Walters help fund cutting-edge facility

Robert and Peggy Walter

Robert Walter doesn’t forget a favor. As an undergraduate at Ohio University in the 1960s, Walter earned scholarships that helped him pursue a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. When he decided to seek an MBA from Harvard Business School a couple of years after his graduation in 1967, then-Ohio University President Vernon Alden supported his application.

And so this past fall, he paid the University back — and then some — when he and his wife, Peggy McGreevey Walter, BFA ’67, announced they would donate $5 million for a new state-of-the-art lecture hall and technologically advanced classroom building on campus.

“This is a great institution,” says Robert Walter, who is in his third year of a nine-year term on the University’s Board of Trustees. “We’re excited about what’s happening at Ohio University.”

The $10 million building, which will provide a landmark at Richland Avenue and South Green Drive, is targeted for completion in 2004. It will include 800 student stations and the latest technological systems.

“We’re very excited about the idea of the science lecture hall, which can be used for so many things,” notes Peggy Walter. She says she and her husband are impressed by President Robert Glidden’s leadership and selected the classroom project as the focus of their gift because he identified it as a campus priority.