Donors name Drury building after university VP

Photo provided by Drury University

Judy Thompson is credited with growing the school's endowment to nearly $100 million.

Two Drury University alumni have made a naming-level donation for a building project, but it won't bear their names.

John and Crystal Beuerlein instead chose to name the 12,000-square-foot executive conference center in honor of Judy Thompson, a longtime Drury employee who's currently serving as acting executive vice president for university advancement, according to a news release. The donation amount was not disclosed.

“It is hard to overstate the role Judy has played in shaping Drury University – both its physical campus and our ability to carry out our mission of transforming students’ lives,” Drury President Tim Cloyd said in the release. “Judy has been the driving force behind the scenes of every major building project of the last half-century and guided our endowment from about $5 million in the 1970s to nearly $100 million today."

The naming decision was announced at an on-campus event yesterday as a surprise to Thompson.

“I’m at a loss for words,” she said in the release. “That doesn’t happen very often.”

The Beuerleins graduated from Drury in 1975. John, at age 26, became the youngest person ever to be made a general partner at Edward Jones, and Crystal has worked for a St. Louis mortgage company.

The Judy Thompson Executive Conference Center is slated to open in fall 2022, according to the release. It's being built adjacent to the $27 million C.H. “Chub” O’Reilly Enterprise Center that's underway.