Commitment Preserves Husband's Legacy

Eloise Batts, wife of the late business leader Warren Batts, EE 1961, has honored her husband’s legacy with a significant commitment for the Technology Innovation: Generating Economic Results (TI:GER) program in the Scheller College of Business. The gift builds upon the couple’s longtime support of Georgia Tech. 

“It’s a beautiful program,” she said of TI:GER — a program that reflects her late husband’s core business values. 

According to Eloise, Warren never tired of sharing his appreciation for his Georgia Tech education. He graduated valedictorian from Tech with a degree in electrical engineering, an opportunity made possible by Tech’s co-op program. He then went on to earn his MBA at Harvard Business School on a fellowship. He enjoyed a successful career in business, rising through the ranks to become chairman and CEO of several multibillion- dollar corporations. He specialized, she said, in “turning around companies,” and was known among business leaders and peers as a problem-solver. 

Over the years, Warren and Eloise directed their transformative philanthropy across campus, beginning with an endowment fund for scholarships in the co-op program that made Warren’s Tech education possible. The couple later established the Warren L. Batts Scholarship Endowment Fund, which focuses on third-year electrical and computer engineering students interested in integrating commercialization into their academic pursuits. In 2005, they established an endowment fund for the TI:GER program. 

A multidisciplinary educational initiative, TI:GER pairs MBA students with Ph.D. students in computing, engineering, and sciences to collaborate on bringing advanced technology to market. Eloise said the program’s unique coordination of business and engineering is what appealed to her husband. 

“He thought it was the best way to help graduate students whose research has led to an idea or an invention but still need the guidance on how to get it to market,” she said. The program, she added, represented for Warren “the very epitome of quality education.” 

TI:GER instills in students the confidence to lead and to bring their intellectual property to bear on solving real-world problems and improving lives. For instance, Alef Vallipur, a Ph.D. student in electrical and computer engineering, said the program “allowed me to see myself as an innovator capable of bringing life-changing technologies from the lab to patients.” 

Shane Connelly, an MBA graduate from Scheller, recalled his TI:GER experience as an “incomparable opportunity to acquire hands-on experience in strategy and innovation.” 

Jonathan Giuliano, TI:GER’s academic director and executive director, expressed his appreciation for the couple’s generosity, saying, “For more than two decades, the Batts’ support has affirmed the educational benefits of TI:GER’s interdisciplinary approach, providing students with essential knowledge, diverse perspectives, and practical skills.” 

For Eloise, supporting the TI:GER program is a meaningful way to help students while honoring her husband’s legacy, saying, “It’s the best,” to see her support help students deepen their appreciation for the kind of applied research her husband so valued.

To learn more or make a gift to TI:GER, contact Duante Stanton, senior director of Development, Scheller College of Business, at duante.stanton@scheller.gatech.edu.