Endowed chairs lend financial hand

Author: Scott Greene

Last week's newly endowed Justice William H. Rehnquist Professorship of American History and Culture joins the College's 44 other endowed chairs as a form of giving that many administrators believe provides the most overall benefit to the College in terms of flexibility and reaching the Strategic Plan's goal of increasing the size of the faculty in the near future.

"For the College, from a financial perspective, an endowment for a professorship takes care of something that is likely to be part of the College budget for a long time," President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz said, "and therefore frees up the funds that previously covered the cost of the faculty member's salary to be used for other priorities of the College, such as financial aid or other programs."

The College now has 45 endowed professorships, or endowed chairs, with each position requiring a set "price" of $2.5 million. When invested in the endowment, the College can spend about five percent of that value annually to use in the operating budget, according to Liebowitz.

"When the chair is fully funded at $2.5 million, spending at five percent will yield about $125,000, which will just about cover the average salary and benefits of a full professor at Middlebury," he said. "The $2.5 million is invested in the endowment and, over time, if the endowment grows, this fund for the professorship grows with it, and produces more funds each year for the operating budget."

The first holder of the Rehnquist chair is Professor of History James R. Ralph Jr., a teacher and scholar of American history and a 1982 Middlebury College graduate.

"It came as a surprise and I do feel that it acknowledges the work I've done up to this point," Ralph said of Tuesday's honor, "but with great fanfare surrounding its announcement it adds expectations, and I hope to live up to those."

Ralph will occupy the position for five years. Some endowed chairs specify a period of tenure, such as three or five years, while other chairs are awarded for the length of a person's service to the College.

"I view this chair as really helping me travel along my research path," Ralph said, "[but] it doesn't change my position. It's a five year appointment and I'm a professor of history at Middlebury and will continue to be a professor of history afterwards."

Endowed positions provide incremental resources to faculty members to support their scholarship, resources that do not have to come out of the College's faculty resource funds, according to Secretary of the College John Emerson. In addition to research, some of a professorship's funds are designated for use in supporting involvement with students, such as a student dinner with an academic theme or resources for hiring a student research assistant. The work of those in endowed chairs is summarized every year and reported to donors, according to Dean of the Faculty Sunder Ramaswamy.

"Obviously the donor will want to know what it is that you've done with the money in terms of creating visibility, in terms of your public presentations, publications which then the are sent to all the donors so the donors know that their money is being well-used," said Ramaswamy.

But the true effect of professorships reaches far outside the realm of the College endowment. In permanently endowing a position such as the Rehnquist professorship, the College is able to re-focus its newly liberated resources.

"You're always going to have full professors on the faculty teaching our students," Emerson said, "and anytime there's a gift that can take over the cost of a professorship you have in fact freed up college resources to support anything that's a high priority, whether it's financial aid or some other part of the academic program really doesn't matter. When you have that kind of gift it's as good as an unrestricted gift." Emerson currently holds a Charles A. Dana chair in mathematics, one of several such chairs in various departments.

Vice President of Academic Affairs Alison Byerly agreed, saying that endowed positions are the College's favorite thing to raise money for each year.

"[Chairs] are a consistent source of funding for something that we absolutely always need, at the top of the list of things we like," she said. "People might have different ideas about what kind of building should go up, certain kinds of lecture funds you may want. None of those are bad ideas, but the advantage to the chair is that it endows an ongoing fund that supports something that we'll always need as long as we're a college, which is faculty."

The process of establishing an endowed professorship entails at least six months to a year of discussions once a donor approaches the College with an intention to give money, and in some cases it may follow years of discussion between the two sides.

"It involves our trying to work with the donor to bring together the donor's interest with the College's needs," said Byerly. "It's a process of discussion and it's one that I'm often closely involved in with donors to try to establish a chair that's going to be of maximum use to the academic program."

While the donor typically will specify a desired department in which to create a chair, and even whom to name the chair after, he or she does not appoint the individual who will occupy the chair, according to Byerly. The College also does not customarily engage the faculty in the process of selecting a chair.

Still, endowed chairs will form the backbone of expansion for the College in the near future, as the Strategic Plan calls for the creation of 24 additional faculty positions by 2015.

"This is exactly the type of thing that needs to happen," Emerson said, referring to the addition of the Rehnquist professorship. "Now that may not sound like a lot, it's three a year, but if we could add three positions a year and have them be endowed like this one then that would be a wonderful thing and I know that endowing as many of them as we possibly can is going to be a major priority of the present president."