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.”