Dear fellow USTCers,

The year 2003 is coming to an end. As you may have known, your donation to the USTC Alumni Foundation (USTCAF) will not only help the growth of our beloved alma mater, but may also lower your tax liability, since the USTCAF is a registered non-profit organization. Also, the total donation to the USTCAF is just a few thousand dollars away from the 400K mark - please help us beat it by the year end!

(Since we haven't emailed you a lot this year, this letter is a little bit long. Please try to reach the end - you won't be bored :-) )

Your generous donation will help USTC in the following ways:

1. It will help USTC to attract and secure top notch young faculty members. The USTCAF Young Faculty Career Award was established in 2001, and has been awarded to 7 outstanding young scholars since then. Some of the awardees have achieved world class research results in such forefront fields as quantum computation and communication.

2. It will help USTC to attract the best high school graduates, through awards such as the Outstanding New Student Award. We have awarded more than 150 outstanding new students since 1996. It is true that USTC has lost some of her past glory, but if you believe in the true value of USTC and the unique experience she offers, please join us to pass on the spirit and pride of USTC and us the USTCers!

3. It will also help financially disadvantaged USTC students to finish their study. The Alumni Foundation has supported more than 200 USTC students through the Goodwill Award since 1999. Your generous donation will tell those fellow USTCers who are fighting the hardships that they are not alone, and we are here to help.

In addition to these awards, the Alumni Foundation is also trying to build a global USTC alumni network, a resource that every USTCer can draw from for his/her personal success. As part of the effort, we revamped the alumni email system (mail.ustc.edu) with the help from USTC Network Center earlier this year. We also organized a very successful overseas alumni delegation (the third one since 2001) in October, to help those alumni interested in returning to China connect with each other, and with the governments and industries in China.

A stronger Alumni Foundation will benefit both USTC and the USTC alumni community. If you think these are good causes and you would like to help, please visit http://af.ustc.edu/Donation.html for instructions on donating to the AF. If you have any suggestions to the AF, please be sure to contact the Alumni Foundation governing board (afgb @ ustcaf.org).

The Alumni Foundation has been in operation for 8 years so far, but it couldn't have lasted a single day without your trust and support. Please rest assured that your donation will be absolutely safe and will be put to good use. We as the members of the governing board share the same love and passion that you have for USTC. We work for the AF on voluntary basis only - we never receive any compensation in any form from the Alumni Foundation. We also have strict rules guiding the operation of the AF, and each and every transition (income and expenditure) has been logged on the website of the Alumni Foundation (af.ustc.edu) for you to track and monitor since AF's inception.

There have been quite some exciting news from USTC lately: work on the two state-of-the-art research institutes in Suzhou and Shanghai are progressing smoothly, 5 professors from USTC were elected CAS academician just recently, and more importantly, some encouraging changes are going on right now in USTC under the new leadership (Mr. Guo Chuanjie, a very pragmatic and passionate leader from the CAS, has just taken the post to serve as USTC's new Party Secretary). Let's join our efforts and build upon this momentum of change - together we can make a big difference!

Thank you very much for your trust and support. And last, to thank you for finishing this letter, here is an early greeting from the Alumni Foundation :-) -

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!!

Jian Ding jding@ ustc.edu