Texas Tech received a major donation to the university's Whitacre College of Engineering.
Apache Corp's $2-million gift will establish the Apache Upstream Research Center in the new petroleum engineering research building.
The company's Regional Vice President John Christmann said Apache has been hiring a lot of well-trained Texas Tech grads and needs more.
Chancellor Kent Hance said the gift not only boosts Tech research in a growing field, it also benefits the system's vision and tradition fundraising campaign.
"At the end of last month, the end of October, we were at $955-million out of a billion dollars," Chancellor Hance said. "So we're within $45-million of hitting our goal in our campaign. I think we'll hit it in the next several months. And we're going to be ahead of time. We're probably going to to be a year, year and a half ahead of schedule."
Apache's gift is eligible for an additional $2-million in matching funds from the Texas research incentive program, created by the state.
