At a press conference Friday, Sept. 5, UM System President and MU Chancellor Mun Choi announced a $2 billion fundraising campaign for the University of Missouri, the largest in MU history. According to Choi, the campaign, ‘Power the Roar,’ has already raised $760 million.
MU’s previous fundraising campaign, ‘Mizzou: Our Time to Lead,’ raised $1.4 billion. This campaign’s goal of $2 billion “was derived from the needs that we have at the university to provide more scholarships for students based on need as well as merit,” Choi said. “As well as professor
ships to attract and retain the very best talent to be able to attract students to our university.”
These costs, in addition to facilities’ needs on the MU campus, are the reason for the lofty target, the president and chancellor said.
Choi announced the campaign following a UM Board of Curators public meeting on the same day, during which an extension of his contract as president to 2031 was approved.
Among the initiatives that Power the Roar will help fund is NextGen MURR, a project to build a new state-of-the-art research reactor with double the power output of the university’s current 10-megawatt MURR, which President Choi called “our highest-priority project” at the fundraiser announcement.
listening to UM System President Mun Choi speak at the podium on Sept. 5, 2025, in Brewer Fieldhouse, at the MizzouRec in Columbia, Mo. The title of this new campaign is dubbed “Power The Roar.” (Andrew Weitzel)
According to the university, MURR, which has been operating for nearly 60 years, is already the most powerful research reactor in the United States and produces radioisotopes used in life-saving cancer treatments.
“We produce a cancer drug that no one else in the United States produces. We produce the vital material for that,” Board of Curators Chair Todd Graves said. “It is hard to wrap your mind around the potential this has for our university… Researchers will want to move here to be close to this facility.”
