One of 12 new schools opened to students for the 2006-2007 school year, Jerry R. Junkins Elementary School is a 90,000-square-foot facility designed to accommodate about 800 students. The school includes 37 classrooms, a kitchen, an auditorium, a gymnasium, and a cafeteria.
Biography of Jerry R. Junkins
Jerry R. Junkins was chairman, president, and CEO of Texas Instruments and a strong supporter of education. Junkins was born in 1937 and raised in a small Iowa community. He was salutatorian of his high school class of 25 students. He was bested by Sally Schevers, who later became his wife.
In 1959, Junkins received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Iowa State University and headed to Dallas. Over the next nine years, while beginning to establish himself at Texas Instruments, Junkins earned his master's degree in engineering management from Southern Methodist University. Later in his career, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Rensselaer Polytech Institute.
At Texas Instruments, Junkins started as a manufacturing engineer in the defense division, going on to manage all of the company's defense business from 1975 to 1981. He was promoted in 1985 to president and CEO and in 1988 was given added responsibilities as chairman. Junkins re-engineered the company's corporate strategy, implementing a teaming structure. Under his direction, TI worked to build economic opportunities in Dallas and grew the minority business development program to more than $150 million in minority- and woman-owned business contracts.
Junkins contributed extensively to the overall growth of industry. He served on the board of directors for 3M, Caterpillar Inc., and Proctor & Gamble Company. He was a board member of the Dallas Citizens Council and the US-Japan Business Council and served as a presidential appointee to the Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He was chairman of the Business Roundtable's International Trade and Investment Task Force and chaired an alliance to secure congressional passage of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, an international free-trade legislation.
Friends of Junkins say his biggest passion was improving education, pointing out that he utilized TI's influence to help create model Head Start programs in the Dallas ISD. As chairman of the Citizens Council Education Committee, he fought for education reform in Texas schools by promoting measurement and accountability in the classroom. In 1995, Junkins was recognized for his work in early childhood education with the John B. Connally Award from the Just for the Kids Foundation.
Jerry R. Junkins died in 1996. At the time of Junkins' death, then Texas Governor George W. Bush honored him with these words: "Jerry Junkins was not only a visionary businessman, but also a great humanitarian who believed that every child in Texas can learn, and he put the resources of his company to work to improve our public schools."
Biography of Jerry R. Junkins