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News Release
Engineering honors donors through facility namings
The College of Engineering celebrated the dedication and renaming of thee facilities during recent Homecoming activities.
Hernandez Hall Room 103 is now known as the Martin V. Trujillo Civil Engineering Classroom.
Martin V. Trujillo passed away in spring 2008, leaving an estate bequest valued at $240,000 to augment the Felix C. Trujillo Scholarship named for his beloved uncle who passed away in 1975. Friends and family honored Felix by establishing a scholarship in his name. The estate bequest will allow the Trujillo family to honor Martin and Felix and to continue supporting civil engineering students at NMSU for decades to come.
Felix C. Trujillo graduated from NMSU in 1966 with a degree in Civil Engineering and went on to a successful career as an engineer with the NM Department of Transportation. During his years as a student at NMSU, Mr. Trujillo participated in the cooperative education program, an experience that he felt strongly prepared him for the workforce following his graduation. As an employee with the NM Department of Transportation, Felix was highly regarded for his professionalism, patience and commitment to young engineering students who participated in cooperative education programs with the department, a commitment he was very passionate about.
Martin considered his uncle Felix as a mentor and role model and held him in high esteem. He followed his uncle’s example and earned his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from NMSU in 1978.
The new Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Water Quality Laboratory is located in the Ed and Harold Foreman Engineering Complex.
In Oct. 2007, the College of Engineering received a gift of $1.5 million to establish the laboratory. The gift was made by the Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Foundation.
The gift has been used for the development of a full-service analytical laboratory, equipped to identify the chemical and colloidal characteristics of a water/particle system. The 1,286-square-foot laboratory augments three small and aging analytical laboratories that are no longer sufficient to support research activities.
Approximately $1 million of the gift has been used to acquire analytical equipment to support the laboratory. The remaining $500,000 has been placed in an endowment with the NMSU Foundation with annual earnings used to support and maintain the laboratory.
The College of Engineering has identified water as a strategic research area and is conducting numerous research projects in the civil and chemical engineering departments as well as through the Institute for Energy and the Environment.
The Arizona Public Service Company Graduate Research and Teaching Cluster has been established in Thomas and Brown Hall.
Arizona Public Service Company has had a long relationship with the College of Engineering through recruitment of our graduates and gifts to the college of more than $700,000. Among those gifts is a scholarship established by the corporation in 2006 honoring Jack and Mary Lou Davis. Jack is an alumnus of the College of Engineering and is a former vice president of the corporation.
The room being named for Arizona Public Service is a 440-square-foot computer laboratory used for research and teaching activities by graduate students in the Electrical Utilities Management Program.
Linda Fresques
October 2009