Kearney Endowed Faculty in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering

Connie and Lee Kearney Two of the university's most active volunteers and generous philanthropists, Lee and Connie Kearney of Vancouver, Wash., both started their careers at OSU.

Lee Kearney earned his degree in civil engineering from OSU in 1963. He worked for 32 years for Peter Kiewit Sons' Inc., one of the largest construction and mining organizations in North America, holding several executive positions and serving on the Board of Directors. He was inducted into the OSU College of Engineering Hall of Fame in 2001.

Connie Kearney started her studies at OSU in 1961 on her way to an undergraduate degree from University of Washington and a law degree from Creighton University in Omaha, where she also later taught. When the Kearneys moved to Washington, Connie became Clark County’s first female commissioner, serving in this role from 1976 to 1980.

Lee and Connie served as co-chairs of the College of Engineering's Top-25 Campaign. Their other volunteer roles have included service on the college’s advisory board (Lee), OSU Foundation Campaign Steering Committee (Lee), and OSU Foundation Board of Trustees (Connie). They received the E.B. Lemon Distinguished Alumni Award from the OSU Alumni Association in 2008. Kearney Hall was renamed in their honor after the couple gave $4 million to transform the 100+-year-old Apperson Hall into a modern home for the university’s civil and construction engineering program.

In 2010 the Kearneys committed $2.5 million to create two faculty position endowments in OSU's School of Civil and Construction Engineering.

Jason Ideker

Dr. Jason Ideker joined the faculty of the School of Civil and Construction Engineering in September 2008 and was named the first Kearney Faculty Scholar in 2010.

His research interests are in the area of high-performance concrete materials as well as early-age properties and durability of cement-based systems. Ideker's work also focuses on providing rapid and effective repair strategies, particularly related to material selection, for the aging infrastructure prevalent throughout the world. His lab is developing new recipes for concrete that include recycled fly ash, offering the potential of significantly reducing carbon emissions while keeping millions of tons of waste material out of landfills.

After receiving his bachelor's degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Ideker earned his master's and doctoral degrees in civil engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.