Kari Adkins, of Summerfield, N.C., the editor of the Engineers’ Forum, the engineering college’s student magazine, presents a $100,000 check to Erin Edwards, director of development for the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech.
The Engineers’ Forum, a magazine produced quarterly by Virginia Tech students on issues relating to the College of Engineering, has announced a $100,000 gift to the University’s Education Foundation.
The gift will be divided into two funds that will be used to provide scholarship money to officers of the magazine on a permanent basis.
“Despite the difficult economic times, our college of engineering continues to have great momentum because of the quality of our students and our high standing as educators, particularly in undergraduate education,” said Richard Benson, dean of the college. “The generosity of the students is inspiring,” he said.
In 2001, the Engineers’ Forum created its initial endowment named after the first student editor, Niall Duffy, a 1983 and 1988 aerospace engineering graduate (bachelor’s and master’s degrees, respectively) who now works at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. The first endowment directs scholarship money of $500 per semester to the editor-in-chief of the magazine.
Kari Adkins of Summerfield, N.C., the 2008-09 editor, said the staff of the magazine “created this endowment to provide opportunities for future student members, and to further their efforts of service to the engineering student body.”
“Since the Forum has been so successful in the past three to five years, it made sense for the staff to look into expanding the scholarships to benefit others in leadership and magazine layout positions. The specific positions that will benefit are the managing editor, business manager, and up to two layout artists,” Adkins, a senior in industrial and systems engineering, explained.
In the future, the Forum is also looking to start paying other staff members for their contributions to the success of the magazine. These payments would go towards the writers, webmaster, and photographers on staff. This incentive is also planned to start in spring 2009 with the scholarships.
The magazine was resurrected in 1981 by Duffy, after a long hiatus from its original form called the Virginia Engineer. Lynn Nystrom, director of news and external relations in the college, has served as the faculty adviser since 1981.
The Engineers’ Forum may be found at http://www.ef.org.vt.edu