A top Northwestern administrator who orchestrated the university’s $1.4 billion fund-raising campaign announced Monday that he will leave for Brown University with one year remaining in the campaign.
Ronald Vanden Dorpel, vice president for university development, will leave NU in August to become Brown’s first vice president for planning.
In his 15 years at NU, Vanden Dorpel has been involved in several fund-raising campaigns, including those for athletic facilities, undergraduate scholarships and endowed professorships.
But he will be remembered at NU for initiating and directing the $1.4 billion Campaign Northwestern, which already has raised $1.298 billion toward several improvements, including six new buildings, research funding and large endowment increases.
The campaign is scheduled to end Aug. 31, 2003, and Vanden Dorpel said NU should finish on time without him.
“I don’t think (my departure) will have any effect at all,” he said. “We’ve been on a very good trajectory. We’re enduring the very same slowdown other campaigns are enduring, but we will snap out of that very soon.”
University President Henry Bienen said he did not know what kind of search would occur to find Vanden Dorpel’s replacement.
The campaign began in 1998 with a goal of $1 billion. After a fast start, administrators increased the goal by $400 million in spring 2000. Vanden Dorpel attributed the campaign’s success to the commitment of NU’s trustees, volunteers, staff and Bienen.
“Fund raising isn’t an end to itself, it’s a means to an end,” Vanden Dorpel said. “The end is the enhancement of Northwestern, and there can be no doubt that over the last four years, the campaign has been greatly enhanced by President Bienen’s leadership.”
While the university has seen great success in its overall campaign, with 92.6 percent of the total raised in 80 percent of the time, the facilities portion is lagging slightly behind, with only 78 percent of the projected $400 million raised.
Included in that amount is money for the expansion of Norris University Center, which has raised about $3 million of the $21 million needed.
Vanden Dorpel said the university will have no trouble raising the remaining $88 million for facilities. Of all universities, NU has raised the most facilities funds during a comprehensive campaign, with Duke University’s $200 million being the closest competitor, he said.
Bienen said Vanden Dorpel’s organizational skills have been important in fueling the campaign’s success.
“He’s just organized a superb group of people … he understands the nature of development,” Bienen said. “He was really responsible for charting the directions of the campaign.”
Jonathan Heintzelman, assistant vice president for development, has worked with Vanden Dorpel for the past 15 years. He said Vanden Dorpel’s support and direction were key in all NU’s developmental successes.
“(Campaign NU) is such a big task that you really need someone at the helm directing everyone on who to see, where to go and what to ask for,” he said. “It’s a lot of money.”
While Vanden Dorpel’s departure came as a surprise, the opportunity will be good for him, said Ann Nash, NU’s director of principal gifts. She said Vanden Dorpel brought integrity to NU’s office during the period of intense fund raising.
“I’m not surprised that (Brown) would have been a place that would have lured him from NU, and I know there would have been few places that would have lured him,” Nash said.
Brown President Ruth J. Simmons created Vanden Dorpel’s position after a major restructuring of the school’s alumni office. Vanden Dorpel, who received a history degree from Brown and worked in their corporate development office before coming to NU, said he hopes to aid Brown in replicating the success NU has had.
“I just turned 55 and one has to think about a new challenge after staying in the same place for 15 years,” Vanden Dorpel said. “Had I not been chosen, I would have very contentedly remained here at NU for the rest of my career.”
Brown plans to start a major campaign to fund an $80 million initiative to increase the quality of academic life at Brown, which will include hiring more faculty, increasing faculty salaries and creating a need-blind admissions process, said Richard Spies, Brown’s executive vice president for planning.
“Part of the appeal Mr. Vanden Dorpel had his very direct experience at NU,” Spies said. “He’s a first-class individual who’s got exactly the kind of skills and experiences we need.”
Vanden Dorpel said returning to Brown is almost a “homecoming” for him. He and his wife own property in Newport, R.I., and his wife will use her Rhode Island bar certification to practice law.
“In a sense it is a homecoming, not only in the sense of returning to my alma mater, but also to a place we would probably end up retiring to,” he said.
But despite his ties to the East Coast – Vanden Dorpel also grew up in northern New Jersey – the Midwest always will hold one part of his heart.
“I’ll be a Cats fan for life,” he said.
