Radcliffe Capital Campaign Securely On Track

To the editors:

In his recent letter to The Crimson (Opinion, Jan. 20), Samuel S. Spektor Jr. asks the question: What is going on at Radcliffe? I'm happy to give The Crimson's readers a brief overview.

Since 1992, Radcliffe has created a new public policy institute, expanded its educational programs; produced cutting-edge research in a variety of fields, continued shaping all of its programs to meet the challenges of a new century and launched an ambitious capital campaign.

Last year, undergraduate participation at Radcliffe was up to 6,000 (some students taking part in several programs) including high-impact programming, Office for the Arts activities, and work in education, research and policy programs.

At the postbaccalaureate level, over 3,000 students enrolled in courses--through Radcliffe's Graduate Studies Center--in liberal arts, womenis studies, management, landscape design, ceramics, publishing and career programs.

Drawn to Radcliffe's outstanding academic resources, over 80 visiting fellows and scholars are engaged in research with resident scholars in the Radcliffe Institutes for Advanced Study. Their work ranges from gender studies to health care to astrophysics.

The Radcliffe Public Policy Institute--created just five years ago--has already emerged as a leading voice for solving complex public policy challenges. The Institute recently released a study of welfare reform that received national attention.

Finally, to set the record straight on Radcliffe's finances, the facts are as follows:

Radcliffe's $200 million endowment more than doubled in the past 10 years and earned an average rate of return of 18.4 percent in the past three years. General and administrative expenses at Radcliffe, which now make up only 11 percent of Radcliffe's budget, grew at a compounded rate of 11.1 percent over the past eight years. This includes the expense of creating and operating new offices of human resources and information technology.

As for Radcliffe's capital campaign, it has two concurrent purposes: to further engage its alumnae and friends in the work that Radcliffe does, and to generate the resources needed to keep Radcliffe on the cutting edge into the next century. Radcliffe's campaign is succeeding on both fronts. In fact, last year the campaign broke Radcliffe's all-time annual fund-raising record by raising nearly $16 million. MICHAEL A. ARMINI   Jan. 26, 1999

The writer is Senior Media Relations Officer for Radcliffe College.