CEE Recent Gifts

September 18, 2007

The CEE Department appreciates the generosity of alumni and friends who have taken part in the Forever LSU campaign. These contributions are vital to the betterment of the department.

John N. “Jack” Carmena and his brothers Joseph, Jr., and Thomas have endowed an undergraduate scholarship in the name of their late father, Joseph W. Carmena, Sr., a CE Alumnus. The Joseph W. Carmena, Sr. Memorial Scholarship will assist selected full-time undergraduate students in civil or environmental engineering with a 3.2 GPA. Financial need will be considered, with preference given to a student from a rural area in Louisiana. Joseph, Sr., was the third of seven children, the son of a farmer, born January 6, 1891, and raised in Zachary, Louisiana. He was the only one of his siblings to complete college. In 1912, he received a BS Degree in Civil Engineering from LSU. Since there were no scholarships offered in his time, he earned some of his college expenses by raising and selling sweet potatoes. When he attended LSU, the campus was near the State Capital in Baton Rouge and as a cadet, he lived in the Pentagon Barracks. Prior to serving in the U.S. Army in World War I, he held multiple positions in the construction industry. He was commissioned a Lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers and served during World War II. After his military discharge, he accepted a position with Standard Oil of Louisiana, a predecessor of Exxon-Mobil. During his career with Exxon, he worked on various capacities in their Maintenance and Construction Group at the Baton Rouge Refinery. John retired in 1956 and spent the next eleven years in intellectual pursuits, one of which was writing a manuscript on Human Engineering. He died in 1967. One of his children and one of his grandchildren have acquired Engineering degrees from LSU.

Mr. John E. and Mary T. Johnson chose to honor LSU by giving a laboratory endowment to the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) through an estate gift from the John E. and Mary T. Johnson Foundation. Mr. Johnson was a 1942 CEE graduate and Chief Structures Design Engineer for the Renton Division of the Boeing Company. He passed away on August 14th, 2005, at the age of 84. The John E. and Mary T. Johnson Materials Behavior Laboratory will provide CEE with materials and support for students and faculty. “It was very personal for my father to select LSU as one of the endowment recipients from their Foundation,” stated daughter Melissa Cook. CEE Chair George Z. Voyiadjis noted, “This is both an undergraduate and research laboratory. Undergraduate students are taught in this class how to assess the strength of materials and the corresponding behavior of materials when subjected to loads. Faculty will also conduct research to examine and understand the strength and behavior of metals and composites. Recently, additional equipment was purchased to characterize the behavior of nanostructures and bring further value to the Johnsons’ investment in the lab."

An Endowment for Materials Behavior Lab has been established to honor John Edlin Mercer, a CE Alumnus of Mercer Island, Washington, passed away on August 14th, 2005, at the age of 84. John and his wife Mary Virginia provided an endowment for the Materials Behavior lab. John was born in Bunkie, Louisiana, in 1921 as the youngest son of nine children. Despite coming from a large family, Mercer graduated from LSU in 1942 at the top of his class in civil engineering and served as President of the academic society of that time. He went to work at the Tennessee Valley Authority in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he met Mary Virginia Thompson from Hardy, Arkansas. They were married in 1945 in Memphis. Mary and John settled in Fort Worth, Texas in the 1950’s where they had four children: John Edlin, Jr., Phillip Webb, Mary Susan and Melissa Anne. His engineering interests and education landed him a job at Boeing in Seattle in 1957. The family moved into a home, built by John and Mary themselves, on Mercer Island, a suburb of Seattle, in 1960. Though John and his family embraced the Pacific Northwest and remained on Mercer Island, John always remained a great Tiger fan. John worked for Boeing for over 30 years. He was Assistant Chief Project Engineer for Structures for the SST, Deputy Structures Design Manager for Airframe Components for the Space Shuttle, Project Designer for airframe structures on the AWAC program and led the structures design for the Model 757. His last position before retirement was as Chief Structures Design Engineer for the Renton Division. John had a passion for education, expressed through trusts for his six grandchildren and his charitable trust. Just a few weeks before his passing, John’s children worked with him to make sure he could be more involved in directing his charitable trust. He expressed great interest in endowing his alma mater LSU, along with the Seattle Foundation and Catholic Relief Services.

Forever LSU, The Campaign for Louisiana State University, was launched at the end of June 2006. The goal is to raise $750 million by the University’s Sesquicentennial in 2010. The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering campaign target has been set at $4 million for departmental initiatives in the next four years, with a stretch goal of $8 million. The “Case for Support,” which is available upon request, outlines the Department’s specific priorities for the campaign. These gifts from alumni and friends will provide the department with the opportunity to use private funds as a strategic investment: to improve academic excellence and to make transformational change. We are very proud that the national ranking of CEE continues to rise, with the hard work of our faculty, staff and students, and the increasing support of our alumni and friends. With your involvement and investment, we can aspire to be among the top in the U.S. These are just a few highlights of the generosity of CEE’s alumni and friends. Each and every contribution is cherished and we hope that these highlights will encourage others to join us in this vital campaign to truly transform the department.

Information excerpted from CEE Department Newsletter, Volume 6 • Summer Issue • July 2007

Article by Mimi LaValle, LSU college of Engineering, 225-578-5706, mlavall@lsu.edu

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