 a huge celebration here at the Woodbury Campus Center on the Portland campus with Circus Maine and we also have lots of food and refreshments, popcorn pretzels, but more importantly we're celebrating with our faculty, students and staff and donors. This is the day of giving celebration and we're here to celebrate our Thanks a Million campaign scholarship for students. We're aiming to hit a million dollars tonight. People from all across the USM, they're all here today celebrating and excited about the fact that we're able to raise over a million dollars for scholarships here at USM for students. The campaign was all about raising money for student scholarships and we have several different buckets that people are able to donate into, the general scholarship fund and then specific scholarships for people who are interested in other more specific departments. What's the great thing about this scholarship campaign is that it really reached out to a lot of people and reminded people that we're on the map, you know, so we want to have a strong footprint out there, we want to talk to people and be able to connect with our alumni, connect with community stakeholders. This was a great opportunity beyond the money, which is really important and it looks like we're close to success. But more importantly than that is that it began to be a reason why we brought people closer to our community, reminded us of ourselves and reminded the community why we're so important and this was the opportunity to build that community, that excitement. So from our point of view, this has multiple victories today. We believe that the circus, that circus main really envelops our theme of bringing scholarships to new heights. Having a focus at USM on raising money for scholarship is incredibly important. So today I think it will bring that focus right to the front of the public, the students, the general community in the greater part of the area, that there needs to be a focus on raising money for scholarship and it's also fun as well, something gets students hyped and makes them a little bit more enthusiastic about scholarships and getting the word out and making sure that people donate to us. This evening they're going to be seeing a juggler, a stilt walker, some aerial performers and also Glenn Cummings, our president of the university, will be speaking on our progress of where we are in this campaign. We like to have a way of celebrating and circus main gives us an opportunity to really celebrate in a way that people love to watch, they like to excite it and I even tried my hand at juggling so it's a chance for us all to have a little fun. So we're really kind of celebrating a really hard goal. I have to say that people at this university in the advancement office and the staff and the faculty really worked hard in the last 75 days to make this a reality and we're so close. So we're just within just a few hours of the closing of midnight. Our dream is that we get to that million dollar mark tonight and even exceed it if we can. Our goal is a million dollars in student scholarships and I believe we're just about a hundred thousand dollars away from our goal. The scholarship fund is incredibly important for a couple reasons. It's important because we have a lot of low-income students that go to this university and that's what USM is really for is to support those low-income students. So having those additional scholarships is something from people not you know if you don't have the scholarship people might not be able to eat for a week or people might not be able to support or have their own vehicle. So having those additional scholarships makes a huge difference as far as students are concerned how they're able to live what quality of life they have. So that has a huge impact. Me personally I've received those scholarships and they've been really beneficial for me. There's a bright future scholarship that was one of the ones that I received and it's helped me personally. It's offset a lot of the cost that I have the tuition cost so it's been really helpful for me. I didn't receive scholarships as a student so even more so now I think it's important to our students who are in school and those who are graduating that they get as much help as they can to lessen the debt load that they receive once they graduate. Our student body vice president is a great example of that. He's received quite a few scholarships and he told me this. He said if I didn't receive those scholarships I would not be graduating this year and those scholarships if he didn't then he would have to stay here for an extra semester gain more debt so these scholarships not only helped him graduate but also reduce his debt college debt which is another huge issue. This is exceptionally important to have the scholarship fund. Over 50 percent of our students are first generation. They're coming from families where they work hard for their money. This is an opportunity for us as a community and as an alumni, as community stakeholders to come together and to find a way to fund students who really otherwise could not be in college. It's very essential. This means a lot to me. As a graduate from here graduating with a pretty hefty debt load it was really important to me that we tried to get our students as much scholarship assistance as we can to keep them in school more importantly and to also help them graduate. It could mean literally hundreds more students that will be able to come. I mean sometimes a surprisingly small amount of money by the time you get some help from the federal government and you put your loans together sometimes a very small amount of money a thousand dollars two thousand dollars can make all the difference of whether a student is able to stay here. We've been raising it online through our website through Facebook social media and also by phone making phone calls to previous donors. If you have somebody who wants to donate it is as simple as going on the website and where it says donation my donation you can click on that and you can make that that contribution it's very easy. I think one of the things that the community can really do is step forward. We're as far as you know the economic hub we're the economic hub of Maine. So the fact that we need to increase more scholarship that's something that I think we really need to look at ourselves and say we're the economic hub of Maine how can we support local students. I see students here every day who are just so happy and grateful and humbled by being able to have a college education but it's endangered quite frankly by their ability to pay for and and so when you think about barriers to education there are a lot of them let's try to take as much as we can let's take money off the off the table as a barrier to higher education especially in a place like USM.