Memorial Day weekend, 1969, Kevin’s father brought him to Central PA to fly fish for wild trout in the limestone spring creeks of Cumberland County. He grew up in the Reading, PA area and enjoyed fly fishing for wild brook trout in Willow Creek in Berks County, PA. They would make that drive many times, and Kevin eventually decided that he wanted to attend Shippensburg State College, so he could be near the spring creeks of the Cumberland Valley and some day perhaps enjoy a career in Central PA.
Kevin started at Ship in September of 1974 as a biology major. During his first semester, he had a chemistry lab that he really enjoyed and his professor, Dr. Thomas Schroeder, asked Kevin to consider taking a chemistry major’s chemistry lab. He graduated in 1978 with two majors, biology and chemistry, and began his career as a chemist at A.S. McCreath and Son, a small consulting firm in Harrisburg, PA. In 1981, he was hired as a chemist at AMP, Inc. in Harrisburg, PA. AMP Inc. was a large electrical connector company with many facilities in Central PA and a global presence. Kevin enjoyed working at AMP and later TE Connectivity from 1981 until his retirement in 2015. “I worked with people with degrees from MIT, Harvard, and Penn State, and the education I received at Ship was as good as any from these major universities. It’s a good value.”
Kevin established the Kevin R. Leibold STEM Scholarship for undergraduate students entering one of the STEM majors (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). “There are so many career opportunities in the STEM disciplines. Every company – from medicine to manufacturing – needs them. My Ship education served me well, and I hope that this endowment will enable others to realize their dreams.”