TABLE OF CONTENTS FRONT PAGE NEXT ARTICLE PREVIOUS ARTICLE
Each of us wants to be recognized for our accomplishments, allowed to work on what interests us and, of course, able to earn a good living.
Faculty members are no different in these regards. And in a market where universities compete for top scholars, faculty members often have the chance to choose their workplace. That leads them to schools that honor their work, both in the classroom and as researchers, and pay them a competitive salary.
Helping Carolina compete in such a challenging market for high-caliber professors is its growing pool of endowed professorships.
An endowed chair confers its holder with extra money, for both salary and research, some flexibility in using those funds, and recognition.
That recognition means a lot to faculty members. Just ask Lee Pedersen.
Pedersen has made a substantial contribution during his 31 years as a chemistry professor at Carolina. He takes on a heavy teaching load, routinely teaching the largest sections of freshman chemistry, notes Ed Samulski, chair of the chemistry department.
The department also benefits from Pedersen leading chemistry's strategic planning efforts and from his maintaining state-of-the-art computational facilities through his National Science Foundation-funded graphics lab.
And the University benefits from his research, which has resulted in more than 100 publications since 1985.
The University recognized Pedersen's decades of teaching and service by making him one of Carolina's newest endowed professors. As of Feb. 1, he became the third member of the chemistry department to hold a Mary Ann Smith professorship, which happens to be the oldest, continuously endowed chair at the University, having been created in 1891.
The position means extra money for Pedersen, which he appreciates. But what really meant a lot to Pedersen was being recognized by his colleagues.
"This is a really good department," Pedersen said. "To be considered good in a really good department like this is a real honor."
Dating back to Smith's gift, the endowed professorship program has grown dramatically in the last century.
The catalyst for the program's growth came in 1917 with the creation of the Kenan professorships, one of the largest parts of the endowed chairs program. Combined with subsequent gifts from the Kenan family, these endowments currently support 63 faculty members.
The number of endowed professorships continues to grow, with 105 chairs being created in the last decade alone.
The steady growth in the number of endowed chairs -- nearly 300 faculty members now hold such positions -- has helped Carolina maintain its excellent faculty in spite of growing competition among schools for top scholars.
"There's no way this University would be as competitive without endowed chairs," said Richard Soloway, senior associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences. "Given our salary structure and the institutions with which we compete, we would be unable to keep the excellent faculty we have."
Establishing more endowed chairs has been a priority for Chancellor Michael Hooker. In the last two fiscal years, a total of 28 new chairs were established.
The Bicentennial Campaign for Carolina that ended June 30, 1995, created 60 endowed professorships. As Carolina plans for a seven-year, $1 billion campaign, endowed professorships will be a top priority, said Matt Kupec, vice chancellor for University Advancement.
"Increasing the number of endowed professorships is going to be an important part of the University's upcoming campaign because we know the crucial role that an outstanding faculty plays in our goal to make Carolina the nation's top public university," Kupec said.
Tough competition
Recruiting and retaining top faculty members is a constant struggle at Carolina.
State funding provides only 32 percent of the University's operating budget, meaning private support is crucial for keeping faculty salaries competitive.
Faculty salaries have improved in recent years, but a survey for the 1997-98 school year placed Carolina 34th among 86 "Research I" universities in salaries for full professors. More important, Carolina trailed some key peers among public universities: California-Berkeley ranked 15th, Michigan ranked 21st and Virginia ranked 25th. Also, neighboring Duke University ranked 13th.
Endowed professorships help Carolina compete for top scholars.
Take the case of William Andrews, who became the E. Maynard Adams professor of English in 1997.
Andrews came from the University of Kansas, where he also had an endowed chair. He is best known for his scholarship on African-American literature, especially slave narratives. His work includes being co-editor of The Norton Anthology of African-American Literature and series editor for an electronic database of slave narratives funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. (Andrews is working with the University library on the project.)
"I came here because of the opportunity to work in an outstanding department, and the endowed professorship made it very attractive," Andrews said. "This was a better endowed professorship than the one I had at Kansas."
One additional factor that drew Andrews to Carolina was that he knew the University was trying to woo Trudier Harris, another well-known scholar of African-American literature, back to Carolina from Emory University.
Carolina succeeded in getting Harris thanks to another endowed professorship. She now is J. Carlyle Sitterson professor of English, a chair named for the former chancellor.
"In training graduate students, no one person can be the entire program in anything," Andrews said. "In terms of African-American literature, we have five excellent professors and that diversity of ideas, interests and experiences is a benefit to our students."
Many endowed chairs are named for esteemed Carolina professors. That list includes former faculty members E. Maynard Adams, William Leuchtenburg and Walter Spearman, among many others.
