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CUE 2006

The Engineering Development staff works with donors to direct their gifts toward students, faculty, programs, and facilities in the college that they wish to support. Ann Scott visits with Morgan Scholarship recipients Jacob Oliver and Risa Abarientos in the Integrated Teaching and Learning Laboratory. John Mabley and Pat Sullivan meet with Bill Batton, Mike Forsha, and Bob Linden at Barber-Nichols, Inc. John Quigley attends an alumni event in Tucson along with Jon Previtali, a student leader with the CU Solar Decathlon team. Emily Muller works with scholarship recipient and student assistant Tarra Logan.

Private Gifts Support Student Learning

Many CU engineering alumni and friends of the college, recognizing the importance of their education to their personal and professional success, have made a commitment to helping the next generation of students through gifts to support people, places, or programs in the college. Following are but a few examples of individual and business donations that support the college's mission, while meeting the donor's specific goals and objectives. The college wishes to thank all of its past and future donors for their support.

Kile Morgan (CivEngrBus '69) came to CU-Boulder on a football scholarship and says it changed his life. Originally from National City, a working-class community south of San Diego, Morgan experienced a completely different part of the country, which helped to open his eyes to the world. Now the owner of a successful homebuilding company in the San Francisco Bay Area, he wants to give that opportunity to someone else.

CU freshmen Jacob Oliver and Risa Abarientos graduated from Morgan's alma mater, Sweetwater High School, and are the first recipients of the Morgan Scholarships at CU-Boulder. Morgan and his wife set up an endowment to support two students, one in engineering and one in business, by paying the majority of their tuition and fees as out-of-state students. The Morgans also fund several other Sweetwater graduates with partial scholarships at other colleges.

Morgan sees the scholarships as an opportunity to "really change some lives" by making it possible for talented young people to attend a four-year college. "I was lucky enough to get a scholarship and go on and do some things, and my goal has been to go back and do some of those same things for other people at Sweetwater," Morgan says.

Community and education are also strongly held values at Barber-Nichols, Inc, a 40-year-old engineering firm in Arvada that makes sophisticated turbo-machinery. The firm prominently displays the art work of local high school students in its offices and funds student scholarships at Red Rocks Community College in addition to CU-Boulder.

Bill Batton (MechEngr '60, MS '63), Mike Forsha (MechEngr '75) and Bob Linden are part of the ownership group that established a new scholarship endowment for CU aerospace and mechanical engineering students, which will be awarded for the first time this fall. "We really like the idea of contributing to a community college in our area, but our bread and butter is in (four-year degrees)," says Forsha, adding that he hopes to get better acquainted with top students through a close relationship with the college.

While most of the engineering employees at Barber-Nichols come from mechanical engineering, the company's scholarship is also open to aerospace engineering students because many of the company's products, including cryogenic pumps and rocket engines, are used in the aerospace industry.

After graduating from CU-Boulder and completing two post-doctoral positions, Adam Beguelin (MS CompSci '88, PhD '90) was offered a faculty position in the top-ranked computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University. But in 1996, the software start-up Inktomi recruited him, and he soon found his success in the Silicon Valley. Inktomi was purchased by Yahoo, and Beguelin repeated the formula again and again before selling his fourth start-up, the Internet video search pioneer Truveo, to AOL in December.

After the sale, Beguelin and his wife decided to make a gift back to the college where he completed his graduate degrees. In particular, they wanted to support Professor Gary Nutt, who had been Beguelin's PhD thesis advisor.

"I really enjoyed my time in Boulder and enjoyed working with Gary," Beguelin says. "We got to do interesting projects on some dedicated equipment, and I'd like to help fund that for some other students."

Nutt says Beguelin's gift will help him to acquire more equipment for the Kernel Laboratory, where students learn to program computer operating systems, and to support undergraduate student assistants in part-time jobs. "Adam has done really well, and we appreciate his support," Nutt says.