A West Virginia University graduate has pledged $30,000 towards the endowment of a lecture fund for the WVU Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer Sciences.
In 1953, E. Lynn Miller received a degree in horticulture from WVU with an emphasis in landscape architecture.
“This became an inspirational foundation from which I launched a successful professional and academic career,”he said.”Since my success could not have been achieved without this start which WVU provided, I would like in some small way to repay the University.”
The lecture will be named the E. Lynn Miller Lecture in Landscape Architecture. Funds will be used to bring regionally, nationally and internationally prominent speakers in the field of landscape architecture to WVU . Faculty and students in the landscape architecture program, housed in the Davis Colleges Division of Resource Management, will select speakers. The program is one of the Davis Colleges largest, with an enrollment of close to 150 undergraduate students.
A native of Webster Springs, Miller followed his years at WVU with graduate school at Harvard University. He spent many years as an award-winning faculty member at Penn State University. Among his achievements are being named a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects and serving as a Congressional Fellow on the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the U.S. House of Representatives. Currently retired and living in Arizona, he is a contributing editor and member of the editorial committee of Landscape Architecture, the magazine of the American Society of Landscape Architects.
This is not Millers first gift to WVU . In 1998, he established the Miller Creative Writing Award for the landscape architecture program in memory of his father, Samson Miller. The annual award goes to the student who best expresses concepts of landscape architecture in a creative context.
“The lectures supported by this fund will be of tremendous benefits to our students,”said Cameron Hackney, dean of the Davis College.”That this gift is from one of our alumni is particularly rewarding. His ongoing interest in the landscape architecture program is a tribute to its quality and impact.”
Millers gift was made to the Davis College through the WVU Foundation, a private non-profit organization, which is the designated agency to receive and administer gifts from private individuals and organizations for the benefit of West Virginia University and its affiliated organizations. The Foundation is in the midst of its Building Greatness Campaign: West Virginia University, a $250 million fundraising effort being conducted by the Foundation on behalf of the University.