two students with Crown truck in Hong Kong

Students Jimmy Sigona (left) and Artem Shevchuk (right) in Hong Kong with the Thompson Global Internship Program (photo courtesy of Jimmy Sigona).

By Pat Lopes Harris, Media Relations Director

James E. Thompson, ’62 Aeronautical Engineering, has made a $950,000 gift commitment to San Jose State University supporting a College of Business program he helped establish in 2010. The gift is expected to support student participants over the next ten years. The competitive Thompson Global Internship Program sends undergraduate business students to tackle challenging, real-life projects identified by Crown Worldwide Group in cities where it operates such as Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur. Thompson is founder and chairman of the Hong Kong-based business, the world’s largest privately-held international moving company. He created the internship so students could develop a truly global worldview. “My interest in funding this program was to encourage San Jose State students to realize the fact that globalization is now part of all our lives and we should embrace it,” he said in May as SJSU’s commencement speaker. “We’ve come very far in making the world a global society, and in my opinion there’s no turning back.”

To learn more, please contact Program Director William DeVincenzi, (408) 924-3488.