About the Campaign

Why We’re Building

The need for educated, ethical leaders today is urgent. The pursuit of educational excellence is demanding and complex. Fresno Pacific University must continue to be innovative and assertive to fulfill its role.

To do this, we must expand programs, buildings, scholarships and endowments. Now, in the most comprehensive way in its history, Fresno Pacific University has established priorities to meet the future.

The projects funded by the Building on Excellence campaign will cost $36 million. This goal is a challenge and an opportunity. Academic and administrative leaders, trustees, alumni and friends provided input and tested the resulting plan. We set priorities. We adjusted the size and scope of projects. In the end, we agreed that FPU requires a unified and extraordinary effort, and that the time to act is now.

To view a this video you will need to download the free Adobe Flash Player.

Meet some of our students. These are the faces of FPU. Your gift benefits these and others like them.

What We’re Building

  • A contemporary fine arts center for music, theater and worship as well as public presentations to the campus and community.
  • An expanded library to better support learning and research in a variety of media.
  • A new building to bring synergy to the School of Education and the AIMS Education Foundation.
  • Support for student scholarships and academic programs.
  • Endowments to fund future scholarships, academic programs, faculty development and
    maintenance of the new structures.
Fine Arts Building Fine Arts Entrance Auditorium

View the master plans for the campus

What We Build On

As the only independent, comprehensive Christian university based in California’s Central San Joaquin Valley offering bachelor’s and master’s degrees, FPU serves a highly diverse regional and international student body.  
All programs emphasize the importance of values, ethics and character development for professionals and leaders of organizations—an affirmation that we are and always will be a distinctively Christian institution.

FPU began as Pacific Bible Institute in 1944 with seven staff members and 28 students in a single building. The institution began awarding bachelor's degrees in the mid-1960s, opened its first graduate programs in the 1970s and became a university in 1997. Today the university is composed of four academic schools: the School of Business, the School of Education, the School of Natural Sciences and the School of Humanities, Religion and Social Sciences. More than 290 faculty and staff and 2,400 students work and learn in 17 major buildings, as well as centers in North Fresno, Visalia and Bakersfield. Students and faculty come from 30 denominations, 31 nations and a variety of ethnic groups.

The university is affiliated with the Pacific District Conference of the Mennonite Brethren Churches. Mennonite Brethren churches are rooted in the Anabaptist tradition, part of the Protestant reformation. The university honors this heritage through a commitment to Mennonite evangelical ideals, including voluntary discipleship and obedience to Jesus as Lord and the reconciling power of God’s spirit. The university is also dedicated to the global mission of the church, the church as a community of the new covenant, mutual care and holistic concern for members of society and the call to pastorally and prophetically address peace and justice concerns throughout the world.