As LOBOMotorsports director plans retirement, $1 million endowment ensures his legacy will continue

After more than 30 years with The University of New Mexico School of Engineering, John Russell, director of the LOBOMotorsports Formula SAE (FSAE) program and professor of mechanical engineering, will retire in May 2026. A $1 million gift from Jim and Ellen King will ensure his legacy continues.

The donation establishes the Dr. John J. Russell Endowed Professorship, providing the next LOBOMotorsports director with discretionary funds to continue revving up the program while honoring the man who built it into what it is today.

Jim King, former chairman of Bradbury Stamm Construction, said he thinks the world of Russell and hopes the endowment can honor his legacy while encouraging the hiring of a high-caliber successor.

The Kings have been longtime supporters of the School of Engineering. Their generous contributions have included supporting the construction of the Centennial Engineering Center, assistance for the Academic Fund for Excellence, the endowment of the dean's position, and annual gifts to the FSAE program.

"Sponsors have helped our program in so many ways, and this endowment is an example of that," Russell said. "The Kings have supported us for so long and have been critical in keeping the program together."

Jim King said he sees contributions to the school as a way to support the development of the next generation of engineers in New Mexico.

"In the old days, you could go through engineering school without really working with people. This program goes against that, requiring students to work as a team to think conceptually as they design, build and race the car," King said. "This is the closest real-world experience I've seen at any school."

Russell has worked hard to develop a program that gets students ready for their careers. It helps that working at UNM was his second profession.

He joined UNM in 1993 after a 27-year career in the U.S. Air Force. His time there had taken him from combat testing in Vietnam to teaching at the Air Force Academy and working at the Pentagon. Russell initially joined UNM as the School of Engineering associate dean for research and professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Later, when a group of students built a car by themselves and came in last place at competition, the mechanical engineering chair asked him to teach a class on automotive design, citing his career as a military systems engineer.

It started out as a one-semester senior design course with an opportunity to attend the annual FSAE competition. After recognizing the need for a more intensive, longer-running experience, he was able to grow the class into a three-semester program with one clear objective: teach students the hard and soft skills needed to succeed in their lives and engineering careers.

"When you ask how we do that - it's the car," he said.

And the car has proven to be a highly effective strategy for graduating talented engineers. Of all Formula SAE programs in the U.S., LOBOMotorsports is one of the only to be run as a course sequence rather than a student club. A 2017 estate gift from alumnus Dana C. Wood funded the creation of a 7,000-square-foot lab space equipped specifically for the needs of the program, which has grown to include a lab manager and an electrical engineering adjunct professor to help teach and lead students. Older models of cars designed and built by students have even become valuable recruitment tools for the University overall. For Russell, the most important accomplishment is graduate outcomes.

"The top students get fantastic jobs. They're in demand," Russell said. "They can get a job right at competition. The national labs also look for grads coming out of this program."

Some LOBOMotorsports alumni have gone on to work in automotive design, including Formula One, while others use the experience they gain in systems engineering and program management to get jobs in other subfields like aerospace, security, or entertainment design.

Early in his career with the Air Force, Russell worked on the development of the AC-130 gunship as a systems engineer, a project that later required him to live in Thailand and work aboard the plane as it was combat tested in Vietnam. Six months after he returned to the U.S. to get his Ph.D., the plane was shot down and the entire crew he worked with was killed. Though Russell does not hold a flight rating, his work on the mission earned him a Distinguished Flying Cross with two Oak Leaf Clusters, an award reserved for members of the armed forces who've demonstrated heroism and achievement in a non-routine operation. The experience solidified a critical lesson about how real his work on the aircraft was.

"I try to get my students to understand that as engineers, there are people who depend upon what you are doing, you have to understand that," he said.

There are other lessons Russell learned in the military that have made their way into the curriculum. As part of the course, student team leads meet weekly with the LOBOMotorsports faculty and staff to discuss their progress and challenges. The process helps students learn to think about how their work fits into the project overall - a skill he learned from team briefings with Air Force generals who needed high-level overviews.

"The car doesn't operate as a bunch of individual systems; it operates as a car," he said.

Russell's work advising LOBOMotorsports earned him the Carroll Smith Mentor's Cup in 2014, an award given by the Formula SAE organization to honor FSAE advisors who make outstanding contributions to their programs and instill qualities of leadership, teamwork, technical skill, self-reliance, inquisitiveness, and project responsibility in their students over the course of many years.

His years of dedication to student learning are sure to leave a permanent mark on the program and the School of Engineering.