Dear Fred and June,

I read this letter today as part of a tradition we began four years ago, at the very first Kummer Day. Every year, as we commemorate the anniversary of your gift, I present a report to our campus community on the impact of your gift on our university.

Today I read this letter with a lump in my throat, as this is the first Kummer Day report I’ve delivered since June’s passing in January. June, I like to think that you and Fred have reunited to extend your 68-year marriage. You were two remarkable individuals and one outstanding couple!/p>

Fred and June, you’ll be pleased to know that the Kummer Institute continues to be in good hands under the direction of the board of directors. Originally named the Kummer Institute Foundation, we recently renamed it the Kummer Missouri S&T Foundation. The new name reflects your devotion to the university as well as the foundation’s partnership and commitment to S&T.

In March, Dr. Steve Roberts, who led the Kummer Institute during our first three years, handed over the reins to Dr. Richard Brow, a longtime researcher, faculty member and leader at S&T.

I want to thank Dr. Roberts for his stellar service to the institute; he is now our vice chancellor and chief strategy officer, focusing on S&T’s Bio-Innovation Initiative and other areas of strategic importance.

We are making great progress on your threefold mandate to elevate S&T, provide broad STEM outreach and ensure economic impact.

First, we are working to elevate S&T through academic and research excellence.

Dr. James Sterling is leading the charge in academics for the Kummer College of Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Development, named in your honor. Dr. Sterling joined S&T in June as founding dean and vice provost of the college. He brings a background in academic entrepreneurship that you would appreciate. He envisions the college as serving the entire university by teaching entrepreneurship.

Dr. Sterling has hit the ground running. In July, he announced the college’s Innovation Ecosystem Design Initiative. Dr. Venkat Allada, professor of engineering management and systems engineering, will lead this one-year project. It is the first major step in developing a robust Rolla-centered regional innovation ecosystem. We are delighted to have on campus today Dr. Joel West, an entrepreneurial expert from the San Diego area who will draw upon his vast expertise and experiences and discuss tips for creating an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

I’d like to extend my thanks to Dr. Tim Faley, who served as interim vice provost and dean of the Kummer College during our college dean search. He is now able to devote his full attention to his role as associate vice chancellor of innovation, entrepreneurship and commercialization. His office for Technology Transfer and Economic Development brought in more than $1 million in royalty income this past fiscal year, a record for our university.

Fred and June, your gift is also transforming research at S&T through grants for research innovation and teaching transformation. These come in the form of our “Ignition Grant” programs, which provide seed funding to support faculty in their quest for large, multidisciplinary grants from federal agencies. In fact, 13 of S&T’s recent invention disclosures were made by Kummer Ignition Grant recipients and Kummer I&E Fellows.

Through the Kummer Institute, we have also committed matching funds to awarded federal grants and matching funds for pending federal grants. We are on the cusp of meeting our North Star goal of Carnegie R-1 Research University status, which is classified as “very high research activity.” We expect to attain that status in January 2025.

Under the leadership of Dr. Kamal Khayat, our university’s overall research awards have increased remarkably — Fiscal Year 2024 saw an increase of more than 36% over 2023, and 78% over 2022. Our overall research expenditures also increased 20% over 2023 and 34% over 2022.

Dr. Richard Billo, our director of the Kummer Institute Center for Advanced Manufacturing, continues to secure significant funding from federal agencies and state government to further our efforts to solidify S&T’s position as a national leader in advanced manufacturing. With a total of $22 million so far and $9.1 million for a MoExcels grant from the state, he will work with leaders from East Central College and St. Charles Community College to modernize the Missouri manufacturing industry and reinvigorate the workforce. This will ultimately ensure economic development for our state.

Our mission to elevate S&T is also benefiting greatly from Kummer scholarship and fellowship programs, which are now in their fourth year. This fall, over 1,300 Kummer Vanguard Scholars are enrolled at S&T, and they are experiencing tremendous success thanks to this program and your generosity.

