$10M to fund Rutgers' Richard Weeks Hall of Engineering

NEW BRUNSWICK – Rutgers University's School of Engineering is getting a new facility thanks in part to $10 million in donations to the Rutgers University Foundation, the university announced on Tuesday.

The Richard Weeks Hall of Engineering, honoring Richard N. Weeks, class of '50 and chairman of Weeks Marine — one of the leading marine construction, dredging and tunneling firms in the United States and Canada — is expected to be completed in 2017. Weeks donated $6 million and another alumnus, who chose to remain anonymous, donated $4 million as part of a challenge grant.

The 100,000 square-foot facility is planned to be built next to the Biomedical Engineering Building on the Busch Campus. The building will house the School of Engineering's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering as well as laboratories for advanced manufacturing and environmentally sustainable resources and systems.

The facility also will house classrooms and collaborative workspaces for students doing research and working on team-based senior design projects.

"This is the first time that the School of Engineering will have a building named for an alumnus," said Thomas Farris, the school's dean. "We will tell Mr. Weeks's story in this building, as well as the stories of other alumni who are leaders in their fields. These stories will inspire our students, showing them how they too can do what Mr. Weeks and others have done with their Rutgers engineering degrees."

After graduating with a civil engineering degree in 1950, Weeks joined the family business, which started in 1919 as a stevedoring firm — loading and unloading cargo ships. During his time with the company, it grew into one of the largest marine construction, dredging and tunneling organizations in North America, performing such recent high-profile jobs as recovering the US Airways plane that Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger safely ditched in the Hudson River in 2009 and dismantling the Seaside Heights roller coaster swept out to sea by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

Farris said the new building will make Rutgers more competitive in attracting talent to the school.

"Having a state-of-the-art facility will speak very strongly to potential students, their parents and the faculty we recruit going forward," he said. "It will also boost our reputation among New Jersey's high schools and change the way counselors and teachers encourage their best students to consider Rutgers."

Farris noted the building supports the priority that Rutgers' strategic plan places on engineering, promoting interdisciplinary research that generates large-scale federal funding. These capabilities also will encourage start-up companies and established industries to work with Rutgers on innovations that boost their competitiveness.

The gift is part of the seven-and-a-half-year "Our Rutgers, Our Future" campaign, the largest and most comprehensive fundraising campaign in the university's history. The campaign surpassed its $1 billion goal by almost 4 percent when it formally ended on Dec. 31.

Total private support raised to date for the construction of the new engineering building is $23.8 million.

Staff Writer Joe Martino: 908-243-6608; jmartino@mycentraljersey.com