United Engineering Foundation approves $25,000 grant for Virginia Tech

The United Engineering Foundation last month came to the aid of Virginia Tech with a gift of $25,000 to help the university defray costs during its recovery from the April 16 school shootings.

The United Engineering Foundation's trustees authorized a special grant of $25,000 for the Virginia Tech College of Engineering. The United Engineering Foundation is comprised of five founder societies: ASME; the American Institute of Chemical Engineers; the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers; the American Society of Civil Engineers; and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

The UEF trustees "unanimously and enthusiastically approved this out-of-cycle grant," said David L. Belden, executive director of the United Engineering Foundation. "In its activities toward returning to a normal operating schedule, the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech is incurring substantial non-budgeted expenses. The Foundation grant is intended to be of assistance during this period of recovery."

Richard Benson, dean of engineering at Virginia Tech, noted that the April 16 tragedy "hit the College of Engineering very hard. Of the 32 victims, 14 were engineers. We lost three honored faculty members and 11 students, each of whom had a wonderfully bright future."

Compounding the tragedy, he said, was that the shootings took place at the heart of the engineering school — Norris Hall — where both the engineering dean's office and the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics were located. "Our displacement has caused a chain-reaction of displacements that has affected every administrative unit in the College of Engineering and quite a few others at Virginia Tech," Benson observed.

Still, gifts like those from the United Engineering Foundation and ASME (see related story, "ASME responds to Virginia Tech tragedy with gift, scholarship") are helping to guarantee that "the work of the College of Engineering goes on," Benson said. "The $25,000 grant from the United Engineering Foundation comes at a critical time and is very precious to us. Every day we deal with unplanned expenses. These include numerous office relocations, new telecommunications hookups, bridge funds for graduate students who lost advisors, re-creation of student records (a number of teaching assistants died on April 16), and travel to other facilities to complete experiments that otherwise would have been conducted in Norris Hall.

"Signs reading 'We will prevail!' can be found all around Virginia Tech, and that optimism is helped enormously by great friends such as the United Engineering Foundation," Benson continued. "You may be assured that your generosity is noticed and deeply appreciated by all of us in the Virginia Tech College of Engineering."

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