Since the beginning of institutions of higher learning, endowed chairs, and professorships have been a means of attracting, retaining, and recognizing the brightest and most promising teacher-scholars.

While the concept of endowed chairs can be traced back to the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius in the second century, the practice was adapted to the modern university system beginning in England in 1502, when Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby and grandmother to the future King Henry VIII, created the first endowed professorships in divinity at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge.

At Georgia Tech, and in this Campaign, endowed chairs and professorships are crucial to the Institute’s success. But how are the resources that come with these positions actually used? To answer that question, we asked two senior academic leaders to explain what they have been able to accomplish as a result of their endowed school chairs.

Unlike most private and public universities, income from permanent endowments supporting chairs and professorships at Georgia Tech is typically made available to the named faculty member for his or her use in advancing their work in their field — whether to enhance their teaching or research, support graduate students, or purchase equipment — as opposed to offsetting their salary base.

Ravi Bellamkonda holds the Wallace H. Coulter School Chair in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory. Prior to his appointment in 2013, he held the Carol Ann and David D. Flanagan Chair in Biomedical Engineering. In his curent position of academic leadership, he is acutely aware that “our faculty are constantly being recruited by other universities,” and that endowed chairs are critical to recognizing the faculty’s excellence. Income from the Coulter Chair is available to him to advance his research as well as invest strategically in his department. He typically uses it to work on projects that are considered high-risk, “so we can evaluate feasibility and make progress in our research in larger steps than federal agencies would allow.”

“I know this from personal experience,” said Bellamkonda. “Both of my chairs have given me the freedom to explore game-changing ideas, out-of-the-box ideas necessitated by the urgent need to develop new therapies for pediatric brain tumors. Ideas that are not easy to support by federal sources — like designing nanofibers that mimic nerves so we can entice brain tumors to move from deep brain locations to the surface, where they can be captured and killed. This idea was seeded by the generosity of donors, facilitated by the Foundation funds available to me as the holder of an endowed chair.”

He went on to describe the response he has received from those whose lives have been touched by this research. “It is not easy to capture the impact of this project, and the hope that it has offered to many parents and families,” Bellamkonda explained. “But it is evident from the notes I receive every week from all over the world.”

And, he added, the Flanagan Chair and the Coulter School Chair have had a tremendous impact on him personally: “They have given me the freedom to express myself fully as an engineer and as a scientist, and the courage to pursue bold ideas that might lead to a quantum difference in the options available for a critical need. This support does not replace federal dollars; it makes the federal dollars that follow projects seeded by philanthropy more meaningful.” 

Steven W. McLaughlin, Steve W. Chaddick School Chair in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), has taken a somewhat different approach to the discretionary funds associated with the chair, which are approximately $100,000 per year in income.

“What’s been happening, especially over the last five years, is state funding continues to decline,” McLaughlin said. “And that cascades down to the schools. In the case of ECE, we remain the largest school on campus, and the decreased state funds mean that the difference between my overall budget and the amount of state funding we receive continues to shrink.”

And that’s where the Chaddick School Chair comes in. It allows McLaughlin to fill in the gaps as that budgetary difference continues to shrink, but it also allows him to invest in strategic areas. In the past year, said McLaughlin, “Entrepreneurship programs have been a major priority. We are trying to greatly expand entrepreneurial opportunities for our undergraduates, and I’ve been able to use funds from the chair to invest in the professors and the classes in that area.”

Specifically, two new courses were created in 2013-14, both of them jointly listed between ECE, the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, and the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering. One is Startup Lab, and the other is Startup Semester. “Students flocked to the courses,” McLaughlin recalled. “We’re about to massively scale that up, through other fundraising efforts. So, not only did the Chaddick Chair allow us to get those started, but the very quick success and huge student interest is also allowing us to engage more philanthropy from other sources to expand the courses — probably between five- and tenfold in the next three years alone.”

McLaughlin estimated that the cost of starting the courses was about $50,000. “It got us going, and we saw some early successes. Now we are going to be able to take this to the next level, and that’s where we know it will have a huge impact on changing the culture and experience of our students. Five years from now, that $50,000 will seem like a small amount. But it’s what started the whole thing.”