Houston offshore oil pioneer C. Robert Palmer (’57, ’66) became a bit nostalgic when he spoke at the May groundbreaking for the new Caruth Hall at the Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering. With his wife, Rebecca, Palmer made a $4 million gift toward the new state-of-the-art building and $1.1 million to their existing scholarship fund for undergraduate engineering students.
“Caruth Hall, as we knew her, soon will no longer exist,“ Palmer said. “There were over 10,000 of us who, over a 50-year period, entered and departed through her doors. The new Caruth Hall is going to be a magnificent structure, with lots of bricks and mortar, but the importance to the University will continue to be the students who pass through the doors.“
C. Robert Palmer (left) spoke at the groundbreaking for the new Caruth Hall. Participating in the platform party were SMU President R. Gerald Turner (center) and Brent Christopher, president and CEO of the Communities Foundation of Texas.
With the Palmers’ gift, SMU has received commitments of $18.7 million toward the $26.3 million goal for the building project. Other gifts include $2 million from the Hillcrest Foundation of Dallas and $1.5 million from the J.E. and L.E. Mabee Foundation of Tulsa. In addition, the W.W. Caruth Jr. Foundation of Communities Foundation of Texas has committed $7.5 million toward the facility.
Housed within the new facility will be the Caruth Institute for Engineering Education at SMU, endowed in October 2007 with an additional $5.1 million gift from the W.W. Caruth Jr. Foundation. The Department of Engineering Management, Information and Systems and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering also will be housed in the 64,000-square-foot building.
The Palmer Engineering Leadership Complex in the new building will include student leadership and co-op programs, an advising center and an “innovation gym,” which will house the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works® Lab to work on the nation’s toughest technology problems. Other major components include the Hillcrest Foundation Amphitheater, the Mabee Foundation Foyer and the Vester Hughes Auditorium.
Nicknamed “Caruth Hall 2.0” by Lyle School of Engineering Dean Geoffrey Orsak, the new building will be bigger – almost double the size – and greener than its predecessor, which was built in 1948. Caruth Hall will be the second engineering building at SMU to be constructed to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) gold-certification standards. The J. Lindsay Embrey Engineering Building, which opened in August 2006, was the first. Environmentally conscious features include natural materials that do not emit chemical gases and a water reclamation system that uses air-conditioning wastewater for landscaping irrigation.
The new Caruth Hall is where “we literally will be defining the new American engineer: a 21st-century leader with the agility, depth and passion to identify and solve problems that matter on a national and global scale,” Orsak says.
For more information, visit lyle.smu.edu, call 214-768-4136 or e-mail engineeringgiving@smu.edu.