While gifts and pledges to the Imagine Tomorrow campaign are providing benefits across the campus, Bemidji State University’s Department of Business Administration has seen a particularly dramatic impact.

Contributions have so far helped create five new endowments for business majors and two more that support accounting majors. This year alone more than $20,000 in scholarships were awarded to nine students through these new funds, and next year the level of support provided by these new endowments will grow to more than $50,000.

“We never know if a $1,000 scholarship is going to be the difference between keeping a student in school or having them leave,” said Dr. Shawn Strong, dean of the College of Business, Technology and Communications. “From that standpoint these scholarships are invaluable. They make a huge impact, one student at a time.”

The boost also will make the department more competitive when recruiting future students, said Dr. Rod Henry, professor and chair of the Department of Business Administration.

“It definitely gives us more stories to tell when we have prospective students coming to campus,” Henry said.

This support comes at an opportune time for the departments of business and accounting as they prepare to move next fall from their current locations in Decker Hall into a new home in a renovated Memorial Hall.

The renovation, part of a construction project totaling nearly $14 million financed by state bonds, began in earnest this September and is creating a completely new setting for business and accounting classes, group projects and departmental offices.

Irvin E. Engebretson ’61, retired senior director of finance for CRAY Research, has stepped forward to help ensure the new Memorial Hall lives up to its promise of providing state-of-the-art facilities.

Engebretson, who lives in Chippewa Falls, Wis., has made a planned gift through the BSU Legacy Society that will provide $250,000 for computers and other technology needed for business and accounting students.

While scholarships and new technology to support those students are obvious, tangible benefits from Imagine Tomorrow, the campaign’s most-important contribution may well be the relationships it is helping forge with its numerous alumni, Henry said.

“Imagine Tomorrow is drawing us closer to our alumni and the organizations they work for,” he said. “It’s drawn us tighter to that community that we were already a part of.”