The Clark Charitable Foundation has given the Whiting School of Engineering $15 million to provide financial aid and enhanced learning opportunities for undergraduate engineering students.
The gift honors the late A. James Clark, a former trustee of the university and of Johns Hopkins Medicine, and a construction engineer and executive for more than 60 years.
The largest endowed scholarship gift ever to the school, it creates the Clark Scholars Program and substantially strengthens the university’s ability to attract talented engineering students while providing need-based aid. The program began this year with 10 Clark Scholars among the Whiting School’s fall semester freshmen.
Clark Scholars will work with faculty mentors, network with professional engineers, and learn from experts in their fields as part of leadership, business, and innovation training during their undergraduate years. They also will contribute to the Baltimore community through service learning projects.
“The Clark Charitable Foundation’s magnificent gift reflects Jim Clark’s enduring legacy at Johns Hopkins of transforming the architecture of our university and helping to educate the engineering leaders of tomorrow,” says Ronald J. Daniels, president of Johns Hopkins University. “This gift continues Jim’s vision to create an environment that will foster engineering leadership to benefit our society now and for the future.”
Courtney Clark Pastrick, board chair of the Clark Charitable Foundation, says that her father “fervently believed that engineering—from biomedical, environmental, and civil to mechanical, electrical, and all other fields—is vitally important to the future of our society.
“We are proud to partner with Johns Hopkins,” she says, “in helping to train future engineering leaders by providing them practical engineering experiences and challenging them to develop solutions to today’s real-world needs.”
Clark, who died in March 2015 at age 87, was chairman and chief executive officer of Clark Enterprises. He built Clark Construction Group LLC to be one of the country’s largest privately held general building contractors.
In 1998, Clark gave $10 million to support construction of the biomedical engineering building that bears his name on the Homewood campus. In 2008, he gave $10 million more to endow the Whiting School’s deanship in honor of his mentor, friend, and business colleague Benjamin T. Rome, a 1925 Johns Hopkins graduate.
“Jim Clark helped transform our university, from the buildings his company built to the research and education he supported,” says Ed Schlesinger, the current Benjamin T. Rome Dean. “We see this in Clark Hall, the clinical towers on the East Baltimore campus, and his investment in people through the Rome Deanship.
“This gift is a continuation of his vision and is consistent with the Whiting School’s mission to create an environment that fosters engineering leaders and leadership for the benefit of society and our country,” says Schlesinger.