On July 23, 2015, the Lyles School of Civil Engineering celebrated the naming of a significant space in Hampton Hall of Civil Engineering.  The Jack & Shirli Flack Family Gateway for Civil Engineering will serve as the central recruiting space for prospective students to the Lyles School of Civil Engineering.  This gives the School a unique, critical and dedicated venue to deliver depth and context crucial to meaningful student visits.

Named in recognition of the Flack Family’s long-standing support of the Excel Fund, this space affords us the opportunity to begin our association with prospective students in a truly world-class way.  The Civil Engineering Excel Fund supports initiatives tied to student recruiting, retention and placement.

The Flack Gateway overlooks The Burke Hydraulics and Hydrology Laboratory and is located immediately above the data visualization room, which functions as a water command center for episodic monitoring and modeling of hydrologic events.  Adjacent to the Flack Gateway, is a three-story interactive water feature that feeds an actual working river model used for demonstrations and experimentation in the sensor-based classroom 2 floors below.  This feature serves as an aesthetic reminder of the lab’s function and also as the headwater to the working channel in which classroom experiments are conducted.   The glass walls surrounding the Jack & Shirli Flack Family Gateway have been ornamented with graphics depicting water.  This symbolizes how the Flack space will be the source of our future students – much like water is the source of life.