The son of an insurance salesman and a homemaker, Alfred James Clark studied civil engineering at the University of Maryland on academic scholarship, hitchhiking each day from his parents’ Bethesda, Maryland home to attend classes in College Park. After graduating, Mr. Clark worked his way up the ladder at a small local construction company, later buying the company in 1969.
The values Mr. Clark adhered to throughout his life were the same values that drove his success at building what is now the Clark Construction Group: hard work, investment in people, honesty, integrity, and a dedication to quality. Today, the Clark Construction Group is one of the largest privately held construction firms in the United States, and Mr. Clark was the tireless engine who launched its success.
In 1987, Mr. Clark founded what is now the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation, supporting more than 580 local organizations over 25 years. Before his passing in 2015, Mr. Clark requested that the foundation sunset within a decade, maximizing its impact by using today’s money to solve today’s problems. With that new direction, in 2016 the Foundation both scaled up its operations and developed specific strategic areas of focus.
Since then, the Clark Foundation has invested in more than 350 organizations and institutions across three strategic areas: educating engineers, improving the lives of veterans and their families, and providing members of the D.C. community the best opportunity to thrive.
Throughout his life, Mr. Clark invested in the University of Maryland and its students with a goal of propelling the University and the A. James Clark School of Engineering to the forefront of education and research, establishing an array of scholarships, fellowships, and professorships, among other projects.
In 2017, the Foundation made a $219.5 million commitment to the University of Maryland: Building Together. The largest investment in the university’s history, and among the largest to a public research institution in the 21st century, Building Together aims to increase college access and affordability, spark innovations that tackle the daunting problems facing the nation and inspire the next generation of engineering leaders.
As part of Building Together, the Foundation invested $35 million to support the building of the E.A. Fernandez IDEA Factory. The IDEA Factory, an expansion of the Clark School’s Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building, will foster innovation with new cutting-edge labs, start-up space and areas dedicated to cross-disciplinary research.
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