Challenge gift from Mike Dolan '75 helps you make a greater impact on WPI
Mike Dolan '75 knows how to solve complex problems. Dolan has built
a distinguished 30-year career by doing just that in almost every
aspect of the oil industry—from design and manufacturing, to sales,
marketing, and management all over the world.
Dolan, a WPI trustee, is now taking a leadership
role in solving an important problem at WPI—building a culture of
annual giving, especially among WPI's youngest alumni. Currently, 16
percent of alumni give to the WPI Annual Fund. At other technical
schools, the annual giving participation rate among alumni is 40
percent. Now consider that 40 percent of WPI's alumni population
graduated in the past 20 years. However, that group donated $105,900 in
fiscal year 2008-09, representing only 5 percent of the $2.17 million
Annual Fund total.
To address this issue, Dolan is challenging alumni
from the last 20 years (1990-2009) to support the WPI Annual Fund at a
modest level. He is matching (50 cents on the dollar) gifts of $100 or
more to the Annual Fund through June 30, 2010. With this matching
challenge, alumni will have an even greater impact on WPI with their
gifts. Dolan recognizes that support from alumni is critical to
advancing WPI's innovative project-based curriculum, which he credits
as the foundation for his own success.
"When I graduated from high school, I was a
blue-collar kid from a blue-collar town, and I wanted to see the world.
I was able to do that—to play in the big leagues of engineering and to
see the whole world," says Dolan, who has lived in a variety places
throughout his career, including Germany, Belgium, Australia, and Saudi
Arabia. "I look back at my four years at WPI as the great enabler of
all of that."
Dolan had already decided to pursue an 
engineering
degree when he graduated from high school. He applied to several
universities, but felt most comfortable at WPI. In addition, Dolan
stresses that WPI made it possible for him to attend. His gratitude for
the scholarship support he received, as well as a desire to remind
other alumni of the generous contributors who made their WPI education
possible, has fueled his challenge gift to the Annual Fund.
"I have a sense of obligation to pay back to the
next generation what was so generously given to me," Dolan says. He
hopes this matching challenge will encourage his fellow alumni to
fulfill their obligation to support WPI with annual gifts. "When I was
a WPI student, there were people 20 or 30 years ahead of me who made
contributions to building the buildings and hire the faculty that make
WPI such a great place to learn."
After earning a BS in chemical engineering, Dolan
began his career as a technical service engineer in research and
development at Universal Oil Products in Des Plaines, Ill., where he
also served as a technical advisor on new refinery oil start-ups
outside the United States. In 1980, he joined Mobil Research and
Development Corporation in Paulsboro, N.J., where he worked in the
research labs and was promoted to a variety of research, planning, and
technical service positions. During his tenure at Mobil, Dolan served
as technical manager at the company's refinery in Adelaide, Australia,
managed the chemical section of Mobil's central engineering company,
and progressed through a variety of strategic planning and business
management positions in the aromatics, olefins, and polyethylene
businesses. He became Mobil's vice president and general manager for
petrochemicals in the Americas in 1998.
Following the merger of Exxon and Mobil in 1999,
Dolan became the Middle East and Africa regional director of ExxonMobil
Chemical. In 2001, he moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he served as
executive vice president for ExxonMobil Chemical Company, Saudi Arabia.
He returned to the United States in September 2003 and served as deputy
to the president of ExxonMobil Refining & Supply Company until
August 2004, when he was appointed executive vice president of
ExxonMobil Chemical Company. He currently serves as president of
ExxonMobil Chemical Company and vice president of ExxonMobil
Corporation.
Throughout his career, Dolan has relied on his WPI
education. He earned an MBA, but adds that his graduate business
education was "nowhere near as important as what I learned at WPI. Ours
is a very technical business." While the WPI Plan was still in its
infancy when he was a student, Dolan says the emphasis on project and
interactive work prepared him for working in culturally and
professionally diverse settings. Noting the development of the Plan
over the last 30 years and the WPI graduates ExxonMobil continues to
recruit into its ranks, he adds, "Today, of course, no one does a
better job of this than WPI."
"If you want to do the big things in engineering,
it's global, and you don't get a better preparation for it than you do
here."
Dolan describes WPI as "the great enabler" in his
life, an education that opened doors to opportunities that have led to
success and fulfillment. He hopes more of his fellow alumni come to
recognize WPI as the great enabler of their lives, as well as their
responsibility to contribute to WPI and support the next generation of
students.
"Providing engineering and technical degrees is
expensive, but important—for individuals, but also for the world,"
Dolan says. "Those are the people who solve the problems in the
world—engineers and scientists."
Make your gift and be a part of the challenge to support the Annual Fund today!