Texas Oilman Endows Scholarship for Black Engineering Students
Over the past 20 years Texas oilman David C. Swalm has contributed more than $30 million to his alma mater, Mississippi State University. The School of Chemical Engineering at the university has been renamed in his honor and a new $18 million, 95,000-square-foot classroom and laboratory building has opened.
Swalm, a white man who graduated from Mississippi State with a degree in chemical engineering, invested $6,000 of his own money in 1968 to start Texas Olefins, a petrochemical manufacturing firm. He sold the company in 1996 for $500 million.
Now Swalm has endowed a new scholarship program to benefit black students seeking advanced degrees in chemical engineering. A $3 million endowment will fund scholarships for science graduates of historically black Jackson State University who want to study for a graduate degree in engineering at Mississippi State. In addition to the graduate level opportunities, undergraduate students at Jackson State who want to pursue a course of study in engineering not offered at that university can apply for a scholarship to transfer to Mississippi State.
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