Alumnus supports students from his hometown
When Dick Keefer was growing up in Canton, Ohio, in the 1940s and ’50s, the region’s automobile industry was booming, giving his father stable work as a master mechanic and maintenance supervisor at a local supplier firm.
After the industry reached its peak in the early 1960s, however, it began to see the effects of overexpansion, and plants across the region gradually closed, taking job security with them.
“That area of Ohio still suffers from not being a hotbed of industry like it was way back when,” Keefer said. It’s one of the reasons he supports scholarships for mechanical and electrical engineering majors at Case Western Reserve University, with a preference for students from Stark County.
His other reason? Scholarships made his education possible.
Keefer was the first in his family to attend college. An aspiring mechanical engineer, he was drawn to Case Institute of Technology (a predecessor to Case Western Reserve University). Case, Keefer said, was "the right place at the right time," due to scholarship support and the school's reputation for preparing students for career success.
“It was hard, there’s no question about that,” Keefer (CIT ’62) said, both of the curriculum and his experience as a first-generation college student. “But with the help of my colleagues at Case, I learned to be persistent in problem solving, and that attitude was helpful throughout my career.”
The alumnus went on to spend 22 years in light truck product development at Ford Motor Co. and another 33 years at the science and engineering consulting firm Exponent.
Keefer also pointed to his campus community as being integral to his development. He swam competitively as an undergraduate—something he doubts he would have been able to do at larger universities—and was active in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. He hopes his support will help future generations from his hometown enjoy the kind of well-rounded education he had.
“If I can help with that,” Keefer said, “I think that’s a good thing. Education is the most important asset we have as a country.”