Rice University Office of Media Relations 00-09
DATE: Sept. 1, 1999
CONTACT: Terry Shepard, (713) 737-6280, [email protected]
McNair Invests $17.5 Million in Shaping Business Leaders at Rice
Cogen Founder's Gift Meant to Power Jones School of Management Into National Leadership
HOUSTON, Sept. 1, 1999 -- Robert C. McNair, the Houston entrepreneur who built Cogen Technologies into the world's largest privately owned cogenerator of electricity and thermal energy, is making a major investment in the production of a different kind of power--the sort that will shape the economy of the future.
McNair and his wife, Janice, have made one of the largest gifts ever by individuals to Rice University--$17.5 million to the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, the university announced today.
"Rice University is one of the premier schools in the country, and it will only be a short time before the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management attains a similar stature among graduate business schools," Bob McNair said. "The city of Houston and the entire southwestern United States will benefit from the contributions a premier graduate business school, such as the Jones School, can make to our business community.
"Janice and I are proud to be a part of the Rice University community and to assist the Jones School as it takes a giant step forward."
Said Rice President Malcolm Gillis, himself an economist: "We expect that this major investment in the Jones School will allow the McNairs and Rice University to cogenerate business leaders, research and teaching vital for Houston, the region and the nation in the 21st Century.
"The McNairs have a keen appreciation of how the Jones School--joined with Rice's strengths in engineering and the social sciences, and our expanding collaborations with the Texas Medical Center--intends to rise to the topmost ranks of the nation's business schools."
Gilbert R. Whitaker, dean of Rice's Jones School, said that the McNairs' gift would make possible new facilities and programs that leverage Rice's strengths.
"Bob is very interested in bringing innovations and technology developed at universities such as Rice to the marketplace," Whitaker said. "As a member of the Rice Board of Trustees, he understands that the Jones School can be a very important catalyst in this process through the development of concepts and ideas, as well as leaders, for established and emerging businesses and industries. This major investment by the McNairs in the Jones School will markedly enhance our ability to serve the Houston business community and its world wide markets."
McNair, 62, founded Cogen Technologies in 1984, and as CEO led it to become one of the world's largest cogeneration companies. Its natural-gas-fired plants--such as those in New Jersey that supply about 13 per cent of New York City's electricity--set a standard for the East Coast in high efficiency and environmental cleanliness. In 1999, Enron Corp., one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas and communications companies, purchased a majority of Cogen's assets.
A wide-ranging civic leader, McNair is senior chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Houston Grand Opera Association, and a member of the boards of Rice University, Baylor College of Medicine, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Greater Houston Partnership. He was elected to the Texas Business Hall of Fame in 1997. McNair also is prominent in sporting circles, leading a group seeking to bring a National Football League franchise to Houston. Under the colors of Stonerside Stable, McNair and his wife breed and race thoroughbred horses, including Touch Gold, winner of the 1997 Belmont Stakes; Coronado's Quest, one of 1998's top three-year-olds; and Chilukki, this year's leading two-year-old filly.
In 1988, the McNairs established the Janice and Robert McNair Foundation which has focused on education. The McNairs' past gifts for education include funding to endow the chair of the director of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. Other significant gifts were made to Baylor College of Medicine to endow the McNair Scholars M.D./Ph.D. program; endowing the McNairs Scholars program at the University of South Carolina, where Bob McNair earned his bachelor's degree in 1958 and received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree in 1999; to Columbia College, Janice McNair's alma mater, to fund construction of the Barbara Bush Center for Science and Technology; to fund numerous education initiatives for inner city youth in Houston; and for a scholarship program in Forest City, N.C., where Bob McNair attended high school.
Their latest gift to Rice is a major boost to the university's comprehensive reshaping of the Jones School of Management. Since coming to Rice two years ago from the University of Michigan, Whitaker has launched an executive MBA program, increased faculty size and depth in critical and emerging disciplines, led a revamping of the curriculum, and initiated forward-looking management education programs.
Rice University, on the nation's third coast and in its fourth-largest city, in early August was named by Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine as the best value in the nation among private universities. Rice is a leading research university distinguished by its selectivity, superior teaching, small size, individual attention, and collaborative and interdisciplinary culture.
###
RSS