CANYON, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) — West Texas A&M University announced that WT alum, Dr. Andy Cole recently provided a $125,000 endowment to establish the new Cole Professorship in Animal Science from the Paul Engler College of Agriculture and Natural Sciences.
Officials with WT described that Cole earned a degree in agriculture, specializing in animal science and later earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in animal nutrition at Oklahoma State University. Cole went on work for 40 years at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Research Lab in Bushland as a nutritionist and as the lab director for four years before he retired.
In 2005, Cole founded the Cole Agriculture Scholarship which aided 40 students to reach their educational goals. According to officials, Cole established a “planned gift of nearly $300,000 through a charitable annuity, his will and his life insurance policy, which will convert the professorship into a distinguished professorship.”
“The annuity works very nicely,” said Cole. “I get a fixed percentage of that each year as income for me, and when I pass on, the University gets the rest. It’s economically smart as well as charitable. It checked off a lot of good boxes, I guess you could say.”