Recently, state Transportation Secretary Stephen Todd Rumbaugh, P.E., presented the West Virginia University Institute of Technology with a $10,000 check for the university’s Beckley campus.
In October 2024, the West Virginia Department of Transportation (WVDOT) won the 2024 America’s Transportation Awards People’s Choice Award for the Wellsburg Bridge project. Sponsored by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), AAA, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the America’s Transportation Awards recognizes the positive impacts of state department of transportation projects have on communities across the nation.
West Virginia was one of 12 finalists in the national competition for the America’s Transportation Award. The People’s Choice Award was determined by public vote, and carried a $10,000 prize to be donated to a charity of the winning state’s choice.
Then-Transportation Secretary Jimmy Wriston, P.E., an alumnus of Tech’s engineering school, decided that the $10,000 should go to Tech’s Beckley campus to be used for a scholarship fund at his alma mater.
Current Transportation Secretary Rumbaugh, also a Tech engineering alumnus, recently presented the check to Civil Engineering Professor Steven Leftwich, an instructor at Tech for the past 38 years.
“A lot of students can’t afford to go to college,” Leftwich said. “I wasn’t able to get all my degrees without scholarships.
“This is really going to help our students,” he said. “We need more scholarships like this.”
Rumbaugh said he was proud to be able to present the check to help train a new crop of engineers.
“They’re our future,” he said.
The Wellsburg Bridge, which connects the communities of Wellsburg, West Virginia, and Brilliant, Ohio, opened in September 2023 to a fanfare of marching bands, confetti, and fireworks, completing a project that residents of the two communities had been pursuing for a century. An estimated 2,500 people turned out for the bridge grand opening.