ALL, Article...Grant from Intel's chairman emeritus reveals realpolitik of public/private
December 9, 1997
Electronic Engineering Times via Individual Inc. : Hillsboro, Ore. - Intel chairman emeritus Gordon Moore and his wife recently offered a private donation of $1.5 million to the Oregon Graduate Institute (OGI)
The circumstances behind the grant are indicative of the new realpolitik of public/private collaboration in developing education programs.
Several recent studies have confirmed the necessity for a growing engineering community to have a well-regarded graduate school nearby. Benefits include a local, educated work force and relevant, leading-edge research.
At the announcement of the grant, Moore said, "Oregon is a major high-tech center. As such, it needs a world-class graduate institute. Education and high- tech are strongly interrelated; it is important not only to supply new students, but also to refresh the knowledge and skills of students who are already operating as employees in industry.
"Technology becomes obsolete rapidly," he said. "The alternative [to continuing education] is being confined to narrower and narrower specialties or falling behind."
As the need for graduate instruction increases, many smaller engineering communities are either unable or are reluctant to support such an institution on their own. An OGI source observed, "there is just no way the State Assembly is going to find the money to support something like this at PSU or the University of Oregon."
Partner or perish
That lack of adequate support forces small local colleges and universities to grow and improve by whatever means they can-usually through innovative programs, through cooperation with neighboring colleges and universities, and through tighter relationships with industry.
OGI, for example, is pursuing all of these. It is designing classes with input from local companies, including Intel, Tektronix, LSI Logic, Mentor Graphics, Lattice Semiconductor and others. It has shifted class times to after 4 p.m. and to weekends to accommodate the schedules of students who are now employed with local companies. With Portland State University, OGI has published a common course catalog, and the two are engaged in collaborative research programs.
Also in response to the specific needs of the local electronics industry, OGI has revised the curriculum of its Department of Electrical Engineering, and re- christened it as the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering (ECE)
But all of those measures together are simply not enough to qualify as a leading educational facility. As noted by both Moore and Paul Bragdon, OGI's retiring president, the only way to build a world-class university is to compile a critical mass of prominent professors, top students and innovative research programs. And that all takes money.
To jump start that process, OGI will use the Moores' donation to help establish the Gordon and Betty Moore Endowed Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
The Moores, who have a long history of supporting colleges, museums and other institutions, offered the $1.5 million as a matching grant. The approach is becoming more common as a means of encouraging local support that otherwise would not be forthcoming.
"We did this as a challenge grant," Moore said, "because it is important that the local community get involved. The hope is that this will be the first step for OGI to take the leadership role that we think is necessary. "
OGI has until the end of March, 1998, to attract an equal amount of money from other private sources. The institute intends to solicit another $3 million from local industry over the next three years.
At the press conference announcing the Moores' donation, OGI president Bragdon announced that Dan Hammerstrom, a founder and until recently the chief technology officer of Adaptive Solutions Inc., has agreed to become department head of ECE.
Hammerstrom said ECE will focus on semiconductor engineering and multimedia engineering-including image and speech processing-and will establish research thrusts into biomedical optics and computational finance.
Intel's largest operation is in Oregon; it employs approximately 10,000 people in the state. Operations here are responsible for much of the company's semiconductor-process technology, and they design alternating generations of the company's Pentium processors. OGI noted that Intel has donated over $2.5 million over the last four years.
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