Faculty Recruitment and Retention
Endowed Chairs and Professorships
The quality of the faculty is the single most important factor that characterizes a
distinguished department. It is the foundation of excellence that attracts both the
best graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and the extramural funding necessary
to create an outstanding teaching and research environment. The Department of
Chemistry and Biochemistry has been highly successful in recruiting and supporting
the best young faculty in the country for more than 30 years. It has also been successful
in recruiting distinguished senior faculty. Endowed positions have played a pivotal
role in this success and, indeed, have become an essential feature of our strategy. The
model developed by our department is unique in the country and it has given us
an important competitive edge in recruiting the best faculty from the national pool.
Given our need to increase the size of the faculty to meet its research and teaching
goals, to make high level senior appointments when opportunities present themselves
and to retain outstanding young faculty being actively recruited for senior positions
at other universities, we must increase significantly the number of endowed positions
in the department.
We seek to establish seven new $1 million endowed professorships and three additional
$3 million endowed chairs; these additional endowments will result in a total of 20
endowed professorships and 10 endowed chairs, a number that we deem necessary to
grow and sustain a world-class faculty and increase the size of the faculty by 10, as
called for in our strategic plan. These endowments do not replace basic faculty support
derived from external grants and contracts. Rather, they are designed to supplement
such funding and to provide faculty with discretionary funds that can be used to seed
innovative research activities that may reap great benefits. At present, there are 12
Professorships, eight Chairs, and one visiting Professorship that are endowed with a
designation solely for the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Our existing
faculty endowments have been instrumental in the transformation of the department
from what is higher than first tier. However, the new endowments are essential if we
hope to secure the ground gained and propel the department to the next level.
New, endowed chairs and professorships will enable us to support current
faculty, and also meet our goal of attracting and retaining the top talent
in the world. These positions will provide top scholars with competitive
salaries, and flexible support so that they can explore their best ideas.
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