IMSA Graduate Gives $100,000 To Ignite Innovation Fund
For Immediate Release, Press Release
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AURORA – Mike McCool, a 1991 graduate of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA), has given a $100,000 gift to the IMSA Fund for Advancement of Education to support the Stephanie Pace Marshall Endowment to Ignite Innovation.
The Marshall Endowment seeks to enliven imagination and develop the creative capacity of IMSA and its students, staff, partners, and alumni to advance the human condition, and develop innovative ideas, products and services that significantly improve the way people live. McCool said giving to the endowment was an easy decision because it “had it all.”
“It highlighted and developed the innovative learning techniques that I remembered from my time at IMSA, particularly the focus on problem solving, creativity, and curiosity, as opposed to memorization,” McCool said. “I always wanted to know how something worked or why something worked – just knowing that it did was never good enough. IMSA taught me to satisfy that curiosity.”
Following his graduation from IMSA, McCool went on to satisfy that curiosity in a number of ways, including serving on the team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that created Mosaic, the Internet browser used to start Netscape. He now works for Multiverse (www.multiverse.net) as Lead Tools Programmer. This is the second, $100,000 gift McCool has given to the IMSA Fund in recent years. McCool, a software engineer now living in California, is a former resident of Westchester, Illinois.
Marshall said she is humbled that McCool has chosen to honor her and IMSA in this way. “When IMSA opened its doors 20 years ago, we pledged to create an environment for exceptional learning—for sophisticated research, path breaking innovation, creative and ethical problem solving, and for imagination and inquiry,” Marshall said. “Mike represents all of these things and more and serves as an outstanding role model of what IMSA students can – and will – become.”
IMSA Vice President for Advancement Suzyn Price said the generous gift from McCool will help the Academy to realize its mission to become the world’s leading teaching and learning laboratory for imagination and inquiry.
“This generous gift will allow IMSA to pursue innovative initiatives such as video ‘games for good,’ corporate apprenticeships and mentorships for students, and an incubation and entrepreneurial design studio, among others,” Price said.
The internationally recognized Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy® (IMSA) develops creative, ethical leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. As a teaching and learning laboratory created by the State of Illinois, IMSA enrolls academically talented Illinois students (grades 10-12) in its advanced, residential college preparatory program. It also serves thousands of educators and students in Illinois and beyond through innovative instructional programs that foster imagination and inquiry. (www.imsa.edu)