The program attracts and supports the best and brightest first-year students in STEM degree programs and is renewable for four years.

Fred and June, this program is much more than a scholarship program. Kummer Vanguard Scholars get involved in professional development programming in five areas: leadership, research, design and build, entrepreneurship, and social impact. They also benefit from the wisdom of alumni and other leaders in business, entrepreneurship and innovation, who speak regularly to these students.

June, you impressed the students who met you by discussing the challenges you faced as a woman working in a technical field. You were a pioneering architect then, and an inspiration now.

In May, some of our first Kummer Vanguard Scholars graduated. This was not our first full cohort of scholars — instead, these 22 students came to S&T with several college credits already earned, which allowed them to graduate in under four years.

We are also in the fourth year of our fellowship program for Ph.D. students, called the Kummer Innovation and Entrepreneurship, or I&E, Doctoral Fellowship. There are currently 47 Ph.D. students in this program. Each of these students is focused on conducting research with a high potential for commercialization. Our goal is to grow that number each year so that we have up to 100 Kummer I&E Fellows on campus at any given time.

In addition to these scholars and fellows, Kummer Student Programs offers opportunities for all students. Dr. Rachel Kohman, assistant dean of entrepreneurship education for Kummer College, encourages students to capitalize on opportunities.

This fall, she launched the Badges of Entrepreneurial Excellence program. Open to all S&T students, this program offers physical and digital badges that validate and showcase the knowledge and skills they develop outside traditional academic settings.

In addition to the tremendous impact of your generosity on our students’ success, I would be remiss, Fred and June, if I did not also mention the impact of your gift on faculty. Not only has your gift funded endowed faculty positions, but this year we introduced the Kummer Impact Professorship. This professorship offers five years of discretionary funding totaling $50,000, including an annual salary stipend of $7,500 plus benefits.

Our inaugural recipient is Dr. Hongyan Ma, Fransico Benavides Scholar and associate professor of civil, architectural and environmental engineering. His research team has made impactful research discoveries in carbon neutral and carbon negative concrete and building materials, recognized with support and awards from the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Your gift has also inspired other donors to give to this wonderful university, and we concluded a record-setting year of fundraising. Philanthropic contributions for Fiscal Year 2024 totaled over $94 million. This amount was only surpassed by our 2021 fundraising year that included your transformational $300 million gift.

Last October, our Kummer Day of Giving match program raised over $750,000 for Missouri S&T students. The donations came from 74 alumni, eight S&T employees, and a few donors who requested anonymity.

We recently announced Gary Havener’s gift of $25 million to support the university’s new Havener Arrival Complex. As a member of the Kummer Institute Foundation Board of Directors and a 1962 S&T graduate, he has long supported our university.

We are also making great strides in the second part of the Kummer mandate: to establish broad STEM outreach. A little over three years ago, Courtney Jones joined S&T as director of the Kummer Center for STEM Education. In just a few years, Courtney and her team have extended STEM education far beyond the walls of this great university.

Courtney oversees the center’s engaging programming for students in grades K–12 and for teacher development. The team hosts after-school programs, free tutoring, community outreach events, teacher conferences and workshops, and research experiences for both teachers and students. Her team takes projects and experiments on the road in vehicles called STEM Mobiles, and has interacted with over 11,000 students at 29 schools this year. I know for a fact, Fred and June, that you would love this wonderful initiative that is now a fully functional program.

The center’s biggest yearly undertaking is our summer camps, where students experience the STEM fields in fun and meaningful ways. This year, we welcomed over 1,000 students from mostly underserved districts to one or more of 28 camps and provided over $95,000 in scholarships to 163 campers.

Another large undertaking is staffing the Missouri State Fair, where children of all ages from all parts of the state came to our S&T area and flew drones, drove or programmed robots, checked out virtual reality and watched live demonstrations.

