CEO of Xircom Donates $1 Million to CSUN

Computer entrepreneur Dirk Gates, CEO of Thousand Oaks-based Xircom, has donated $1 million to the College of Engineering and Computer Science at Cal State Northridge.

The gift is the largest from an alumnus and the second-largest from an individual in the university’s 39-year history.

Gates graduated from CSUN in 1983 with a major in electrical engineering. He co-founded Xircom in 1988 with J. Kirk Matthews, and the pair devised the computer industry’s first adapters for connecting portable personal computers to local-area networks.

Xircom has offices on four continents and reached nearly $200 million in sales last year.

“As an undergraduate at Cal State Northridge, I worked closely with my professors in a way that only graduate students at other universities do,” Gates said. “The engineering training I received there was instrumental to the success of Xircom products, and I am delighted to acknowledge Northridge’s contributions to my education with this gift.”

Sharlene Katz, the college’s acting associate dean, said Xircom has also funded scholarships for electrical engineering and computer science students for the past three years.