Campus Currents

Dan Murray '80 joined Lockheed Sanders in 1982 after working at another company for a couple of years. He was introduced to the type of work done at Lockheed Sanders by none other than his wife, Virginia Bruen Murray '80, another UNH mechanical engineering graduate.

Architect's model of the new Kingsbury Hall.

Today, the Nashua-based company is the Information and Electronic Warfare Systems unit of BAE Systems, and Murray is director of engineering for information dominance systems. BAE Systems employs more than 200 UNH alumni, most of them engineers like the Murrays, and it wants more. So much so that the company announced in September that it was giving the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences $1 million to establish an advanced technology center. The money will help fund the expansion and renovation of Kingsbury Hall, where the center will be located.

The new center will introduce UNH's engineering students to BAE System's collaborative engineering process, which is increasingly found throughout the high-tech sector. "In business, being able to work with engineers from other disciplines is essential. People skills, presentation skills and the ability to write well are just as important as engineering skills," says Murray. An additional reason for the collaboration is the opportunity to introduce the company to potential employees. "We've hired quite a few graduates out of UNH, are very happy with their work and we're always looking to get more," says Murray. ~

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