By Mark Rupright, Guest Op-ed
For more than 160 years, Birmingham-Southern College has been a leader in Alabama higher education. With help, we will continue to do so for generations to come.
As the only nationally ranked liberal arts college in the state, BSC has supplied Alabama with private and public sector leaders for generations. A Birmingham-Southern degree is a symbol of excellence and a source of pride for alumni and their families. It is a mark of a person who has chosen to lead a life of significance.
BSC serves a diverse student body, nearly a third of whom are ethnic minorities and about that same number who are first-generation college students. BSC currently enrolls dozens of students from the Trussville, Clay, and Pinson area, which is home to hundreds of its alumni.
BSC and its students are inseparable from our community. Its alumni are our doctors, teachers, accountants, coaches, ministers, and lawyers. Its students serve people in need, work to save our watersheds, educate our children, and entertain us with sports, musical performances, and theatrical shows. The College supplies Alabama, Auburn, UAB, and other state universities with their most talented graduate and professional students.
As a BSC physics professor and Trussville resident for the past 16 years, I have seen what the College has done for our students. We have taken students with modest mathematics backgrounds and turned them into engineers and data scientists. I have seen an English major become a physician, a football player become a drug-development team leader, and a physics major become a pastor. BSC is a place where students deeply study subjects that interest them while developing skills that aid them in fields far outside of their majors.
Unfortunately, BSC finds itself in a financial crisis. Decisions that are questionable in hindsight, coupled with a major recession and later a pandemic, have drained the College’s endowment.
Fortunately, BSC President Daniel Coleman, an internationally recognized expert in finance, has a sound plan for creating financial resilience for the College through a new endowment with rigid oversight. We have already secured commitments of $45 million toward a May 2026 goal of $200 million. President Coleman’s plan will rebuild in a few years a financial structure that took many years to collapse.
To meet this goal, the College needs operational support in the form of a one-time investment from the State of Alabama, Jefferson County, and the City of Birmingham. Much of this money comes from federal funds related to the global pandemic. Based on guidance from the U.S. Department of Treasury, BSC already qualifies for $12.5 million of those funds, which must be distributed by the state. The balance of $17.5 million could come from the Alabama Education Trust Fund, which has a projected surplus of $2.5 billion this year. ETF funds are allocated to private entities, including colleges and universities, every year. With that surplus, bridge funding for BSC in 2023 will not diminish funding to any other institution, public or private.
Combined with smaller asks to Jefferson County and the City of Birmingham, this investment will keep the College operating while the endowment raise is completed.
How can such an investment be justified? A study by an independent economist found that the College has a direct economic impact of $97.2 million each year on Alabama’s economy. When the economic contribution of BSC alumni is added, the impact is even greater. The study, conducted by M. Keivan Deravi, Ph.D. of Economic Research Services, Inc., found that in addition to the College itself, BSC alumni “… are responsible for a value-added social benefit of approximately $211.5 million in 2022. That is their annual contribution to the state’s economy,” the study found.
With a one-time allocation of $17.5 million, the College will continue to benefit Alabama with $97.2 million in direct economic impact — year after year. By any measure, that represents a solid return on investment.
BSC has touched countless lives inside Alabama and beyond. We have a president and a board dedicated to implementing a clear, attainable financial plan. All we need is time.
If you agree that Alabama’s premier undergraduate institution is a worthy investment, please contact your state and county representatives and ask them to support the College’s request for bridge funding.
Trussville resident Dr. Mark Rupright is an associate professor of physics at Birmingham-Southern College. He holds a B.S. in physics and mathematics from the University of Tennessee and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of North Carolina.