About Mel Rines

S. Melvin "Mel" Rines '47

Mel received a BA from UNH in 1947 and served as a navy fighter pilot during World War II and the Korean War.  He was engaged in international investment banking for Kidder, Peabody as a managing director and senior vice president, specializing in supranational and sovereign financing.

As an adjunct professor at American University, Mel created and taught a graduate level course on international capital markets and lectured at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.Mel began his service to the University by seeding and co-directing the International Private Enterprise Center at the Whittemore School of Business and Economics (now Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics) to foster private sector growth in the U.S. and developing countries. This, in turn, led to membership on the School's executive board and joining the UNH Foundation Board. He was elected chairman in 1999. In 2014, as Co-chair of the UNH Emeriti Council (a group of former members of the UNH Foundation
Board seeking ways to continue being of service to the University), Mel established and funded a new grant program to encourage student groups to develop and implement international service projects. The UNH Emeriti Council Student International Service Initiative Fund (EC-SISI) supports opportunities for UNH students to bring their knowledge, enthusiasm and expertise to solve real world problems in developing areas of the world.Mel’s most recent contribution to UNH was the establishment of the Mel Rines Student Angel Investment Fund (Rines Angel Fund). The purpose of the Rines Angel Fund is to fuel undergraduate students’ direct involvement in private equity markets and entrepreneurial finance.
A student-driven, multi-disciplinary team, with the supervision of the Director of the Center for Venture Research, manages the Rines Angel Fund program.Mel’s wife, Mary Jo Marcy Rines, graduated from Skidmore College in 1953.  A professional artist, she exhibited her work nationally.  Mary Jo was a director and past president of the New England Watercolor Society, a member of the Board of Overseers at the Walnut Hill School for the Performing Arts, and a former member of the Executive Committee of the Community Advisory Board of the WGBH public television station in Boston.  Mel and Mary Jo received the Hubbard Family Award for Service to Philanthropy in 2007.  Mary Jo passed away in 2011.