Ford Motor Co. has created a $1 million scholarship program for engineering students in honor of former CEO Alan Mulally, who retired June 30.
The Alan Mulally Leadership in Engineering Scholarship program will hand out 10 onetime $10,000 scholarships annually to sophomore or junior engineering students at universities around the world, the company said today.
The program will kick off in spring 2015 and run for 10 years. Half the money will come from Ford Motor Co. and the other half from the Ford Fund, the company's philanthropic arm.
Mulally, an engineer by training who joined Ford as CEO from Boeing in 2006, put technology at the forefront of his drive to reinvent the automaker.
“Alan's engineering background and data-driven decision making paved the way for the extraordinary leadership he provided at Ford,” Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford said in a statement. “We are honoring his legacy by providing scholarships to students who demonstrate the strong engineering ability that is required to develop into the next generation of leaders for our industry.”
The Ford Fund will manage the program. Scholarship winners will be connected with the company's corporate science, technology, engineering and math strategic initiative, which is “building the next generation of leaders in these key disciplines,” the company said. Ford will work directly with partner universities to identify candidates.