CSU lands $53.3M gift from Walter Scott Jr. for engineering school

FORT COLLINS – Colorado State University on Tuesday announced the receipt of a $53.3 million gift from Omaha, Neb., businessman Walter Scott Jr., that is the largest in the school’s history.

The gift will benefit CSU’s College of Engineering, providing funding for student scholarships, faculty recruitment and research. CSU is also renaming the College of Engineering the Walter Scott Jr. College of Engineering.

Scott – who served as CEO and chairman of construction giant Peter Kiewit Sons’ Inc. – graduated from CSU in 1953 with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. The $53.3 million gift is just Scott’s latest to his alma mater. He and his late wife Suzanne provided a leadership gift for the Suzanne and Walter Scott Jr. Bioengineering Building that was completed in 2015.

“We are humbled and incredibly grateful for this remarkable gift from Walter Scott,” CSU president Tony Frank said in a news release. “Walter has been a passionate and generous supporter of CSU since he graduated more than 60 years ago, and this gift is truly transformational. It will allow the Walter Scott Jr. College of Engineering to attract the finest faculty and students for years to come.”

The new gift will expand the previously established Walter Scott Jr. Scholarship Program to now provide renewable merit scholarships for up to 80 undergraduates and fellowships for up to 30 graduate students, CSU officials said. The gift also aims to attract world-class faculty through the creation of four Presidential Chairs in water, health, energy and environment. It will provide infrastructure and labs. And it will provide discretionary funds for strategic initiatives and the creation of leadership programs supporting innovation.

“As we get older, I think it’s natural to think about the generations that will follow,” Scott said in the release from the school. “And in a technological age, it’s important that our top students have the opportunity to study at strong research universities.”

Scott worked for Kiewit in the summers during college and went to work there full-time in 1956 after a two-year stint in the U.S. Air Force. He rose to president in 1979 and was named chairman of the board the same year after the death of Peter Kiewit. Under Scott’s leadership, Kiewit spun off its telecommunications operations in 1998 into what is now Broomfield-based Level 3 Communications Inc.

Scott retired as a director of Level 3 in 2014, but remains on the boards of Peter Kiewit Sons’ Inc., Berkshire Hathaway, Berkshire Hathaway Energy and Valmont Industries. He ranked 150^th on Forbes magazine’s 2016 list of the richest Americans, with an estimated net worth of $3.8 billion.

CSU plans to host Scott on campus at an event in April to celebrate the new gift.

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