TI Foundation Hopes Grant Inspires Innovators

The Texas Instruments Foundation has established a $332,400  grant over a three-year period to create a TI Science & Technology Innovation Fund.

The fund, announced Wednesday, will support innovation and entrepreneurial development camps for high school juniors and seniors to increase interest in science and technology careers.

It will also provide scholarships to UT Dallas engineering and science students who take entrepreneurship courses.

“There is a great story of collaboration unfolding at UT Dallas, which I believe will yield tremendous value for this region and has been greatly facilitated by the TI Foundation’s grant,” said Steve Lyle, Texas Instruments’ director of Human Resources Shared Services and chairman of the industry advisory council for UT Dallas’ School of Management.

“The collaboration between the schools of Management and Engineering has never been better and more aligned with the vision of UT Dallas as a whole,” Lyle said. “This alignment and collaboration will promote economic growth in the region by turning research into valuable products and services and by delivering a talented labor pool of engineers and technologists who are also managers, leaders and entrepreneurs.”

To date, the relationship between the university’s School of Management and the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science has yielded a joint degree program, in which a student can obtain dual master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering and Management. Also, students earning bachelor’s degrees in Electrical Engineering can earn credit toward MBA degrees.

The schools have also collaborated on the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IIE) at UT Dallas. The Entrepreneurship Incentive Scholarship program is designed to encourage undergraduates enrolled in UTD’s engineering, science and technology majors to enroll in SOM courses leading to the university’s minor in Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

TI has supported higher education for more than 60 years. In the past decade, Texas Instruments and the Texas Instruments Foundation have made grants totaling more than $75 million to colleges and universities. The foundation, founded in 1964, is a nonprofit corporation providing philanthropic support for educational and charitable purposes, primarily in the communities where Texas Instruments has a presence.

The School of Management’s full-time MBA program ranks 26th among public schools of business and 53rd overall, according to U.S. News & World Report. Financial Times ranks the research productivity of the SOM faculty 20th worldwide, and it ranks the school’s executive MBA first in Texas and tied for 10th in the U.S.

With more than 2,600 students, nearly 100 faculty and  more than $27 million in research funding, the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at UT Dallas is in the midst of a $300 million public-private initiative that includes the recent completion of a 192,000-square-foot interdisciplinary research building. Named after Texas Instruments co-founder J. Erik Jonsson, the school awards degrees in electrical engineering, computer science, telecommunications engineering, computer engineering, software engineering, and materials science and engineering.

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