A University of Texas, El Paso, engineering school alumnus and the Halliburton Corp. are donating $2 million to the school to launch a new undergraduate-degree program in engineering leadership in fall 2012, the school announced on Jan. 19. The UTEP College of Engineering says its Leadership Engineering Program will feature a “broad-based curriculum of engineering design, project management and innovation, along with an emphasis on business, communication, ethics and social science.” Donating most of the money is UTEP engineering graduate Bob Malone, who now is president and CEO of First National Bank of Sonora, Texas, and his wife Diane. Malone also is former chairman and president of British Petroleum (BP) America, but the donation is not connected to the company, according to a published report in El Paso. Malone retired from BP in 2009, a year before the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. “What some people [call] ‘renaissance engineers,’ we call them leadership engineers,” says Richard Schoephoerster, the College of Engineering dean. “The overarching goal is graduation of a new pedigree of qualified engineers with the professional skills, business acumen and strategic foresight—in addition to engineering prowess—to meet the needs of the construction industry in the 21st Century.”