Leland T. & Jessie W. Jordan Endowment in International Business Education & Research

   Leland T. and Jessie W. Jordan Endowment in International Business Education and Research was established in 1991 to support international business education and research programs. Income from the endowment is used to fund study abroad scholarships for students enrolled in the Mays College & Graduate School of Business at Texas A&M University. The Jordan’s also provided a grant to Texas A&M University to establish the MSC Jordan Institute for International Awareness.

Born in 1906, Leland T. Jordan, class of 1929, was a native of Lufkin, Texas. Known to friends and colleagues in the oil business as “L.T.,” he was truly an international citizen, spending more than thirty years overseas in Venezuela and Kuwait.

Mr. Jordan began his career in the oil fields of Kansas and Oklahoma during summer breaks from Texas A&M where he was studying mechanical engineering. He was captain of Battery A in the Corps of Cadets and was a member of ASME upon graduation. Gulf Oil Corporation hired Mr. Jordan in 1929 as a production engineering in the oil fields of Venezuela. By 1945 he was general manager of Gulf’s Western Division based in Maracaibo.

Gulf Oil and Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, later known as British Petroleum, created the jointly owned Kuwait Oil Company, Ltd. And found the need for Leland Jordan to manage and direct this young company in 1948. In thirteen short years, Mr. Jordan and employees from twenty-nine countries transformed their company into a highly successful technical and commercial enterprise.

In recognition of Mr. Jordan’s service to British interest in Kuwait, Queen Elizabeth II appointed him Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire, an honor rarely conferred on a non-British subject.

Upon retirement in 1962, he returned to Lufkin with his wife of 27 years, the former Jessie Wright. Mr. Jordan continued to play an active part in the affairs of the Kuwait Oil Company, Ltd. He also became actively involved with the Association of Former Students at Texas A&M and became a charter member of the Century Club.

In memory of her husband who passed away in 1976, his distinguished career, and his international spirit, Mrs. Jordan endowed Texas A&M University with the Jordan Institute for International Awareness and the Leland T. Jordan Chair in Mechanical Engineering in 1987. Matching University funds for the endowed chair were used to establish the Jordan Endowment in International Business Education and Research.