Over the past academic year, Courtney and her team brought over 5,000 K-12 students to campus through inspiring STEM programs. The STEM Center also hosted workshops and conferences for K-12 teachers. Starting this semester, the center is launching a free after school program for three Phelps County school districts, thanks in part to a grant totaling almost $2 million over the next several years. Fred and June, you’d love to see this!

Last but certainly not least, our third goal is to ensure economic impact in our region and state. Your transformative gift is doing that in many ways.

As I mentioned earlier, Dr. Richard Billo helped secure $9.1 million in state funding to modernize Missouri manufacturing and reinvigorate the workforce. At Manufacturing Day last week, leaders from collaborating colleges and elected officials came together and discussed these plans and how to overcome challenges in manufacturing. S&T is leading the way, thanks in large part to your gift.

Dr. Billo is the director of the Missouri Protoplex, which will open in Spring 2026 as the first building of our manufacturing technology and innovation campus on the north side of U.S. Interstate 44.

The Missouri Protoplex will serve as the research and development hub for manufacturers across the state. We already have companies signed on to be a part of this facility and the Manufacture Missouri Ecosystem, or MME.

The MME will connect small, medium-sized and large manufacturers throughout Missouri to our expert researchers and talented students.

Another exciting initiative is our forthcoming semiconductor engineering program, which will launch next fall. Thanks to the support of the board and private gifts, Missouri S&T will be one of the first universities in the nation to tackle the profession’s workforce gap, which federal and industry employment projections show could soar to the tens of thousands over the next several years. We expect to see interest from students in Missouri, throughout the U.S. and around the globe.

Part of this $20 million investment will fund a new 2,500-square-foot cleanroom located on the ground floor of our Applied Research Center, with construction finished by late 2026.

Your gift has been instrumental in transforming our campus, and provides ongoing investment in capital projects.

In April, we dedicated our 50,000-square-foot Innovation Lab, a remarkable facility that includes spaces useful to students across all disciplines. The building is already a home for the imagination and creativity of students. We are seeing high use of the spaces and enthusiasm from our students. It’s a place for possibility thinking, and I wish you were able to see your vision come to fruition.

We also opened our nearby underground parking facility during the past year. Over the summer we expanded and relocated the underpass that connects the main campus with our residence halls.

Construction continues on the Welcome Center, which will open next summer. This 32-000-square-foot facility will stand directly east of the Innovation Lab, taking its place among more familiar S&T landmarks like the Rolla Building and the Havener Center. True to its name, the facility will serve as a beginning point for S&T visitors, including future students and their families.

Support from the Kummer Institute is helping with the renovation and expansion of our Applied Research Center – formerly named the Engineering Research Laboratory; the renovation of Schrenk Hall East for our biological sciences classes and teaching labs, in support of our new efforts in biomedicine and biological engineering and sciences; and an expansion of our geothermal field in the main campus. These three projects all will be completed by April 2027.

As this letter attests, we are on the right trajectory in fulfilling your mandate.

Fred, you encouraged us all to think big, and you and June backed it up with the largest charitable gift in Missouri history. You have significantly raised our sights and our supporters’ confidence in our future.

The Kummer Institute that your generosity created has an unlimited potential to improve lives through STEM outreach and education. Your inspiration remains the responsibility of all of us who serve here.

On behalf of the Kummer Institute, Kummer College, Kummer Vanguard Scholars, the I&E Doctoral Fellows, our endowed chairs and professors, the university and the greater community of Rolla and the region, I say that we are proud to continue the great work of the institute in your name.

We therefore continue to remain grateful, Fred and June, that you decided, based on your own personal experience, that this university’s mission is worthy of your support.

You have made a tremendous difference, and we look forward to fulfilling your wishes in perpetuity in accordance with your mandate to elevate Missouri S&T, provide broad STEM outreach and ensure economic impact.

Sincerely,

Mo Dehghani
Missouri S&T Chancellor