The early upbringing of James C. “Jim” McGill (BS 1965) did not portend a highly successful career as a technology entrepreneur. His father was a factory worker and his mother managed the family farm making ends meet, and he spent the day in a one-room schoolhouse before returning home to the nearby worker’s camp.
But thanks to a new state law, the one-room/five-grade school was consolidated into a rural twelve-grade school, which was to become Tulsa’s East Central High School several years later; this brought new opportunities. McGill graduated with a football scholarship, and just as it appeared he was on his way to better things, a knee injury suddenly ruled out football. This turn of events left him with two options: enlist in the Army or work his way through The University of Tulsa. His mother insisted on the latter. Because of the Great Depression, neither she nor his father had made it past the tenth grade, and she wanted her children to have college degrees. So McGill took on the monumental challenge of working full-time at a stone quarry while attending TU. He barely had time to eat and sleep, let alone participate in campus life, but he got what he came for – a degree. He graduated magna cum laude and second in his class in chemical engineering, which was very gratifying for someone who had been warned as a freshman that he stood little chance of passing calculus.
His TU degree took him from the quarry to Dresser Engineering, where he was soon managing a natural gas processing plant construction project in Texas with 600 employees.
In 1970, McGill left Dresser to start his own company, McGill Environmental Systems. He set to work developing his designs for equipment that would meet new federal emissions standards. That same year, the EPA asked him to help draft its regulations.
Five years later, McGill Environmental Systems was a multi-million-dollar company. While building McGill Environmental Systems and acquiring 25 U.S. and foreign patents, McGill also started a family investment company, McGill Resources. McGill thereby invested in other companies while building his own. He sold McGill Environmental Systems in 1986 and went on to found other United States businesses via investments through McGill Resources. He also established Wark-McGill International with Brian Wark, who had run the international arm of McGill Environmental Systems. Operating with offices in Sydney, Australia and Tulsa, Oklahoma, Wark-McGill made several successful investments in the United States and abroad. When he shut down McGill Resources and Wark-McGill International in 2000, they had made over fifty investments ranging from gold mines to pipeline construction, to fitness equipment and the use of GPS in the game of golf.
The last investment venture (in 1999) was in MacroSolve, a developer of mobile software, which he ran until merging it with Drone Aviation Holdings in 2014. He enjoys semi-retirement now while assisting his wife, Edith, in running Ediche Peruvian Creations, which imports women’s fashion clothes from Peru for sale in the United States.
Even with a demanding schedule, Jim found time to serve on The University of Tulsa Board of Trustees from 1994 to 2015, chairing two of the nine committees on which he served, and he continues to hold the title of Trustee Emeritus. He also served on the Industrial Advisory Board for the Department of Chemical Engineering and as Chairman of the TURC Fellows, and he and his late wife, Jean, made many gifts to support an array of TU programs, facilities and scholarships.
In acknowledgement of his extraordinary career achievements and loyalty to TU, Jim McGill received TU’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2005, he was inducted into the Collins College of Business Hall of Fame in 2013, he was inducted into the College of Engineering and Natural Sciences Hall of Fame in 1992, and he was named the 1987 Outstanding Alumnus by the Department of Chemical Engineering.
Jim’s wife, Edith Adelaida McGill, hails from Peru, and the couple divides their time among Tulsa, Peru and Colorado, although they consider Tulsa their true home.
Mr. and Mrs. McGill continue to support an array of programs and initiatives at his alma mater, including annual gifts to fund The James McGill Annual Scholarship for Chemical Engineering and investments in the renovation of Keplinger Hall. They have been recognized as members of the esteemed Circle Society and the Chapman Legacy Society.
In 2019, they officially established The Edith and Jim McGill Endowment for Chemical Engineering, which will provide perpetual scholarship support for chemical engineering students at TU through an estate gift.
The University of Tulsa is grateful for Jim and Edith McGill’s support and friendship. Their dedication to TU will make it possible for other young men and women to follow Jim’s example and take firm hold of the education that will likely change the course of their lives.
