New England College gets $10 million gift, its biggest ever

New England College has received a $10 million gift, the largest in its 80-year history, to boost science, technology, and mathematics programs.

The gift comes from Austin Kovacs, class of 1960, and his wife, Betty Ann. In 2022, the Kovacs’ gifted $1 million to kickstart the first phase of the science building renovation.

Austin Kovacs, a civil engineering graduate of NEC, was a senior research civil engineer at the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, from 1962 to 1995. He authored and co-authored more than 220 technical papers, and holds two patents on specialized auguring, coring, drilling, and testing devices that he developed.

Betty Ann Kovacs was the chief operating officer of Kovacs Enterprises, Inc., a supplier of specialized ice drilling and ice coring equipment founded by the couple in 1995. The equipment has been used on every continent across the globe. The Kovacs sold the business in 2013.

The college said the gift “will give students expanded access to state-of-the-art facilities, cutting-edge degree programs, and opportunities in fast-growing fields like artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, bioscience, information technology, and game theory.

“For NEC students, like those in the Computer Information Systems program, this investment creates opportunities to dive deeper into specialized areas and shape their own learning experiences,” the school said in a statement. “The Kovacs’ grandson, an NEC graduate, exemplified this by designing a customized program in computer systems when such a degree did not yet exist.”