Colin Cahoon ’83 earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, but he was an “Aggie” long before he enrolled at New Mexico State University. His father had attended NMSU in the late ’50s and he was a big fan of Charley Johnson and the football team of his student days. The younger Cahoon was a big fan of the men’s basketball team during the first “Lou Henson Era” in the ’60s and ’70s.

Colin graduated from Gadsden High School. He attended NMSU on an Army ROTC scholarship and was active in ASNMSU as well. He served as vice president of that organization during his senior year.

Colin served as a helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army, rising to the rank of captain. He also operated a consulting business, Cahoon Water Quality Consultants, in Salinas, Calif., before obtaining a law degree from Southern Methodist University in 1991. He continues to hold a pilot’s license and owns and operates a Piper Saratoga.

Now a partner in the intellectual property law firm of Carstens & Cahoon LLP, he focuses his patent law practice in the telecommunications, manufacturing, food processing, aviation and chemical technology industries.

Colin has been a supporter of NMSU because, he says, “that is where I got a sound technical foundation and work ethic.”

In October 2004, during the “quiet phase” of the university’s current comprehensive campaign, he and his wife Susan were approached by NMSU development officer Robert Peterson to host a “kitchen table dinner” for alumni in the Dallas area he now calls home.

Among the university representatives who attended that dinner was Charley Johnson, then department head of chemical engineering and former star in the NFL. Colin’s father passed away several years ago, but he still had his father’s yearbooks, which Charley autographed for the family.

This gathering opened the door to a new relationship between Colin and NMSU. Johnson sent each of the three Cahoon children a deck of NFL football cards, autographing the card with his picture. Colin visited campus and met Martha Mitchell, the current chemical engineering department head.

“I learned about the opportunity to create an endowment and the difference a gift like that could make at a time when it was financially feasible for me to do so,” Colin says. He chose to create a fund that would be used at the discretion of the department head to meet needs in chemical engineering. Earnings the first year funded the students’ annual liquid nitrogen ice cream social in September 2006.

In October 2006 he returned to campus to participate in a Professor for a Day event to give students insight into the career he is enjoying as a patent attorney.

“My maternal grandfather, A. D. Boston, was dean of arts and sciences here from 1947 to 1963, and now I am ‘Professor for a Day.’ That completes one circle in our family, but I plan to continue to find ways to stay connected to NMSU,” he says.