Skip to main content
The University of New Mexico

Our Time year-end update for 2022

In November 2021, we publicly launched our $50 million Our Time campaign for the people and programs in the School of Engineering. We are thrilled that at the end of 2022, we are already at the $32 million mark, with two years left to go in the campaign. Reaching this milestone is possible only because of supporters like you.

This year has been a historic year for UNM Engineering. These are just a few of the recent gifts that are making a difference:

  • Alumnus Douglas Campbell, CEO and co-founder of Solid Power, a Colorado-based all-solid-state electric vehicle battery developer, made a $5 million cash pledge. It will create the Gerald May Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering and is the largest cash gift pledge to the School of Engineering in history.

  • MathWorks (developer of MATLAB) donated $2 million to create an endowed chair in the Department of Computer Science. The gift establishes the Cleve Moler and MathWorks Chair of Mathematical and Engineering Software Endowed Fund, which will generate funds to hire a faculty member in computer science. Moler, who was a faculty member at UNM for 13 years, began developing MATLAB while he was a math professor at UNM in the late 1970s.

  • Alumna Polle Zellweger and Jock Mackinlay made an investment to create the Computer Science Section Leaders Program, which aims to strengthen undergraduate computer science education for all students. Section leaders are undergraduates who help beginning computer science students learn in introductory classes, then some of those students become section leaders to guide the following students. Their passion for the program stems from answering the call for more engineers and computer scientists while making sure there is a positive culture of access and success.

  • Alumnus Merrick Olives created the Olives Family Foundation Mechanical Engineering Endowed Scholarship, which serves as a bridge in the funding gap for entering freshman mechanical engineering students in their first semester, in anticipation of their receiving the New Mexico Lottery Scholarship in the second semester of their freshman year.

Despite the challenges of the last several years, our momentum and vision never faltered.

Through a global pandemic, economic uncertainties, and many changes inside and outside our School of Engineering community, we have kept our vision alive. Again, thank you for your support, and we look forward to celebrating more successes with you in the new year.