This year, Johns Hopkins and the Whiting School of Engineering lost two former university board members who were influential in re-establishing the School of Engineering.
Willard Hackerman ’38
Few individuals have played as pivotal a role at Johns Hopkins Engineering as philanthropist Willard Hackerman ’38, the president and CEO of Baltimore-based Whiting-Turner Contracting Co. and a former university trustee, who died on February 10, 2014, at the age of 95.
“Willard embodied those traits that define the Greatest Generation—perseverance, integrity, humility, and extraordinary character,” said Ed Schlesinger, the Whiting School’s Benjamin T. Rome Dean. “And his impact on the Johns Hopkins University, and on the Whiting School of Engineering, has been tremendous. Over the years, he has supported our faculty and has offered valued counsel and advice to my predecessors. His commitment to our students—from providing them with scholarships and internships to hiring our graduates—has provided lasting opportunities to generations of young engineers.”
Since Hackerman matriculated as a 16-year-old civil engineering student at JHU in 1935, until his death this past winter, his dedication to engineering education and to the university has been a constant. The Whiting School’s very existence, in fact, is a result of Hackerman’s efforts in 1979 to re-establish a stand-alone engineering school at Johns Hopkins, and he was instrumental in securing the school-naming gift in honor of his mentor, G.W.C. Whiting.
Over the decades, Hackerman and his wife, Lillian, created scholarships for high-achieving graduates of Baltimore Polytechnic Institute (his alma mater) to attend Johns Hopkins; funded faculty positions in the Whiting School of Engineering and the School of Medicine; and supported multiple research centers across the university. In 2010, the Computational Science and Engineering Building, which opened on the Decker Quad in 2008, was rededicated as Hackerman Hall in recognition of the Hackermans’ lifetime of support for the engineering school.
Herschel Seder ’39
Herschel Seder ’39, a dedicated supporter of the Whiting School of Engineering, who played a played a vital role in the school and in the university for nearly four decades, died on March 1.
In addition to serving on the university’s board of trustees for nearly 20 years, Seder was a member of the advisory councils of multiple Johns Hopkins University divisions, including the Whiting School of Engineering, where he helped pioneer the university’s expansion into biomedical engineering.
The Seder family’s impact on Johns Hopkins students and faculty has been enormous. In 2004, the family established the Whiting School’s first endowed professorship, the Herschel and Ruth Seder Professorship in Biomedical Engineering, which is now held by Michael I. Miller ’79, PhD ’84.
Additionally, the Ruth and Herschel Seder Scholarship Fund, established in1974, has provided 47 scholarship awards to 25 students. In recognition of this support, the university honored Herschel Seder with the Distinguished Alumni Award in 1979, and in 2000, with the Heritage Award. The Seder family’s Hopkins legacy extends to two of the Seder children, John ’69 and Robert ’81, and Seder’s daughter-in-law, Deborah Harmon ’81.