UGS gives SU College of Engineering a $229 million donation

Southern University, and other colleges and universities throughout the south with accredited engineering colleges affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, have received donations from UGS Corporation from a $1 billion endowment.
The Southern University College of Engineering in particular received $229 million worth of UGS software and services.
“This is the largest donation Southern University has ever received,” said Edward Jackson, chancellor of the Baton Rouge campus. “This puts us in an advantageous position and makes the whole region more competitive. We are enormously grateful.”
Along with Southern, other Historically Black Colleges and Universities with engineering programs such as Tuskegee, Jackson State, Prairie View, Florida A&M-Florida State and Alabama A&M Universities were some of 50 total colleges selected from the states of Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Alabama.
“We wanted to provide where the need was greatest,” said Hulas King, director of global opportunities in product lifestyle management (GO PLM) and global community relations for UGS. “We want students to be trained, to learn processes and applications. This will make them more valuable and prepared for the real world.”
Approximately 7,000 undergraduate and graduate students will now have direct access to the software.
UGS Corporation develops products and tools to market global innovations from the beginnings of conception to deliverance of a final product.
Headquartered in Plano, Texas, UGS is a leading provider of product lifestyle management software and services. PLM is essential in effectively creating and utilizing such networks.
PLM is characterized as either an information strategy that builds coherent data structure or as an enterprise strategy that allows innovation and development for learning initiatives.
Applicable to all disciplines of engineering, “This software is one of the strongest components for engineering education hardware and software,” said Habib Mohamadian, dean and professor of the college of engineering. “This has really added to our capabilities drastically.”
Global leaders such as Procter and Gamble, Boeing, Ford, Lockhed Martin and General Motors are a few of the leading companies whose engineers and technologists currently use UGS software and tools.
“This is a win-win partnership for the corporation and Southern University,” Mohamadian said.
As a part of the donation, the company and university are in the process of training teachers so that high school students will be prepared for coursework and programs by the time they reach college.
Mohamadian said that less than five percent of those in the engineering workforce are African American, yet more than 30 percent are from HBCUs.
“We want to see those numbers rise,” Mohamadian said.