In 2007, Virginia Tech's Student Engineers' Council (SEC) created a new endowment to support the nationally and internationally acclaimed engineering student design teams in the college.
The SEC opened this account with an initial $105,000 gift to Virginia Tech dedicated to the engineering design team fund. The SEC recently announced another gift to this fund, valued at $125,000, bringing its total contribution to $230,000 in less than a year.
The SEC's goal is to add to this account each year, allowing the interest generated by the principal amount to become a dependable source of revenue for the design teams. The SEC's final goal for this project is to reach $500,000 by 2010.
In August, The Boeing Company made its own contribution to this endowment with a gift of $50,000 from its Global Corporate Citizenship (GCC) disaster relief team budget.. The donation was made as a way to help Virginia Tech students and honor those killed on the Virginia Tech campus of April 16. Boeing added another $!0,000 from a separate account, and both industrial gifts were due to the efforts of aerospace engineering alumnus Marc Sheffler, Boeing executive focal for Virginia Tech and senior engineering manager for Advanced Rotorcraft Systems.
In total, the fund now has $290,000, more than halfway to its goal of $500,000, and the students have some three years to complete their efforts by December of 2010. The SEC started making its first allocations to the design teams in spring semester, 2008. The engineering design teams range from the hybrid electric vehicle to unmanned autonomous vehicles to steel bridges.
In 2006 the National Association of Engineering Student Councils (NAESC) named Virginia Tech's SEC the most philanthropic organization of its kind in the nation for the second time in five years.
The SEC earns the money it donates to the college by hosting the Engineering Expo career fair each year. In 1980, approximately 40 companies attended the Career Fair; today some 260 companies participate. Virginia Tech's Engineering Expo is one of the most successful career fairs in the country.
Other SEC funded projects in the past few years include enhancements to the Ware Lab which hosts numerous engineering design teams, the College of Engineering's Student Assistance Center, the Frith Freshman Design Engineering Lab, the Freshman Engineering Program, and the renovation of several engineering classrooms.