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When Dallas-based oil professional Kelcy Warren attended the University of Texas at Arlington many years ago, he knew he was setting out on an important journey in his life. He would turn the education he earned there into a veritable empire in the industry, earning him the status of billionaire in the process.
That's something that he has always made it a priority to NOT forget, and his philanthropic efforts go a long way towards proving that. Most recently, Kelcy Warren made a donation to his alma mater. But not just any old donation - he made the largest in the institution's history, coming it at $12 million, to the engineering school.
The Past, Present, and Future of Kelcy Warren
The money donated by Kelcy Warren will be used for a wide range of important purposes across UTA. It will help create no less than three new faculty positions, for example, allowing the school to attract and retain some of the brightest minds in the world for the engineering department. It will also help fund additional resource when it comes to one of the school's newest programs - the Resource and Energy Engineering degree.
UTA has made a big deal of its new bachelor's degree program, which is currently poised to launch in the fall of 2023. It is said to be the first of its kind anywhere in the United States. Faculty want to prepare students to apply invaluable engineering principles to not only important topics like energy generation, but also storage, conversion, and even distribution systems as well.
This is important for a number of reasons - chief among them being that students wind up with an education that helps prepare them for one of the most in-demand fields of the modern era. But from the point of view of the school, the program - and the donation that made it possible - will help accelerate their own ability to create as many talented engineers as possible who are ready to make a positive impact on dynamic energy as a whole.
Concepts like renewable energy and sustainable distribution systems are only going to get more important over the course of the next decade. Things are shifting rapidly and those who will last the longest in the field are those who are prepared to capitalize on these trends. That's what Kelcy Warren has always done and that's what he wants to help others do, too.
Note that this is not the first significant donation that Kelcy Warren has made to his alma mater. Over the course of 25 years, he has donated approximately $4 million spread out over 10 separate gifts.
Despite his undeniable success up to this point, Kelcy Warren is a man of humble beginnings. He was born in the 1950s in Gladewater - a small town located in eastern Texas. He was the youngest of four children. The oil industry was actually a big part of his life from an early age, though not in the way it would be decades later - his father worked for Sun Oil as a ditch digger and gauger. Eventually, the Elder Warren would work his way up to the esteemed position of field clerk.
Indeed, Kelcy Warren's father has always acted as one of his biggest inspirations in life. Despite having only a high school education, he was still able to accomplish a great deal. In addition to the aforementioned job, he (along with Kelcy Warren's mother) were always looking for new opportunities to generate income for the family. At one point, Warren's father had a paper route - something that required him to get up at 2:30am. He also opened a trailer park, which turned into a reliable way to subsidize the family's income.
Regardless, all of these things instilled a powerful sense of purpose and responsibility in Kelcy Warren during a formidable part of his life. It taught him that hard work and perseverance pay off and, regardless of the resources that you're given access to, it's possible to accomplish more than you could have ever imagined if you're able to put your mind to it. That's a valuable lesson that he has taken with him for years and, through charitable efforts like his recent donation to UT Arlington, Kelcy Warren hopes to help as many people as possible realize the same thing moving forward.
Learn more about Kelcy Warren here: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/tag/kelcy-warren