Profiles in Giving
Support and Inspiration
Gift honors parents through endowment
by Laura Cruz Acosta
NOVA Winter 2007
UTEP alumna Katherine McIntyre earned a degree in Spanish. Her mother, a talented performer, worked as a news reporter.
But when it came time to create a scholarship endowment, McIntyre was most inspired by her father’s work and passion: Geology.
A 1964 graduate of Texas Western College (now UTEP), McIntyre recently established the Roy S. and Helen Magruder Endowed Scholarship for the Department of Geological Sciences. The annual scholarship will cover tuition, fees and books.
I hope that (this gift) will encourage other alumni to do the same and create more scholarships.
– Alumna and donor Katherine McIntyre
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“He was a true oil man, wild catter, spending many hours on dusty trails throughout the desert southwest, Oklahoma, even east into Alabama,” McIntyre says about her father. “His days were spent building and climbing oil rigs and drilling oil wells.”
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Born in Kentucky, Roy S. Magruder started the A&M Petroleum Company and owned one of the first gas stations in El Paso and the first across the border in Juárez, McIntyre says. Her mother, Helen Magruder, came to El Paso with her family and worked as a reporter for the El Paso Times.
“She was also a talented actress and singer, performing in many plays in El Paso, Ruidoso and Cloudcroft,” McIntyre recalls. “She was a very skilled horsewoman, riding with the cavalry at Fort Bliss, winning many awards.”
McIntyre and her husband, retired lawyer James B. McIntyre, have also contributed to the UTEP Library and the Department of Language and Linguistics.
An interior designer, McIntyre says her parents would be pleased by the tribute. More so, she hopes the scholarship will give talented and dedicated students the opportunity to attend UTEP without having to work.
“Hopefully this will grow so it will support more than one student a year,” says McIntyre. “I also hope that it will encourage other alumni to do the same and create more scholarships.”
Geology professor and department chair Diane Doser says nearly all of UTEP’s students are in need of some sort of financial support to pursue their degree.
“I think the students appreciate when they receive a scholarship through gifts from alumni,” Doser says. “They learn how successful some of our alumni have been, how much the alumni valued the education they obtained at UTEP and how much these alumni valued giving others the chance to complete their education at UTEP.” N
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