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Creating an Endowment

Funding an endowment is perhaps one of the most selfless and charitable acts of philanthropy an individual or a company can make. Creating an endowment requires a minimum donation of $10,000. The donated funds are deposited with The University of Texas at Austin Investment Management Company (UTIMCO) and the principal is never spent. Rather, annual distributions from the earned interest are allocated to the donors indicated area of support while the remaining interest is reinvested, thereby growing the fund year to year.

Establishing a named endowment means your generosity will support the college every year. Endowment size is unlimited, but as stated before, the minimum donation is $25,000, payable over five years. All Endowments may be named according to the donors wishes.

The following list details the funding levels for all endowment opportunities:

Friends of Alec Life Membership Endowment
From $10,000

Establish a Life Membership through the FoA Annual Giving Program to be used for scholarships, or to benefit a department or College program.

Endowed Excellence Fund
From $25,000

Unrestricted endowments, either college wide or for a certain department, are one of the most important sources of funding as they allow for maximum flexibility.

Endowed Undergraduate Scholarships
From $25,000

There is intense competition at the undergraduate level to recruit the most outstanding young engineers to our program. We have seen over the past 6 years a steady increase in the average SAT score of our entering freshmen. This means two things – first, by enrolling the top students in the nation, we are positioning the College to be ranked among the best in the Unites States. This also means that as the number of top students increases, so too must our resources to recruit them and award them through scholarship.

Endowed Presidential Scholarship (EPS)
From $50,000

Endowed Presidential Scholarships, similar to endowed scholarships, help to promote excellence within the College. Annually, we host the Endowed Presidential Scholarship Dinner to honor the donors and the outstanding recipients of these prestigious awards.

Endowed Faculty Fellowship
From $250,000

Granted to the most promising junior faculty members, this endowed fund provides major incentives to attract and to retain those who will become tomorrow’s leading teachers and scholars. Faculty Fellowship funds are awarded for up to five years, providing support to encourage innovation in teaching and research, thereby nurturing the professional advancement of the named faculty member during the critical pre-tenure years.

Endowed Graduate Fellowship
From $400,000

The importance of attracting outstanding graduate students is critical to the success of our mission. Financial incentives are often the difference in persuading outstanding students to attend graduate school in high-demand disciplines such as Engineering. To attract the best and brightest, a named fellowship endowment is most effective, as it will fund a graduate student throughout his advanced education.

Endowed Faculty Professorship
From $500,000

Distributions from this endowment are used to support an outstanding faculty member in a specific engineering department and ensure that such individuals have the resources necessary to remain at the forefront of their fields and to lead teaching and research efforts in areas important to the future of their department.

Endowed Faculty Chair
From $2,000,000

Designed to provide resources to scholars of eminent stature, a named faculty chair is the most prestigious endowment a Professor can hold. A named chair holder represents excellence within his or her field of research. The chair holder will inevitably draw outstanding students to their program, stimulate innovative research, mentor younger faculty and aggressively seek leveraged funding from government and industrial sources.

Naming of a Department Building
From $12,000,000

Despite the efforts taken in the mid-1900s to construct the most outstanding engineering facilities, decades of use and thousands of students later, many of the buildings that house the seven departments of the College of Engineering are tired and outdated. Equipment needs replacing, space needs updating, and without question, students deserve classroom and study areas outfitted with today’s modern learning resources. A gift of this size would act as an unrestricted endowment for the renovation and maintenance of the building.

Generous donors have already named three buildings. They include:

The Engineering buildings available for naming are:

Naming a Department
From $25,000,000

The funds needed on an annual basis to institute the level of programming, teaching, equipment replacement, and technology upgrades to compete against top engineering departments across the country is phenomenal. Unrestricted money of this sort, to be overseen by the Department Chair for the strengthening of that department, is critical if we as an Engineering community want to continue to rank among the top Colleges in the nation.

Naming the College
From $60,000,000

The prestige that accompanies the naming of a world-renowned research and teaching organization speaks for itself in many ways. Both for the College and for the donor who wishes to endow in perpetuity, a legacy of excellence, commitment and growth, the naming of the college is perhaps our most important initiative. The endowment created by a gift of this magnitude would forever position the College of Engineering at UT among the top in the world. The resources generated on an annual basis would allow the most outstanding faculty to be hired and retained, the brightest students to be funded by scholarships and fellowships, research to be pursued that would change the course of history as we know it, and the purchase of equipment and laboratory stations comparable to none. Unrestricted funds of this nature would propel the College to levels unimaginable at this very moment.

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Establishing a named endowment is a very simple process involving a letter to Dean Ben Streetman or President Bill Powers indicating your intentions. There is a university-wide endowment agreement (which a development officer can help you to draft) that acts simply as a donor directive instrument in perpetuity, not as a legally binding document.

For immediate assistance with creating an endowment, please contact the Engineering Development Office at:

John Halton, 512-471-2120
Kelsey Evans, 512-471-6151
Boone Powell, 512-471-4046