exceeding the initial goal of $4 million. That total includes a gift for campus expansion of $350,000 from the Mitchell Area Development Corporation which was from the proceeds from the sale of land owned by the corporation.
The MTI Foundation’s annual donor recognition event will be held on December 2.
