A ground breaking was held July 10, 2009 to celebrate the start of construction on the new home for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Building at the University of Utah.
Thanks to a $3.3 million dollar donation from Floyd and Jeri Meldrum of Las Vegas, Nevada, the university will build a 14,500 square foot addition to an existing laboratory building to provide space for new department offices, 22 faculty offices, student group space, a student design space, teaching assistant offices, two conference rooms and a 45 seat auditorium. The existing Energy and Mineral Research Lab Building that will be re-named the Floyd & Jeri Meldrum Civil Engineering Building once construction is completed in August of 2010.
The construction is being funded entirely through private support from the Meldrum’s and other members of the civil engineering and contracting community. Floyd A. Meldrum is a University of Utah alumnus and the retired owner of Southern Nevada Paving, Inc.
The groundbreaking lunch and ceremony was held in the Warnock Engineering Building Gallery, 72 S. Central Campus Drive. Remarks were delivered by Paul J. Tikalsky, Chair of the department of civil and environmental engineering, David W. Pershing senior vice president for academic affairs, Richard B. Brown, dean of the college of engineering, and Floyd Meldrum. Ron Dunn, chair of the Department’s Industrial Advisory Board and president of Dunn Associates, Inc., presided over the groundbreaking.
The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is one of the core engineering disciplines at the University of Utah, in an area that is essential for regional development. The department is ranked 48th nationally in the number of degrees awarded, according to the ASEE 2008 Edition of Profiles of Engineering and Engineering Technology Colleges.