For a hundred years, generations of students like you have walked through the halls of Loyola and been transformed — forever changed by the passion of our faculty and staff. You can picture their faces, from those sepia-toned photographs in 1912 to the bright colors of today. Loyola has taken eager minds and open hearts and helped fulfill their dreams.

And those generations of alumni decided to pay forward their opportunity to all of you.

They gave to Loyola, and to the Loyola community, $101 million. They gave us the kind of excellence you deserve in the classroom, a total of $22 million for new and renovated facilities. They gave us the kind of excellence you deserve in teaching, with named professorships that attract and keep our brilliant faculty, and with exciting new programs like the Law Advocacy Center and the Center for Entrepreneurship and Community Development.

And most of all, they gave scholarships, over $36 million of new support to pay forward the opportunities that Loyola gave them.

The alumni, parents, employees and friends of Loyola reached deep and donated their treasure and also their time, more than 20,000 hours (a total of 2,500 work days) to ensure we reached our goals.

The Faith in the Future campaign has been a game-changer in so many ways.

The next time you step into Monroe Hall and look through a microscope in one of our world-class laboratories, visit the J. Michael Early broadcast studio, or play pick-up basketball in the Sports Plex, remember them. The next time you brainstorm in the Ideation Lab or hone your study skills in the Pan-American Life Student Success Center, remember them.

These generous members of the Wolf Pack can look back and see how all those days spent in class and long nights in the library shaped them. They can see how service opportunities changed their hearts and lives, and truly know what it means to be connected to the city of New Orleans for life.

They decided to pay that forward, with gifts large and small, so that Loyola students can enjoy a transformative Jesuit education for a second hundred years.

Please join me in a prayer of gratitude, because we can never thank them enough.