The endowment was announced jointly by Larry Benefield, Auburn's dean of engineering, and Jeff Stone, the chief operating officer of Brasfield & Gorrie.

The Brasfield & Gorrie Fund for Excellence in Civil Engineering will enhance AU's Department of Civil Engineering in areas such as research, fellowships, scholarships, materials and equipment. Endowment funds will be distributed with a preference for programs related to construction engineering.

"Brasfield & Gorrie has a long history of generosity to Auburn University," says Benefield. "Such support from alumni and friends helps the College of Engineering attract and retain outstanding students and faculty, and helps build state-of-the-art facilities in which they can teach and learn. These are the factors that will help the college achieve its vision of positioning itself as one of the nations elite engineering institutions."

Brasfield & Gorrie is a regional general contractor and a Forbes 500 company with offices in Atlanta; Birmingham; Nashville, Tenn.; Orlando, Fla.; and Raleigh, N.C. It ranks 44th among the nation's top 400 contractors based on annual contract awards of more than $1.05 billion, according to Engineering News Record magazine.

Stone and the company's chairman and CEO, Miller Gorrie, are graduates of Auburn civil engineering.

"The accomplishments of Auburn engineering faculty and students are both amazing and inspiring," says Stone. "Auburn engineers have an outstanding foundation on which to build a career. It is incumbent upon alumni to give back to the college so that future Auburn engineers can benefit from the same opportunities we had."

Michael Stallings, head of the Department of Civil Engineering, says the flexibility of the endowment will allow the department to address needs and act on opportunities that will help enhance its program.

"By giving us the ability to attract top-level students, this gift will help strengthen our undergraduate scholarship program," he says. "It also has the potential to boost our graduate program in construction engineering and management by providing graduate fellowships."

Stallings says contributions such as this allow the department to enhance the quality of its programs by supplementing budgets of student competition teams, installing state-of-the-art technology in classrooms, and purchasing specialized software for computer labs.

"The college's vision is based on a specific and strategic plan," said Stone. "Brasfield & Gorrie has attempted to match its contribution to this plan to enable the college and the Department of Civil Engineering to best align the funds with their greatest needs, making the most positive impact on the civil engineering program at Auburn University."