Jones School trading room, scholarships get a boost

Jones School trading room, scholarships get a boost

BY MAILEEN HAMTO
Special to the Rice News

El Paso Energy
Foundation, the philanthropic arm of El Paso Energy Corp.,
announced that it has donated $2.5 million to Rice’s
Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management for a new state-of-the-art
trading room and an endowment for annual scholarships.

The grant will
support curricular development and research in option theory,
trading of energy-related commodities, bandwidth and financial
instruments involving stocks, bonds and various other commodities.
The Jones School has added a number of courses on energy
derivatives in both its regular MBA and MBA for Executives
programs. Two million dollars will be used to assist in
the construction, furnishing and ongoing operation and maintenance
of a trading room in the new Jones School building. The
167,000-square-foot, $60 million building is scheduled to
be completed in July 2002.

The remaining
$500,000 will fund two-year, partial-tuition scholarships
for four or five students, who will be known as El Paso
Energy Scholars, annually. The first El Paso Energy Scholars
will enter the Jones School in the fall of 2001.

“El Paso
Energy is pleased to contribute to the Jones School’s
ongoing growth and success,” said William A. Wise,
president and chief executive officer of El Paso Energy.
“We seek to broaden and deepen our partnership with
the Jones School, whose faculty and alumni have made a significant
impact, both in our industry and throughout the business
world as well as in our own organization.” Wise expressed
particular interest in expanding executive involvement with
the Jones School, including the design of course curriculum
and related operation of the trading room.

“Hands-on
experience in the highly complex world of options trading
will increase the pool of qualified candidates for El Paso
Energy’s recruiting efforts,” noted Wise. The
program also will offer El Paso Energy employees who meet
Jones School admissions standards the opportunity to take
leave from the company to attend the school in the regular
MBA or the MBA for Executives programs. In addition, the
Jones School also will work with El Paso Energy to develop
nondegree programs for its employees.

“This gift
is important not only for the dollars, but also for the
partnership leverage it provides,” said Gil Whitaker,
dean of the Jones School. “The trading room will provide
opportunities for mutual learning as faculty and students
work with El Paso Energy and other executives to explore
the complex world of trading and the analytical tools of
finance. We are deeply appreciative of the generosity of
El Paso Energy.”

With more than
$19 billion in assets, El Paso Energy Corp. provides comprehensive
energy solutions through its strategic business units: Tennessee
Gas Pipeline Co., El Paso Natural Gas Co., Southern Natural
Gas Co., El Paso Merchant Energy Co., El Paso Energy International
Co., El Paso Field Services Co. and El Paso Production Co.
The company owns North America’s largest natural gas
pipeline system, both in terms of throughput and miles of
pipeline, and has operations in natural gas transmission,
merchant energy services, power generation, international
project development, gas gathering and processing and gas
and oil production. Visit El Paso Energy’s Web site
at <www.epenergy.com>.

— Maileen
Hamto is an assistant editor at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate
School of Management.