Unprecedented $20 million gift made to School of Architecture
The largest ever estate gift in support of the school was committed by Professor Emeritus Salahuddin Choudhury and his wife, May.
When Charles Burchard recruited Salahuddin Choudhury to Virginia Tech, he couldn’t offer a fancy office or big budget.
Instead, the first dean of what is now the College of Architecture, Arts, and Design offered Choudhury something the young architect valued even more: a chance to help grow a program to national prominence.
“In the early years, we had scant resources, but no one complained,” said Choudhury, who joined Virginia Tech in 1974 and was honored with emeritus status in 2019. “We begged, borrowed, and — no, we didn’t steal — to make do with whatever we had. And yes, our spouses brought pizza at 3 in the morning to Cowgill Hall as we worked on international competitions. Lacking furniture, the faculty chipped in to buy a rug for the students to sit on.”
Along with his wife, May, Choudhury recently committed far more than a rug to help fuel excellence within a program whose scale and worldwide reputation has grown tremendously since its early days.
Their recent, $20 million gift is the largest bequest ever committed to the School of Architecture. It will ultimately provide substantial, endowed resources for the college dean and school director to use to keep Virginia Tech at the forefront of architecture education.
Teaching tradition
Working alongside professors like Olivio Ferrari, whom he considered a mentor in many ways, Choudhury helped generations of students develop theoretical and practical knowledge based on a broad and deep understanding of all the sciences, arts, and even nature.
He taught for decades, out of the Blacksburg campus and in study-abroad programs, and stressed the Vitruvian ideal — named for a Roman author, architect, and civil engineer who lived during the first century B.C. — which integrates questions of philosophy, knowledge, aesthetics, and culture into the education of an architect.
During that time, Virginia Tech’s architecture program rose to prominence. The college that housed it opened facilities in Alexandria and Switzerland. By 2007, DesignIntelligence ranked Virginia Tech’s Bachelor of Architecture program No. 1 among National Architectural Accrediting Board-accredited programs, based on a survey of leading firms as to which programs best prepared students for professional practice.
Virginia Tech architecture was among the nation’s top programs in DesignIntelligence’s last such rankings, which were issued in 2019.
The Choudhurys described their gift as a natural extension of long, family legacy of prioritizing education.
“My grandfather was a scholar of Rumi and was a respected wise man in our ancestral village,” Choudhury said. “The high school of that village is named after him. My offering is a tribute to him and my father and all my students and colleagues of the last 47 years. I learned from all.”
“The Choudhurys' incredibly generous gift extends their 50-year legacy of distinguished professional service to the university into the future by providing philanthropic support that will spark new discoveries and empower students for generations to come,” said Virginia Tech President Tim Sands. “We are deeply honored by their commitment to Virginia Tech and proud to be part of their family’s ongoing engagement in higher education.”
Lu Liu, dean of the College of Architecture, Arts, and Design, described the gift as a major moment in the proud history of both the college and the university.
“The early faculty of Virginia Tech architecture built an incredibly strong foundation for the success of generations of architecture students,” said Liu. “They taught the students not just how to design and how to learn, but also how to think creatively and critically and how to ask fundamental questions about the buildings and their broader context. Sal is an architect and a philosopher. His teaching was profound and critical to the strength of our foundation. We are profoundly grateful to him and May, for their transformative gift that will help us to rise ever higher.”
Jim Bassett, associate professor of architecture and director of the school, described Choudhury as a colleague who “modeled a love of wisdom, a commitment to the education of the architect, and a champion of the idea that every great work of art, including architecture, is at heart an unanswered question.”
Bassett added, “As this gift unfolds it challenges us to ask, what can this make possible? While the answer will emerge in the future, we know the Choudhury’s generosity will fuel top priorities like student experiences, faculty empowerment, and thoughtful adjustments in the education of tomorrow’s architects.”
Generations of Choudhurys had a love of education that they strove to pass on. In the 1950s, Choudhury’s father traveled from Bengal to Harvard to study international taxation law and returned with stories about the many different opportunities that impressed him.
“I was spellbound by his stories,” Choudhury said. “He found out about the discipline of architecture at Harvard. He elaborated upon this new discipline that not too many people around me knew a lot about. By happenstance, the year I graduated from high school, USAID [the United States Agency for International Development] decided to add the Department of Architecture in the local engineering university. Obviously, I followed my father’s advice and enrolled there. Our professors came from Texas A&M, Harvard, Illinois, Berkeley. Everything was paid for by the USAID.”
After earning his Bachelor of Architecture from East Pakistan University, Choudhury traveled to the U.S. to complete his Master of Architecture at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis. He initially returned to Bengal to work in industry after completing his graduate degree.
“Unfortunately, a civil war broke out, and my father wanted me to go back to the safety of the United States,” Choudhury said. “I went to Washington, D.C. I was humbled by such a welcoming America and generous Americans.”
Meaningful mentorship
One person Choudhury connected with at a profound level was Olivio Ferrari, whom he met after being recruited from a job in Washington to become an assistant professor of architecture at Virginia Tech.
“Olivio Ferrari took me under his wing,” Choudhury said. “It was the beginning of my own education.”
Choudhury fondly remembered faculty gatherings Ferrari organized. He also took to heart Ferrari’s recommendation that colleagues read the Wall Street Journal, making that a daily habit.
“Other than the news in text, I found out that it was full of thousands of small numbers preceded by symbols that fluctuated every day,” Choudhury said. “As a young man I pored over those small numbers on the kitchen table after dinner as May read Agatha Christie one after the other. We were both engaged in the same activity. We were both sleuthing detectives.”
Although he concedes his “first few blunders were painful,” Choudhury’s investing improved with time, allowing him and May to make their unprecedented gift to the architecture program that featured so prominently in their lives.
In keeping with how he taught, when asked questions Choudhury is still likely to respond with a telling quote from a distinguished artist, scientist, author, or philosopher.
“Nothing that you have not given away will ever be yours, taught C.S. Lewis,” he said when asked about his and May’s philanthropy. “For many years I gave in the classroom. Now we are giving away our financial assets. … Charles Burchard the dean of architecture at Virginia Tech, invited me to join the faculty over 50 years ago. I was offered a place to learn in the school. For 47 years I was given the gift of intellectual liberty. The Choudhury Endowment Fund is a token of my gratitude. I hope many others may benefit as I did.”
