The man who inspired the creation of Iowa State’s construction engineering department is the namesake of a new teaching professorship for the department head.

Charles Jahren, professor-in-charge of construction engineering and associate professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering, is the first recipient of the W.A. Klinger Teaching Professorship.

Jahren said William Klinger changed the way construction was taught at many colleges and universities.

“This guy had the idea that construction was an engineering topic,” Jahren said. “He looked at it as being more like architectural engineering and civil engineering.”

Before Klinger’s efforts, Jahren said construction majors dealt less with the physics and aesthetics of construction and more with the business of contracting.

Today’s construction engineers, at Iowa State and elsewhere, learn about the business and science of construction, he said.

Jahren said when Klinger decided to develop a construction engineering curriculum, he was running a construction company in Sioux City he founded in 1919, so he brought his idea to former ISU president James H. Hilton.

“[Klinger] said, ‘Construction engineering is something we need to do at Iowa State,’ ” Jahren said. “But they didn’t have the money then.”

Jahren said Klinger went to local contractors to get the necessary funding to create the program and the first construction engineering professor-in-charge, Thomas Jellinger, was hired in 1960.

Lowell Greimann, professor and chairman of the civil, construction and environmental engineering departments, said construction engineering has become a popular major since its introduction.

“The construction engineering program [at Iowa State] is often recognized as one of the top construction engineering programs in the nation,” Greimann said. “About one-half of our undergraduates [in the department] are construction engineering majors.”

John Gleeson, grandson of William Klinger and president of W.A. Klinger Inc. in Sioux City, said Catherine Klinger, William’s widow, left $200,000 in her will for the teaching professorship at Iowa State.

However, Gleeson said the will was created in the 1970s, and when Catherine Klinger died in 1990, the money was no longer enough to fund a professorship.

Gleeson said a representative from the Iowa State University Foundation called him last year to ask if his family would help augment the endowment to fund a full professorship.

“Education was always very important to my grandfather,” Gleeson said. “[He felt] curriculum needed to be modified to be more beneficial for contractors … he was instrumental in education on the national level with the construction industry.”

Jahren and future professors-in-charge of construction engineering will have use of the endowed professorship.

He said no decisions have been made about the use of the new endowment, but the priorities will be retaining quality faculty members and reducing class sizes for labs.

Jahren said it was important for coursework in construction engineering to be modified continually to keep it relevant.

“[We] need to look at what’s effective, what’s worth spending your time,” he said.