Peter and Kristi Balazy didn’t want to scour campus with their noses to the ground to search for the bricks etched with their names.
Instead, the husband and wife team designed a website that searches graduates’ names and maps out where each brick is plotted.
“Coming back to campus and seeing our bricks and remembering our time was special for us,” Peter Balazy said. “That’s why we started, we wanted to share that feeling.”
GW began its brick program in 1990, engraving each graduate’s name, degree and class year on bricks laid in Kogan Plaza, University Yard and Anniversary Park.
Alumni who graduated after that year automatically receive a brick, and those who graduated prior to 1990 can donate $100 to the Alumni Campus Beautification Project to order bricks in their names.
The Balazy’s – who met at GW – launched their website in 2010 as a tool to spread the word about the program to alumni.
The website uses interactive maps that pinpoint the location of a brick based on an individual’s graduation year, and also has a feature that plots a position that is “accurate within a few feet,” Peter Balazy said.
It also offers merchandise, including replica bricks and framed professional photographs of a brick with GW’s seal.
The website offers easier access to brick information than the University’s alumni website, Peter Balazy said. GW’s website provides map images and only has brick information for graduated classes dating back to 2003.
Director of Alumni Benefits and Outreach Kevin Corbett said the University is in the process of ordering bricks for the Class of 2010 and will order bricks for the Class of 2011 after students graduate in the winter.