Companies and individuals who have shown outstanding support of The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Engineering will be recognized April 6 with this year’s Corporate Service, Texas Star and Corporate Champion Awards.
The Corporate Service Award honors a company that exemplifies the highest standards of support for the College. This year’s recipient is ChevronTexaco. The company has funded scholarships and programs within the petroleum engineering department, including the Workforce Initiative and the remote master’s degree program. They also provided funds for scholarships within the departments of civil, electrical, chemical and mechanical engineering. Beyond that, they have given generously to the Women in Engineering Program and the Equal Opportunity in Engineering Program, the College’s two outreach programs focusing on increasing the number of women and minorities earning engineering degrees. They have also generously supported many student organizations. The recognition notes that the company’s ongoing support has increased the quality of education for students in the College.
Lockheed Martin won this year’s Texas Service Award, which honors a company who has supported a key initiative within the College. In an effort to help engineering students maximize their use of the College’s largest job fair, Lockheed Martin provided key sponsorship of the “How to Work EXPO” workshop in the fall of 2002 and 2003. The workshop taught students how to navigate Engineering EXPO, the College’s career fair that features more than 200 employers offering information and job search opportunities. The workshop was highly successful, drawing over 140 students, and has been planned again for next year. The company proved well-suited for assisting with the workshop since, for the last two years, Lockheed Martin has hired more engineering graduates for permanent positions than any other company.
Corporate Champion awards honor individuals within companies who have made significant, ongoing contributions to the relationship between the College and their companies. This year, three individuals were recognized.
Ray Almgren, a UT Austin electrical engineering graduate, is vice-president of product marketing and academic relations for National Instruments. He has been involved with the College for over a decade. In the mid 1990s, Ray helped develop and implement the College’s Laptops for Learning initiative, a program making laptops accessible and affordable for engineering students. He helped provide a free package of National Instruments software for those buying the laptops, and also worked with National Instruments to produce the largest donation of any company to the College’s Friends of Alec annual giving program. These funds provide scholarships to students, helping them earn a UT Austin engineering degree without the added stress of financing all of their college expenses. To give students free access to an invaluable educational tool, Ray worked to allow the use of National Instruments’ award-winning software, Labview, in all engineering on-campus computer labs.
Bryan Cotner, a UT Austin petroleum engineering graduate, is an asset consultant with ChevronTexaco’s Project Resources Company, where he evaluates economics for projects and ventures around the world. Bryan has been professionally involved with the College of Engineering for more than a decade and has been described as the “backbone” behind ChevronTexaco’s relationship with the College. When the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at UT Austin began a workforce initiative to recruit more petroleum engineering majors, Bryan was instrumental in making ChevronTexaco part of the effort. His company’s support made a huge impact on the department’s recruiting and retention of top students, drawing talented engineers into a growing field where the supply of engineers is shrinking. Among his other contributions to the College, Bryan has donated to the Friends of Alec scholarship program, and is noted for securing ChevronTexaco support for the student chapter of the Society of Petroleum Engineers.
Gary Kott, an electrical engineering graduate of UT Austin, is a project engineering manager and executive sponsor with Fluor. In his role as Fluor’s executive contact to the College, Gary served a three-year term on the Department of Mechanical Engineering’s External Advisory Committee, which assists the department in acquiring financial and intellectual resources and promotes teaching excellence. He has worked closely with the College and with Fluor to provide funding in key places, including contributions to academic departments as well as the Women in Engineering Program, the Equal Opportunity in Engineering Program, the Society of Women Engineers, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and the National Society of Black Engineers. He led Fluor to sponsor several senior mechanical engineering students’ design projects. Required the final year before graduation, these projects pull together all of a student’s engineering studies and apply them to a client’s engineering problem. He also worked to organize alumni gatherings with Dean Ben G. Streetman and is a strong advocate of encouraging grade-school students to pursue engineering education.
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About the Cockrell School of Engineering:
The Cockrell School ranks among the top ten engineering programs in the United States and aspires to move into the top five. With the nation's fourth highest number of faculty members elected to the National Academy of Engineering, the Cockrell School's more than 7,000 students work with many of the world's finest engineering educators and researchers. This environment prepares graduates to become engineering leaders and innovators working for the betterment of society.