p. p. The University of Notre Dame has received a gift of $60,046 from Ameritech to expand the Ameritech Pre-College Minority Engineering Program (APMEP).p. “Interest in engineering among minority students needs to be encouraged before high school,” said Rev. Edward A. Malloy, C.S.C., Notre Dame’s president, in announcing the gift. “Without such interest, students simply will not choose, nor succeed in, a high school curriculum that will sustain them through college careers. APMEP truly makes the difference in Notre Dame’s ability to reach out to the surrounding communities to share our blessings of talented students, faculty and administrators.”p. “Ameritech is interested in awarding grants that will help position Indiana as a leader in the future,” said Kent Lebherz, president of Ameritech Indiana. “We recognize that our brightest hope for tomorrow depends upon the opportunities provided to our youth today. That’s why Ameritech is working now to give our youth the opportunity to fulfill their potential in a society that is increasingly centered on technology-based goods and services.”p. APMEP was developed by the University’s Minority Engineering Program and has been supported by Ameritech since 1995. The program is designed to introduce minority students in area middle schools to engineering and related fields. Originating from a specially equipped classroom in DeBartolo Hall, Notre Dame’s high-tech learning center, APMEP uses a two-way videoconferencing system to link students and teachers at three sites in South Bend ? Washington, Adams and Riley High Schools ? with faculty and minority graduate and undergraduate engineering students for a variety of projects, experiments and discussions.p. Last year, Ameritech contributed more than $26 million to 1,821 nonprofit organizations, and Ameritech Pioneers ? a volunteer organization of the company’s employees and retirees in the Midwest ? gave 366,350 hours of service to civic and community projects and educational and arts programs.p. The Ameritech gift is a component of Notre Dame’s $767 million “Generations” campaign. Announced last year, “Generations” is the largest fund-raising campaign in the history of Catholic higher education and the sixth largest capital campaign now in progress in American academe.
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