Daily Independent

The state community college system of which Ashland Community and Technical College is a part on Monday launched a multi-million dollar fund-raising campaign.

The Kentucky Community and Technical College System's five-year major-gifts campaign will target corporate heavyweights to fund four major initiatives:

*Student Success Fund will offer loans and scholarships, expand career exploration and job-shadowing, create programs and services for at-risk students, support student involvement in national academic and leadership organizations and increase the transfer of students to universities.

*New Economy Fund will expand teaching capabilities in emerging technologies.

*New Opportunities Fund will be an unrestricted endowment to pay for special projects and initiatives for which budgeted funds are not available.

*KCTCS Building Fund will support renovation of a former manufacturing facility into permanent quarters for the KCTCS system office.

ACTC will launch its own fund-raising campaign in the spring, said its president, Greg Adkins. That drive will be separate from the system-wide campaign, he said.

KCTCS didn't announce a goal, but President Michael B. McCall said the campaign is expected to be the largest private fund-raising effort ever undertaken by a two-year college system in the U.S.

The largest such campaign previously was the $43 million undertaking by the Kentucky community college system in the mid-1990s.

Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky has already promised the first major gift of the campaign, $500,000 to launch the KCTCS Center of Excellence in Automotive Manufacturing, McCall said.

Most of the benefit from that gift will go to Central Kentucky Technical College in Lexington and Gateway Community and Technical College in Northern Kentucky.

The money will allow KCTCS to develop its capability to teach skills needed in the automotive industry.

ACTC will receive some benefit, Adkins said, in the form of diagnostic equipment and other hardware for its automotive technology program.