AUTOMOTIVE

The announcement came at a news conference at BMW's Spartanburg, S.C. manufacturing plant. BMW has pledged $10 million to endow the academic programs, and Hodges said the state will provide $25 million to construct and equip a state-of-the-art facility to house the graduate center. The BMW gift is the largest cash donation in Clemson history. James F. Barker, president of Clemson University, called the premier automotive engineering center a major step in Clemson's quest to be a top 20 public university and in South Carolina's drive to build a knowledge-based economy. At the news conference, BMW made public its plans to invest $400 million in its Spartanburg factory to increase capacity by 20 percent – a move that will create 400 new jobs by the end of the year. S.C. Gov. Jim Hodges called the collaboration "one of the finest examples of higher education, government, training and business working together for the benefit of all." The graduate center, which will be built in Greenville, S.C., will feature state-of-the-art facilities for automotive research and development and graduate engineering programs in mass customization. The program that will offer masters and doctoral degrees in automotive engineering. Clemson recently developed an academic strategic plan that calls for the university to build nationally recognized programs in eight emphasis areas, one of which is automotive and transportation technology. The new graduate program will build on existing strengths at Clemson. Researchers have collaborated with some of the world's top automotive companies and federal agencies, as well as leaders in the motorsports industry. Engineering projects have included development of complex computer models to predict handling of vehicles and their aerodynamics under a range of operating conditions, development of methodologies for virtual car design, collaborative design in a global environment and comparison of laser diagnostics from wind tunnel tests against data from actual track tests. Clemson has one of the nation's top university computational fluid dynamics labs. The complex CFD theories can be used to predict and ultimately control intricate fluid flows in everything from the exteriors of speeding cars to the interiors of jet engines. Begun in the early 1990s, Clemson's motorsports initiative was the first of its kind in the nation. Today, the motorsports engineering program is the most visible arm of Clemson's Brooks Institute for Sports Science, which combines the interdisciplinary studies of sports engineering, management, marketing and communications.