Inspired by a group of students who created a scholarship in her late husband’s honor, a former UMass Amherst employee joined their efforts to ensure the professor’s enduring legacy at UMass.

When former UMass Amherst employee Marty Smith learned that a group of students had established a scholarship in memory of her late husband, UMass Amherst Professor James MacGregor Smith, she was touched by their generosity.

“Jim had students from all over the world, and a group of them have stayed really close over the years. They established the scholarship,” Marty says. “Jim would be thrilled to learn the students had come together to do something so meaningful in his honor.”

Marty grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, and attended the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she met James. When James got a teaching position in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at UMass, Marty joined him in Amherst, where they lived for the next 45 years.

When they first moved to Massachusetts, Marty, an architect, worked for an architectural firm in nearby Northampton and then at Smith College. After Marty and Jim’s daughter was born, she joined the Facilities and Campus Planning Division at UMass as senior architect and eventually led the in-house design group.

Marty’s work included overseeing construction and renovations across campus. She was also heavily involved with improving accessibility on campus after the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) passed in 1990.

“I was the person who oversaw accessibility renovations,” she says. “I worked with disabled students, staff, and faculty to make it possible for them to do their work. It was very meaningful to me.”

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Jim also found fulfillment at UMass, serving as a professor first in the Industrial Engineering Department and then the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department for a total of 45 years.

“Jim was the most brilliant person I’ve ever met. His interests ranged from architecture to double helixes to golf,” Marty says. “He also loved to travel, and we traveled every year. Oftentimes we visited with students all over the world. It was a good life. I got really lucky.”

When Marty learned of the scholarship established in Jim’s honor, she was inspired to join the students’ efforts.

“I knew that most scholarships in the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department never reach perpetuity. I wanted Jim’s scholarship to be able to award a meaningful grant and be in perpetuity.”

Marty Smith

The fund provides support to rising seniors who are studying industrial engineering, preferably with a focus on operations research, which was Jim’s area of expertise.

“Industrial engineering isn’t really understood by the general public, and yet it’s essential to everything we do. It’s all about organization and flow, and that underlies everything in our built world,” she explains. “My hope for the scholarship is that it will encourage students to study operations research.”

Make a gift to the Professor James MacGregor Smith Memorial Scholarship Endowment to support rising seniors.