After a long hiatus, the university’s Alumni Association is relaunching a fundraising campaign that offers graduates personalized commemorative bricks that will decorate walkways around the campus alumni center.

With a $500 or $1,000 donation, graduates can buy bricks or pavers engraved with their names, graduation dates and little terrapins or Greek letters. The bricks will be in the Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center’s Scholarship Plaza and Moxley Gardens.

Out of every donation, about $30 will go toward engraving and installing each brick. The remainder will fund student activities, alumni tailgating and upkeep for the center, said Beth Morgen, director of alumni communications.

The bricks are offered as part of the association’s Legacy Brick Campaign, which began with fundraising for the center’s construction. However, it fell on the back burner after the center was dedicated in 2005 and the association focused on larger fundraising projects, she said.

With most spaces in the alumni center already named for various donors, the association thought relaunching the brick campaign would allow more graduates to participate with lower-cost donations.

The campaign aims to collect $100,000 by June 30, Morgen said.

“We hope it will catch on,” she said.

Already, 47 graduates have contributed a total of $30,000 for bricks or pavers. Anyone else who donates by Dec. 31 will see their names by summer.

Rebecca C. Swartz, class of 1970, purchased a paver for herself, her husband Thomas F. Swartz (1972) and her daughter Kristi E. Swartz (1998).

“I like giving back,” Swartz said. “It does give recognition of past alumni and their dedication to the alumni association and the university.”

An e-mail advertising the campaign was sent to some current students last week because of a computer error, but the campaign is not targeting recent graduates, she said.

“Understandably, $500 for a brick and $1,000 for a paver is way beyond students’ budgets,” she said. “But, of course they’re included.”

The association is considering offering 2009 graduates a package deal for lifetime association membership and a brick at a discounted price, Morgen said.

“Our goal in years to come is to see all of Scholarship Plaza have many pavers,” Morgen said. “We will put them in as long as we have space.”

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