
Ford Laumer and Mary Jane Laumer (left) and Harbert College Dean Bill Hardgrave present the Mary Jane Laumer Endowed Scholarship to Colin Elizabeth Harrang of Westminster, Md.
Even after retiring in 2005 from a faculty position he held for 33 years, former
marketing professor Ford Laumer continues to positively influence Harbert College
of Business students.
Laumer, who earned the Student Government Association’s outstanding professor award
nine times as well as the college’s Lifetime Achievement Award, invests in their future
through the Mary Jane Laumer Endowed Scholarship in the College of Business.
He’s not alone.
In August, the Harbert College of Business celebrated the excellence of its students
and the generosity of its donors during the 2013 Scholarship Awards Ceremony and Reception
at The Hotel at Auburn University & Dixon Conference Center.
The college presented 383 undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships totaling
more than $540,000.
Laumer said that the college’s scholarship recipients have good reason to be proud
of their accomplishments, but that “this is not the end of the line.” He touched on
the fact that students’ academic and professional excellence is often the product
of internal drive, but that many others – parents, teachers and mentors – factor into
their journey.
“Thank those people,” Laumer told the scholarship recipients. “Tell them how you
feel about them. They will respect you for taking the time to do it.”
Harbert College Dean Bill Hardgrave thanked friends and graduates of the college
for being generous in their support of students.
“Many of the students here today would not be Auburn students without the generosity
of those who fund the scholarships,” he said. “For [some students], it means the difference
between working full-time, working part-time, having or not having a job while being
a college student.”
That thought definitely resonated with Cheryl Casey `83, Senior Vice President for
Dreyfus Investments, who endowed a scholarship. She hopes to grow the Cheryl Casey
Endowed Scholarship to the point of providing support for multiple Harbert College
students.
“I don’t have any children to fund an education for, so I decided to fund the endowed
scholarship to help someone else’s children that may have a need or simply deserve
the scholarship,” Casey said. “I plan to add to it each year, so hopefully it will
go to more than one student in the future.”