Home : Volume 31 : Spring 2005 :
GIFT REPORT 2005: Bequest funds lounge restoration

Among other updates, the Helen Whitman-Obert bequest will restore the two-story ceiling in the Mechanical Engineering Building student lounge. (25K JPG)

Within the past few decades, the student study lounge in the Mechanical Engineering Building has undergone a variety of changes to make it a more functional and collaborative, yet aesthetically pleasing, space. Its most recent renovation concluded in early 1998, funded by a bequest from Mechanical Engineering Professor Emeritus Edward Obert, who died in 1993. The project relocated the vending machines elsewhere and included new study tables, chairs, sofas and study carrels, a fresh coat of paint, and two lively geometric murals, which were a gift from Obert's widow Helen Whitman-Obert.

Before she died in August 2004, Helen designated $750,000 toward the student lounge in the renovated Mechanical Engineering Building. The murals — and their artist's hand — will again play a role in the décor. And, for those alumni who remember the old lounge's earlier days, it will once again become a two-story space.

"One of the important legacy benefits here is that we're going to have a lounge that benefits undergraduates and is to memorialize Professor Obert and the things he held important," says Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Physics Adjunct Professor Fred Elder, the Oberts' close friend and representative for the professor's estate.

Content by perspective@engr.wisc.edu

Date last modified: Wednesday, 25-May-2005 10:30:05 CDT
Date created: 25-May-2005

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