$10 Million for Engineering Education Scholarships

Posted on May 9, 2007  Comments (1)

$10 million perk aims to help prove engineering is the profession to pursue (link broken)

Kao today will announce that his family foundation is donating $10 million to establish scholarship funds at six regional universities for students majoring in electrical and computer engineering. Kao, an electrical engineer who co-founded Garmin, said he decided to fund the program because he was concerned the United States was losing its edge in engineering and design.

“As a business leader of a company like Garmin, and as an immigrant, I feel it should be a real concern for this country,” Kao said. “I don’t think it’s good for a country to be a pure service business.” The education initiative is the somewhat private billionaire CEO’s first significant endowment in the Kansas City area. “Compared to Asian countries, the career of engineer is somewhat overlooked” in the United States, Kao said. “Young kids don’t aspire to be engineers.”

The endowment from the Kao Family Foundation will be used to fund 100 scholarships a year, offering students $5,000 annually. It will be tied in with Garmin’s internship program, offering 75 or more summer jobs that include a furnished apartment and health and dental benefits.

Good. Related: Increasing American Fellowship Support for Scientists and EngineersScience and Engineering Scholarships and FellowshipsEngineering Internships$35 million to the USC School of Engineering

One Response to “$10 Million for Engineering Education Scholarships”

  1. Dave
    May 12th, 2007 @ 5:55 pm

    This is wonderful. Give a man a fish feed him for a day, teach him to fish and feed him for life. Scholarships are definitely teaching them to fish.

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