COE community bands together to support students and research

Alumni, faculty members, staff, students and friends of the College of Engineering came together to show their support and help the College of Engineering (COE) write its next chapter on Day of Giving on March 23, raising $1,504,048 from 1,443 gifts.

Started in 2019 at NC State, Day of Giving is a one-day event to raise money to support all of the opportunities at the University, including groundbreaking research, scholarships for students and facility upgrades. The donations given on this day support the College in improving its already world-class education.

For the University, this year marked the most gifts ever received on a single day. The University received 14,533 gifts totaling $23,060,336.

Throughout the day, the College won several giving challenges, including most student gifts in a single hour and most alumni gifts in a single hour. At the end of the day, COE finished in third place for most gifts received, behind only the Division of Academic and Student Affairs and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Among the departments that make up the College, the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering (CCEE) received the most gifts, followed by the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) and the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. The nine academic departments also engaged in a friendly competition, trying to receive the most gifts to win a greater share of $15,000 in prize money from Dean Louis Martin-Vega.

The alumni advisory boards for CCEE, ISE and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering each offered matching fund challenges for their department’s alumni. Three other departments’ match challenges were made possible through donations from individuals: Al Banes, emeritus faculty member in the UNC/NC State Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering; Pranav Hangalur, who worked as a research assistant for Department of Materials Science and Engineering Head Don Brenner; and Mark Wyatt, an alumnus of the Department of Computer Science.

The College received several major gifts. In 2006, alumnus Dick Franklin established the Kenneth D. and Wanda B. Franklin ISE Merit Scholarship Endowment for juniors and seniors in industrial and systems engineering. This year, he made an additional donation to this fund so that students can continue to complete their education with less financial burden.

Alumnus Timothy Humphrey also gave to an existing fund, the Timothy L. Humphrey Women and Minority Engineering Initiatives Award. He gave the original gift in 2020 to Women and Minority Engineering Programs, which recruits, retains and mentors students who are traditionally underrepresented at the College.

The College is grateful to everyone who supported NC State engineering on this day by participating in social media challenges or donating. These gifts ensure that the next generations of NC State engineers will continue to improve the world around them.