Tennessee Tech Board Of Trustees Passes Naming Of New Engineering Building

The Tennessee Tech Board of Trustees approved a name for its new engineering building.

Chair Trudy Harper said the building will be called the Ashraf Islam Engineering Building in honor of the 1968 Tech graduate.

Tech President Phil Oldham said that they wanted to honor the Houston-based engineer for both his monetary and physical contributions to the university.

“He’s been recognized here on campus for his contributions,” Oldham said. “And he has pledged a significant $3 million gift to the engineering building. So it’s really a pleasure to recognize Mr. Islam with this naming opportunity.”

Islam has been actively involved in the Tennessee Tech University Foundation as well as the civil and environmental engineering advisory boards for 20 years. He established construction company AIA Engineers in Houston in 1985 that has since been leveraged to a multi-corporate entity CONSOR Engineers, LLC of which he is the co-chair.

Oldham said that Islam’s gift helps the university to reach one-third of its $9 million goal. He said that while there are some loose industry standards that there has not been a lengthy history for gifts for naming buildings at TTU.

“Clearly this is a very substantial gift,” Oldham said. “And it’s a very important gift to help us reach the goals of the engineering building. And so we felt it was within the reasonable range of naming a building here at Tennesse Tech based on our history and based on the significance of this particular building. I think as time goes on we will probably see the value of those naming opportunities continue to grow in value. So in the future, there probably will be larger gifts but for this time and this place this is a very significant gift and worthy of the naming.”

Oldham said that the university was required by the state to have about a five percent match for funding. He said that they’ve raised more than enough, but that the building now has additional enhancements that the designers and engineering faculty planned into the project.