BANGOR, Maine — The Foundation for Maine’s Community Colleges has reached a major milestone, surpassing $30 million in fundraising since 2009, the group announced this week.
“Students across Maine and at every one of our colleges have benefited from your good work,” Maine Community College System President Derek Langhauser said during an event Tuesday at Southern Maine Community College. “We are enormously grateful to all those who contributed to the foundation’s remarkable success.”
The foundation raises and distributes money to the system’s seven schools to support programs and scholarships and grow the institutions.
At the event, system officials announced a $1.6 million gift from Lisa Gorman, the foundation’s vice chairwoman, bringing the total raised over the past seven years to $32.3 million.
Her donation will expand the Leon Gorman Endowed Scholarship at all seven campuses and fund a department chairperson in English for Speakers of Other Languages, among other programs, according to the system. The Leon Gorman scholarship is named in honor of Lisa Gorman’s late husband, a longtime president of L.L. Bean. Leon Gorman died in September 2015.
The Gormans led the creation of the foundation as a means of supporting the schools as state funding declines and college budgets are stretched thin.
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