Former legislator Joe T. May and his family are giving Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering $5 million.
The May Family Foundation gift will be used to create a multi-year program that aims to increase the number of first-generation engineering students who enroll and graduate from Virginia Tech.
May, chairman and chief technology officer of Loudoun County-based Electronic Instrumentation and Technology (EIT), earned an electrical engineering degree from the school in 1962. “A couple of people in small ways were very helpful in getting me on track and allowed me to end up getting an engineering degree from Virginia Tech, and frankly ending up with a career that’s been very satisfying to me and I think helpful in general,” May said in a statement.
That’s one of the reasons May, his wife, Bobby, and two daughters, one of whom is a Virginia Tech alumna, made the gift, which the university announced Tuesday morning during a state of the college speech by Julie M. Ross, Tech’s dean of engineering.
