CAMPAIGN STORIES

Jim Wilkinson ’91, MS ’93 has made a $1 million commitment of additional support to the Jim Wilkinson ’91 Endowed Scholarship for undergraduate students.  Wilkinson led the SolidWorks User Experience at Dassault Systèmes team before retiring in 2018. He is now active in community volunteer activities in Southern New Hampshire where he lives with his wife Patricia Stone. He serves on the WPI Alumni Association’s Citations Committee, selecting alumni from the global WPI community for professional achievement and service recognition each year.

When asked what motivated him to make this generous gift to his alma mater, Jim noted how much his WPI education and the WPI Plan have fueled his professional successes and personal fulfillment. Jim felt compelled to pay back some of what he gained through his WPI experience and help make the same possible for future generations of students.

Here’s what else he had to share about his alma mater and why he chose to support it with this philanthropy.

Q. What motivated you to make this commitment to WPI?

A. WPI has been an invaluable part of my success both professionally and personally. Without everything that I learned from my six years at WPI, both academically and socially, I feel like I would not have been as successful at my profession, enabling me to retire early and become an active community volunteer after retirement.

The WPI plan was perfectly suited for my preferred style of learning and not only afforded me to excel technically in my profession but was a huge contributor to preparing me as a successful manager of both projects and people. WPI 100 percent supported me from a financial standpoint through my graduate studies as a teaching assistant and this role perfectly prepared me for the industry in which I worked for my entire career.

I feel like it is only right to “pay back” WPI for the success it afforded me and to pay that success forward to future generations of WPI students.

Q. What do you hope your gift will achieve—either for future generations of students and faculty at WPI, or for individuals and communities beyond our campus, or both?

A. I hope to enable future generations of students like myself to benefit from all that WPI offers with the hope that they will also excel in their careers, personal lives, and have a positive impact on their community, whether it be local or global.

Q. What does WPI mean to you? Was there a person or experience that was particularly memorable or meaningful to you?

A. I had several experiences at WPI that I feel were particularly meaningful to me and contributed to my success. Professor John Zeugner was both my Sufficiency and IQP advisor and was instrumental in helping me hone my historical/humanities research and writing skills. Professor Christopher Brown, as both my MQP advisor and junior year summer research project advisor, helped me advance my technical research and analysis skills and further guided my advancement in technical writing. Most importantly, Professors Kenneth Scott and Holly Ault helped me learn the field in which I made my career, Computer Aided Design. Under Professor Scott, I was a proctor in the CAD Lab as an undergraduate and then the Teaching Assistant in that lab during graduate school. These positions not only gave me the technical skills in the CAD domain but provided me the opportunity to dive deep into the field, writing training manuals and teaching these skills to undergraduates. My graduate thesis under Holly Ault let me dive deeper into the technical side of CAD and CAM. Lastly, I participated in quite a few groups/clubs/activities as both an undergraduate and graduate student and these experiences were invaluable in shaping my skills at social and personal interaction and people management.

Q. What excites you about WPI now and in the future?

A. I very much appreciate that WPI has stayed true to what has enabled me to succeed in life which is the project-based education and more personal interaction with faculty, staff, and other students. In my own experience and from interacting with other WPI alumni whom I hired or otherwise worked with, the skills learned from the program are second to none for success in business and beyond. I am also excited by the additional programs added to WPI’s offering since I graduated such as business, global studies, and new technical fields which are extremely important to the success of students entering today’s business world.

Q. What would you say to other alumni and friends to encourage them to stay connected and to support WPI by giving back?

A. I would ask that other alumni consider how WPI has contributed to their success and if they feel it made an important contribution, making regular contributions to support the same experience for other students is extremely important. I would also suggest investigating alternative forms of support to WPI than a typical, direct monetary donation. While I have made monetary contributions almost every year, most of my contributions have been in other forms such as setting up a scholarship for students using a donation of stock and bequeathing a portion of my retirement savings which will have a positive impact for future generations of students.