Five outstanding engineering alumni and one longtime faculty member of the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering were honored by the Auburn Alumni Engineering Council during a ceremony Friday, Sept. 13, for their distinguished professional careers. These alumni include four who were recognized as Distinguished Auburn Engineers, one as an Outstanding Young Auburn Engineer and a mechanical engineering professor emeritus for Superior Service. The council also honored alumnus Charles Gavin, ’59 textile engineering, who will receive an honorary doctorate of science at the December commencement ceremonies.
Maury Gaston, ’82 Mechanical Engineering
Maury Gaston earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1982. He recently retired as manager of marketing services for AMERICAN Cast Iron Pipe Company. Gaston is a third-generation Auburn graduate and a first-generation Auburn engineer. He came to Auburn from Sylacauga and spent a significant portion of his 42-year career with AMERICAN working in New York, Florida, California and Texas before returning home to headquarters in Birmingham in 1997. His entire career with AMERICAN was in sales and marketing, where he enthusiastically promoted iron and steel pipe, engineering and Auburn.
Gaston serves Auburn University in many capacities, including joining the Auburn Alumni Engineering Council in 2002, serving as chair from 2013-16. He has served the waterworks industry as vice chair of the national standards committee for iron pipe, as chair of the Alabama Iron and Steel Council and as a frequent author and presenter of papers at industry technical conferences. Maury has represented Auburn as a current director and past chair of the State of Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame. He is also currently serving as regent — which is the national president — of Sigma Nu Fraternity. In 2014, Maury was named as the Auburn University Department of Mechanical Engineering Alumnus of the Year.
Giving back, Maury and his family have established a scholarship endowment in the college, and he is a member of the college’s Ginn and EAGLE societies and the university’s Foy, Samford and Petrie societies.