One such chair is the Raymond Dawson Bicentennial Distinguished professorship in political science named for the former Carolina professor and dean who went on to be a vice president for the UNC system.
Being named the Raymond Dawson professor of political science holds added meaning for Jim Stimson. That's because Stimson once studied under Dawson and today considers him a dear friend.
"I revere Raymond
Dawson because he is a person of extraordinary character," Stimson said. "Knowing him makes it very personally satisfying to hold a chair named for him."
Stimson was recruited from the University of Minnesota, where he also held an endowed chair. The Raymond Dawson chair is actually the second one Stimson has held at Carolina.
"Getting an endowed chair was an essential part of my coming here," Stimson said.
And it's helped keep him here. An expert in public opinion polling -- including polls evaluating the approval/disapproval rankings of the president -- Stimson has turned down an offer to go elsewhere thanks to the endowed chair.
Selecting professors
The process for identifying faculty to hold endowed chairs starts at the department level.
Soloway, the senior associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, said the college asks for nominations, generally in the fall. The nominations come from department chairs and faculty members. Some people nominate themselves.
Most endowed chairs go to people already on the University faculty, but a few are designated to attract outstanding faculty from other schools. For example, the College of Arts and Sciences currently is attempting to recruit four outstanding teacher-scholars from other schools.
The nominations are detailed, including not only a curriculum vitae of each candidate's teaching, research and service records, but also a minimum of four letters of recommendation from external sources. Those nominations are then examined by a committee of chaired faculty, usually composed of six people drawn from different divisions of the college, Soloway said.
Some endowed professorships support particular departments. In those cases, the department would vote on nominations, Soloway said. In all cases the nominations follow the normal personnel review policy, requiring approval of the dean of Arts and Sciences or a professional school, the chancellor, the Board of Trustees and, in some cases, the Board of Governors, Soloway said.
There are two types of endowed professorships, and each has a separate nomination process. "Permanent" chairs are, as implied, appointments the faculty member keeps for the rest of his or her time at Carolina. Most chairs are permanent, as is the case with professors Pedersen, Andrews, Harris and Stimson.
"Fixed term" professorships are limited to a single five-year term, Soloway said.
Soloway said that the University devotes one year to selecting permanent chairs and the next to fixed term chairs. The number of positions granted depends on how many are available, which in turn depends on new chairs being created as well as retirements or departures creating openings.
A constant, however, is that the committees invariably identify more qualified candidates than the number of available chairs, Soloway said.
"Our last committee found 12-13 deserving candidates and we had only six chairs opening in the next two years," Soloway said.
Adding chairs
Endowing a distinguished professorship comes at two levels: $1 million and $500,000. The greater the amount of money, the more income the endowment generates. In many cases, more than one professor is supported (such as the Mary Ann Smith chair).
A state matching fund created in 1985 makes it easier to create an endowed professorship.
Named the Distinguished Professors Endowment Trust Fund, this state program provides one-third of the money to establish such a fund. That means if Carolina receives a private donation of $666,000, the state will provide the remaining $334,000. For a private donation of $333,000, the state will contribute $117,000.
The program has helped create 58 endowed chairs at Carolina, forging an important partnership between the state and private donors to the University, said Kupec, vice chancellor for University Advancement.
"The state matching program is a great example of the public and private sectors working together to leverage resources to recruit and retain outstanding faculty members for this University," Kupec said. "These matching funds are a powerful catalyst for securing private support, which enables us to serve the state through a faculty that delivers outstanding teaching, research and service."
Chancellor Hooker frequently points out that "a university's reputation rests on its faculty." An outstanding faculty improves the University by attracting the best students and by producing groundbreaking research. That combination of top-notch graduates and research in turn boosts the state's economy.
Increasing the number of endowed chairs helps build the faculty, and not just by providing a way to win a few bidding wars for star scholars. The availability of such chairs to professors in all disciplines sends a clear message that the University provides opportunities for excellence in every department. That helps make Carolina attractive to outstanding young scholars as well as established stars.
Madeline Levine chairs the Department of Slavic Languages and holds a Kenan distinguished professorship. She is perhaps best known as the English prose translator of the works of Polish author Czeslaw Milosz, the 1980 winner of the Nobel Prize for literature.
Slavic languages is a small department at Carolina, yet Levine is one of two professors in the department to hold endowed chairs. That sends a message to the academic community around the world, Levine said.
"When colleagues hear we have two endowed chairs in our department, they are thrilled," Levine said. "They get the message that this University still supports the humanities."
"If the University wants to recruit a hotshot young scholar, it's good when they see people in the humanities get endowed chairs because they see there is opportunity," she said. "That sends a message both subliminal and overt that helps our recruiting."
To UNC-CH Home Page