Campaign Goals

The goal of the Highlanders Athletics Campaign is to raise $5 million: $3 million for athletic facilities, $1.5 million for athletic scholarships and $500,000 for program support.

Athletic Facilities

On NJIT's compact urban campus, Lubetkin Field and the Fleisher Athletic Center are significant visual elements.  Their appearance is central to the way that visitors--including potential applicants--perceive the university.  The Highlanders Athletics Campaign would allocate $3 million to repair and improve these facilities, which are also used for intramural sports, personal recreation and physical fitness, and other non-athletic university events.

Proposed improvements include an artificial grass field for maximum utility and durability, a tennis center, air conditioning and better ventilation and lighting for the main gymnasium, new gym seating, modern locker rooms, new gymnasium dividers, a new pool deck, new scoreboards and sound system, and new coaches' offices and meeting facilities, among others.  

These upgrades will be an important component of the overall program of physical improvements currently in progress at NJIT, which include the completion of new buildings and the implementation of a master landscaping plan.

Athletic Scholarships

Some 70 percent of the students at NJIT receive financial assistance--including the scholarships available to promising scholar-athletes. At a time when all public universities in the United States are greatly challenged in terms of funding, the Highlanders Athletics Campaign would increase athletic scholarships by well over a million dollars.

Many NJIT students receive athletic scholarships from endowed and annual-fund sources, totaling $391,000 in 2003. About half of these students also receive academic, merit-based assistance.  Federal and state scholarships as well as private (non-NJIT) grants and loans total another $630,000 in financial aid to student-athletes.

Program Support

Gifts directed to the Highlanders Athletics Campaign for program support will enhance the operating budgets of our teams and help to meet their equipment needs. Opportunities also exist to endow coaching positions.  These funds will live in perpetuity to compensate a coach during his or her tenure at NJIT while freeing up resources to be used elsewhere for the program.