In truth, it was Bowyer himself who Chameau was trying to get back to Tech — as a member of the Civil Engineering Advisory Board.

Bowyer, who earned a civil engineering degree in 1964 and a master's in sanitary engineering in 1966, served on the Alumni Association Board of Trustees during 1992-95 and as president of the Central Florida Georgia Tech Club in 1992. Bowyer acceded to Chameau's request and subsequently agreed to serve on the board of the Georgia Tech Foundation. Now in his third year, Bowyer has chaired the audit committee for the past 18 months.

Bowyer's association with Georgia Tech predates his student days. His father, Fred L. Bowyer Sr., graduated in 1922 and his older brother, Fred Jr., earned a civil engineering degree in 1958. Bowyer's son, Samuel, has maintained the tradition, graduating in 1995 with a degree in civil engineering.

To attend the quarterly Foundation meetings in Atlanta, Bowyer flies in from Orlando, where he is chairman and CEO of Bowyer-Singleton & Associates. He co-founded the firm in 1972 with Ralph Singleton, since retired, to provide civil engineering, land surveying and mapping services in the growing Orlando market.

Central Florida has experienced spectacular change over the past three decades, and much of it originated at Bowyer's drafting board. The firm began with three employees and a few basic services and has grown as dramatically as the region itself to employ more than 170 people at four offices.

"We do almost everything from planning to various types of engineering," says Bowyer, who in 1988 received the Chamber of Commerce Business Excellence Award.

"We do land planning, surveying and mapping, environmental analysis and permitting, engineering design, construction plan preparation, construction administration and project closeout — it's a full service operation."

Just as Orlando today is not the small town where he set down his roots in the early '70s, Georgia Tech is a much larger, more prominent and academically diverse institution than it was in Bowyer's day. But more important, Bowyer says, while other institutions have responded to changing times by compromising academic standards, Tech has remained steadfast.

"If someone can't make the grade, they can't make the grade," he says.

Tech's commitment to academic quality is one reason why, when Bowyer decided to scale back his extracurricular activities, the Foundation made the cut.

"I think I'm basically a fairly generous person and I like to help people," he explains. "But several years ago I was involved in lots of things and I wasn't able to do an effective job with any of them because there just wasn't enough time. "I decided I was going to choose a couple things, so in addition to the time I spend with my business and family, my next priority is my church and after that is Tech. It ends there."

©2005 Georgia Tech Alumni Association