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NKU Alum Scott Lucke leads family homebuilding business — and pays it forward with scholarship


Scott Lucke pays it forward with his family company’s annual scholarship.

Scott Lucke knew what the future held for him at an early age. After all, the 2001 Northern Kentucky University graduate is the grandson and son of men who founded and grew a successful business. Now in its 65th year of building custom residences in Cincinnati, Robert Lucke Homes continues to thrive under Scott’s guidance.

“My grandfather started in 1953. My dad took over in 1982, and I took over in 2013,” Lucke says. “So there is a longevity of successful business that comes into it. The thing I see as most important is continuing that reputation.”

Scott Lucke

While Lucke feels blessed for the opportunity to lead the family business, it’s not like he was simply handed the company; he was made to earn his role in the business from an early age, when he started at the bottom—literally, in the basement.

“Before high school, I used to have supervisors picking me up and taking me to job sites,” Scott says. “I had to clean out the basements, sweep out houses and all that stuff. Then when I got into high school, after I got out at 3:00, I’d go to a job and clean up to make some extra money.”

The Lucke family has always respected hard work; they also believe in working to impact the community. These ideals led to the creation of the Adam Brown/Nicholas Lucke Scholarship fund, which awards a yearly scholarship to a Williamsburg High School graduate and Sycamore High School graduate attending NKU. The scholarship’s namesakes were a pair of cousins who died at early ages, and a scholarship seemed the perfect way to memorialize them.

“Adam Brown grew up in Williamsburg,” Scott says. “When he passed away at 14, he had put his own stamp on the Williamsburg area. He had touched a lot of people. And the same thing for Nick. When you see these people who have touched a lot of people, how do you continue that?

To raise funds for the scholarship, the family hosts a yearly golf outing. The 18th Annual Lucke Golf Scramble takes place at TPC River’s Bend Clubhouse. Scott feels the golf outing is the perfect way to bring people together to support a worthy endeavor.

“It was an opportunity for us to get the industry together and create a fundraiser to honor Adam and Nick, and bring it to a cause to help out other individuals,” Lucke says.

The scholarships are awarded to NKU students pursuing a construction management B.A. at the Highland Heights campus. Lucke was a construction management major during his time at the university, and he wanted to enable students to have the same positive experience he did.

“I felt like the professors were more engaged with the students,” Scott says. “There weren’t these big classes. And you could communicate with the teachers without having hundreds of people to deal with.”

His NKU experience has extended past his time in the classroom, too, as he today finds himself connecting with fellow alumni in the home building industry.

“I’ve run across quite a few graduates of NKU in the home building business,” Scott says.

“As I deal with other aspects of the business, I come across a lot of companies that have guys that I went to school with or graduated with. So those connections are always good.”

Those connections, combined with Scott’s strong work ethic, keep Robert Lucke Homes a favorite among Cincinnati custom home builders. And that’s very good news for future recipients of the Adam Brown/Nicholas Lucke Scholarship.

Northern Kentucky University. This first appeared on the NKU Alum website.


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