Contact: Sammy McDavid
STARKVILLE, Miss.--Mississippi State alumni working at the ExxonMobil Corp. continue to support programs in Mississippi State's Bagley College of Engineering, which has a long history of producing employees for the international oil and gas company.
Doug Deason, a 1980 chemical engineering graduate of the university, recently was on the Starkville campus to present a $130,000 check to Interim MSU President Vance H. Watson and Bagley College Interim Dean Glenn Steele. Deason is an environmental adviser at the company's Dallas, Texas, headquarters.
The amount of the check represents matching funds for contributions made by ExxonMobil's MSU employees during 2007.
The company's educational matching gift program is considered among the most generous of its kind in the United States--as much as $7,500 a year on a 3-to-1 basis to higher education institutions with which employees or retirees are affiliated.
Mississippi State has received more than $1.5 million through the program since it began in 1962. Overall, more than $372 million has been provided to U.S. institutions of higher education during this time.
"This is one way we keep reaching out to our employees," Deason said. "While some may not have been on campus for 25 years, they continue to have strong connections to Mississippi and Mississippi State University."
ExxonMobil is among more than 16,000 corporate employers throughout the country that provide matching higher education gifts for employees' contributions.
For more information about matching gift programs at MSU, contact Heather Andrews of the MSU Foundation at 662-325-1652 or send an email.