Thanks

• Exxon, Irving, $1.7 million $1.7 million from the oil company’s departmental grants program to more than ninety colleges and universities—including the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M, in College Station, Rice University, in Houston, Texas Tech, in Lubbock, the University of Texas at El Paso, and Southwest Texas State University, in San Marcos—to provide extra funding for special programs. The grants are made to schools that offer degrees in business, engineering, computer science, geology, geophysics, and other fields from which the company recruits future employees.

• Kimberly-Clark, Irving, $1.2 million $1.2 million to Marquette University, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. $1 million will be used to establish the need-based Kimberly-Clark Corporation Scholarship Program; the remaining $200,000 will go toward operating expenses. “We at Kimberly-Clark believe that this gift and our ongoing strategic partnership with Marquette can be a model for corporate-academic excellence,” says Wayne R. Sanders, the chairman and CEO of Kimberly-Clark. Mr. Sanders is a Marquette trustee and a graduate of its master’s program in business administration.

• JCPenney, Plano, $1 million $1 million to Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, to establish the JCPenney Center for Retail Excellence at its Edwin L. Cox School of Business. “The only constant in retailing today is change,” says Jim Oesterreicher, JCPenney’s chairman and CEO. “JCPenney is excited about the opportunity to bring a strong retail curriculum to SMU and to assist in the development of additional high-caliber graduates for the retail industry.”